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[00:01]
A
They'll keep you company, they'll keep you sane on a long bike ride or a slow workday making bed and wax about a playoff race whose bats hard. It's Effectively Wild. So stick around, you'll be well beguiled. Hello and welcome to episode 2356 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of fangraphs and I am joined by Venlim.
[00:56]
B
Almost. Almost made it. Made it about halfway through the name. Actually, more than halfway. Halfway through the last name.
[01:04]
A
Ben Lindberg.
[01:07]
B
That's it.
[01:07]
A
How are you, Ben?
[01:08]
B
How are you? Which I was going to ask before that minor introductory stumble there. Yeah, you've been busy. You just shepherded, what, 20 something posts to publication in the past day or so?
[01:22]
A
Well, I would be wildly remiss if I claimed shepherding as if I were the only shepherd.
[01:30]
B
Yeah. Doesn't preclude other shepherds being involved.
[01:33]
A
Oh, yeah. We must, we must thank Matt Martell among. Among the shepherds. He's, he's, you know, really the other shepherd, at least on the fan graph side. Let's see, we published 19 things yesterday and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. As we are recording right now, Matt's shepherding a seventh. Davey just filed an eighth. And we're also going to have a prospect ranking post that'll go live probably sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. So it's a lot of sheep as it were.
[02:15]
B
Transformed you into count, fan count. It sounds like we're here on a Friday afternoon. You're perhaps a little extra loopy. And yet we have a trade deadline debrief to do a trade deadline digest, dissection, other words that start with D. It was. It was a deadline. It was not a deadline mid Meg. It was. Oh, see, I called you Med. See, we.
[02:41]
A
And what's your excuse? Did you even write on the deadline, Ben? You didn't even write on the deadline.
[02:46]
B
We'll get our names down eventually. Another 2300 something episodes, but there you go. It was busy. That is indisputable. It was eventful. I think there are two schools of thought on this trade deadline. Two possible interpretations. So one is that this was active. This was wild. This was super exciting. This exceeded every expectation. And unquestionably, there were a lot of trades. And Jake and Jordan over at Tespas family barbecue, their count was 36 trades. I don't know if they did that in the countdown count voice, but 36 trades on deadline day. And that was just On. On the final day itself. 52 over the final two days, they declared this a record, a new record for trades. And so that's one interpretation. Wow, this deadline just blew our expectations out of the water. We thought it was going to be sort of slower, inconsequential, and. And wow, were we wrong. The other interpretation was that a lot happened, but not that much of consequence, that there were many trades but few impact, that this was sound and fury signifying something, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. I'd say Dan Simborski initially struck this tone. He put on Blue Sky. I'm running the numbers now, but I suspect that when the zip simulations are done, this will project as one of the lower impact trade deadlines in recent memory in terms of the bottom line, probability changes.
[04:20]
A
Yeah.
[04:20]
B
And I asked him whether that turned out to be the case when he did run the numbers, and he said not completely. It was a little lower, but not interestingly so. So it. It wasn't notably inconsequential, but maybe the raw volume, the number of trades is a little deceptive in terms of how much they move the needle. And that was Johan's stance too. In his excellent newsletter, he said that a lot of people describe the deadline as exciting. I don't see it. The median and Mode trades were three guys who sounded made up in exchange for 25 innings of three and a half FIP relief pitching from a third righty. Two the trades that don't fit that pattern were three guys who sounded made up for fifth starters and fourth outfielders, et cetera. So that was his take a lot of.
[05:06]
A
Sorry not to insult Joe, but has he heard of Mason Miller? Like, does he know who that is?
[05:10]
B
Well, yes, I think he is aware, but as he noted, Baseball America had two top 100 prospects traded. I don't know what the. The fan graphs tally would be there, but that's more than the zero from last year's deadline.
[05:25]
A
We had. We had non zero last year, so there's that.
[05:29]
B
But yeah, ye. Yeah, so. So that, I guess those are the two extremes, those are the two polls, and often we come down somewhere in the middle. That will probably be the case here too. I think there are elements of. Of each of those interpretations that I agree with. And yet on the whole, I think it was certainly an interesting trade deadline. I think there's a lot that I'm excited to talk about.
[05:53]
A
Yeah, I think so. A couple of things about that, and I'm not meaning to snark at Joe, but I think you have a. A couple of things that can at least account for the way that this all played out in the projections. And Dan acknowledged this dynamic when he published his piece today on like, sort of which teams saw their playoff fortunes move the most in zips as a result of the activity, starting with the Adam Frazier trade, that blockbuster, and concluding with yesterday's activity and you know, some of it was that the highest profile trades that happened yesterday, not all of them obviously, but, but many of them that happened yesterday or earlier this week involved relievers and even very good relievers aren't necessarily going to move the needle from a playoff projection perspective all that much. We might be, you know, if we are fans of the Mets or the Phillies or the Padres, thrilled to see those guys come October. And they definitely have the potential for outsized impact once we get to the part of the calendar where being able to deploy shut down arms is particularly impactful. But you're not going to necessarily see that as much in the projection. So that's one thing. I think that part of it too can be accounted for as simply as when you look at what Baltimore did with their deadline. They got some good prospects, but they clearly were taking a volume approach rather than insisting on top, top return. Now again, it doesn't mean that there weren't good prospects who moved at the deadline, both for Baltimore and for other team teams. But I think the maybe the best guy who moved, I mean like DeVries is probably the best prospect though, you know, it kind of depends what list you're looking at. But you also saw guys moving in the Duran trade like there were, there were good prospects who went back and forth, but not the top, top guys. Again, depending on your view of Duri. So, so some of it was that, that there was more of a volume approach taken. And then you have trades like, and then we can dive into some of these in particular, I guess maybe starting with this one even if we want to. But you look at what say the Minnesota Twins did, arguably their biggest deal in terms of sort of resetting the trajectory of the franchise was moving Carlos Correa. And what they were interested in that transaction was salary relief, not a prospect. Right? Now I know that that trade and Minnesota's approach more generally has been like very upsetting to Twins fans. Yeah, I, I'd get out of that Cray deal if it were me and we can talk more about that. But like some of it too is that like the biggest names either involved relievers or were like, hey won't you take $33 million of this back from us. The Astros. What a weird organization they are at this point. They're. They're coming and going. They are. They are bagwelled and not. I. Yeah, I don't know.
[09:09]
B
The same players coming and going often.
[09:11]
A
Yes.
[09:11]
B
These Astros, we, we got a listener email about that. Just how many players they have reacquired. Yes, just over the past five years or so since the 2020-2021 off season. Jason Castro, Michael Brantley, Marwin Gonzalez, Justin Verlander, Rafael Montero, Michael Brantley twice John Singleton, Kend Justin Verlander twice Josh Hater, Miguel Diaz, Oledmus Diaz, Hector Neris, Ben Gammell, Cooper Hummel, John Singleton twice Omar Narvaez, Taylor Scott, Hector Neris again, twice. Maybe Jordan Weems, Luis Guillerme, Carlos Correa. Yeah, that's a, that's a lot of guys to get back. And some of them, as this listener Harry noted, were Jesse Chavez type situations where someone's kind of sticking around and up and down. But. But that is a lot of guys have reunited with that organization.
[10:04]
A
Yeah. Where should we start? Because there's a lot of. There's a lot of trades here.
[10:09]
B
The balance that I would strike between those two extremes of it was wild and it was kind of a dud is that. Yeah, I mean, most deadlines probably aren't super consequential. I think we tend to overrate the impact of the trade deadline in terms of just how determinative they are of who makes the playoffs or how far they advance in the playoffs. There's just. There's only so much, much time after the trade deadline. And as Joe always says, variance swamps everything. So you project this or that some guys are, are, as I believe he wrote, are going to go off and some guys are going to go away. They're just going to do nothing. And other guys are just going to be on fire for the rest of the season. And it'll look like a brilliant trade, but it's not necessarily something that you could have expected or projected. But yeah, on the whole, other than a CC Sabathia trade here and there, it's. It's usually not going to be the thing that decides a season, or at least it's hard to say in retrospect that it was the thing. But I think that there were a lot of interesting storylines from this deadline, at least. Like, there's a lot of stuff that's just fun to. To chew on. There weren't that many individual moves that made me do a Double take or say, oh, wow, I didn't think that kind of trade was going to get done with the exception of Carlos Correa, which was partly because he was returning to the Astros, but also partly because I just didn't foresee with the number of years and dollars that he has left on his deal that, that he would move. But I didn't foresee the depth of the Twins sell off here, obviously. So that trade and then the Preller A's Padres trade with Miller and Sears and Devries, that's a big one too. So those are probably the two that really rocked me back on my heels. And that's not a lot. But then again, I guess how many major moves are you really expecting at a trade deadline? Other than that, it was a lot of guys who were expected to go who went. And oddly, some guys who were expected to go who did not. Even though there was this great volume of trades. Like when this season started, if you had to peg two players who would have been traded at the deadline, it would have been Sandy Alcantara and Luis Robert Jr. And neither one of them went anywhere. So that is sort of surprising. But between the Twins doing their semi mid season fire sale and Preller up to his old antics and the Correa reunion, I think there was enough here that, that stood out to say, oh, yeah, this was, this was fun. This was eventful. This was, you know, not individual trades that are like, described as blockbusters. Like, other than the. Maybe the Miller trade I'd describe as a blockbuster. Other than that, I don't know.
[13:02]
A
Duran.
[13:03]
B
Yeah, maybe Duran. That's one thing that stood out is this was like a, a closer carousel.
[13:08]
A
Great year to have a closer you were interested in moving.
[13:11]
B
Yeah, yeah. Or, or acquiring. I mean, yes, there were, gosh, what, like six guys, I guess, who were closers or who were their team's designated save getters at some point this season. Duran, Helsley, Miller, Finnegan, Bednar, Duvall. And there's a big gap between Duran and Finnegan, let's say. I realize that even though they're both closers, but still, that's. That's a lot. I think that seems like a lot. And Neil Payne did some analysis about how many relievers were moved at this deadline. And that's, that's always kind of the case because there are just a lot of relievers and they're just not nailed down really. They're so fine, fungible, and everyone could use one, really. And so even bad teams will typically have a good reliever they could part with. So, you know, and they're just a lot of them that aren't on long term deals. So they tend to be on expiring contracts and they're good rentals and, and if you're headed for the postseason, then you know that you're gonna really rely on.
[14:18]
A
You're gonna need them.
[14:18]
B
Yeah. Once you get to October. And one thing that Neil pointed out this season in particular was that a lot of the good teams that are in shape to make the playoffs actually don't have good bullpens.
[14:32]
A
Yeah.
[14:32]
B
So I think that created a need if you had like the Cubs, the Blue Jays, the Tigers, the Yankees, the Phillies, the Rangers, the Mariners, these are a lot of teams that are probably ticketed for October, but didn't really have those shut down laden and guys that you really want in October. And so that just. That created alignment between needs and, and whether their teams were getting rid of other than like the brewers, the Astros, the Padres had good pull pens. Not that that stopped A.J. preller and the Padres from further upgrading their. Their bullpen. This was like, it was a throwback. It was nice to see Depot and Preller up to their old tricks. You know, like, they've been. They've been kind of quiet and by their standards. And it's. It's nice to see them get that release because you know that, that had to feel good for. For Jerry and AJ Moves. Pulling triggers.
[15:27]
A
We have the concept of the challenge trade right. Where it's like you. You trade your guy who. And then it's like, I think that every year AJ Introduces his own version of a challenge trade to the writers of America where he's like, I'm gonna do a trade that you weren't anticipating. And I dare you to not use the word stimulant in it. Your analysis anywhere at all. I'm just saying, like the man.
[15:55]
B
Wired differently.
[15:56]
A
Wired differently. What a lovely way to put that. I liked seeing them active. I will say that I thought this was a very. And this is gonna sound like a backhanded compliment, and I don't. I don't mean it to, but in a way, I thought this was Jerry's most straightforward and almost restrained deadline and also his most impactful. And I don't want to discount the Randy Rosarino TR from last year because that obviously paid dividends for them, even though they didn't make the postseason. Like, it helped to dramatically reshape that offense for the second half last year. And clearly he's an important part of their lineup this year. But I feel like Jerry can have a, you know, red paperclip tendency, right, where he's like, I'm going to eventually trade this into a World Series ring. And that's not what he sounds like, but. And he never does it or he hasn't yet. And this year it was like, hey, our offense needs upgrading. Those two bats can really help. They're going to bolster our infield corners. We're going to reunite with Aohoney of Suarez. The city of Seattle is going to go nuts. They were talking on the broadcast last night. It was Eric Goldsmith and Ryan Roland Smith in the booth and they were both remarking upon the fact that Mariners fans are so happy that AO Honey is back in Seattle. And they act like that guy has. Was in the org for like 10 years. He had two seasons with the Mariners before now. But I think it's just a testament to like, what a good clubhouse presidency is like. He, he seems to, wherever he goes, just like engender a lot of affection from, from the media, from his teammates, shortly from fans. But yeah, Jiro's like, our offense needs an upgrade. Ben Williamson, who has been playing third base for Seattle, is a terrific defender and I'm sure that he will remain on the roster and be there as at the very least a late inning defensive replacement. But it's like we need to do better than Ben Williamson's bat and we need to do better than Rowdy to Lez or Luke Rayleigh or Donovan Solano. And so they just went out and got Aoenosaurus and Josh Naylor bing bang boom. I'm sure that they would have have liked to bring in additional bullpen reinforcement outside of Caleb Ferguson, although I liked that movie even though it was smaller because they had exactly a one reliable lefty in the bullpen prior to his acquisition. So, you know, it was quieter in a way, but I think it's just like they had needs and those needs were mostly addressed with the possible exception of them getting like a higher impact relief arm. So good job, Jerry. And then, yeah, AJ's just like, like, oh, you think I can't trade for Mason Miller? You think I can't freaking trade for Mason Miller? I'm gonna go trade for Mason Miller. And then he did. Yeah, but they did other stuff too, right? Like, Mason Miller is like a very surprising luxury option for them given the rest of their bullpen. What they really needed was a reliable dh, and he went and got one of those too. And that's good.
[19:04]
B
Yeah. On Jerry, I, I was sort of impressed that they went back to that Suarez. Well, because they did sort of salary dump him, and they seemed to feel like perhaps his best days were behind him, and he had played like that late in his Mariners tenure. And so there's a certain amount of having to swallow that maybe you misjudged the guy or maybe that was the wrong move at the time, or maybe it's kind of conceding, like, to bring that guy back and to win a bidding war for him when he's the most desirable bet on the market. That. That does kind of take some owning up, I guess, to saying, oh, well, maybe it wasn't the best move to get rid of that guy when we did, but we're not going to double down on that by now, depriving us of his services in 2025, too. He's what we need. Maybe we should have kept him all along. He's even on the same deal. Like, he didn't sign. Sign in. He's not like, more affordable now or anything. She's just having a really good year. And. And that deal is almost up. And so they went and got him. So I thought. Thought that was nice, you know, not. Not like being too proud to admit that the guy you need now is the guy you let get away. I think that's. That's good, right? So. Yeah. So between Suarez and Naylor, everyone has wanted Jerry to go get bats. And he went and got bets, got some bets. Good job.
[20:31]
A
Jerry went and got some bats. He needed a bet. He was like, I need a bat. And then they. And then it was like in Ocean's Eleven, he's like. Like, you think we need one more? I think we'll go get one more.
[20:40]
B
And they got the best one, probably.
[20:42]
A
I agree that they got the best one. And, you know, with a. Like a livable, you're not gonna. You're generally not gonna get good players without giving something up. Right. Like the. The days of teams getting really well and truly fleeced in deal. I don't want to say it doesn't happen, but, like, most runners are pretty savvy, and there might be guys where the evaluation front office has is. Is fundamentally different than the rest of the industry, and that should perhaps give them pause. Like, I'm sure that if Oakland had the Sean Murphy deal to do again, they do it differently now, but it's unusual for a team to just get skunked by another. By another club. And so you're going to give up good players generally, or you're going to get salary relief or something. Like, there's often a legible and sort of logical rationale for these transact, even if the fans might not like it or it doesn't end up working out or whatever. Having said that, like, I think the Diamondbacks got good players back from Seattle in both of these deals. But there's. There was no like, you know, mortgaging of the future here. Right. Like, maybe you really like Locklear's bat more than I do, but, you know, like, it was fine. I thought they'd have to. They didn't have to give up any of their top, top guys to get either of those dudes, which is appropriate because, you know, Honey was a rent. Um, but he was the best bat available. And sometimes when you're the best bat available, you end up returning like much more significant prospects than your contract and your production would necessarily merit. But that didn't happen this time. It's like Arizona got good players. Some of those players are either close to the majors or. I mean, Locklear is probably just. My mom is coming to visit. She knows it's. It's wild for her to come this time of year, but she loves me and I'm. I'm taking her to driving back scheme while she's here. And the depravity. We are going to see the, the stripped down. We might get to see Mason Miller close a game for the Padres though, so that's going to be cool and weird.
[22:51]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk about aj. He. He owns the deadline. This is his time. It's just. I was asked by another Ringer editor, Isaac Levy Rubinette, is AJ Prowler good? Is he a good gm? And I said, not sure if he's good, but he's good for content. That much is definitely true. It is fun to talk and write about a power because he will just do things that no one else does. And we kind of complain sometimes about how all the GMs and the Pobos, they're just cut from the same cloth these days. And a lot of them talk the same way and they operate the same way and they have similar models and they're conservative and they value prospects and all these things and okay, they probably know what they're doing, but it's nice to have just someone who's out there just on an island, doing his own thing and standing out. And that could be an advantage. It could also be a disadvantage, depending. But you look at AJ Preller and you think like, how does he keep getting away with this. How does he keep doing this? How does he always have prospects to trade? And that's the thing that impresses me is that he has traded entire farm systems worth of prospects. I remember a Baseball America piece from like 2021 about how the Padres had traded like a whole 40 man roster worth of prospects over the preceding two years or something. And, and he just keeps doing that. And Isaac said to me, yeah, it feels like one of those magical coin sacks that improbably always has room for more. It's just like the loaves and the fishes or something. It's just like, just when you think that Preller has completely cleaned out the farm system and he can't keep enticing teams to make trades with him because he has got nothing left. No. Suddenly he's scouted or signed or developed another excellent prospect and DeVries is a good example of that. So DeVries, a consensus best prospect who has traded at this deadline. 18 year old shortstop who's in high A. And there's some difference of opinion on him. Like fan Graphs has him 21st overall prospect in baseball. Pipeline has him third overall.
[25:07]
A
That's, we're definitely the low outlet on DeVries.
[25:11]
B
Yeah, but, but still pretty high. If that's the low, that's pretty high. He's, he's an excellent prospect.
[25:17]
A
Yes. Yeah, like I don't want to, I don't want anyone to like come away, don't, don't anyone come away confused from, from this. Like he's a great prospect. He's, you know, but we have him as a 50 where I think a lot of publications have him closer to like where Walcott and mate Connor Griffin, you know, in the 60 range.
[25:37]
B
So yeah, so you look at a list of all the prospects Preller has traded over the years and it does maybe make you a little sick to your stomach if you're a Padres fan. It's like Trey Turner, James Woods, Max Freed, Mackenzie Gore, Andres Munoz. A bunch of guys who were traded to other teams at this deadline were Padres prospects of the past. Like yeah, Josh, Josh Naylor and David Bednar for, for that matter and C.J. abrams and, and oh man, just class A for that matter. Not that he was traded, we know why, but like just so many guys who started their professional lives as Padres and then went out in this great Padres diaspora to other organizations. And so you could, you could say oh well they sure would like to have some of those guys back and I'm sure that they would. But there's just as long A list, probably a longer list of guys who were big prospects at the time and then just haven't panned out. And he traded them, you know, like your Luis Cerrillos or Luis Patino or Graham Pauley or all these guys who were top prospects and now no one really thinks about them that much. So that's the problem with prospects. Most of them don't pan out. And maybe it's an advantage if everyone else is saying no, you can't pry any prospects away from me. And AJ Is just like, we'll make more, you know, we'll part with these guys, we'll get more proven commodities, sure things in the short term, and then we'll figure it out. And he clearly has some acumen when it comes to international scouting. Like, that's been a strength of his going back to his Rangers era. And he has managed to just refresh the pipeline enough that he could always get a deal done when he wants to get one done. Now this particular deal, I don't know. I don't know that I love it. I not like a super prospect expert, but I like Devries. You got to like anyone who's that young and that advanced and play shortstop and everything.
[27:40]
A
Yeah.
[27:41]
B
And Mason Miller, like, obviously an excellent reliever, but the Padres don't really need him. I mean, he helps, of course, but that. That was a strength of theirs. And there was some talk that, okay, there's. They're. They're now going to trade Robert Suarez and they're going to trade Dylan Cease, and they didn't do that. And credit to them that it was just all upgrade for them.
[28:02]
A
Right. Yeah.
[28:03]
B
But also, did they need Mason Miller that acutely or. Or JP Sears? How big of an upgrade were those guys really? And. And Miller is. Is under team control for a few more seasons, so it's not like a rental situation, obviously, but even so, you know, just a lot of volatility with that kind of player profile. Reliever, hard thrower, et cetera. I know there' some speculation that maybe they'll. They'll turn him back into a starter or something. Yeah.
[28:30]
A
That they might upcycle him.
[28:32]
B
Yeah. So perhaps there's some upside there, but. Yeah, I don't know. It. It seems like a steep price to pay. It's definitely the. The type of price that teams tend not to pay at the deadline anymore, surrendering a prospect of that caliber. So he makes that trade that I think a lot of teams would have been hesitant to make. And then there was clearly some unfinished business because the Padres Needed bats. And then they went and got bats, too. So they went and got Ryan O'Hearn and Ramon Loriano from the Orioles. Now, Loriano has been excellent this season, which has completely come out of nowhere for me. Like, you know, I didn't. And he has a high BABIP and all the rest. It's not like complete mirage, but definitely sort of unexpected performance for Loriano as opposed to o', Hearn, who's a pretty good hitter. So I don't know how much I. I trust that continuing.
[29:24]
A
Yeah.
[29:24]
B
But then there were other depth moves. He goes and gets Nestor Cortez from the Brewers. He gets Freddie for me and the catcher from the Royals.
[29:32]
A
Oh, God.
[29:33]
B
Yeah.
[29:34]
A
And they DFA'd Maldonado last night, too.
[29:37]
B
Yeah. It gets Will Wagner from the Blue Jays. It's just like all sorts of moves that Preller is making here. So. So for me, and that seems like, you know, the bats they got were not like superstars, but I think were. Were needed. They. They needed guys like that.
[29:53]
A
Yeah. And if you look at, like, you know, obviously, I'm sure. I don't think San Diego has any complaints about their production out of right corner has been a problem for them all season. I'm sure that they're relieved that they didn't try to bring Profar back, but, like, they've had issues in left pretty much the entire year. And, you know, Loriano's in some ways miscast and left because he's a better defender than you typically have over there. Like, he could. He could cover center if you really needed him to. Although he's been in left for most of the his recent career. But he's an upgrade. Sometimes it's about getting, like, a position to the point of acceptability rather than having it be a black hole. Right. Like, Freddy, for me, is a fine player. He's on any other team. He's just like, straightforwardly a backup catcher. That was the role that he played in Kansas City. But the depth of San Diego's catching despair to this point, shocking. Shocking. Right. And so for him, you know, this is kind of like, this is a good trade for San Diego. And this is one of those times where I'm like, you know what? Good for Freddie for Mean, because now Freddie for Mean is going to be just like a starter and he's going to get. And like, he's on a team that's postseason bound with much greater certainty than would be the case in Kansas City. He had to go live in San Diego.
[31:13]
B
Sure.
[31:14]
A
Get out of Here. That sounds fantastic. So like that. I think that they. I agree with the idea that DE is a. Is a high as steep price for what is basically a luxury reinforcement to an already very strong unit. I wouldn't even say an upgrade because like you can make a case at least for this year's version of Mason Miller. Now there have been prior years where you're like, he's just the best reliever in baseball. But like this year's Mason Miller has been diminished relative to his very strong rookie campaign and yet is still good man. Mason Miller's like, I get to go live in San Diego. I don't have to live in Sacramento anymore. Mason Miller, what that guy. What a great time. What a. What a champion. What a what, what a life lived right now. Didn't have anything to do with it. Still great. So, so you know, it's like he is a, he's not even really an upgrade on their existing unit. He's a reinforcement of an already strong unit. But they have to deal with the Dodgers and, and Mason Miller helps them deal with the Dodgers next year. To your point, like he's under team control for such a long time and he's, he can be a tremendous reliever or maybe they will try to upcycle him into being a starter and that'll work out or maybe it won't and if it doesn't, so he goes back to the bullpen. Like, it's hard to judge ages as an executive because I generally am of the belief that like from a process perspective, San Diego is a mess. Like the potteries are a mess. It is sound and fury signifying a good team. But often like it is, it seems to the outside anyway that it is a couple of folks in that front office and they get a wild hair in them and all of a sudden you have Mason Miller in your bullpen. And so I think from a modern process perspective, disaster. But the results can be like really fun and they can be really good. And I think that having a base, aggressive instinct when you have to contend with the rest of that division is generally an asset. It doesn't mean that it always works out for them long term. And obviously like Preller has had some catastrophic misses in terms of his choice grades, but I do generally think that like you at least want to look, you know, up north and go, I gotta be a rock em sock em robot sometimes. I don't even know what metaphors I'm mixing right now. I am pretty surprisingly not like loopy today. I do feel the crush of a month's worth of fatigue, but I feel like I'm holding, but still like rock em sock em robot. Who am I anyway?
[34:01]
B
I saw a tweet or blue sky poster, someone who said like, I used the phrase Bob's your uncle in an interview and I've never said that before in my life. People were just quoting all sorts, quote tweeting, all sorts of like, weird expressions that they used out loud despite never having said them before.
[34:20]
A
Yeah, Rock em sock em robot. Did you have rock em sock em? I just enjoy saying rock em suck em, I think is what I'm learning in this instance.
[34:29]
B
Well, you only have to hold it together until the end of this episode and then you can rest. Maybe. But maybe, yeah, you pull back and okay, so yeah, Miller is like, maybe gilding the late inning lily a little bit there. But. But yeah, like, it's exciting. He's. From the day he started, he's been making exciting trades and signings and all the rest. And it's now, I guess it'll be 11 years that he's been running the Padres front office in a couple days. And he's made the playoffs three times now. He's probably about to make. Make it a fourth time. And also 2023 was just weird and kind of fluky that they didn't make it. So they have had a sustained run of being in contention here and obviously that depended a lot on the fact that they splurged and spent a lot of money. It wasn't all just AJ engineering this through the brilliance of his trades. But yeah, it's not. He hasn't like, taken them to the promised land. Exactly. And there's been a lot of going forward and then stepping back and he's tried to kind of circumvent a rebuild and, and then figured out, oh, maybe we actually do have to. To do this kind of the slower way. And then, you know, it's. It is a tough assignment in the no west, as you said. The thing is that they have developed a lot of talent or at least a lot of talent has originated with them. It's not that they've developed it always, but either they, they haven't really given themselves a chance to develop it in a lot of cases because they just traded guys or players have failed to launch in San Diego. So it does seem like they're stronger when it comes to the scouting and the signing than, than the doing the developing.
[36:12]
A
Yes. At least on the pitching side. I, I think that they've had more success among their position players. But yeah, they, you don't have a lot of homegrown Padres pitching talent to look at and say like, oh yeah, they made that guy better than when he entered the org.
[36:25]
B
Right? Yeah. And Zach Kreiser ran the numbers on this in the bandwagon and, and he found that, yeah, they have generated more major leaguers than, than almost anyone else. Like maybe the Dodgers, the Astros, the Cardinals, the Yankees are up there. But if you look at all the regulars in baseball today, then like players who originally signed as Padres have been more productive than players who have originated with any other organization except the Dodgers and the Astros, who were kind of the, the two leading player development franchises for some time there. So, so that's, that's a feather in their cap. But very little of that production has come with the actual Padres or is coming with it this year. If you look at their roster, Zach found only 16% of the 2025 production from original Padres has come for the actual Padres, the lowest percentage of any franchise. So just not a lot of homegrown guys like the, the median MLP team he found is reaping 47.5% of the benefits from the leaguers it signed. So almost half. And no other team in contention is below the Cubs, who are at like 30%. And then the Padres are at about half that. So they've, they've minted all these major leaguers. They've signed them, they've found them and then they've given them away for the most part. And that's like almost doing it on hard mode, I guess. Like the, the way that a lot of teams build successful franchises, they, they sign and develop, develop draft players and then those players play for them and give them a young, cost controlled core. And the Padres do most of that, but not the, the part of like actually getting that cheap production from those players. They just move them on for someone else's major leaguer. So it is a lot of work to get to where they are. It's just a lot of dancing and plate spinning and all the rest. And it's highly entertaining from afar to watch it happen. And yeah, there's going to be some heartbreak with the guys. They give up, but there's some method to the madness, I guess it's all just, it's made possible by the fact that they keep somehow reaching down and coming up with another wave of prospects that they can pedal for established big leaguers. And that's certainly a skill in itself.
[38:45]
A
And it'll be interesting to see how if at all their kind of roster building approach adapts going forward because part of what has backstopped Preller's ability to do what he's done and take the sort of tact that he has over the last couple of years was that it seemed like maybe the money wasn't endless, but that they were going to operate within whatever financial constraints they needed to build the team. They being the front office rather than ownership saying, hey, hey, sorry, you gotta go sell. And obviously the appetite for that seems to have changed with the, you know, with Seidler's passing, with some of the consternation within that ownership group. So I don't know, I don't know how many deadlines like this they will have because if suddenly your young cost control core matters a lot more. Maybe you can't, you can't trade, you know, a top 20 prospect for like a reliever. Maybe you can't do that. But so far, ayyjayy gonna AJ So yeah, I don't know, it seems like it's been fine.
[40:00]
B
Yeah. So that's the, the addition. The team that added, that made the most waves. And a lot of the waves at this deadline were generated by the Minnesota Twins, sadly for Twins fans. But this was, this was the thing that kind of catapulted the trade activity at this deadline above a lot of people's expectations is that you had the Twins single handedly making double digit total of trades or I don't know how many it came to, but they ended up shipping out about 40% of their active roster.
[40:34]
A
It was 11 players.
[40:36]
B
Yeah, that's, that's certainly more than I expected. So I don't know what to make of this. Like, you know, Derek FVI puts out a statement basically saying like this had to be done, that we think we're in a stronger position now. I mean, what else is he going to say? But you know, just like this group wasn't quite good enough and so we had to make the painful decision to basically start over and, and do a rebuild here. Obviously hanging over all of this is the impending sale of the Twins, which, which sounds like it could be coming in a matter of weeks that something will be announced here. And it's, it's very odd that this is the way it works, that this is evidently something that makes a franchise more attractive, I know, to potential bidders. Just like let's strip the roster down to its studs. Like what, what is the value of a, a baseball team? I mean, it's that There are only 30 in the majors, and there's a ballpark, and you have a. A following, and you have media rights and all this stuff that's sort of hardwired, and it almost doesn't matter who's on the roster. But then, you know, you can see it in the Twins attendance figures, which have fallen fast because they haven't given their fans any reason to come to the park lately. They've just sat on their hands. I mean, maybe Twins fans would prefer their approach at the last couple deadlines, which was do nothing. That was like, this was a monkey's paw. If you didn't want that to happen again, is this what you wanted? Probably not that either. But over the off season, too, they just didn't do anything. And so basically everyone who was rumored to go, except for Joe Ryan, left and right, it's just odd that you would want to pick up. I guess I understand the appeal of starting fresh. Like, okay, we're. We're picking up this asset, the Minnesota Twins, and there's not a lot of other spending and commitments that someone else made that we're now saddled with. But, like, you want a good baseball team that people will come to see so that you can make money, right?
[42:37]
A
Think that. Yeah, you would think that. I want to remind everyone, you never have to hand it to them. You just don't even. Even Uncle Steve. But, like, the. The number of owners who just don't seem like right now we have a lot of owners in the baseball cap and quarter zip molds, right? Which is like, when I. I think I've said this before on the public, when I saw coaches cone, like, in the front row in that outfit during the postseason last year, I was like, oh, the Mets are gonna sign. Like, oh, okay. I understand this differently now than I did before. This guy wants to be the team, right? Like, he is. He is doing. You know, and like, spoiler alert, Steve Cohen wants to make money, but, like, you know, he. He's in it in a different kind of way, right? And not the only owner who is like, I view my team as a. As at least in part, and more so than many of my fellows in this weird little group. A civic institution, right? Like, there. There aren't enough owners who. None of them go to the grocery store. So this is like, kind of a broken way of describing this, but, like, there just aren't enough owners where they want. Want. They want someone in the. In the frozen food aisle at the grocery store to be like, you're doing great with the team, you know, like, you need. Maybe the answer is that they need to be out in the world more so that they can be congratulated or yelled at, whatever's appropriate, you know. But I just don't think there are enough owners that are sort of in that hypothetical group. I say hypothetical because, again, none of them actually go to the grocery store. But, you know, know, this is the, the problem that you run into. And I think it explains in large part this phenomena you're describing, because part of what reinforces that virtuous cycle of, hey, but at, at base we want to have a good baseball team is viewing the team as either a civic institution for your community to enjoy or an expression of your own narcissism. And if it occupies one of those two for you, you're probably going to invest more in your club. But if your understanding of it is, well, we have this tremendous opportunity to be in a constrained asset class, you've already lost the thread. And to your point, I'm sure that there is some amount of this that is explainable by, we might have a vision for how a roster ought to be built. We might have a. We want to bring in our own guys, right? We want this club to be our club. But it does strike me as strange that it's not a bigger problem for them to just be like, well, you're going to be a bad baseball team for the first however long. And I think Minnesota did well, given what I imagined was a directive from ownership for them to shed as much payroll as they possibly could at the deadline. You know, I think they came into the year like, hey, let's do. Let's have one last ride. And if you, you, you know, if you guys are in contention come the deadline, like, maybe the directive would have been different, but given where they were, I think they were just like, everything must go. You know, they did reasonably well given that mandate. Like, it does feel bad to have the guy who you committed a franchise record contract to sort of unceremoniously sent back from whence he came for nothing more, quote unquote than contract relief. But I do think that's kind of a defensible move on their part, because I think the back end of that Korea deal might look really bad and we might be in the beginning of really bad right now. But it, you know, it's hard when you're sending guys who, you know, excite the team when you're sending the best closer. You know, sure, you're excited about, like, tight, but, like, are you that excited? Are you that excited About Mick Abel, do you, you know, don't you want Louis Varland, like, in the fold for longer? And again, I think that, like, these are defensible moves insofar as they were told, hey, you gotta shut payroll. And so I think they brought in prospects, some of whom will end up being good players for them. But it's a tough. It's a really tough pill to swallow, you know, and I wanna. I, I want Twins fans to know that, like, I, I hear, and I know that we have a number of listeners who are Twins fans. And so I'm not trying to discount, like, the experience of this from a fan perspective, because it really sucks. And I think that it really sucks, especially because fans know you can, you can take this approach, right? You can do the hard rebuild and, like, sometimes it works out, but sometimes you're the Baltimore Orioles and, like, you're still selling off everything in sight that you possibly could. They're only, Only non. I. I didn't realize this. I didn't quite clock it until Curie was writing her piece on, on the Mullins deal. But the only healthy, pending free agent who wasn't shipped out of Baltimore over this deadline period is Sagano. All the rest of them are gone. And now they have hurt guys, right? Like, Eflin's still there and, And Gary Sanchez, but, like, they don't have anyone who's not on the aisle and a pending free agent who is still on that roster. And so it's like, you know, I don't. I think that we can sometimes get a little caught up in the, like, the surplus value of it all and the. A brighter day will dawn. And I hope so much that that is true. But I understand it feeling bad in the immediate term, and I understand not taking for granted that, like, it will materialize into a better team, because sometimes, Sometimes it doesn't. And then you're just, like, left with a collection of arbitration or pre arb. Indistinguishable blondes, some of whom are very good, but some of whom have been less fortunate. I'm talking about all the guys in Baltimore who. Look, I know the thing.
[48:52]
B
I think there's. There's something to be said for being decisive. When you do decide to. To do a rebuild, then. Then really do it. And I'm saying you have to absolutely, totally tank and, and be terrible, but. But just pick a lane. I think that can be helpful sometimes. And that was sort of how Falvi tried to sell it. We made a clear and deliberate decision to strengthen the Next chapter of championship caliber baseball. We didn't make surface moves. We acted with purpose, and it wasn't about patchwork or small adjustments. Okay. I think there's something to be said for that in. In some circumstances, like, I'd. I'd rather do that every now and then, rip the band aid off than the. The Angels, let's say, who, you know, are kind of like, nominally on the fringes of contention, and they just go pick up Andrew Chaffin and Luis Garcia, like that's going to make a difference. You know, it's not like they gave up that much either, but they just can't wait.
[49:47]
A
Okay, I'm going to put a pin in my Angel's thoughts because I have a couple. But please continue. What a. What a deadline.
[49:54]
B
They just. Yeah, they never say, we're done. We need to start over. At some point, you just have to do that or else you just end up treading water or worse. Usually sinking in their case, but, you know, you have a few guys who could kind of be the beginnings of a core of a competitive team, but then you're going for it when you have no realistic chance to go for it. Like, I re. I respect. That's something that you want a pobo or a GM to be able to do. And Buster Posey kind of did it. You know, the Giants were kind of on the periphery of contention, too, and obviously started the season well, and he was just, like, looking at where we are and how we've been playing, it's not happening, you know, so just reload for. For when you have a more realistic shot. And that's always tough. And it's especially tough in this expanded playoffs world where a lot of teams are close enough to have a chance, at least on paper on the standings. But, yeah, sometimes you have to know that's the difficult decision that you employ these people to make. In the Twins case, though, I think it really smarts because. Because they were there. Like, they were right there. They had the championship caliber core and they just did not supplement it. And that's probably more of a polad problem, but. But nonetheless, like, Twins fans saw this team that made the playoffs in 2023 and. And had this continuity and these good players and just did absolutely nothing to improve on it. And like, they did the hard part of. Of acquiring a core, and then they just would not spend a cent, really, to improve it, and then they decide, well, this isn't working out. We have to start over. Well, yeah, because you just. You kind of gave up on it. Prematurely.
[51:38]
A
Right.
[51:39]
B
So I think that's the source of the frustration. And maybe the Twins will be good again under new ownership in a few years, and it'll, you know, be some of the guys that they got at this deadline who are driving that roster at that point. But, yeah, just. It leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth where you kind of got close enough that you could see it and then just stalled out at that point because you stopped investing in the roster. And then suddenly you're trading Correa, Duran, Jax Varland, France, Bader, Castro, Stewart, Paddock, Coulomb. Just so many guys gone at once. I saw Chris Antonetti, the Guardian were playing the Twins, and he was like, yeah, we're gonna have to do some work to, like, familiarize ourselves with who's on this roster that we're playing.
[52:24]
A
I ordered the Cleveland Guardians. I would not be making jokes about other people's deadline activity. That's just a little Meg quote you can throw out there, sir.
[52:34]
B
They didn't. They didn't do what the Twins did. For better or worse. They. They traded Bieber, but they didn't do a whole lot else.
[52:40]
A
I agree. I just, like, I want to know how they understand themselves. I'm glad that they did. Didn't. I'm really glad they didn't move Stephen Kwan. I'm glad that they mostly kept this group together. I think that this is. And I think they did well with that Bieber trade, like, so. But also, like, you're just not a very active deadline team, is my point. Like, they never, like, go. You know, they don't. They're not like, ah, we gotta go for it. So it's just like, you leave the criticism of people's deadline strategies to. And, you know, I wasn't really criticizing them. Like, relax, my guy. Same is true for anyone who goes to play Baltimore. It's like, the only guys who are left are indistinguishable blondes. Like, how will we ever figure out?
[53:22]
B
Was it like, okay, so the Orioles and the Diamondbacks were in sort of the same boat. They expected to be good. I mean, the Diamondbacks were in a boat where they actually tried to get better over the off season and made some significant moves, but didn't pan out for either of them.
[53:37]
A
Boats in the desert rarely do, you know?
[53:39]
B
Yeah, true. And so. So these beached boats, they decided, okay, we're. We're going to just do some subtracting. In the short term. They know that they have good enough players that they should, in theory, come back next year and be in line to contend, but they did what one typically does when you're kind of out of it. Fine. Okay. I don't have a problem with, with that approach. But the Braves did not. They. They didn't do that. They. Those are the three teams that I would kind of go group in, like, were supposed to be good and just a lot of things went wrong.
[54:13]
A
Yeah.
[54:13]
B
And the Braves basically didn't do anything at this deadline. They traded Rafael Montero, I guess, but that's about it. Not that they had so much to trade.
[54:22]
A
This is the thing.
[54:23]
B
Yes, all their pitchers are hurt, and then, you know, Marcelo Zuna's not playing well. And yeah, I guess there wasn't that much for them to do. But I wonder because Alexander said some time ago, we're, we're not going to sell. And that, like, he couldn't even conceive of selling because it's been so long since he was running a team that was not in the playoffs or was not contending. And so.
[54:46]
A
All right.
[54:46]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if part of it was bad and like the memory of 2021 and you never know and. But yeah, when I look at their roster, I guess there's only so much that they realistically had to offer.
[55:00]
A
Yeah, I, I think that they found themselves in a modified version of the Diamondback situation where it's like the D backs had a clear, you know, by the time the deadline rolled around, they had a clear case to sell. Right. You know, it could have gone other either way for a while there, but I think that once, you know, when they got to the point where they traded Naylor, it was like, okay, you know, your game under.500, I get the, the direction here. I guess Naylor came a little after that anyway, you know what I'm trying to say. So, like, they were in this position where they had a clear directive to sell. They had made that choice voice. They have a bunch of guys on the team who are obviously going to be around for a long time and good next year, but they also had this crop of pending free agents. And so the decision they had to make was like, are we going to get enough in trade that it is worth it for us to send these guys away as opposed to keep some of them in house qualifying, offer them, and then get draft pick compensation when the time comes. Right. Which was part of Bauman's argument. When I told him and Jay, I was like, you have to argue with each other about whether they should sell or not. And I thought it was a Point well taken, right? Which is that their option wasn't to either trade them and get something or keep them and get nothing. They could have extended the qualifying offer to a couple of them, Merrill Kelly, Aohenio to Gallen maybe. And if those guys had signed elsewhere, they would have gotten draft pick compared to compensation for them. But the, the Braves didn't really have like, they didn't have an Aohenio. Suarez. If they'd had an Ao Anyosaurus, maybe they wouldn't have had a sell at all. But like they didn't have that same sort of contingent of obviously good and valuable but disposable in terms of the long term roster fit guys. Right. There was no Merrill Kelly on their team. So yeah, we should talk about the Rangers because their deadline was really weird to me. But so I'm kind of simple, sympathetic to the situation that they found themselves in. That team is getting older though, you know, like they are getting older and a lot of their younger guys are like injured pitching. So that's going to be an interesting thing for them to navigate because that, that group of like bright eyed, you know, Brace foundation donors is getting, getting closer and closer to 30 every day. Every day. They are.
[57:19]
B
Yeah, there wasn't, you know, for all the relievers who were traded and all the late inning guys, and that's one thing I guess you could say about this deadline is that there's a pretty good chance that we'll be watching late October games, even World Series games, and some of the last innings will be pitched by players who change teams at this deadline. So that's kind of consequential. The other thing I guess I would say is last time we talked and we were sort of setting up the deadline, we were thinking, well, maybe there will be fewer moves because so many teams are in contention and they could convince themselves, themselves that they'll be in the running either this year or next year or the year after.
[58:00]
A
Right.
[58:01]
B
The other thing though, you could say, I guess is because there are so many teams clumped together that there actually is a decent chance that the deadline this year could be kind of consequential just because marginal differences may make the difference this year, like the wild card races, who wins that third wild card and who's on the outside looking and that probably will come down to a game or two, right? So that this very well could swing who ends up inside and, and who ends up on the cold in the outside. And you know, you, you look at Suarez and say, okay, he's probably the best Player traded, best bat. Someone else who was traded will outwar him. I would expect I would take the field over the best player because, you know, he's, he's good. He's not that good and also.
[58:48]
A
And he's defensively limited and.
[58:50]
B
Yeah, and there are a lot of other players who could just get hot for a couple months but. But yeah, like it could, it could end up really mattering. Even if it's. It's just a one war difference or something. Well, it, it might be a one game difference in the standings, but for all the relievers who were traded, there were very few starting pitchers.
[59:10]
A
Very few.
[59:11]
B
Yeah. And. And there are teams that needed a starter and didn't get a starter and their fans are upset that they didn't get a starter, but at least no one else got one either. So it's, it's not like, you know, you, you got outbid. Yeah, I, I guess I, I think the best starting pitcher who was acquired was maybe Shane Bieber who hasn't pitched in the majors this season but has looked good in his rehab appearances and should be back soon. And at least you know, he has ace upside if he comes back and isn't too rusty or, or diminished by the Tommy John surgery. But other than that, like what other starters were out there? Dustin May and Stephen. Matt's the guy that the guys at.
[59:53]
A
The Red Sox and Matt's has been in long relief pretty much the whole year. So I don't, I don't know that their plan is to make him a starter again. He's pretty, his splits are pretty dramatic. I think that he will probably. Which also makes it a weird roster fit cuz I'm like you have a bunch of lefties already and then like you're adding in the.
[60:11]
B
Yeah. Sears. Sears, like you know, back end guy. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[60:17]
A
It's just a lot of Padres guys who moved to the Royals probably have been starting and probably will, especially given Kansas City's. I thought that they threaded the needle in a nice way. Kansas City. I was, I was generally pretty.
[60:32]
B
Yeah.
[60:33]
A
By their. It was, it was like. It was muted and I don't know if it'll work and maybe for it to have worked they needed to do something bolder. But. But I also think that like it would have been really goofy for them to over commit given where they are. And so I don't know. I thought that they. It's to your point earlier, like picking a lane and having a decisive course of action is often the right move and we have Criticized teams over the years. The Red Sox comes sort of most immediately to mind for, like, this coming and going business. It's like, what do you. How do you understand yourself? You know, I feel like the Red Royals, they didn't, like, go. They came. Did they go? Went. I don't know. I like the royal deadline. I thought it was fine. It was like they upgraded in a couple of places, not dramatically, but in some spots it was like their corner outfields were to the Royals what the Padres catching situation was to the Padres. And it's like, is. Is a Yastremsky gritchick platoon, like, gonna catapult you to the division lead? Probably not that, but, like, it'll make you a more respectable baseball team. Maybe. I catch lightning in a bottle, you know, a little lightning in a bottle.
[61:42]
B
Zach Lutel, another starter who was traded, went to the Reds. Yeah, yeah, there. There were a few teams as their.
[61:48]
A
Up and home runs.
[61:49]
B
I know there are a lot of teams who do try to. To kind of, you know, balance the. The coming and the going. And. And there are times when that can make sense. I mean, you know, you could upgrade yourself and maybe still get a good deal with an eye toward the future. But. But, yeah, like, the Dodgers, I guess, were in that camp. The Rays, the Royals, to some extent, all made moves that you would classify as buying and selling. Probably.
[62:17]
A
Yeah. The Dodgers deadline fascinated me because, you know, speaking of another team that probably could have used a starter and didn't get one, in fact, they dealt one. Yeah, their deadline was much more sort of of future focused in terms of the, like, the best players they came away from their trades with were prospects. I mean, they managed to insinuate themselves into that Letel trade and got a good prospect in the balance. But, yeah, it was for a club that, like, has both obvious flaws in the moment and clear postseason ambition. They were more future focused than I thought they would be. Like, they had an Alex call and Brock Stewart, Tony Brax. It's hard for me to say that name without going Barack. I want to put, like, some oomph behind Barack.
[63:11]
B
Yeah.
[63:12]
A
When did Brock become a name? What's that name about? I'm not trying to insult all the Braks who listen to us. I'm sure there are a number of brux.
[63:20]
B
Yes.
[63:20]
A
It's just. What's up with your shame? Who was the first bridge, you know, who rock. See? And it's like, I've said it enough where I'm like, what is that word? How are you allowed to put a b And an R and C and a K so close together.
[63:43]
B
Oh, boy. Oh, it's all catching up with you now. Okay, well, where do we go from Brock?
[64:00]
A
Should we talk about the. The Rangers real weird deadline just as a reset. What was up with the Rangers? Here's the part of this that confused me. On the one hand, I can totally understand feeling nervous about your existing rotation situation, not because I guess Meryl Kelly was the best starter who moved at the deadline.
[64:23]
B
Yeah.
[64:24]
A
All right, let me here. Now I'll round into form on the Rangers. So I think Meryl Callier is great. He is precisely the kind of starter that the Rangers need because he is good. He is above average. He is having a year even better than his, like, career numbers this year. There have been times in the last couple years where he's had, like, cramping, I think, because the air conditioning and Chase is bad. I don't know. Um, but, like, he. This year has been remarkably available. Just like a super reliable, steadying force for rotation that has been, like, very injured or underperforming. Great. And I get them wanting to reinforce both the rotation and sort of the back part of that bullpen because, you know, like, they have deGrom, who's having a great year, but is made of candy glass, and Evaldi, who has been good. And then it's like, a lot less, like, sorted after that. Right. Like, rockers up and down and lighters up and down. Not literally from the majors to the minors, but in terms of their performance. Gray is, like, in the bullpen now. They've had a bunch of injuries.
[65:30]
B
Put some respect on Patrick Corbin's name.
[65:33]
A
I was just gonna say. And then they have Patrick Corbin having the season he's having and being very good for him relative to his most immediate seasons, and super available. But you're not going to give playoff innings to Patrick Corbin unless you. Unless something catastrophic has happened. Right. So I get them wanting a starter, but also, like, their pitching has been very strong and their lineup has been at times underwhelming. It's been better over the last month, but, like, you know, like, they're running a dual lease out there every day they're going well, so, I mean, not every day, but, you know, it's like they had obvious places that they could upgrade and they had a deep farm system. So in theory, like, they had the. The prospect capital to make a move. And so I just. I thought the way that they allocated resources to be so pitching heavy was just weird. And, you know, maybe they'll make a fool of me. But it just seemed like there were other bats that moved who were good and I'm surprised that they. And maybe they were in on all those guys and they just weren't able to get a deal done. But I'm a little skeptical of that. So I don't know, it's just like a weird. The shape of it was strange given their roster needs to me. So.
[66:51]
B
Yeah, I agree though, since you brought up the Rangers, I must note that the biggest addition they made from my perspective was not adding Coulomb or Kelly or. Who else? Phil Meiton, but Luis Corvelo, whom they promoted this week and who made his major league debut on deadline day.
[67:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[67:14]
B
Two beautiful scoreless innings to complete my minor league free agent draft board. 10 for 10. It's now, it's official. It's the deadline pod for this.
[67:28]
A
Using the deadline pod to brag about your minor league.
[67:32]
B
I mean, I have to tell the world I'm bursting with pride because. Because Corvelo, he had been on the taxi squad earlier this year, right. And. And didn't make it into a game. And I felt like Armando Galaraga. I came so close to perfection. But unlike Galarraga, I got a do over and this is my proudest achievement as a prognosticator. Perhaps my only achievement as a prognosticator because I try not to prognosticate. They said it couldn't be done. 10 for 10. Perfect. Minor league free agent draft. We'll return to that topic at the end of the season. But just. Just had to crow about it a little bit. I'm sorry. Sorry.
[68:10]
A
Okay.
[68:11]
B
Well, I just hope that their new relief additions don't endanger Corello standing in that bullpen because I still still need those batters faced. But I'm very proud, very proud. Papa. Okay.
[68:23]
A
I'm so. I'm happy for you.
[68:25]
B
Yeah, I know. I can sense that this. The happiness is just so. Warmth in your voice.
[68:30]
A
Overwhelming.
[68:33]
B
So I guess other teams we should just quickly touch on the Mets. The Mets were fairly active. They picked up a lot of bullpen help to put behind Edwin Diaz. They got Gregory Soto and man, they got Cedric Mullins, who I know is not hitting like he did in his prime, but he robbed a homer in his last game as an Oriole, I think the day before he was traded. So he still got it out there in the outfield and that. That'll improve them. And then they got Helsley and they got Tyler Rogers, who wasn't included. In our previous listing of of save getters and closers, but is one of the best relievers in baseball. We probably don't talk enough about Tyler Rogers and, and how consistent and unorthodox he is. Both of the Rogers were traded actually on deadline day, but the Mets got the better Rogers. The. They got Tyler and they, they gave up.
[69:27]
A
Taylor got traded twice this deadline season.
[69:29]
B
Yeah, he did. It's true. He was a Pirate. Very briefly, I guess.
[69:33]
A
Very briefly.
[69:34]
B
Mets gave up kind of a lot in the Tyler Rogers trade, but Rogers is a really good reliever. So you know, like these are teams that are pretty certain of their playoff bound status and they're just trying to get those late October innings set and, and they did that and their rivals in the NL east also did that. They actually, they had sort of similar deadlines in a way because they both got late inning help. They got closers. The Phillies added Duran and they also added Bader. So that was their, their good defensive center fielder they picked up. Bader was sort of supposed to be Buxton's caddy, the latest of them. But until recently Buxton had been healthy so he didn't really need to back up Buxton so much. But he was actually, actually hitting pretty well in Minnesota. So yeah, the, the Phillies and the Mets were both quite aggressive but sort of canceled each other's moves out a little bit I guess at least when it comes to the division race. But you know, it's, it's classic Dombrowski to part with some prospects to get relief help. And the Phillies have had better bullpens than Dombrowski's teams used to have. But they still needed some help in that department this year and they got the best guy available. They got Duran who is another guy who's under team control for a few years. So they, they had to give up Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel, catcher and, and big league ready starter. So two of the best prospects at the deadline. But these are teams that should be making that kind of move. The Phillies and the Mets for that matter. Like Phillies are getting older and have this aging core and they're in it and this is the time we, when you make that type of move to, to rob the future to pay the present. They also picked up Matt Manning. So yeah, a lot of, lot of action there to make up for the inaction in the rest of the NL East. Of the other teams which didn't, didn't do much. The Marlins didn't do much either. They didn't trade Alcantara. They didn't trade Cabera. They just, I guess, like what they have. They've been surprisingly good lately anyway. Yeah. Like, when you're in that position where you're pretty confident that you're going to be playing playoff baseball, then you. You just want to shore things up and solidify those late innings because you know that those are going to be pretty important.
[71:58]
A
Yeah. I think that they each knew that they were going to go into the deadline being aggressive and trying to bolster obvious holes. And you bolster a hole, bolster a weakness. Yeah, they did that. And you know, it's remarkable when you look at the zips projections for Mets and the Phillies post deadline, like, they didn't really change their playoff odds that much, in part because they both made similarly matched moves. Right. They're still sort of deadlocked, but they each improved their World Series odds.
[72:32]
B
Yeah.
[72:32]
A
Because they're better teams now than they were. So I just think it's a fun little bit of symmetry is all, I guess.
[72:40]
B
Two teams that were fairly inactive despite being in decent playoff position, though. Different playoff positions, the Cubs and the Red Sox. So the Cubs didn't do a whole lot. They picked up Michael Siroca and Andrew Kittredge and Willie Castro and, you know, those are all nice little moves. They picked up the other Rogers, Taylor Rogers. So.
[73:05]
A
Right.
[73:06]
B
They made several additions, but none huge on its own. And then the Red Sox, of course, who were rumored to be in the running for Joe Ryan late, were making a push, but evidently didn't get all that close to prying him away from Minnesota. So they settle for Matt and May. So their fans not pleased. They gave up the. The younger prospect, the outfielder James Tibbs iii, whom they got back in the Devers trade.
[73:34]
A
Yeah.
[73:34]
B
They then flipped him and another prospect to the Dodgers for May. So. So May, like he's been one of the only durable Dodgers starters this year, but has not been that great. And I guess the Dodgers are feeling pretty good about their guys getting healthy in time for October, that they felt comfortable removing May from the mix, even though he's sort of been the staple, the stalwart in that rotation this season. And the Red Sox get him. And like, you know, I guess there weren't that many impact starters available. And May has been better before. I generally, I like him as a pitcher and thought he'd be better than he's been this year. And they did address their deficiencies and their needs there, but not in a very exciting way. And there was a Craig Breslow press conference where he Just, you know, kind of talked like he does in this sort of new age exec, robot, robotic way that I guess confirmed the Brez is a stiff perception that, that people seem to have now. And he basically did a. We tried.
[74:48]
A
Yeah.
[74:48]
B
He said if fans were in the office during this deadline, they would see that guys, we didn't expect to be willing to talk about going into these conversations we made available. We tried to put the most aggressive offers we could in hopes they were going to end in deals. I understand the frustration and the disappointment because we're all looking at the last week right now in terms of the trades that were made and weren't made. There's not a lot of sympathy for how hard we tried to get deals across the line. I understand that that second to last sentence there has really been making the rounds, I think kind of out of context because, you know, he wasn't complaining about the fact that there wasn't a lot of sympathy. I don't think he was saying, woe is me. We tried really hard. Why won't anyone feel sympathy for us? But when you see that line, that sentence in isolation, it sort of sounds like that's what he's saying, saying. But no, I think he was attempting to be empathetic and saying, I understand why there's not a lot of sympathy. But nonetheless, whatever he said, it wasn't going to go over well because, yeah, you know, they made the Devers trade, they cleared all that salary. They've got all these young guys, they've got this great young core and they had prospects, they could dangle and. And they just ultimately just didn't make very exciting moves. And. And they are in a spot where they, they kind of need to, like, I guess. Which do you think, like, needed to make moves more, the Cubs or the Red Sox? Cause they had sort of similar playoff percentages, I think. Or no, the Cubs have a very high playoff percentage. They're like basically a lock, but they are kind of 50, 50 in the division. And that obviously makes a big difference. Do you get that buy or not? Whereas the Red Sox. Sox have very little shot at the division, at least according to the playoff odds. And yet they have a pretty good shot at a wild card. And so you could say, well, they should be even more motivated to make moves because their place, their playoff berth is much less assured. But then again, the Cubs are in the running for a division which is a bigger prize that may be out of reach for the Red Sox. So I guess, yeah, either way, you, you know, and The Red Sox are only what, like five games back in the east, so I guess that's not entirely out of reach. So yeah, there's just, there's a lot of frustration with the Red Sox organization right now.
[77:03]
A
So, like, not that that depot hasn't managed to put his foot in his mouth at different points, but like, I think that there was a realization on the Mariners part at some point that like a lot of what Jerry says inspires reaction. And I think a lot of that reaction is like, fair, but some of it is also like a fatigue with him. And so it would be hard for him to say anything and not have it come across in a way that bothers people. And so that I think is part of why the organization has put Justin Hollander out front so much. You know, part of that is that like, he's the, he's the GM and he, you know, should talk to the media and like they want to keep him and so he needs to have a front facing role in addition to Dipota. But I, I think that maybe Breslow, maybe there would, maybe it would be good for Breslow to have like a designated deputy for some of this stuff because like, it does, it's not a great quote, but it also felt like people were ready to be mad at him, like you said, for whatever he said. And so I'm just like, but like, this is pretty early in your tenure for you to be at that point, you know, so I don't know. I don't know about that. That seems not good.
[78:18]
B
I guess they don't have a gm, right. So I don't, I don't think they do.
[78:22]
A
I don't think they do.
[78:24]
B
Yeah. So they don't really have a designated number two who could kind of fill that role maybe. But yeah, might be something to look into, I guess. Anyway, Anything else we should touch on? I guess I, I, the Yankees were pretty busy and I, I kind of like, like what they did. Yeah, there wasn't any one move maybe that's going to like persuade the, the Cashman haters out there. But you take it in, in some. They made quite a bunch of moves to address weaknesses. Like yeah, their, their bullpen went from not very good to pretty elite. Now at least if you like, look at the projections, adding Bednar in Dval and, and Jake Bird from the Rockies, like, that's a pretty big upgrade to your bullpen to make at the deadline. Bednar. We talked about Jake Berger's minor league reset earlier this year and, and the concept of the minor league reset, just sort of send a guy down, get his head straight, light a fire under him, whatever it is. Bednar also had that this year. He had a minor league reset and he's come back firing after that, I guess. Francisco Alvarez, too. The minor league reset, it's a, It's a fun phenomenon. But yeah, the Yankees, like we talked about, the McMahon trade, when that happened, and Rosario, they just, they did a lot. They, they turned over a surprisingly high percentage of their roster, too, for a team that is adding. And Caballero, they picked up from the Rays as well, so really remade their bullpen, gave themselves a lot of depth, depth and, and versatility on the position player side. So, yeah, you know, no huge star pickup that's going to win over Yankees fans who are unimpressed by this organization. But on the whole, lots of little improvements.
[80:17]
A
I think they're in some ways a difficult roster to upgrade. They have all of this star power and money already sunk in, and a lot of it is. A lot of the players are good, you know, so I don't know that there. I think marginal changes were the, the order of the day given that, like, you know, they're going to get judged back and, you know, they will have more pitching available in future seasons. Obviously not right now. So it's just, they're in sort of a weird spot. So I thought that they did well given some of their, their concerns. Like, I feel much better about that bullpen than I did before the deadline. Caballero is such an interesting, like, I mean, this, I want to be clear. I mean, this is a compliment. Jose Caballero is a pain in the ass. Like, he's a pain in the ass if you're playing him. Like, I don't know him as a person. I have no sense of him as a man, you know, but like, he, he's. He delights in trying to mess with pitchers around like the pitch timer. And, you know, he's a really hard base runner and he is one of these guys who likes to, he likes to kind of be a little annoying to his opposition. Not in a way that's like disrespectful or anything like that. I'm trying to knock the guy, but, like, in a way that feels purposeful. Right? He's trying to be a little bit of a pain in the ass. And that's just a. Interesting fit for New York because, you know, but they like, they like playing the villain. They play the stupid. They do the, you know, they have the evil Empire reputation. So anyway, Jose Caviar is just like an interesting fit for them. But yeah, I liked their deadline. Should we. Can I just say how weird the Angels are for a second?
[81:59]
B
Oh, yeah. Well, just.
[82:00]
A
The Angels are so weird.
[82:01]
B
The Yankees guys, that they got those relievers also under team control for a while. I think Bednar, they have for next year. Duval for a few years. So they gave up some pretty decent prospects to get Bednar, for instance. But those guys aren't really rentals. McMahon wasn't either, so they've kind of done some of their off season business here at the deadline as well. Okay. Yes, please proceed in talking about how odd the Angels are.
[82:24]
A
They're so weird, Ben. Like, it's fine for staff members to disagree. Jeff, he was like, very exercised about their deadline activity when he wrote about it, which I found fascinating because it's just so hard to get exercised about Andrew Chase Chaffan, you know, like, and Andrew Chaffin's a fine player. I, I thought that, like, it was. You can't be mad because they didn't really give up a whole lot. Right. Like, it wasn't like they had a dramatic overpay for him and Luis Garcia. I did have a. I did have a moment where I was worried that we. I hadn't read the piece. I don't, I didn't edit that one. Matt did. Matt's a consummate professional, so Matt would never have made this mistake. But, you know, it's the deadline, everybody's busy, and I was like, wait, we had the right Luis Garcia in there. There are a lot of Luis Garcias. You know, it's. It's Joe Smith. That's very common name. So anyway. But they didn't, they didn't overpay. But they're also not too, like, middle relievers away. So I'm just like, what is your. Again, what is your understanding of yourself? Because it's. It's weird. It's a weird. They're so weird, you know? And like, they're. I. I don't know.
[83:48]
B
They have a ownership mandate not to sell, but they also seemingly have an ownership mandate not to spend that much anymore. And, And a lot of the other free agent additions really went wrong. And so I get why they might be a bit squeamish or gun shy, I guess, but. Yeah, sure.
[84:07]
A
But it's like you're trying to. Yeah, I guess you. If you, if you can't sell, then you can't sell. But, like, I don't know. You want to tell me that Kikuchi wouldn't have been a valuable trade target.
[84:23]
B
Mm, yeah, I don't know.
[84:25]
A
I'm so confused by that.
[84:27]
B
Anderson or. I don't know. They had some.
[84:29]
A
I mean, kind of. This is the other thing. It's like, who other than Kikuchi, who did they really have to trade? Like they're not going to move. I guess they could. You know, they would have gotten. You know who they would have gotten a lot back for would have probably been Taylor Ward. They probably could have.
[84:47]
B
Yeah. Given just how many moves were made. There were. Were some, like, even on the Braves, someone like Ryel Iglesias. You know, you had all these relievers and closers moving, not him or Pierce Johnson. And then the Marlins kept those starters and the White Sox kept Robert and Ben and Tendi and Tman and the Pirates kept Tommy Fam and ikf, which I was kind of hoping he'd get traded so that my man Cam Devaney could get more playing time. But yeah, there were bunch of bad teams that still had a least a few maybe appealing players and they just kept them. The White Sox did trade Austin Slater. I forgot in my recounting of Yankees moves, yet another addition that they made and you know, kind of nice like platoon, outfield bat. He'll be, he'll be somewhat useful for them. So, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it's like whatever the opposite of, of death by a thousand paper cuts is, it's just like you. You're out adding with a. A bunch of little moves that amount to maybe a lot in the end. I guess we've come almost to the end here and, and in classic, effectively wild fashion, we have neglected to talk about the Reds who did make some moves. Also kind of confusingly so. Yeah, they got Miguel and Duhar, who's still, still around. What a weird career he has had. And then they got Zachel, who, yeah, doesn't seem like the best fit for that ballpark. Perhaps. Perhaps they got key Brian Hayes from the Pirates, who, like I have believed in him in various points. I, I thought that he was going to hit and at times it really looked like he was, but boy, he sure hasn't lately. And physically I'm just not sure that he can. But you know, the glove is great. But now what are they going to do with Noel Viarte? I, I guess I get that they needed some help, but they're just always positionally kind of confusing. They're just always moving guys around and, and sometimes we praise versatility and playing guys out of Position. It's like positionless baseball. Hey, don't let guys get stereotyped or typecast or locked into a box. Maybe they could play other positions, but with the Reds, it often seems that they're just bouncing guys around and maybe it hurts their development offensively because they're trying to. To play positions that they're miscast at anyway. I don't know. They seem like they could make a run. They have this core. Some of their core has underperformed, I guess. L gives them some rotation depth and insurance if someone gets hurt, as is often the case in their rotation, which has been good on the whole, but is fairly fragile. But yeah, I don't know exactly how like and Duhar and Hayes fit with their existing alignment and, and whether Hayes can hit at all.
[87:36]
A
Right.
[87:36]
B
Yeah, I don't know. They're kind of confusing to me too.
[87:40]
A
They. Dan noted that they're. They took on money with Hayes and not a. Not a lot in the grand scheme. A surprising amount for the Reds and their playoff odds actually went down. I don't know if Brian Hayes will ever be able to hit. Acceptable. I understand wanting to try more now. My, my optimism around that has dimmed just because he's been healthy this year and he still hasn't hit. And so like, in prior years, you'd be like, oh, there's been some injuries bending. Not really the case this year. So that part of it is concerning. He is a really special defender, and so I get that part. But I find their strategy within fielders just generally over the last couple of years to be kind of confounding. And I don't know that their evaluations have been. Have been particularly good. Like, remember when they signed Candelario? And then. Yeah, you know, and some of this isn't their fault. Right. Like, you know, Marte got suspended, did for PEDs, and so some of it is like you. And they've had a lot of injury on the infield, so some of it's that. But I also, given all of that sort of volatility, can understand them wanting to be like, well, let's just get this guy, have him anchor third. He's a good defender there, a really great defender there. And like, you know, I think because his bat has struggled so mightily, we, We've kind of lost sight of how, how. How special he is at. At third. And then we just, you know, we'll get him to hit or we won't, but we don't have to worry about that position from a, From a Defensive perspective. So. So maybe. Maybe that's the. The rationale. But, yeah. What do you do with Marte? Because, like, he's. I had the Reds game on, and they're like, yeah, we don't. I'm trying to remember who was saying this. I can't remember if I had the Reds broadcast on or not, but they were like, what are we. What are they going to do with Marte? Because, you know, like, they can't put him at short because of Elliot. I'm like, they can't put him at short because he can't play shortstop. Like, what are we talking? Like, he's also defensively limited. Like, is he better at second than Matt McClain? I don't know, man. So, yeah, they're. They're in. They're in a weird kind of spot with. With some of their guys. And. And it's not like, you know, like, Marte's under team control until, like, 2030 or something. It's not like free agency is going to just, like, thin the hurt for them. Naturally. They're going to have to. But he's hitting well this year, Marte, you know, so.
[90:32]
B
Yeah.
[90:32]
A
I don't know. Just.
[90:33]
B
The Tigers did not attempt to repeat their plan from last year, which was get worse and profit instantly, though. No, they didn't.
[90:46]
A
I don't know if they got a lot better, but they are a better team, so that's fine.
[90:49]
B
Yeah, right. They. They got Charlie Morton, they got Kyle Finnegan, they got Paul Seald, they got.
[90:56]
A
Cody Hoyer, Paul Seald.
[90:58]
B
Yeah. They got Raphael Montero, they got Chris Paddock and Randy Doak. So they. They did a bunch of stuff, but.
[91:05]
A
I like the paddock move.
[91:07]
B
Yeah. I always like Morton. He's been pitching better of late, so.
[91:11]
A
Yeah.
[91:12]
B
Yeah. You know, they. They need help less than they did last year when they decided that they were beyond help and then went on a run anyway, so. Plus, they have the power of Riley Green's mustache now. Have you. Have you read the quotes about Riley Greene's mustache? He is. He went from beard to mustache, and everyone's obsessed with the mustache now.
[91:35]
A
Who is everyone?
[91:36]
B
Everyone on the Tigers. Yeah. Okay. They all touch it now. They touch the stash. And Green said, it's great. It gets the boys going. Whatever gets the boys going. And he says McKinstry may have gotten some power from touching the stash. He touched it. A lot of people touched it. Okay, so A.J. h. Said, we've all touched it. I'm not sure how that's going to go over with quotes around it. And good. Said it's getting kind of weird.
[92:10]
A
Okay, so. Okay. Okay. So here's the thing again. I am a known advocate for the boys giving each other a little kiss if everyone wants to. And if. And if Riley Greene is fine with people touching his stash, that's between him and God. That's none of my business. Although it sounds like he's starting to register it as a bit odd.
[92:32]
B
Yes. He also said it's not a good look. Just. He doesn't like how the mustache.
[92:37]
A
Okay. I was like.
[92:38]
B
Not the touching of it, but the.
[92:40]
A
Of all the. I just.
[92:41]
B
But he said, if it means winning, then I'll keep it. I don't know that it does, but I guess you.
[92:46]
A
You'll never convince baseball players of that. You've never met a more superstitious group of human beings in your life. Like, they're, you know, they're puritans who burned witches who are less superstitious than baseball players. I'm doing witches in air quotes. I just think that, like, it's on your face is the thing, like, of all the, like, things to. To touch in your workplace, on another worker's face. It's just a lot. Like, there's something very. I mean, we're all thinking of so many jokes right now, and they all involved. Involve nastiness. Right. Our grandmothers are embarrassed. They're blushing. They don't know why, but they're like. I feel like somebody's thinking a bad thing, but there's something so intimate about, like, you're in the dugout, and. And all of a sudden, like, you're just. Zach McKinstry is just, like, touching your face. He's just like. And it's like, you can't. It's hard to touch your. Touch your mustache without, like, obscuring part of your mouth. Mouth. So it's just like a very. I don't know about that. You know? I don't know about it. I. Again, like you. If you're gonna be in the lip area already, just give each other a little kiss. You know, like, give it a little good little kiss. Will Carlos Correa be able to give members of the Astros a little kiss on the head? He's a little kiss on the head guy. Is he like, Houston.
[94:20]
B
Yeah.
[94:21]
A
And I'm bringing back the little kiss on the head, you know?
[94:23]
B
Yep.
[94:24]
A
Is he gonna be able to do that? I don't think I. Sorry, can I just say this about Carlos Gray? Because I feel like I. I don't Think I appreciated how dire Isak Paredes injury was until they traded done for.
[94:36]
B
The year, it seems.
[94:37]
A
Yeah, I did not. Somehow, in the. In the. In all the comings and goings, I didn't clock how bad his injury was. I don't know how much they talked about that, but I just missed it. I'll. I'll blame myself and not the ast.
[94:52]
B
Um, anyway. No, it. It is. Well, first of all, speaking of other news about touching, Brian Cashman was asked whether Spencer Jones was untouchable, and he said, some guys are more touchable than others. Clearly, Riley Green is among them. But, yeah, Carl Correa, like, he has not played well this year. He played well last year when he was healthy, but between being unavailable sometimes and just. Just not playing well this year. And there's. There's no apparent injury this year that you can exactly trace it to, but it's in some ways that's almost more concerning. So him going back to the Astros, I guess it's like. It's a feel good story for Astros fans and for everyone else, it's like a. It's also feel good because you get to feel angry, I guess, because it's like, oh, good, I can consolidate my booing now. One of the sign stealers is back on the sign stealing team. So that simplifies things maybe. But I could imagine that, yes, as you said, like, the Twins may be happy to get out of the back end of that contract. On the other hand, I could also imagine him just, like, going back to Houston and just miraculously having a run and it clicking and. And they need help.
[96:06]
A
It will 100% happen, Ben.
[96:08]
B
Yeah, it will.
[96:09]
A
100. Because, look, the universe is like, you need a new way to feel bad about your baseball team, Meg. And so he will go home, and Rick, he's gonna. He's gonna be riding high on how he gets to go literally home because, like, you know, his wife's family is from there. I think his parents maybe live there. Now he's get. No, it's gonna be.
[96:37]
B
No.
[96:37]
A
He'll ready to crouch out about it. Ready.
[96:40]
B
It'll be vintage Carlos Correa.
[96:42]
A
Ready?
[96:43]
B
Most likely. Yeah. All right, and then the brewers, we haven't really mentioned they didn't do much either. And they're. They're locked in a tight race there. Maybe they figured, hey, we have Andrew Vaughn. What else do we need? He's the best hitter in baseball, but he moved back in the box, Meg. He moved back in the batter's box. I'm sure that was the only reason.
[97:03]
A
But I. I want to be clear. I was never giving you guff about your theory. I said that there were exactly examples to the contrary, but I didn't.
[97:11]
B
Yes.
[97:12]
A
It really works for some guys. Like, yes.
[97:15]
B
Oh, yeah. But no, the. The brewers, they got Shelby Miller and Jordan Montgomery, which would have been a major move at one point several years ago.
[97:23]
A
Jordan Montgomery slow quitting king. Like, and I feel bad saying that because he had Tommy John. He's injured. But, like, Jordan Montgomery got a trade bonus and will probably never, ever. I. I wonder if he'll even go to Wisconsin. Like, is that guy. Because he's. He's a free agent at the end of the season, he's never gonna throw a pitch for the brewers, at least not on this contract. But he got a half million dollar trade bonus, so I think that's great. You know what it feels like a win for labor generally, you know, and like, that deal was a bad. That ended up being a real disaster of a free agent signing for the Diamonds backs. But what are you gonna do? You know, sometimes those don't work out, and sometimes you get half a million dollars for being home. That sounds great. I would take half a million dollars to be at home. I'm already home.
[98:17]
B
Then that's where I want to be. That's my natural habitat.
[98:20]
A
I know.
[98:21]
B
Brewers also got Danny Jensen. Anyway, they didn't do that much, but they'll probably just figure it out and win anyway, somehow.
[98:28]
A
Somehow. Although, you know, they. They could have used a big bet. I'm just saying. I know that Andrew Vaughn may never strike out again. Maybe he'll never miss, but there's a lot of evidence to the contrary about that. And Andrew Vaughn. You know, I hadn't seen Andrew Vaughn without his hat on until he went to Milwaukee. You should wear a hat. It's my not very generous Andrew von ticket. Just like I think the problem is. I think it's hat hair. You're exactly. The problem is that, like, he wears the cap because I'm gesticulating, because I'm. I'm imitating his hair with my hand. I'm like, oh, it's his hair. And it makes him look so much older than he is. He's 27. He is more than a decade younger than I am. And boy, would you have a hard time convincing me of that if I didn't know what his birthday was. That's a funny thing about him. What other teams have. When we talk about. About that, we should. The Pirates sold. That's not surprising much.
[99:29]
B
Yeah, we didn't talk about Ronald Auna's Achilles injury, which was. If this had not been a deadline pod, we probably would have talked about that. That's a bummer and extra bummer cuz like, it was. It was sore and hurting him and he didn't want to miss any more time. And so he probably pushed it too hard and now he ends up with an Achilles injury. Hopefully it's not a terrible one, but. Yeah. And Buxton back on the IL with ribs. @ least it's not knee, but. Yeah, no, I think we covered almost all the major trade activity. I did. Before we say farewell, I wanted to share with you Sir Anthony Dominguez's farewell to Orioles fans. He. He put a graphic up on Instagram. I guess that is almost indecipherable because it's like orange text over. Over a partly orange background and it's a real graphic. Design is my passion. Sort of goodbye message, but kind of. Kind of nice because you figure he probably did this himself. It's just like a superimposed text that says, I just want to say thank you, Orioles. My family and I will always be grateful for having been given the opportunity to be one of you. But I could barely read the words because it's against white and orange background. Always, always enjoy that. And you also.
[100:51]
A
Yeah, sorry, I just opened the link. Orange is a. That's a hard color. You know, it's a tricky color. It's a tricky color to wear and I'm learning. A tricky color to read.
[101:05]
B
Yeah. And also, I believe you had an unhinged joke that you wanted to make that you didn't want me to forget because you. You posted that you had this.
[101:15]
A
I don't know if this is good. Okay. I don't know. I don't know. I was riding the high of Aohaniosaurus being back in Seattle and. Yeah, although that and the. And the Mariners beat the Rangers and you know, they'd been tied for that third wild card and like a doubled and Cole Young hit this, like, freaking tank.
[101:34]
B
This was all before Luis Corvelo came down and shut up him down for two and. Right.
[101:39]
A
Yeah, it was before that, but, you know, it ended on kind of a down note because I think, speaking of Achilles injuries, I think that Trent Thornton blew out his. But they haven't gotten the MRI back on that. But needed a cart to get off the field. Never a good sign. So, you know, that kind of soured the previously immaculate vibes. But before that happens, you know, Dominic canzone we gotta talk about Dominican for a second. I mean, only for a second. A second to set up this joke. So he's been, you know, he. Speaking of Mariners guys who are the byproduct of a trade with the Diamondbacks, like, DominicanZone has been really good for Seattle in limited action this year. And, like, he's definitely over his skis. Although, like, you know, he's running a super high Babbitt. But, like, you know, from a wobex perspective, it's not all that bad. So it's like, okay, Dominic Canzone stomach can's in the box and he is, you know, they're showing Dominican from various angles. Here's what I'll say. A big dumper gets all the attention. Right. I think that we need to spend a little time in a different can zone because you work in with quite a. Yeah, it's not the big dumper, but there's a little bit of a dumper back there. And I'm just trying to work up, like, can zone. You know, I feel like there's something there. I'm. I'm not saying it's a fully formed joke.
[103:04]
B
It sounds like it would be the, the rooting section of fans out in the outfield or wherever would be in the can zone and they might have, like, they'd hold up some butts or something.
[103:16]
A
Yeah.
[103:16]
B
Maybe they'd moon people.
[103:18]
A
Yeah. And it's like, you know, I. I think that it, it's. It's. There's a tension. Right. Because, like, sometimes a. A woman will be told that she's cans and it's her, you know.
[103:32]
B
Yes.
[103:33]
A
And it's not. It's. It's not the hinder. And so there might be some. There might be some slang confusion there. Right. And so maybe that's why it doesn't work. But I just, I was like, it's a. It's not even a joke so much as an observation that has been delivered sort of humorously. I'm like, what? I want it to work. And I wonder, like, does Dominic Canzone. I don't want to know the answer to this, actually. Okay. No one ask him. I would be mortified. But I do wonder, like, does Dominic Canzone feel like Cal's keister is obscuring his, is concealing his hinder, or is he relieved? Is he like, oh, I've been hearing about my great ass my whole life. You were, you were worried I was gonna be like, all down the middle. And then I made a stimulus joke and you were like, where's this gonna go and the place it's gonna go is to me talking about Dominicanzone's ass.
[104:36]
B
Yep.
[104:37]
A
Canzone. The cans part of it makes it tricky. You know, like that part it's like eh, that doesn't maybe work but I just think that it could, you know, and, and slang evolves over time and maybe it can mean one thing broadly but a different thing specifically. And the specific thing could be about Dominicans one's butt.
[105:02]
B
Yeah, well you can think about that and you can think about Brock.
[105:06]
A
Brock.
[105:08]
B
All right. You know, I meant to say I don't know where the A's will be playing in 2028, but I'm pretty bullish on the bats. Kurtz, Wilson, Butler, Rooker, Soderstrom, Clark, now Devries. I think they got a stew going. Not Dave Stewart. He was a pitcher. Also his nickname was Smoke. A few final follow ups here. Listener Zach Patreon supporter wrote in to remind us of a precedent for cows in the clubhouse. Meg was talking about this, what with the raw milk in the Phillies. And of course there was a situation with Meg's Mariners involving a cow in the Clubhouse. Back in 1995, Ken Griffey Jr. Lost a bet to Mariners manager Lou Pinella. It was about Griffey hitting homers in batting practice. Junior lost the bet and the stakes or were a steak. And so instead of paying up with an actual steak dinner, Griffey delivered a cow to Lupinella's office after finding some pretense to remove the manager. So yes, everything in baseball has happened before and may happen again. Listener Rick Patreon supporter also wrote in about an email that we answered in our previous episode about whether some rich person or rich persons could frame a pitcher by betting on some pitch prop and making it look like that pitcher was doing something illegal. Put a bunch of money on someone throwing a Rick writes the reason the betting scheme likely wouldn't work is the bets would need to be correct to implicate the pitcher. If a bunch of bets were placed on a first pitch ball but the first pitch was a strike, it might raise some alarms, but it would be clear the pitcher wasn't involved in any wrongdoing. That's true. That is a complication. There might still be some suspicion. Maybe it would look like you agreed to throw a ball and then thought better of it at the last second or something. Also, as I said to Rick, there's a pretty decent chance that you would just get that correct by chance. First pitches this season have been balls. Almost 40% of the time league wide and with the right combination of batter and pitcher, you could probably get your odds even higher. Maybe you could get it to the point where it's close to a coin flip and then if you did it a few times, then you'd be right eventually. It's probably an overly elaborate scheme anyway. Also Raymond Raymond Chen, effectively Wild Wiki keeper Patreon supporter, wrote in about other precedents for mid doubleheader trades because Sir Anthony Dominguez was traded between two teams that were playing each other in the middle of a doubleheader. He pitched in the second game, not in the first game, of course, but I mentioned that there was some precedent. Cliff Heathcote and Max Flack, outfielders who switched teams and jerseys, I believe the Cardinals and cubs back in 1922. Raymond's research paid dividends, he said on mid double header trades I found this On Monday, June 8, 1952, Cal Abrams, a spare outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was traded to the Cincinnati Reds between games of a double header. The funny part is that before the first game started, the Dodgers manager, Charlie Dressen told Abrams that if he wanted to stay with the team, he had to heckle the opposing team and their manager from the dugout for the entire entirety of the double header. After doing this for the entirety of the first game, Abrams was told between games that he had been traded to the Reds and had to immediately report to the manager, Rogers Hornsby, he had been heckling throughout the first game. Hornsby not the greatest guy to begin with. Also, Raymond says Jose Cardinal went from the Phillies to the Mets in the middle of the July 2, 1979 doubleheader, but spent the second game on the bench. So he missed out on being a trivia question answer. Until now at least. You don't have to miss out on being a Patreon supporter of this podcast. If you go to patreon.com, you can be one too. You can sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners Cody B. Trevin, Tom Myers, David Vero, Gorbitz and mz. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and activity, free fancraft memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastancrafts.com you can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple podcasts and Spotify, YouTube Music, etc. Your positive reviews and ratings do help us. You can also find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild Wild. You can join our facebook group@facebook.com group effectively wild and you can check the show notes at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That'll do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week.
[109:37]
A
It's Effectively Wild and it's Wildly effective. Perfect perspective, impressively smart and impeccably styled. It's the wildly effective Effectively Wild Spin Rain Long Shango. You might hear something you never heard before.

Summary6 min read

Effectively Wild Episode 2356: The Trade Lifeline

FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh & Meg Rowley
Date: August 2, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley provide a deep-dive debrief of the 2025 Major League Baseball trade deadline. They discuss the record-breaking volume of trades, analyze whether the sheer number equated to significant impact, and break down major moves, emerging team strategies, and shifting organizational philosophies. The episode is equal parts granular analysis and classic Effectively Wild banter, with sharp observations on front office decision-making, impacts on playoff races, and the strange psychology of fandom and ownership.

Key Themes and Episode Structure

Trade Deadline Impressions (03:00–10:00)
Impact of Bullpen and Volume Trades (10:00–17:00)
Highlight Trades: Correa, Padres-A’s Blockbuster, Closer Carousel (17:00–30:00)
Front Office Philosophies: Preller, Dipoto, and Prospect Churning (30:00–38:00)
Organizational Sell-Offs and "Pick a Lane" Discourse (40:00–53:00)
Quiet, Perplexing, or Notable Deadlines: Braves, Royals, Dodgers, and Others (53:00–63:00)
Quick Hits: Mets/Phillies, Red Sox, Cubs, Yankees, Angels, Reds, Tigers, Pirates, Brewers (68:00–98:00)

Detailed Recap

1. Initial Reactions to the Deadline

(03:00–10:00)

A new record: 36 trades on deadline day, over 50 in two days ("Jake and Jordan... Their count was 36 trades on deadline day... 52 over the final two days, they declared this a record," Ben, 02:50).
Did all that noise matter? Two perspectives—"sound and fury" with little playoff impact (per Dan Szymborski's zips and Johan’s newsletter) vs. fans feeling the excitement.
- “The median and Mode trades were three guys who sounded made up in exchange for 25 innings of three and a half FIP relief pitching from a third righty.” (Ben, paraphrasing Joe/Johan, 04:50)
Noted: Increase in top 100 prospect movement compared to last year.

2. Bullpen Heavy, Prospect-Lite

(10:00–17:00)

Bullpen additions dominated, but projections show relievers rarely shift playoff odds much.
Teams notably traded volume of prospects over top-end quality.
- "The biggest names either involved relievers or were like, hey won't you take $33 million of this back from us..." (Meg, 08:00)
Big exceptions: Carlos Correa trade (Minnesota → Houston) and blockbuster Padres/A’s deal (Mason Miller, Sears, DeVries). These were rare “jaw-drop" moves.

3. Trade Deadline Psychology & The Big Moves

(17:00–30:00)

Carlos Correa Back to Houston: Shocking due to contract size/duration and the emotional turnaround for the franchise.
Preller’s Big Bet (Padres-A’s Blockbuster): Mason Miller to Padres for DeVries (elite prospect), JP Sears.
- "How does he [Preller] always have prospects to trade?... It feels like one of those magical coin sacks..." (Ben, 24:30)
Closer Carousel: At least six closers traded, highlighting demand for relief arms among playoff hopefuls.
- “This was, like, a closer carousel... a great year to have a closer you were interested in moving.” (Ben & Meg, ~13:00)

4. Front Office Styles: Aggression versus Restraint

(30:00–38:00)

A.J. Preller (Padres): "Wired differently. What a lovely way to put that." (Meg, 15:56)
- Always flipping elite prospects for short-term help. Padres’ development pipeline remains deep despite endless trades: "We’ll make more" (Ben, 25:37).
- Is this brilliance or recklessness? The process is "a mess" but results can be fun and, sometimes, effective.
Jerry Dipoto (Mariners): Surprisingly "straightforward, restrained, and impactful deadline," per Meg, focusing on obvious offensive needs and not overthinking.
- “Jerry went and got some bats... It was like in Ocean’s Eleven, he’s like ‘You think we need one more?’” (Meg, 20:31)
- Reunited with Aohenyos Suarez and Josh Naylor for infield upgrades.
- Mariners didn’t mortgage the future, showing newer, savvier trade logic.

5. Organizational Sell-Offs: Twins & Orioles Go Full Rebuild

(40:00–53:00)

Minnesota Twins: Shipped out 11 active roster players, signaling a clear rebuild ahead of a team sale.
- “It was like, let’s strip the roster down to its studs.” (Ben, 41:00)
- Fans are bitter: “Did the hard part of acquiring a core and then just would not spend a cent to improve it.”
Orioles & D-backs: Both, expected contenders, subtracted despite strong rosters; Orioles moved all healthy, pending FAs, surprising many.

Notable Quote

“Part of what reinforces that virtuous cycle of, hey, at base we want to have a good baseball team, is viewing the team as either a civic institution... or an expression of your own narcissism.”
— Meg, 43:00

6. The "Decisive" Path & Playoff Math

(53:00–63:00)

Hosts discussed "picking a lane"—better to execute a full rebuild or push, rather than straddle the fence.
Playoff odds: Many moves may shift chances a percent or two, but playoff races are so tight that a single WAR might have real impact.

7. Rundown of Noteworthy and Puzzling Deadlines

(68:00–100:00)

Busy and Decisive:

Mets, Phillies: Stacked late-inning relief (Helsley, Duran, Tyler Rogers) and defense (Mullins, Bader), but improvements mainly canceled each other out in the standings.
Yankees: Transformed their bullpen (Bednar, Doval, Jake Bird) and added position flexibility.
- "No huge star pickup... but on the whole, lots of little improvements." (Ben, 79:00)

Quieter/Confusing:

Cubs, Red Sox: Active, but underwhelming in terms of impact.
Braves, Royals, Dodgers: Braves notably inactive; Dodgers were more future-focused in their acquisitions, which surprised both hosts.

Rangers: Over-invested in pitching (Merrill Kelly, Phil Maton) rather than bats, which both hosts questioned.

“The shape of it was strange given their roster needs.” (Meg, 66:50)

Angels: Perpetually confusing; minor moves for middle relievers, direction unclear.

“Again, what is your understanding of yourself? Because it's... a weird, weird team.” (Meg, 83:00)

Reds: Acquired Ke’Bryan Hayes (glove-first, bat-questionable) but face a continual logjam with infielders, confounding team-building logic.

Tigers: Improved incrementally; key acquisition of Charlie Morton and Paul Sewald.

Pirates, Brewers: Brewers added relievers but stayed mostly quiet—hosts speculate they’ll "figure it out and win anyway."

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On the trade deadline's meaning:

“Most deadlines probably aren’t super consequential... Other than a CC Sabathia trade here and there, it’s usually not going to be the thing that decides a season.”
— Ben (10:09)

On A.J. Preller:

“How does he keep getting away with this? ...It feels like one of those magical coin sacks that improbably always has room for more.”
— Ben (24:30)

On Mariners reacquiring Aohenyos Suarez:

“There’s a certain amount of having to swallow that maybe you misjudged the guy or maybe that was the wrong move at the time…”
— Ben (19:04)

On ownership mindsets:

“There aren’t enough owners who want someone in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store to be like, ‘You’re doing great with the team.’...Maybe the answer is that they need to be out in the world more so that they can be congratulated or yelled at.”
— Meg (42:36)

Random Fun: The Mustache Ritual

“He went from beard to mustache, and everyone’s obsessed with the mustache now...They all touch it now. They touch the stash. And Green said, it’s great. It gets the boys going.”
— Ben, Riley Greene’s mustache, (91:11)

Timestamps for Key Segments

Record Setting Deadline and Interpretations: 03:00–09:00
Correa, Preller's Big Move, Closer Carousel: 10:00–29:00
Philosophy of GM-ing (Preller, Dipoto): 30:00–38:00
Twins Sell-off / Ownership Talk: 40:00–53:00
‘Picking a Lane’ and Playoff Margins: 54:00–63:00
Mets, Phillies, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox: 68:00–78:00
Yankees Detailed Moves: 78:00–82:00
Angels’ Perpetual Weirdness: 82:00–84:00
Reds Infield Logjam: 86:00–90:00
Tigers’ Mustache Ritual: 91:11–94:00

Final Thoughts & Outtakes

The episode closes with a classic Effectively Wild mix of irreverence and stat-head sharpness: quirky rituals, trade trivia, and signature listener emails, ending on a light note about Dominic Canzone and the evolving meaning of “cans” in baseball slang.
Full circle: “Everything in baseball has happened before and may happen again.”

For more detail, multimedia, and to read the posts referenced, check FanGraphs’ deadline coverage.

Loading summary

Transcript219 lines

[00:01]
A
They'll keep you company, they'll keep you sane on a long bike ride or a slow workday making bed and wax about a playoff race whose bats hard. It's Effectively Wild. So stick around, you'll be well beguiled. Hello and welcome to episode 2356 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of fangraphs and I am joined by Venlim.
[00:56]
B
Almost. Almost made it. Made it about halfway through the name. Actually, more than halfway. Halfway through the last name.
[01:04]
A
Ben Lindberg.
[01:07]
B
That's it.
[01:07]
A
How are you, Ben?
[01:08]
B
How are you? Which I was going to ask before that minor introductory stumble there. Yeah, you've been busy. You just shepherded, what, 20 something posts to publication in the past day or so?
[01:22]
A
Well, I would be wildly remiss if I claimed shepherding as if I were the only shepherd.
[01:30]
B
Yeah. Doesn't preclude other shepherds being involved.
[01:33]
A
Oh, yeah. We must, we must thank Matt Martell among. Among the shepherds. He's, he's, you know, really the other shepherd, at least on the fan graph side. Let's see, we published 19 things yesterday and then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. As we are recording right now, Matt's shepherding a seventh. Davey just filed an eighth. And we're also going to have a prospect ranking post that'll go live probably sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. So it's a lot of sheep as it were.
[02:15]
B
Transformed you into count, fan count. It sounds like we're here on a Friday afternoon. You're perhaps a little extra loopy. And yet we have a trade deadline debrief to do a trade deadline digest, dissection, other words that start with D. It was. It was a deadline. It was not a deadline mid Meg. It was. Oh, see, I called you Med. See, we.
[02:41]
A
And what's your excuse? Did you even write on the deadline, Ben? You didn't even write on the deadline.
[02:46]
B
We'll get our names down eventually. Another 2300 something episodes, but there you go. It was busy. That is indisputable. It was eventful. I think there are two schools of thought on this trade deadline. Two possible interpretations. So one is that this was active. This was wild. This was super exciting. This exceeded every expectation. And unquestionably, there were a lot of trades. And Jake and Jordan over at Tespas family barbecue, their count was 36 trades. I don't know if they did that in the countdown count voice, but 36 trades on deadline day. And that was just On. On the final day itself. 52 over the final two days, they declared this a record, a new record for trades. And so that's one interpretation. Wow, this deadline just blew our expectations out of the water. We thought it was going to be sort of slower, inconsequential, and. And wow, were we wrong. The other interpretation was that a lot happened, but not that much of consequence, that there were many trades but few impact, that this was sound and fury signifying something, but not that much in the grand scheme of things. I'd say Dan Simborski initially struck this tone. He put on Blue Sky. I'm running the numbers now, but I suspect that when the zip simulations are done, this will project as one of the lower impact trade deadlines in recent memory in terms of the bottom line, probability changes.
[04:20]
A
Yeah.
[04:20]
B
And I asked him whether that turned out to be the case when he did run the numbers, and he said not completely. It was a little lower, but not interestingly so. So it. It wasn't notably inconsequential, but maybe the raw volume, the number of trades is a little deceptive in terms of how much they move the needle. And that was Johan's stance too. In his excellent newsletter, he said that a lot of people describe the deadline as exciting. I don't see it. The median and Mode trades were three guys who sounded made up in exchange for 25 innings of three and a half FIP relief pitching from a third righty. Two the trades that don't fit that pattern were three guys who sounded made up for fifth starters and fourth outfielders, et cetera. So that was his take a lot of.
[05:06]
A
Sorry not to insult Joe, but has he heard of Mason Miller? Like, does he know who that is?
[05:10]
B
Well, yes, I think he is aware, but as he noted, Baseball America had two top 100 prospects traded. I don't know what the. The fan graphs tally would be there, but that's more than the zero from last year's deadline.
[05:25]
A
We had. We had non zero last year, so there's that.
[05:29]
B
But yeah, ye. Yeah, so. So that, I guess those are the two extremes, those are the two polls, and often we come down somewhere in the middle. That will probably be the case here too. I think there are elements of. Of each of those interpretations that I agree with. And yet on the whole, I think it was certainly an interesting trade deadline. I think there's a lot that I'm excited to talk about.
[05:53]
A
Yeah, I think so. A couple of things about that, and I'm not meaning to snark at Joe, but I think you have a. A couple of things that can at least account for the way that this all played out in the projections. And Dan acknowledged this dynamic when he published his piece today on like, sort of which teams saw their playoff fortunes move the most in zips as a result of the activity, starting with the Adam Frazier trade, that blockbuster, and concluding with yesterday's activity and you know, some of it was that the highest profile trades that happened yesterday, not all of them obviously, but, but many of them that happened yesterday or earlier this week involved relievers and even very good relievers aren't necessarily going to move the needle from a playoff projection perspective all that much. We might be, you know, if we are fans of the Mets or the Phillies or the Padres, thrilled to see those guys come October. And they definitely have the potential for outsized impact once we get to the part of the calendar where being able to deploy shut down arms is particularly impactful. But you're not going to necessarily see that as much in the projection. So that's one thing. I think that part of it too can be accounted for as simply as when you look at what Baltimore did with their deadline. They got some good prospects, but they clearly were taking a volume approach rather than insisting on top, top return. Now again, it doesn't mean that there weren't good prospects who moved at the deadline, both for Baltimore and for other team teams. But I think the maybe the best guy who moved, I mean like DeVries is probably the best prospect though, you know, it kind of depends what list you're looking at. But you also saw guys moving in the Duran trade like there were, there were good prospects who went back and forth, but not the top, top guys. Again, depending on your view of Duri. So, so some of it was that, that there was more of a volume approach taken. And then you have trades like, and then we can dive into some of these in particular, I guess maybe starting with this one even if we want to. But you look at what say the Minnesota Twins did, arguably their biggest deal in terms of sort of resetting the trajectory of the franchise was moving Carlos Correa. And what they were interested in that transaction was salary relief, not a prospect. Right? Now I know that that trade and Minnesota's approach more generally has been like very upsetting to Twins fans. Yeah, I, I'd get out of that Cray deal if it were me and we can talk more about that. But like some of it too is that like the biggest names either involved relievers or were like, hey won't you take $33 million of this back from us. The Astros. What a weird organization they are at this point. They're. They're coming and going. They are. They are bagwelled and not. I. Yeah, I don't know.
[09:09]
B
The same players coming and going often.
[09:11]
A
Yes.
[09:11]
B
These Astros, we, we got a listener email about that. Just how many players they have reacquired. Yes, just over the past five years or so since the 2020-2021 off season. Jason Castro, Michael Brantley, Marwin Gonzalez, Justin Verlander, Rafael Montero, Michael Brantley twice John Singleton, Kend Justin Verlander twice Josh Hater, Miguel Diaz, Oledmus Diaz, Hector Neris, Ben Gammell, Cooper Hummel, John Singleton twice Omar Narvaez, Taylor Scott, Hector Neris again, twice. Maybe Jordan Weems, Luis Guillerme, Carlos Correa. Yeah, that's a, that's a lot of guys to get back. And some of them, as this listener Harry noted, were Jesse Chavez type situations where someone's kind of sticking around and up and down. But. But that is a lot of guys have reunited with that organization.
[10:04]
A
Yeah. Where should we start? Because there's a lot of. There's a lot of trades here.
[10:09]
B
The balance that I would strike between those two extremes of it was wild and it was kind of a dud is that. Yeah, I mean, most deadlines probably aren't super consequential. I think we tend to overrate the impact of the trade deadline in terms of just how determinative they are of who makes the playoffs or how far they advance in the playoffs. There's just. There's only so much, much time after the trade deadline. And as Joe always says, variance swamps everything. So you project this or that some guys are, are, as I believe he wrote, are going to go off and some guys are going to go away. They're just going to do nothing. And other guys are just going to be on fire for the rest of the season. And it'll look like a brilliant trade, but it's not necessarily something that you could have expected or projected. But yeah, on the whole, other than a CC Sabathia trade here and there, it's. It's usually not going to be the thing that decides a season, or at least it's hard to say in retrospect that it was the thing. But I think that there were a lot of interesting storylines from this deadline, at least. Like, there's a lot of stuff that's just fun to. To chew on. There weren't that many individual moves that made me do a Double take or say, oh, wow, I didn't think that kind of trade was going to get done with the exception of Carlos Correa, which was partly because he was returning to the Astros, but also partly because I just didn't foresee with the number of years and dollars that he has left on his deal that, that he would move. But I didn't foresee the depth of the Twins sell off here, obviously. So that trade and then the Preller A's Padres trade with Miller and Sears and Devries, that's a big one too. So those are probably the two that really rocked me back on my heels. And that's not a lot. But then again, I guess how many major moves are you really expecting at a trade deadline? Other than that, it was a lot of guys who were expected to go who went. And oddly, some guys who were expected to go who did not. Even though there was this great volume of trades. Like when this season started, if you had to peg two players who would have been traded at the deadline, it would have been Sandy Alcantara and Luis Robert Jr. And neither one of them went anywhere. So that is sort of surprising. But between the Twins doing their semi mid season fire sale and Preller up to his old antics and the Correa reunion, I think there was enough here that, that stood out to say, oh, yeah, this was, this was fun. This was eventful. This was, you know, not individual trades that are like, described as blockbusters. Like, other than the. Maybe the Miller trade I'd describe as a blockbuster. Other than that, I don't know.
[13:02]
A
Duran.
[13:03]
B
Yeah, maybe Duran. That's one thing that stood out is this was like a, a closer carousel.
[13:08]
A
Great year to have a closer you were interested in moving.
[13:11]
B
Yeah, yeah. Or, or acquiring. I mean, yes, there were, gosh, what, like six guys, I guess, who were closers or who were their team's designated save getters at some point this season. Duran, Helsley, Miller, Finnegan, Bednar, Duvall. And there's a big gap between Duran and Finnegan, let's say. I realize that even though they're both closers, but still, that's. That's a lot. I think that seems like a lot. And Neil Payne did some analysis about how many relievers were moved at this deadline. And that's, that's always kind of the case because there are just a lot of relievers and they're just not nailed down really. They're so fine, fungible, and everyone could use one, really. And so even bad teams will typically have a good reliever they could part with. So, you know, and they're just a lot of them that aren't on long term deals. So they tend to be on expiring contracts and they're good rentals and, and if you're headed for the postseason, then you know that you're gonna really rely on.
[14:18]
A
You're gonna need them.
[14:18]
B
Yeah. Once you get to October. And one thing that Neil pointed out this season in particular was that a lot of the good teams that are in shape to make the playoffs actually don't have good bullpens.
[14:32]
A
Yeah.
[14:32]
B
So I think that created a need if you had like the Cubs, the Blue Jays, the Tigers, the Yankees, the Phillies, the Rangers, the Mariners, these are a lot of teams that are probably ticketed for October, but didn't really have those shut down laden and guys that you really want in October. And so that just. That created alignment between needs and, and whether their teams were getting rid of other than like the brewers, the Astros, the Padres had good pull pens. Not that that stopped A.J. preller and the Padres from further upgrading their. Their bullpen. This was like, it was a throwback. It was nice to see Depot and Preller up to their old tricks. You know, like, they've been. They've been kind of quiet and by their standards. And it's. It's nice to see them get that release because you know that, that had to feel good for. For Jerry and AJ Moves. Pulling triggers.
[15:27]
A
We have the concept of the challenge trade right. Where it's like you. You trade your guy who. And then it's like, I think that every year AJ Introduces his own version of a challenge trade to the writers of America where he's like, I'm gonna do a trade that you weren't anticipating. And I dare you to not use the word stimulant in it. Your analysis anywhere at all. I'm just saying, like the man.
[15:55]
B
Wired differently.
[15:56]
A
Wired differently. What a lovely way to put that. I liked seeing them active. I will say that I thought this was a very. And this is gonna sound like a backhanded compliment, and I don't. I don't mean it to, but in a way, I thought this was Jerry's most straightforward and almost restrained deadline and also his most impactful. And I don't want to discount the Randy Rosarino TR from last year because that obviously paid dividends for them, even though they didn't make the postseason. Like, it helped to dramatically reshape that offense for the second half last year. And clearly he's an important part of their lineup this year. But I feel like Jerry can have a, you know, red paperclip tendency, right, where he's like, I'm going to eventually trade this into a World Series ring. And that's not what he sounds like, but. And he never does it or he hasn't yet. And this year it was like, hey, our offense needs upgrading. Those two bats can really help. They're going to bolster our infield corners. We're going to reunite with Aohoney of Suarez. The city of Seattle is going to go nuts. They were talking on the broadcast last night. It was Eric Goldsmith and Ryan Roland Smith in the booth and they were both remarking upon the fact that Mariners fans are so happy that AO Honey is back in Seattle. And they act like that guy has. Was in the org for like 10 years. He had two seasons with the Mariners before now. But I think it's just a testament to like, what a good clubhouse presidency is like. He, he seems to, wherever he goes, just like engender a lot of affection from, from the media, from his teammates, shortly from fans. But yeah, Jiro's like, our offense needs an upgrade. Ben Williamson, who has been playing third base for Seattle, is a terrific defender and I'm sure that he will remain on the roster and be there as at the very least a late inning defensive replacement. But it's like we need to do better than Ben Williamson's bat and we need to do better than Rowdy to Lez or Luke Rayleigh or Donovan Solano. And so they just went out and got Aoenosaurus and Josh Naylor bing bang boom. I'm sure that they would have have liked to bring in additional bullpen reinforcement outside of Caleb Ferguson, although I liked that movie even though it was smaller because they had exactly a one reliable lefty in the bullpen prior to his acquisition. So, you know, it was quieter in a way, but I think it's just like they had needs and those needs were mostly addressed with the possible exception of them getting like a higher impact relief arm. So good job, Jerry. And then, yeah, AJ's just like, like, oh, you think I can't trade for Mason Miller? You think I can't freaking trade for Mason Miller? I'm gonna go trade for Mason Miller. And then he did. Yeah, but they did other stuff too, right? Like, Mason Miller is like a very surprising luxury option for them given the rest of their bullpen. What they really needed was a reliable dh, and he went and got one of those too. And that's good.
[19:04]
B
Yeah. On Jerry, I, I was sort of impressed that they went back to that Suarez. Well, because they did sort of salary dump him, and they seemed to feel like perhaps his best days were behind him, and he had played like that late in his Mariners tenure. And so there's a certain amount of having to swallow that maybe you misjudged the guy or maybe that was the wrong move at the time, or maybe it's kind of conceding, like, to bring that guy back and to win a bidding war for him when he's the most desirable bet on the market. That. That does kind of take some owning up, I guess, to saying, oh, well, maybe it wasn't the best move to get rid of that guy when we did, but we're not going to double down on that by now, depriving us of his services in 2025, too. He's what we need. Maybe we should have kept him all along. He's even on the same deal. Like, he didn't sign. Sign in. He's not like, more affordable now or anything. She's just having a really good year. And. And that deal is almost up. And so they went and got him. So I thought. Thought that was nice, you know, not. Not like being too proud to admit that the guy you need now is the guy you let get away. I think that's. That's good, right? So. Yeah. So between Suarez and Naylor, everyone has wanted Jerry to go get bats. And he went and got bets, got some bets. Good job.
[20:31]
A
Jerry went and got some bats. He needed a bet. He was like, I need a bat. And then they. And then it was like in Ocean's Eleven, he's like. Like, you think we need one more? I think we'll go get one more.
[20:40]
B
And they got the best one, probably.
[20:42]
A
I agree that they got the best one. And, you know, with a. Like a livable, you're not gonna. You're generally not gonna get good players without giving something up. Right. Like the. The days of teams getting really well and truly fleeced in deal. I don't want to say it doesn't happen, but, like, most runners are pretty savvy, and there might be guys where the evaluation front office has is. Is fundamentally different than the rest of the industry, and that should perhaps give them pause. Like, I'm sure that if Oakland had the Sean Murphy deal to do again, they do it differently now, but it's unusual for a team to just get skunked by another. By another club. And so you're going to give up good players generally, or you're going to get salary relief or something. Like, there's often a legible and sort of logical rationale for these transact, even if the fans might not like it or it doesn't end up working out or whatever. Having said that, like, I think the Diamondbacks got good players back from Seattle in both of these deals. But there's. There was no like, you know, mortgaging of the future here. Right. Like, maybe you really like Locklear's bat more than I do, but, you know, like, it was fine. I thought they'd have to. They didn't have to give up any of their top, top guys to get either of those dudes, which is appropriate because, you know, Honey was a rent. Um, but he was the best bat available. And sometimes when you're the best bat available, you end up returning like much more significant prospects than your contract and your production would necessarily merit. But that didn't happen this time. It's like Arizona got good players. Some of those players are either close to the majors or. I mean, Locklear is probably just. My mom is coming to visit. She knows it's. It's wild for her to come this time of year, but she loves me and I'm. I'm taking her to driving back scheme while she's here. And the depravity. We are going to see the, the stripped down. We might get to see Mason Miller close a game for the Padres though, so that's going to be cool and weird.
[22:51]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk about aj. He. He owns the deadline. This is his time. It's just. I was asked by another Ringer editor, Isaac Levy Rubinette, is AJ Prowler good? Is he a good gm? And I said, not sure if he's good, but he's good for content. That much is definitely true. It is fun to talk and write about a power because he will just do things that no one else does. And we kind of complain sometimes about how all the GMs and the Pobos, they're just cut from the same cloth these days. And a lot of them talk the same way and they operate the same way and they have similar models and they're conservative and they value prospects and all these things and okay, they probably know what they're doing, but it's nice to have just someone who's out there just on an island, doing his own thing and standing out. And that could be an advantage. It could also be a disadvantage, depending. But you look at AJ Preller and you think like, how does he keep getting away with this. How does he keep doing this? How does he always have prospects to trade? And that's the thing that impresses me is that he has traded entire farm systems worth of prospects. I remember a Baseball America piece from like 2021 about how the Padres had traded like a whole 40 man roster worth of prospects over the preceding two years or something. And, and he just keeps doing that. And Isaac said to me, yeah, it feels like one of those magical coin sacks that improbably always has room for more. It's just like the loaves and the fishes or something. It's just like, just when you think that Preller has completely cleaned out the farm system and he can't keep enticing teams to make trades with him because he has got nothing left. No. Suddenly he's scouted or signed or developed another excellent prospect and DeVries is a good example of that. So DeVries, a consensus best prospect who has traded at this deadline. 18 year old shortstop who's in high A. And there's some difference of opinion on him. Like fan Graphs has him 21st overall prospect in baseball. Pipeline has him third overall.
[25:07]
A
That's, we're definitely the low outlet on DeVries.
[25:11]
B
Yeah, but, but still pretty high. If that's the low, that's pretty high. He's, he's an excellent prospect.
[25:17]
A
Yes. Yeah, like I don't want to, I don't want anyone to like come away, don't, don't anyone come away confused from, from this. Like he's a great prospect. He's, you know, but we have him as a 50 where I think a lot of publications have him closer to like where Walcott and mate Connor Griffin, you know, in the 60 range.
[25:37]
B
So yeah, so you look at a list of all the prospects Preller has traded over the years and it does maybe make you a little sick to your stomach if you're a Padres fan. It's like Trey Turner, James Woods, Max Freed, Mackenzie Gore, Andres Munoz. A bunch of guys who were traded to other teams at this deadline were Padres prospects of the past. Like yeah, Josh, Josh Naylor and David Bednar for, for that matter and C.J. abrams and, and oh man, just class A for that matter. Not that he was traded, we know why, but like just so many guys who started their professional lives as Padres and then went out in this great Padres diaspora to other organizations. And so you could, you could say oh well they sure would like to have some of those guys back and I'm sure that they would. But there's just as long A list, probably a longer list of guys who were big prospects at the time and then just haven't panned out. And he traded them, you know, like your Luis Cerrillos or Luis Patino or Graham Pauley or all these guys who were top prospects and now no one really thinks about them that much. So that's the problem with prospects. Most of them don't pan out. And maybe it's an advantage if everyone else is saying no, you can't pry any prospects away from me. And AJ Is just like, we'll make more, you know, we'll part with these guys, we'll get more proven commodities, sure things in the short term, and then we'll figure it out. And he clearly has some acumen when it comes to international scouting. Like, that's been a strength of his going back to his Rangers era. And he has managed to just refresh the pipeline enough that he could always get a deal done when he wants to get one done. Now this particular deal, I don't know. I don't know that I love it. I not like a super prospect expert, but I like Devries. You got to like anyone who's that young and that advanced and play shortstop and everything.
[27:40]
A
Yeah.
[27:41]
B
And Mason Miller, like, obviously an excellent reliever, but the Padres don't really need him. I mean, he helps, of course, but that. That was a strength of theirs. And there was some talk that, okay, there's. They're. They're now going to trade Robert Suarez and they're going to trade Dylan Cease, and they didn't do that. And credit to them that it was just all upgrade for them.
[28:02]
A
Right. Yeah.
[28:03]
B
But also, did they need Mason Miller that acutely or. Or JP Sears? How big of an upgrade were those guys really? And. And Miller is. Is under team control for a few more seasons, so it's not like a rental situation, obviously, but even so, you know, just a lot of volatility with that kind of player profile. Reliever, hard thrower, et cetera. I know there' some speculation that maybe they'll. They'll turn him back into a starter or something. Yeah.
[28:30]
A
That they might upcycle him.
[28:32]
B
Yeah. So perhaps there's some upside there, but. Yeah, I don't know. It. It seems like a steep price to pay. It's definitely the. The type of price that teams tend not to pay at the deadline anymore, surrendering a prospect of that caliber. So he makes that trade that I think a lot of teams would have been hesitant to make. And then there was clearly some unfinished business because the Padres Needed bats. And then they went and got bats, too. So they went and got Ryan O'Hearn and Ramon Loriano from the Orioles. Now, Loriano has been excellent this season, which has completely come out of nowhere for me. Like, you know, I didn't. And he has a high BABIP and all the rest. It's not like complete mirage, but definitely sort of unexpected performance for Loriano as opposed to o', Hearn, who's a pretty good hitter. So I don't know how much I. I trust that continuing.
[29:24]
A
Yeah.
[29:24]
B
But then there were other depth moves. He goes and gets Nestor Cortez from the Brewers. He gets Freddie for me and the catcher from the Royals.
[29:32]
A
Oh, God.
[29:33]
B
Yeah.
[29:34]
A
And they DFA'd Maldonado last night, too.
[29:37]
B
Yeah. It gets Will Wagner from the Blue Jays. It's just like all sorts of moves that Preller is making here. So. So for me, and that seems like, you know, the bats they got were not like superstars, but I think were. Were needed. They. They needed guys like that.
[29:53]
A
Yeah. And if you look at, like, you know, obviously, I'm sure. I don't think San Diego has any complaints about their production out of right corner has been a problem for them all season. I'm sure that they're relieved that they didn't try to bring Profar back, but, like, they've had issues in left pretty much the entire year. And, you know, Loriano's in some ways miscast and left because he's a better defender than you typically have over there. Like, he could. He could cover center if you really needed him to. Although he's been in left for most of the his recent career. But he's an upgrade. Sometimes it's about getting, like, a position to the point of acceptability rather than having it be a black hole. Right. Like, Freddy, for me, is a fine player. He's on any other team. He's just like, straightforwardly a backup catcher. That was the role that he played in Kansas City. But the depth of San Diego's catching despair to this point, shocking. Shocking. Right. And so for him, you know, this is kind of like, this is a good trade for San Diego. And this is one of those times where I'm like, you know what? Good for Freddie for Mean, because now Freddie for Mean is going to be just like a starter and he's going to get. And like, he's on a team that's postseason bound with much greater certainty than would be the case in Kansas City. He had to go live in San Diego.
[31:13]
B
Sure.
[31:14]
A
Get out of Here. That sounds fantastic. So like that. I think that they. I agree with the idea that DE is a. Is a high as steep price for what is basically a luxury reinforcement to an already very strong unit. I wouldn't even say an upgrade because like you can make a case at least for this year's version of Mason Miller. Now there have been prior years where you're like, he's just the best reliever in baseball. But like this year's Mason Miller has been diminished relative to his very strong rookie campaign and yet is still good man. Mason Miller's like, I get to go live in San Diego. I don't have to live in Sacramento anymore. Mason Miller, what that guy. What a great time. What a. What a champion. What a what, what a life lived right now. Didn't have anything to do with it. Still great. So, so you know, it's like he is a, he's not even really an upgrade on their existing unit. He's a reinforcement of an already strong unit. But they have to deal with the Dodgers and, and Mason Miller helps them deal with the Dodgers next year. To your point, like he's under team control for such a long time and he's, he can be a tremendous reliever or maybe they will try to upcycle him into being a starter and that'll work out or maybe it won't and if it doesn't, so he goes back to the bullpen. Like, it's hard to judge ages as an executive because I generally am of the belief that like from a process perspective, San Diego is a mess. Like the potteries are a mess. It is sound and fury signifying a good team. But often like it is, it seems to the outside anyway that it is a couple of folks in that front office and they get a wild hair in them and all of a sudden you have Mason Miller in your bullpen. And so I think from a modern process perspective, disaster. But the results can be like really fun and they can be really good. And I think that having a base, aggressive instinct when you have to contend with the rest of that division is generally an asset. It doesn't mean that it always works out for them long term. And obviously like Preller has had some catastrophic misses in terms of his choice grades, but I do generally think that like you at least want to look, you know, up north and go, I gotta be a rock em sock em robot sometimes. I don't even know what metaphors I'm mixing right now. I am pretty surprisingly not like loopy today. I do feel the crush of a month's worth of fatigue, but I feel like I'm holding, but still like rock em sock em robot. Who am I anyway?
[34:01]
B
I saw a tweet or blue sky poster, someone who said like, I used the phrase Bob's your uncle in an interview and I've never said that before in my life. People were just quoting all sorts, quote tweeting, all sorts of like, weird expressions that they used out loud despite never having said them before.
[34:20]
A
Yeah, Rock em sock em robot. Did you have rock em sock em? I just enjoy saying rock em suck em, I think is what I'm learning in this instance.
[34:29]
B
Well, you only have to hold it together until the end of this episode and then you can rest. Maybe. But maybe, yeah, you pull back and okay, so yeah, Miller is like, maybe gilding the late inning lily a little bit there. But. But yeah, like, it's exciting. He's. From the day he started, he's been making exciting trades and signings and all the rest. And it's now, I guess it'll be 11 years that he's been running the Padres front office in a couple days. And he's made the playoffs three times now. He's probably about to make. Make it a fourth time. And also 2023 was just weird and kind of fluky that they didn't make it. So they have had a sustained run of being in contention here and obviously that depended a lot on the fact that they splurged and spent a lot of money. It wasn't all just AJ engineering this through the brilliance of his trades. But yeah, it's not. He hasn't like, taken them to the promised land. Exactly. And there's been a lot of going forward and then stepping back and he's tried to kind of circumvent a rebuild and, and then figured out, oh, maybe we actually do have to. To do this kind of the slower way. And then, you know, it's. It is a tough assignment in the no west, as you said. The thing is that they have developed a lot of talent or at least a lot of talent has originated with them. It's not that they've developed it always, but either they, they haven't really given themselves a chance to develop it in a lot of cases because they just traded guys or players have failed to launch in San Diego. So it does seem like they're stronger when it comes to the scouting and the signing than, than the doing the developing.
[36:12]
A
Yes. At least on the pitching side. I, I think that they've had more success among their position players. But yeah, they, you don't have a lot of homegrown Padres pitching talent to look at and say like, oh yeah, they made that guy better than when he entered the org.
[36:25]
B
Right? Yeah. And Zach Kreiser ran the numbers on this in the bandwagon and, and he found that, yeah, they have generated more major leaguers than, than almost anyone else. Like maybe the Dodgers, the Astros, the Cardinals, the Yankees are up there. But if you look at all the regulars in baseball today, then like players who originally signed as Padres have been more productive than players who have originated with any other organization except the Dodgers and the Astros, who were kind of the, the two leading player development franchises for some time there. So, so that's, that's a feather in their cap. But very little of that production has come with the actual Padres or is coming with it this year. If you look at their roster, Zach found only 16% of the 2025 production from original Padres has come for the actual Padres, the lowest percentage of any franchise. So just not a lot of homegrown guys like the, the median MLP team he found is reaping 47.5% of the benefits from the leaguers it signed. So almost half. And no other team in contention is below the Cubs, who are at like 30%. And then the Padres are at about half that. So they've, they've minted all these major leaguers. They've signed them, they've found them and then they've given them away for the most part. And that's like almost doing it on hard mode, I guess. Like the, the way that a lot of teams build successful franchises, they, they sign and develop, develop draft players and then those players play for them and give them a young, cost controlled core. And the Padres do most of that, but not the, the part of like actually getting that cheap production from those players. They just move them on for someone else's major leaguer. So it is a lot of work to get to where they are. It's just a lot of dancing and plate spinning and all the rest. And it's highly entertaining from afar to watch it happen. And yeah, there's going to be some heartbreak with the guys. They give up, but there's some method to the madness, I guess it's all just, it's made possible by the fact that they keep somehow reaching down and coming up with another wave of prospects that they can pedal for established big leaguers. And that's certainly a skill in itself.
[38:45]
A
And it'll be interesting to see how if at all their kind of roster building approach adapts going forward because part of what has backstopped Preller's ability to do what he's done and take the sort of tact that he has over the last couple of years was that it seemed like maybe the money wasn't endless, but that they were going to operate within whatever financial constraints they needed to build the team. They being the front office rather than ownership saying, hey, hey, sorry, you gotta go sell. And obviously the appetite for that seems to have changed with the, you know, with Seidler's passing, with some of the consternation within that ownership group. So I don't know, I don't know how many deadlines like this they will have because if suddenly your young cost control core matters a lot more. Maybe you can't, you can't trade, you know, a top 20 prospect for like a reliever. Maybe you can't do that. But so far, ayyjayy gonna AJ So yeah, I don't know, it seems like it's been fine.
[40:00]
B
Yeah. So that's the, the addition. The team that added, that made the most waves. And a lot of the waves at this deadline were generated by the Minnesota Twins, sadly for Twins fans. But this was, this was the thing that kind of catapulted the trade activity at this deadline above a lot of people's expectations is that you had the Twins single handedly making double digit total of trades or I don't know how many it came to, but they ended up shipping out about 40% of their active roster.
[40:34]
A
It was 11 players.
[40:36]
B
Yeah, that's, that's certainly more than I expected. So I don't know what to make of this. Like, you know, Derek FVI puts out a statement basically saying like this had to be done, that we think we're in a stronger position now. I mean, what else is he going to say? But you know, just like this group wasn't quite good enough and so we had to make the painful decision to basically start over and, and do a rebuild here. Obviously hanging over all of this is the impending sale of the Twins, which, which sounds like it could be coming in a matter of weeks that something will be announced here. And it's, it's very odd that this is the way it works, that this is evidently something that makes a franchise more attractive, I know, to potential bidders. Just like let's strip the roster down to its studs. Like what, what is the value of a, a baseball team? I mean, it's that There are only 30 in the majors, and there's a ballpark, and you have a. A following, and you have media rights and all this stuff that's sort of hardwired, and it almost doesn't matter who's on the roster. But then, you know, you can see it in the Twins attendance figures, which have fallen fast because they haven't given their fans any reason to come to the park lately. They've just sat on their hands. I mean, maybe Twins fans would prefer their approach at the last couple deadlines, which was do nothing. That was like, this was a monkey's paw. If you didn't want that to happen again, is this what you wanted? Probably not that either. But over the off season, too, they just didn't do anything. And so basically everyone who was rumored to go, except for Joe Ryan, left and right, it's just odd that you would want to pick up. I guess I understand the appeal of starting fresh. Like, okay, we're. We're picking up this asset, the Minnesota Twins, and there's not a lot of other spending and commitments that someone else made that we're now saddled with. But, like, you want a good baseball team that people will come to see so that you can make money, right?
[42:37]
A
Think that. Yeah, you would think that. I want to remind everyone, you never have to hand it to them. You just don't even. Even Uncle Steve. But, like, the. The number of owners who just don't seem like right now we have a lot of owners in the baseball cap and quarter zip molds, right? Which is like, when I. I think I've said this before on the public, when I saw coaches cone, like, in the front row in that outfit during the postseason last year, I was like, oh, the Mets are gonna sign. Like, oh, okay. I understand this differently now than I did before. This guy wants to be the team, right? Like, he is. He is doing. You know, and like, spoiler alert, Steve Cohen wants to make money, but, like, you know, he. He's in it in a different kind of way, right? And not the only owner who is like, I view my team as a. As at least in part, and more so than many of my fellows in this weird little group. A civic institution, right? Like, there. There aren't enough owners who. None of them go to the grocery store. So this is like, kind of a broken way of describing this, but, like, there just aren't enough owners where they want. Want. They want someone in the. In the frozen food aisle at the grocery store to be like, you're doing great with the team, you know, like, you need. Maybe the answer is that they need to be out in the world more so that they can be congratulated or yelled at, whatever's appropriate, you know. But I just don't think there are enough owners that are sort of in that hypothetical group. I say hypothetical because, again, none of them actually go to the grocery store. But, you know, know, this is the, the problem that you run into. And I think it explains in large part this phenomena you're describing, because part of what reinforces that virtuous cycle of, hey, but at, at base we want to have a good baseball team is viewing the team as either a civic institution for your community to enjoy or an expression of your own narcissism. And if it occupies one of those two for you, you're probably going to invest more in your club. But if your understanding of it is, well, we have this tremendous opportunity to be in a constrained asset class, you've already lost the thread. And to your point, I'm sure that there is some amount of this that is explainable by, we might have a vision for how a roster ought to be built. We might have a. We want to bring in our own guys, right? We want this club to be our club. But it does strike me as strange that it's not a bigger problem for them to just be like, well, you're going to be a bad baseball team for the first however long. And I think Minnesota did well, given what I imagined was a directive from ownership for them to shed as much payroll as they possibly could at the deadline. You know, I think they came into the year like, hey, let's do. Let's have one last ride. And if you, you, you know, if you guys are in contention come the deadline, like, maybe the directive would have been different, but given where they were, I think they were just like, everything must go. You know, they did reasonably well given that mandate. Like, it does feel bad to have the guy who you committed a franchise record contract to sort of unceremoniously sent back from whence he came for nothing more, quote unquote than contract relief. But I do think that's kind of a defensible move on their part, because I think the back end of that Korea deal might look really bad and we might be in the beginning of really bad right now. But it, you know, it's hard when you're sending guys who, you know, excite the team when you're sending the best closer. You know, sure, you're excited about, like, tight, but, like, are you that excited? Are you that excited About Mick Abel, do you, you know, don't you want Louis Varland, like, in the fold for longer? And again, I think that, like, these are defensible moves insofar as they were told, hey, you gotta shut payroll. And so I think they brought in prospects, some of whom will end up being good players for them. But it's a tough. It's a really tough pill to swallow, you know, and I wanna. I, I want Twins fans to know that, like, I, I hear, and I know that we have a number of listeners who are Twins fans. And so I'm not trying to discount, like, the experience of this from a fan perspective, because it really sucks. And I think that it really sucks, especially because fans know you can, you can take this approach, right? You can do the hard rebuild and, like, sometimes it works out, but sometimes you're the Baltimore Orioles and, like, you're still selling off everything in sight that you possibly could. They're only, Only non. I. I didn't realize this. I didn't quite clock it until Curie was writing her piece on, on the Mullins deal. But the only healthy, pending free agent who wasn't shipped out of Baltimore over this deadline period is Sagano. All the rest of them are gone. And now they have hurt guys, right? Like, Eflin's still there and, And Gary Sanchez, but, like, they don't have anyone who's not on the aisle and a pending free agent who is still on that roster. And so it's like, you know, I don't. I think that we can sometimes get a little caught up in the, like, the surplus value of it all and the. A brighter day will dawn. And I hope so much that that is true. But I understand it feeling bad in the immediate term, and I understand not taking for granted that, like, it will materialize into a better team, because sometimes, Sometimes it doesn't. And then you're just, like, left with a collection of arbitration or pre arb. Indistinguishable blondes, some of whom are very good, but some of whom have been less fortunate. I'm talking about all the guys in Baltimore who. Look, I know the thing.
[48:52]
B
I think there's. There's something to be said for being decisive. When you do decide to. To do a rebuild, then. Then really do it. And I'm saying you have to absolutely, totally tank and, and be terrible, but. But just pick a lane. I think that can be helpful sometimes. And that was sort of how Falvi tried to sell it. We made a clear and deliberate decision to strengthen the Next chapter of championship caliber baseball. We didn't make surface moves. We acted with purpose, and it wasn't about patchwork or small adjustments. Okay. I think there's something to be said for that in. In some circumstances, like, I'd. I'd rather do that every now and then, rip the band aid off than the. The Angels, let's say, who, you know, are kind of like, nominally on the fringes of contention, and they just go pick up Andrew Chaffin and Luis Garcia, like that's going to make a difference. You know, it's not like they gave up that much either, but they just can't wait.
[49:47]
A
Okay, I'm going to put a pin in my Angel's thoughts because I have a couple. But please continue. What a. What a deadline.
[49:54]
B
They just. Yeah, they never say, we're done. We need to start over. At some point, you just have to do that or else you just end up treading water or worse. Usually sinking in their case, but, you know, you have a few guys who could kind of be the beginnings of a core of a competitive team, but then you're going for it when you have no realistic chance to go for it. Like, I re. I respect. That's something that you want a pobo or a GM to be able to do. And Buster Posey kind of did it. You know, the Giants were kind of on the periphery of contention, too, and obviously started the season well, and he was just, like, looking at where we are and how we've been playing, it's not happening, you know, so just reload for. For when you have a more realistic shot. And that's always tough. And it's especially tough in this expanded playoffs world where a lot of teams are close enough to have a chance, at least on paper on the standings. But, yeah, sometimes you have to know that's the difficult decision that you employ these people to make. In the Twins case, though, I think it really smarts because. Because they were there. Like, they were right there. They had the championship caliber core and they just did not supplement it. And that's probably more of a polad problem, but. But nonetheless, like, Twins fans saw this team that made the playoffs in 2023 and. And had this continuity and these good players and just did absolutely nothing to improve on it. And like, they did the hard part of. Of acquiring a core, and then they just would not spend a cent, really, to improve it, and then they decide, well, this isn't working out. We have to start over. Well, yeah, because you just. You kind of gave up on it. Prematurely.
[51:38]
A
Right.
[51:39]
B
So I think that's the source of the frustration. And maybe the Twins will be good again under new ownership in a few years, and it'll, you know, be some of the guys that they got at this deadline who are driving that roster at that point. But, yeah, just. It leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth where you kind of got close enough that you could see it and then just stalled out at that point because you stopped investing in the roster. And then suddenly you're trading Correa, Duran, Jax Varland, France, Bader, Castro, Stewart, Paddock, Coulomb. Just so many guys gone at once. I saw Chris Antonetti, the Guardian were playing the Twins, and he was like, yeah, we're gonna have to do some work to, like, familiarize ourselves with who's on this roster that we're playing.
[52:24]
A
I ordered the Cleveland Guardians. I would not be making jokes about other people's deadline activity. That's just a little Meg quote you can throw out there, sir.
[52:34]
B
They didn't. They didn't do what the Twins did. For better or worse. They. They traded Bieber, but they didn't do a whole lot else.
[52:40]
A
I agree. I just, like, I want to know how they understand themselves. I'm glad that they did. Didn't. I'm really glad they didn't move Stephen Kwan. I'm glad that they mostly kept this group together. I think that this is. And I think they did well with that Bieber trade, like, so. But also, like, you're just not a very active deadline team, is my point. Like, they never, like, go. You know, they don't. They're not like, ah, we gotta go for it. So it's just like, you leave the criticism of people's deadline strategies to. And, you know, I wasn't really criticizing them. Like, relax, my guy. Same is true for anyone who goes to play Baltimore. It's like, the only guys who are left are indistinguishable blondes. Like, how will we ever figure out?
[53:22]
B
Was it like, okay, so the Orioles and the Diamondbacks were in sort of the same boat. They expected to be good. I mean, the Diamondbacks were in a boat where they actually tried to get better over the off season and made some significant moves, but didn't pan out for either of them.
[53:37]
A
Boats in the desert rarely do, you know?
[53:39]
B
Yeah, true. And so. So these beached boats, they decided, okay, we're. We're going to just do some subtracting. In the short term. They know that they have good enough players that they should, in theory, come back next year and be in line to contend, but they did what one typically does when you're kind of out of it. Fine. Okay. I don't have a problem with, with that approach. But the Braves did not. They. They didn't do that. They. Those are the three teams that I would kind of go group in, like, were supposed to be good and just a lot of things went wrong.
[54:13]
A
Yeah.
[54:13]
B
And the Braves basically didn't do anything at this deadline. They traded Rafael Montero, I guess, but that's about it. Not that they had so much to trade.
[54:22]
A
This is the thing.
[54:23]
B
Yes, all their pitchers are hurt, and then, you know, Marcelo Zuna's not playing well. And yeah, I guess there wasn't that much for them to do. But I wonder because Alexander said some time ago, we're, we're not going to sell. And that, like, he couldn't even conceive of selling because it's been so long since he was running a team that was not in the playoffs or was not contending. And so.
[54:46]
A
All right.
[54:46]
B
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if part of it was bad and like the memory of 2021 and you never know and. But yeah, when I look at their roster, I guess there's only so much that they realistically had to offer.
[55:00]
A
Yeah, I, I think that they found themselves in a modified version of the Diamondback situation where it's like the D backs had a clear, you know, by the time the deadline rolled around, they had a clear case to sell. Right. You know, it could have gone other either way for a while there, but I think that once, you know, when they got to the point where they traded Naylor, it was like, okay, you know, your game under.500, I get the, the direction here. I guess Naylor came a little after that anyway, you know what I'm trying to say. So, like, they were in this position where they had a clear directive to sell. They had made that choice voice. They have a bunch of guys on the team who are obviously going to be around for a long time and good next year, but they also had this crop of pending free agents. And so the decision they had to make was like, are we going to get enough in trade that it is worth it for us to send these guys away as opposed to keep some of them in house qualifying, offer them, and then get draft pick compensation when the time comes. Right. Which was part of Bauman's argument. When I told him and Jay, I was like, you have to argue with each other about whether they should sell or not. And I thought it was a Point well taken, right? Which is that their option wasn't to either trade them and get something or keep them and get nothing. They could have extended the qualifying offer to a couple of them, Merrill Kelly, Aohenio to Gallen maybe. And if those guys had signed elsewhere, they would have gotten draft pick compared to compensation for them. But the, the Braves didn't really have like, they didn't have an Aohenio. Suarez. If they'd had an Ao Anyosaurus, maybe they wouldn't have had a sell at all. But like they didn't have that same sort of contingent of obviously good and valuable but disposable in terms of the long term roster fit guys. Right. There was no Merrill Kelly on their team. So yeah, we should talk about the Rangers because their deadline was really weird to me. But so I'm kind of simple, sympathetic to the situation that they found themselves in. That team is getting older though, you know, like they are getting older and a lot of their younger guys are like injured pitching. So that's going to be an interesting thing for them to navigate because that, that group of like bright eyed, you know, Brace foundation donors is getting, getting closer and closer to 30 every day. Every day. They are.
[57:19]
B
Yeah, there wasn't, you know, for all the relievers who were traded and all the late inning guys, and that's one thing I guess you could say about this deadline is that there's a pretty good chance that we'll be watching late October games, even World Series games, and some of the last innings will be pitched by players who change teams at this deadline. So that's kind of consequential. The other thing I guess I would say is last time we talked and we were sort of setting up the deadline, we were thinking, well, maybe there will be fewer moves because so many teams are in contention and they could convince themselves, themselves that they'll be in the running either this year or next year or the year after.
[58:00]
A
Right.
[58:01]
B
The other thing though, you could say, I guess is because there are so many teams clumped together that there actually is a decent chance that the deadline this year could be kind of consequential just because marginal differences may make the difference this year, like the wild card races, who wins that third wild card and who's on the outside looking and that probably will come down to a game or two, right? So that this very well could swing who ends up inside and, and who ends up on the cold in the outside. And you know, you, you look at Suarez and say, okay, he's probably the best Player traded, best bat. Someone else who was traded will outwar him. I would expect I would take the field over the best player because, you know, he's, he's good. He's not that good and also.
[58:48]
A
And he's defensively limited and.
[58:50]
B
Yeah, and there are a lot of other players who could just get hot for a couple months but. But yeah, like it could, it could end up really mattering. Even if it's. It's just a one war difference or something. Well, it, it might be a one game difference in the standings, but for all the relievers who were traded, there were very few starting pitchers.
[59:10]
A
Very few.
[59:11]
B
Yeah. And. And there are teams that needed a starter and didn't get a starter and their fans are upset that they didn't get a starter, but at least no one else got one either. So it's, it's not like, you know, you, you got outbid. Yeah, I, I guess I, I think the best starting pitcher who was acquired was maybe Shane Bieber who hasn't pitched in the majors this season but has looked good in his rehab appearances and should be back soon. And at least you know, he has ace upside if he comes back and isn't too rusty or, or diminished by the Tommy John surgery. But other than that, like what other starters were out there? Dustin May and Stephen. Matt's the guy that the guys at.
[59:53]
A
The Red Sox and Matt's has been in long relief pretty much the whole year. So I don't, I don't know that their plan is to make him a starter again. He's pretty, his splits are pretty dramatic. I think that he will probably. Which also makes it a weird roster fit cuz I'm like you have a bunch of lefties already and then like you're adding in the.
[60:11]
B
Yeah. Sears. Sears, like you know, back end guy. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
[60:17]
A
It's just a lot of Padres guys who moved to the Royals probably have been starting and probably will, especially given Kansas City's. I thought that they threaded the needle in a nice way. Kansas City. I was, I was generally pretty.
[60:32]
B
Yeah.
[60:33]
A
By their. It was, it was like. It was muted and I don't know if it'll work and maybe for it to have worked they needed to do something bolder. But. But I also think that like it would have been really goofy for them to over commit given where they are. And so I don't know. I thought that they. It's to your point earlier, like picking a lane and having a decisive course of action is often the right move and we have Criticized teams over the years. The Red Sox comes sort of most immediately to mind for, like, this coming and going business. It's like, what do you. How do you understand yourself? You know, I feel like the Red Royals, they didn't, like, go. They came. Did they go? Went. I don't know. I like the royal deadline. I thought it was fine. It was like they upgraded in a couple of places, not dramatically, but in some spots it was like their corner outfields were to the Royals what the Padres catching situation was to the Padres. And it's like, is. Is a Yastremsky gritchick platoon, like, gonna catapult you to the division lead? Probably not that, but, like, it'll make you a more respectable baseball team. Maybe. I catch lightning in a bottle, you know, a little lightning in a bottle.
[61:42]
B
Zach Lutel, another starter who was traded, went to the Reds. Yeah, yeah, there. There were a few teams as their.
[61:48]
A
Up and home runs.
[61:49]
B
I know there are a lot of teams who do try to. To kind of, you know, balance the. The coming and the going. And. And there are times when that can make sense. I mean, you know, you could upgrade yourself and maybe still get a good deal with an eye toward the future. But. But, yeah, like, the Dodgers, I guess, were in that camp. The Rays, the Royals, to some extent, all made moves that you would classify as buying and selling. Probably.
[62:17]
A
Yeah. The Dodgers deadline fascinated me because, you know, speaking of another team that probably could have used a starter and didn't get one, in fact, they dealt one. Yeah, their deadline was much more sort of of future focused in terms of the, like, the best players they came away from their trades with were prospects. I mean, they managed to insinuate themselves into that Letel trade and got a good prospect in the balance. But, yeah, it was for a club that, like, has both obvious flaws in the moment and clear postseason ambition. They were more future focused than I thought they would be. Like, they had an Alex call and Brock Stewart, Tony Brax. It's hard for me to say that name without going Barack. I want to put, like, some oomph behind Barack.
[63:11]
B
Yeah.
[63:12]
A
When did Brock become a name? What's that name about? I'm not trying to insult all the Braks who listen to us. I'm sure there are a number of brux.
[63:20]
B
Yes.
[63:20]
A
It's just. What's up with your shame? Who was the first bridge, you know, who rock. See? And it's like, I've said it enough where I'm like, what is that word? How are you allowed to put a b And an R and C and a K so close together.
[63:43]
B
Oh, boy. Oh, it's all catching up with you now. Okay, well, where do we go from Brock?
[64:00]
A
Should we talk about the. The Rangers real weird deadline just as a reset. What was up with the Rangers? Here's the part of this that confused me. On the one hand, I can totally understand feeling nervous about your existing rotation situation, not because I guess Meryl Kelly was the best starter who moved at the deadline.
[64:23]
B
Yeah.
[64:24]
A
All right, let me here. Now I'll round into form on the Rangers. So I think Meryl Callier is great. He is precisely the kind of starter that the Rangers need because he is good. He is above average. He is having a year even better than his, like, career numbers this year. There have been times in the last couple years where he's had, like, cramping, I think, because the air conditioning and Chase is bad. I don't know. Um, but, like, he. This year has been remarkably available. Just like a super reliable, steadying force for rotation that has been, like, very injured or underperforming. Great. And I get them wanting to reinforce both the rotation and sort of the back part of that bullpen because, you know, like, they have deGrom, who's having a great year, but is made of candy glass, and Evaldi, who has been good. And then it's like, a lot less, like, sorted after that. Right. Like, rockers up and down and lighters up and down. Not literally from the majors to the minors, but in terms of their performance. Gray is, like, in the bullpen now. They've had a bunch of injuries.
[65:30]
B
Put some respect on Patrick Corbin's name.
[65:33]
A
I was just gonna say. And then they have Patrick Corbin having the season he's having and being very good for him relative to his most immediate seasons, and super available. But you're not going to give playoff innings to Patrick Corbin unless you. Unless something catastrophic has happened. Right. So I get them wanting a starter, but also, like, their pitching has been very strong and their lineup has been at times underwhelming. It's been better over the last month, but, like, you know, like, they're running a dual lease out there every day they're going well, so, I mean, not every day, but, you know, it's like they had obvious places that they could upgrade and they had a deep farm system. So in theory, like, they had the. The prospect capital to make a move. And so I just. I thought the way that they allocated resources to be so pitching heavy was just weird. And, you know, maybe they'll make a fool of me. But it just seemed like there were other bats that moved who were good and I'm surprised that they. And maybe they were in on all those guys and they just weren't able to get a deal done. But I'm a little skeptical of that. So I don't know, it's just like a weird. The shape of it was strange given their roster needs to me. So.
[66:51]
B
Yeah, I agree though, since you brought up the Rangers, I must note that the biggest addition they made from my perspective was not adding Coulomb or Kelly or. Who else? Phil Meiton, but Luis Corvelo, whom they promoted this week and who made his major league debut on deadline day.
[67:13]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[67:14]
B
Two beautiful scoreless innings to complete my minor league free agent draft board. 10 for 10. It's now, it's official. It's the deadline pod for this.
[67:28]
A
Using the deadline pod to brag about your minor league.
[67:32]
B
I mean, I have to tell the world I'm bursting with pride because. Because Corvelo, he had been on the taxi squad earlier this year, right. And. And didn't make it into a game. And I felt like Armando Galaraga. I came so close to perfection. But unlike Galarraga, I got a do over and this is my proudest achievement as a prognosticator. Perhaps my only achievement as a prognosticator because I try not to prognosticate. They said it couldn't be done. 10 for 10. Perfect. Minor league free agent draft. We'll return to that topic at the end of the season. But just. Just had to crow about it a little bit. I'm sorry. Sorry.
[68:10]
A
Okay.
[68:11]
B
Well, I just hope that their new relief additions don't endanger Corello standing in that bullpen because I still still need those batters faced. But I'm very proud, very proud. Papa. Okay.
[68:23]
A
I'm so. I'm happy for you.
[68:25]
B
Yeah, I know. I can sense that this. The happiness is just so. Warmth in your voice.
[68:30]
A
Overwhelming.
[68:33]
B
So I guess other teams we should just quickly touch on the Mets. The Mets were fairly active. They picked up a lot of bullpen help to put behind Edwin Diaz. They got Gregory Soto and man, they got Cedric Mullins, who I know is not hitting like he did in his prime, but he robbed a homer in his last game as an Oriole, I think the day before he was traded. So he still got it out there in the outfield and that. That'll improve them. And then they got Helsley and they got Tyler Rogers, who wasn't included. In our previous listing of of save getters and closers, but is one of the best relievers in baseball. We probably don't talk enough about Tyler Rogers and, and how consistent and unorthodox he is. Both of the Rogers were traded actually on deadline day, but the Mets got the better Rogers. The. They got Tyler and they, they gave up.
[69:27]
A
Taylor got traded twice this deadline season.
[69:29]
B
Yeah, he did. It's true. He was a Pirate. Very briefly, I guess.
[69:33]
A
Very briefly.
[69:34]
B
Mets gave up kind of a lot in the Tyler Rogers trade, but Rogers is a really good reliever. So you know, like these are teams that are pretty certain of their playoff bound status and they're just trying to get those late October innings set and, and they did that and their rivals in the NL east also did that. They actually, they had sort of similar deadlines in a way because they both got late inning help. They got closers. The Phillies added Duran and they also added Bader. So that was their, their good defensive center fielder they picked up. Bader was sort of supposed to be Buxton's caddy, the latest of them. But until recently Buxton had been healthy so he didn't really need to back up Buxton so much. But he was actually, actually hitting pretty well in Minnesota. So yeah, the, the Phillies and the Mets were both quite aggressive but sort of canceled each other's moves out a little bit I guess at least when it comes to the division race. But you know, it's, it's classic Dombrowski to part with some prospects to get relief help. And the Phillies have had better bullpens than Dombrowski's teams used to have. But they still needed some help in that department this year and they got the best guy available. They got Duran who is another guy who's under team control for a few years. So they, they had to give up Eduardo Tait and Mick Abel, catcher and, and big league ready starter. So two of the best prospects at the deadline. But these are teams that should be making that kind of move. The Phillies and the Mets for that matter. Like Phillies are getting older and have this aging core and they're in it and this is the time we, when you make that type of move to, to rob the future to pay the present. They also picked up Matt Manning. So yeah, a lot of, lot of action there to make up for the inaction in the rest of the NL East. Of the other teams which didn't, didn't do much. The Marlins didn't do much either. They didn't trade Alcantara. They didn't trade Cabera. They just, I guess, like what they have. They've been surprisingly good lately anyway. Yeah. Like, when you're in that position where you're pretty confident that you're going to be playing playoff baseball, then you. You just want to shore things up and solidify those late innings because you know that those are going to be pretty important.
[71:58]
A
Yeah. I think that they each knew that they were going to go into the deadline being aggressive and trying to bolster obvious holes. And you bolster a hole, bolster a weakness. Yeah, they did that. And you know, it's remarkable when you look at the zips projections for Mets and the Phillies post deadline, like, they didn't really change their playoff odds that much, in part because they both made similarly matched moves. Right. They're still sort of deadlocked, but they each improved their World Series odds.
[72:32]
B
Yeah.
[72:32]
A
Because they're better teams now than they were. So I just think it's a fun little bit of symmetry is all, I guess.
[72:40]
B
Two teams that were fairly inactive despite being in decent playoff position, though. Different playoff positions, the Cubs and the Red Sox. So the Cubs didn't do a whole lot. They picked up Michael Siroca and Andrew Kittredge and Willie Castro and, you know, those are all nice little moves. They picked up the other Rogers, Taylor Rogers. So.
[73:05]
A
Right.
[73:06]
B
They made several additions, but none huge on its own. And then the Red Sox, of course, who were rumored to be in the running for Joe Ryan late, were making a push, but evidently didn't get all that close to prying him away from Minnesota. So they settle for Matt and May. So their fans not pleased. They gave up the. The younger prospect, the outfielder James Tibbs iii, whom they got back in the Devers trade.
[73:34]
A
Yeah.
[73:34]
B
They then flipped him and another prospect to the Dodgers for May. So. So May, like he's been one of the only durable Dodgers starters this year, but has not been that great. And I guess the Dodgers are feeling pretty good about their guys getting healthy in time for October, that they felt comfortable removing May from the mix, even though he's sort of been the staple, the stalwart in that rotation this season. And the Red Sox get him. And like, you know, I guess there weren't that many impact starters available. And May has been better before. I generally, I like him as a pitcher and thought he'd be better than he's been this year. And they did address their deficiencies and their needs there, but not in a very exciting way. And there was a Craig Breslow press conference where he Just, you know, kind of talked like he does in this sort of new age exec, robot, robotic way that I guess confirmed the Brez is a stiff perception that, that people seem to have now. And he basically did a. We tried.
[74:48]
A
Yeah.
[74:48]
B
He said if fans were in the office during this deadline, they would see that guys, we didn't expect to be willing to talk about going into these conversations we made available. We tried to put the most aggressive offers we could in hopes they were going to end in deals. I understand the frustration and the disappointment because we're all looking at the last week right now in terms of the trades that were made and weren't made. There's not a lot of sympathy for how hard we tried to get deals across the line. I understand that that second to last sentence there has really been making the rounds, I think kind of out of context because, you know, he wasn't complaining about the fact that there wasn't a lot of sympathy. I don't think he was saying, woe is me. We tried really hard. Why won't anyone feel sympathy for us? But when you see that line, that sentence in isolation, it sort of sounds like that's what he's saying, saying. But no, I think he was attempting to be empathetic and saying, I understand why there's not a lot of sympathy. But nonetheless, whatever he said, it wasn't going to go over well because, yeah, you know, they made the Devers trade, they cleared all that salary. They've got all these young guys, they've got this great young core and they had prospects, they could dangle and. And they just ultimately just didn't make very exciting moves. And. And they are in a spot where they, they kind of need to, like, I guess. Which do you think, like, needed to make moves more, the Cubs or the Red Sox? Cause they had sort of similar playoff percentages, I think. Or no, the Cubs have a very high playoff percentage. They're like basically a lock, but they are kind of 50, 50 in the division. And that obviously makes a big difference. Do you get that buy or not? Whereas the Red Sox. Sox have very little shot at the division, at least according to the playoff odds. And yet they have a pretty good shot at a wild card. And so you could say, well, they should be even more motivated to make moves because their place, their playoff berth is much less assured. But then again, the Cubs are in the running for a division which is a bigger prize that may be out of reach for the Red Sox. So I guess, yeah, either way, you, you know, and The Red Sox are only what, like five games back in the east, so I guess that's not entirely out of reach. So yeah, there's just, there's a lot of frustration with the Red Sox organization right now.
[77:03]
A
So, like, not that that depot hasn't managed to put his foot in his mouth at different points, but like, I think that there was a realization on the Mariners part at some point that like a lot of what Jerry says inspires reaction. And I think a lot of that reaction is like, fair, but some of it is also like a fatigue with him. And so it would be hard for him to say anything and not have it come across in a way that bothers people. And so that I think is part of why the organization has put Justin Hollander out front so much. You know, part of that is that like, he's the, he's the GM and he, you know, should talk to the media and like they want to keep him and so he needs to have a front facing role in addition to Dipota. But I, I think that maybe Breslow, maybe there would, maybe it would be good for Breslow to have like a designated deputy for some of this stuff because like, it does, it's not a great quote, but it also felt like people were ready to be mad at him, like you said, for whatever he said. And so I'm just like, but like, this is pretty early in your tenure for you to be at that point, you know, so I don't know. I don't know about that. That seems not good.
[78:18]
B
I guess they don't have a gm, right. So I don't, I don't think they do.
[78:22]
A
I don't think they do.
[78:24]
B
Yeah. So they don't really have a designated number two who could kind of fill that role maybe. But yeah, might be something to look into, I guess. Anyway, Anything else we should touch on? I guess I, I, the Yankees were pretty busy and I, I kind of like, like what they did. Yeah, there wasn't any one move maybe that's going to like persuade the, the Cashman haters out there. But you take it in, in some. They made quite a bunch of moves to address weaknesses. Like yeah, their, their bullpen went from not very good to pretty elite. Now at least if you like, look at the projections, adding Bednar in Dval and, and Jake Bird from the Rockies, like, that's a pretty big upgrade to your bullpen to make at the deadline. Bednar. We talked about Jake Berger's minor league reset earlier this year and, and the concept of the minor league reset, just sort of send a guy down, get his head straight, light a fire under him, whatever it is. Bednar also had that this year. He had a minor league reset and he's come back firing after that, I guess. Francisco Alvarez, too. The minor league reset, it's a, It's a fun phenomenon. But yeah, the Yankees, like we talked about, the McMahon trade, when that happened, and Rosario, they just, they did a lot. They, they turned over a surprisingly high percentage of their roster, too, for a team that is adding. And Caballero, they picked up from the Rays as well, so really remade their bullpen, gave themselves a lot of depth, depth and, and versatility on the position player side. So, yeah, you know, no huge star pickup that's going to win over Yankees fans who are unimpressed by this organization. But on the whole, lots of little improvements.
[80:17]
A
I think they're in some ways a difficult roster to upgrade. They have all of this star power and money already sunk in, and a lot of it is. A lot of the players are good, you know, so I don't know that there. I think marginal changes were the, the order of the day given that, like, you know, they're going to get judged back and, you know, they will have more pitching available in future seasons. Obviously not right now. So it's just, they're in sort of a weird spot. So I thought that they did well given some of their, their concerns. Like, I feel much better about that bullpen than I did before the deadline. Caballero is such an interesting, like, I mean, this, I want to be clear. I mean, this is a compliment. Jose Caballero is a pain in the ass. Like, he's a pain in the ass if you're playing him. Like, I don't know him as a person. I have no sense of him as a man, you know, but like, he, he's. He delights in trying to mess with pitchers around like the pitch timer. And, you know, he's a really hard base runner and he is one of these guys who likes to, he likes to kind of be a little annoying to his opposition. Not in a way that's like disrespectful or anything like that. I'm trying to knock the guy, but, like, in a way that feels purposeful. Right? He's trying to be a little bit of a pain in the ass. And that's just a. Interesting fit for New York because, you know, but they like, they like playing the villain. They play the stupid. They do the, you know, they have the evil Empire reputation. So anyway, Jose Caviar is just like an interesting fit for them. But yeah, I liked their deadline. Should we. Can I just say how weird the Angels are for a second?
[81:59]
B
Oh, yeah. Well, just.
[82:00]
A
The Angels are so weird.
[82:01]
B
The Yankees guys, that they got those relievers also under team control for a while. I think Bednar, they have for next year. Duval for a few years. So they gave up some pretty decent prospects to get Bednar, for instance. But those guys aren't really rentals. McMahon wasn't either, so they've kind of done some of their off season business here at the deadline as well. Okay. Yes, please proceed in talking about how odd the Angels are.
[82:24]
A
They're so weird, Ben. Like, it's fine for staff members to disagree. Jeff, he was like, very exercised about their deadline activity when he wrote about it, which I found fascinating because it's just so hard to get exercised about Andrew Chase Chaffan, you know, like, and Andrew Chaffin's a fine player. I, I thought that, like, it was. You can't be mad because they didn't really give up a whole lot. Right. Like, it wasn't like they had a dramatic overpay for him and Luis Garcia. I did have a. I did have a moment where I was worried that we. I hadn't read the piece. I don't, I didn't edit that one. Matt did. Matt's a consummate professional, so Matt would never have made this mistake. But, you know, it's the deadline, everybody's busy, and I was like, wait, we had the right Luis Garcia in there. There are a lot of Luis Garcias. You know, it's. It's Joe Smith. That's very common name. So anyway. But they didn't, they didn't overpay. But they're also not too, like, middle relievers away. So I'm just like, what is your. Again, what is your understanding of yourself? Because it's. It's weird. It's a weird. They're so weird, you know? And like, they're. I. I don't know.
[83:48]
B
They have a ownership mandate not to sell, but they also seemingly have an ownership mandate not to spend that much anymore. And, And a lot of the other free agent additions really went wrong. And so I get why they might be a bit squeamish or gun shy, I guess, but. Yeah, sure.
[84:07]
A
But it's like you're trying to. Yeah, I guess you. If you, if you can't sell, then you can't sell. But, like, I don't know. You want to tell me that Kikuchi wouldn't have been a valuable trade target.
[84:23]
B
Mm, yeah, I don't know.
[84:25]
A
I'm so confused by that.
[84:27]
B
Anderson or. I don't know. They had some.
[84:29]
A
I mean, kind of. This is the other thing. It's like, who other than Kikuchi, who did they really have to trade? Like they're not going to move. I guess they could. You know, they would have gotten. You know who they would have gotten a lot back for would have probably been Taylor Ward. They probably could have.
[84:47]
B
Yeah. Given just how many moves were made. There were. Were some, like, even on the Braves, someone like Ryel Iglesias. You know, you had all these relievers and closers moving, not him or Pierce Johnson. And then the Marlins kept those starters and the White Sox kept Robert and Ben and Tendi and Tman and the Pirates kept Tommy Fam and ikf, which I was kind of hoping he'd get traded so that my man Cam Devaney could get more playing time. But yeah, there were bunch of bad teams that still had a least a few maybe appealing players and they just kept them. The White Sox did trade Austin Slater. I forgot in my recounting of Yankees moves, yet another addition that they made and you know, kind of nice like platoon, outfield bat. He'll be, he'll be somewhat useful for them. So, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it's like whatever the opposite of, of death by a thousand paper cuts is, it's just like you. You're out adding with a. A bunch of little moves that amount to maybe a lot in the end. I guess we've come almost to the end here and, and in classic, effectively wild fashion, we have neglected to talk about the Reds who did make some moves. Also kind of confusingly so. Yeah, they got Miguel and Duhar, who's still, still around. What a weird career he has had. And then they got Zachel, who, yeah, doesn't seem like the best fit for that ballpark. Perhaps. Perhaps they got key Brian Hayes from the Pirates, who, like I have believed in him in various points. I, I thought that he was going to hit and at times it really looked like he was, but boy, he sure hasn't lately. And physically I'm just not sure that he can. But you know, the glove is great. But now what are they going to do with Noel Viarte? I, I guess I get that they needed some help, but they're just always positionally kind of confusing. They're just always moving guys around and, and sometimes we praise versatility and playing guys out of Position. It's like positionless baseball. Hey, don't let guys get stereotyped or typecast or locked into a box. Maybe they could play other positions, but with the Reds, it often seems that they're just bouncing guys around and maybe it hurts their development offensively because they're trying to. To play positions that they're miscast at anyway. I don't know. They seem like they could make a run. They have this core. Some of their core has underperformed, I guess. L gives them some rotation depth and insurance if someone gets hurt, as is often the case in their rotation, which has been good on the whole, but is fairly fragile. But yeah, I don't know exactly how like and Duhar and Hayes fit with their existing alignment and, and whether Hayes can hit at all.
[87:36]
A
Right.
[87:36]
B
Yeah, I don't know. They're kind of confusing to me too.
[87:40]
A
They. Dan noted that they're. They took on money with Hayes and not a. Not a lot in the grand scheme. A surprising amount for the Reds and their playoff odds actually went down. I don't know if Brian Hayes will ever be able to hit. Acceptable. I understand wanting to try more now. My, my optimism around that has dimmed just because he's been healthy this year and he still hasn't hit. And so like, in prior years, you'd be like, oh, there's been some injuries bending. Not really the case this year. So that part of it is concerning. He is a really special defender, and so I get that part. But I find their strategy within fielders just generally over the last couple of years to be kind of confounding. And I don't know that their evaluations have been. Have been particularly good. Like, remember when they signed Candelario? And then. Yeah, you know, and some of this isn't their fault. Right. Like, you know, Marte got suspended, did for PEDs, and so some of it is like you. And they've had a lot of injury on the infield, so some of it's that. But I also, given all of that sort of volatility, can understand them wanting to be like, well, let's just get this guy, have him anchor third. He's a good defender there, a really great defender there. And like, you know, I think because his bat has struggled so mightily, we, We've kind of lost sight of how, how. How special he is at. At third. And then we just, you know, we'll get him to hit or we won't, but we don't have to worry about that position from a, From a Defensive perspective. So. So maybe. Maybe that's the. The rationale. But, yeah. What do you do with Marte? Because, like, he's. I had the Reds game on, and they're like, yeah, we don't. I'm trying to remember who was saying this. I can't remember if I had the Reds broadcast on or not, but they were like, what are we. What are they going to do with Marte? Because, you know, like, they can't put him at short because of Elliot. I'm like, they can't put him at short because he can't play shortstop. Like, what are we talking? Like, he's also defensively limited. Like, is he better at second than Matt McClain? I don't know, man. So, yeah, they're. They're in. They're in a weird kind of spot with. With some of their guys. And. And it's not like, you know, like, Marte's under team control until, like, 2030 or something. It's not like free agency is going to just, like, thin the hurt for them. Naturally. They're going to have to. But he's hitting well this year, Marte, you know, so.
[90:32]
B
Yeah.
[90:32]
A
I don't know. Just.
[90:33]
B
The Tigers did not attempt to repeat their plan from last year, which was get worse and profit instantly, though. No, they didn't.
[90:46]
A
I don't know if they got a lot better, but they are a better team, so that's fine.
[90:49]
B
Yeah, right. They. They got Charlie Morton, they got Kyle Finnegan, they got Paul Seald, they got.
[90:56]
A
Cody Hoyer, Paul Seald.
[90:58]
B
Yeah. They got Raphael Montero, they got Chris Paddock and Randy Doak. So they. They did a bunch of stuff, but.
[91:05]
A
I like the paddock move.
[91:07]
B
Yeah. I always like Morton. He's been pitching better of late, so.
[91:11]
A
Yeah.
[91:12]
B
Yeah. You know, they. They need help less than they did last year when they decided that they were beyond help and then went on a run anyway, so. Plus, they have the power of Riley Green's mustache now. Have you. Have you read the quotes about Riley Greene's mustache? He is. He went from beard to mustache, and everyone's obsessed with the mustache now.
[91:35]
A
Who is everyone?
[91:36]
B
Everyone on the Tigers. Yeah. Okay. They all touch it now. They touch the stash. And Green said, it's great. It gets the boys going. Whatever gets the boys going. And he says McKinstry may have gotten some power from touching the stash. He touched it. A lot of people touched it. Okay, so A.J. h. Said, we've all touched it. I'm not sure how that's going to go over with quotes around it. And good. Said it's getting kind of weird.
[92:10]
A
Okay, so. Okay. Okay. So here's the thing again. I am a known advocate for the boys giving each other a little kiss if everyone wants to. And if. And if Riley Greene is fine with people touching his stash, that's between him and God. That's none of my business. Although it sounds like he's starting to register it as a bit odd.
[92:32]
B
Yes. He also said it's not a good look. Just. He doesn't like how the mustache.
[92:37]
A
Okay. I was like.
[92:38]
B
Not the touching of it, but the.
[92:40]
A
Of all the. I just.
[92:41]
B
But he said, if it means winning, then I'll keep it. I don't know that it does, but I guess you.
[92:46]
A
You'll never convince baseball players of that. You've never met a more superstitious group of human beings in your life. Like, they're, you know, they're puritans who burned witches who are less superstitious than baseball players. I'm doing witches in air quotes. I just think that, like, it's on your face is the thing, like, of all the, like, things to. To touch in your workplace, on another worker's face. It's just a lot. Like, there's something very. I mean, we're all thinking of so many jokes right now, and they all involved. Involve nastiness. Right. Our grandmothers are embarrassed. They're blushing. They don't know why, but they're like. I feel like somebody's thinking a bad thing, but there's something so intimate about, like, you're in the dugout, and. And all of a sudden, like, you're just. Zach McKinstry is just, like, touching your face. He's just like. And it's like, you can't. It's hard to touch your. Touch your mustache without, like, obscuring part of your mouth. Mouth. So it's just like a very. I don't know about that. You know? I don't know about it. I. Again, like you. If you're gonna be in the lip area already, just give each other a little kiss. You know, like, give it a little good little kiss. Will Carlos Correa be able to give members of the Astros a little kiss on the head? He's a little kiss on the head guy. Is he like, Houston.
[94:20]
B
Yeah.
[94:21]
A
And I'm bringing back the little kiss on the head, you know?
[94:23]
B
Yep.
[94:24]
A
Is he gonna be able to do that? I don't think I. Sorry, can I just say this about Carlos Gray? Because I feel like I. I don't Think I appreciated how dire Isak Paredes injury was until they traded done for.
[94:36]
B
The year, it seems.
[94:37]
A
Yeah, I did not. Somehow, in the. In the. In all the comings and goings, I didn't clock how bad his injury was. I don't know how much they talked about that, but I just missed it. I'll. I'll blame myself and not the ast.
[94:52]
B
Um, anyway. No, it. It is. Well, first of all, speaking of other news about touching, Brian Cashman was asked whether Spencer Jones was untouchable, and he said, some guys are more touchable than others. Clearly, Riley Green is among them. But, yeah, Carl Correa, like, he has not played well this year. He played well last year when he was healthy, but between being unavailable sometimes and just. Just not playing well this year. And there's. There's no apparent injury this year that you can exactly trace it to, but it's in some ways that's almost more concerning. So him going back to the Astros, I guess it's like. It's a feel good story for Astros fans and for everyone else, it's like a. It's also feel good because you get to feel angry, I guess, because it's like, oh, good, I can consolidate my booing now. One of the sign stealers is back on the sign stealing team. So that simplifies things maybe. But I could imagine that, yes, as you said, like, the Twins may be happy to get out of the back end of that contract. On the other hand, I could also imagine him just, like, going back to Houston and just miraculously having a run and it clicking and. And they need help.
[96:06]
A
It will 100% happen, Ben.
[96:08]
B
Yeah, it will.
[96:09]
A
100. Because, look, the universe is like, you need a new way to feel bad about your baseball team, Meg. And so he will go home, and Rick, he's gonna. He's gonna be riding high on how he gets to go literally home because, like, you know, his wife's family is from there. I think his parents maybe live there. Now he's get. No, it's gonna be.
[96:37]
B
No.
[96:37]
A
He'll ready to crouch out about it. Ready.
[96:40]
B
It'll be vintage Carlos Correa.
[96:42]
A
Ready?
[96:43]
B
Most likely. Yeah. All right, and then the brewers, we haven't really mentioned they didn't do much either. And they're. They're locked in a tight race there. Maybe they figured, hey, we have Andrew Vaughn. What else do we need? He's the best hitter in baseball, but he moved back in the box, Meg. He moved back in the batter's box. I'm sure that was the only reason.
[97:03]
A
But I. I want to be clear. I was never giving you guff about your theory. I said that there were exactly examples to the contrary, but I didn't.
[97:11]
B
Yes.
[97:12]
A
It really works for some guys. Like, yes.
[97:15]
B
Oh, yeah. But no, the. The brewers, they got Shelby Miller and Jordan Montgomery, which would have been a major move at one point several years ago.
[97:23]
A
Jordan Montgomery slow quitting king. Like, and I feel bad saying that because he had Tommy John. He's injured. But, like, Jordan Montgomery got a trade bonus and will probably never, ever. I. I wonder if he'll even go to Wisconsin. Like, is that guy. Because he's. He's a free agent at the end of the season, he's never gonna throw a pitch for the brewers, at least not on this contract. But he got a half million dollar trade bonus, so I think that's great. You know what it feels like a win for labor generally, you know, and like, that deal was a bad. That ended up being a real disaster of a free agent signing for the Diamonds backs. But what are you gonna do? You know, sometimes those don't work out, and sometimes you get half a million dollars for being home. That sounds great. I would take half a million dollars to be at home. I'm already home.
[98:17]
B
Then that's where I want to be. That's my natural habitat.
[98:20]
A
I know.
[98:21]
B
Brewers also got Danny Jensen. Anyway, they didn't do that much, but they'll probably just figure it out and win anyway, somehow.
[98:28]
A
Somehow. Although, you know, they. They could have used a big bet. I'm just saying. I know that Andrew Vaughn may never strike out again. Maybe he'll never miss, but there's a lot of evidence to the contrary about that. And Andrew Vaughn. You know, I hadn't seen Andrew Vaughn without his hat on until he went to Milwaukee. You should wear a hat. It's my not very generous Andrew von ticket. Just like I think the problem is. I think it's hat hair. You're exactly. The problem is that, like, he wears the cap because I'm gesticulating, because I'm. I'm imitating his hair with my hand. I'm like, oh, it's his hair. And it makes him look so much older than he is. He's 27. He is more than a decade younger than I am. And boy, would you have a hard time convincing me of that if I didn't know what his birthday was. That's a funny thing about him. What other teams have. When we talk about. About that, we should. The Pirates sold. That's not surprising much.
[99:29]
B
Yeah, we didn't talk about Ronald Auna's Achilles injury, which was. If this had not been a deadline pod, we probably would have talked about that. That's a bummer and extra bummer cuz like, it was. It was sore and hurting him and he didn't want to miss any more time. And so he probably pushed it too hard and now he ends up with an Achilles injury. Hopefully it's not a terrible one, but. Yeah. And Buxton back on the IL with ribs. @ least it's not knee, but. Yeah, no, I think we covered almost all the major trade activity. I did. Before we say farewell, I wanted to share with you Sir Anthony Dominguez's farewell to Orioles fans. He. He put a graphic up on Instagram. I guess that is almost indecipherable because it's like orange text over. Over a partly orange background and it's a real graphic. Design is my passion. Sort of goodbye message, but kind of. Kind of nice because you figure he probably did this himself. It's just like a superimposed text that says, I just want to say thank you, Orioles. My family and I will always be grateful for having been given the opportunity to be one of you. But I could barely read the words because it's against white and orange background. Always, always enjoy that. And you also.
[100:51]
A
Yeah, sorry, I just opened the link. Orange is a. That's a hard color. You know, it's a tricky color. It's a tricky color to wear and I'm learning. A tricky color to read.
[101:05]
B
Yeah. And also, I believe you had an unhinged joke that you wanted to make that you didn't want me to forget because you. You posted that you had this.
[101:15]
A
I don't know if this is good. Okay. I don't know. I don't know. I was riding the high of Aohaniosaurus being back in Seattle and. Yeah, although that and the. And the Mariners beat the Rangers and you know, they'd been tied for that third wild card and like a doubled and Cole Young hit this, like, freaking tank.
[101:34]
B
This was all before Luis Corvelo came down and shut up him down for two and. Right.
[101:39]
A
Yeah, it was before that, but, you know, it ended on kind of a down note because I think, speaking of Achilles injuries, I think that Trent Thornton blew out his. But they haven't gotten the MRI back on that. But needed a cart to get off the field. Never a good sign. So, you know, that kind of soured the previously immaculate vibes. But before that happens, you know, Dominic canzone we gotta talk about Dominican for a second. I mean, only for a second. A second to set up this joke. So he's been, you know, he. Speaking of Mariners guys who are the byproduct of a trade with the Diamondbacks, like, DominicanZone has been really good for Seattle in limited action this year. And, like, he's definitely over his skis. Although, like, you know, he's running a super high Babbitt. But, like, you know, from a wobex perspective, it's not all that bad. So it's like, okay, Dominic Canzone stomach can's in the box and he is, you know, they're showing Dominican from various angles. Here's what I'll say. A big dumper gets all the attention. Right. I think that we need to spend a little time in a different can zone because you work in with quite a. Yeah, it's not the big dumper, but there's a little bit of a dumper back there. And I'm just trying to work up, like, can zone. You know, I feel like there's something there. I'm. I'm not saying it's a fully formed joke.
[103:04]
B
It sounds like it would be the, the rooting section of fans out in the outfield or wherever would be in the can zone and they might have, like, they'd hold up some butts or something.
[103:16]
A
Yeah.
[103:16]
B
Maybe they'd moon people.
[103:18]
A
Yeah. And it's like, you know, I. I think that it, it's. It's. There's a tension. Right. Because, like, sometimes a. A woman will be told that she's cans and it's her, you know.
[103:32]
B
Yes.
[103:33]
A
And it's not. It's. It's not the hinder. And so there might be some. There might be some slang confusion there. Right. And so maybe that's why it doesn't work. But I just, I was like, it's a. It's not even a joke so much as an observation that has been delivered sort of humorously. I'm like, what? I want it to work. And I wonder, like, does Dominic Canzone. I don't want to know the answer to this, actually. Okay. No one ask him. I would be mortified. But I do wonder, like, does Dominic Canzone feel like Cal's keister is obscuring his, is concealing his hinder, or is he relieved? Is he like, oh, I've been hearing about my great ass my whole life. You were, you were worried I was gonna be like, all down the middle. And then I made a stimulus joke and you were like, where's this gonna go and the place it's gonna go is to me talking about Dominicanzone's ass.
[104:36]
B
Yep.
[104:37]
A
Canzone. The cans part of it makes it tricky. You know, like that part it's like eh, that doesn't maybe work but I just think that it could, you know, and, and slang evolves over time and maybe it can mean one thing broadly but a different thing specifically. And the specific thing could be about Dominicans one's butt.
[105:02]
B
Yeah, well you can think about that and you can think about Brock.
[105:06]
A
Brock.
[105:08]
B
All right. You know, I meant to say I don't know where the A's will be playing in 2028, but I'm pretty bullish on the bats. Kurtz, Wilson, Butler, Rooker, Soderstrom, Clark, now Devries. I think they got a stew going. Not Dave Stewart. He was a pitcher. Also his nickname was Smoke. A few final follow ups here. Listener Zach Patreon supporter wrote in to remind us of a precedent for cows in the clubhouse. Meg was talking about this, what with the raw milk in the Phillies. And of course there was a situation with Meg's Mariners involving a cow in the Clubhouse. Back in 1995, Ken Griffey Jr. Lost a bet to Mariners manager Lou Pinella. It was about Griffey hitting homers in batting practice. Junior lost the bet and the stakes or were a steak. And so instead of paying up with an actual steak dinner, Griffey delivered a cow to Lupinella's office after finding some pretense to remove the manager. So yes, everything in baseball has happened before and may happen again. Listener Rick Patreon supporter also wrote in about an email that we answered in our previous episode about whether some rich person or rich persons could frame a pitcher by betting on some pitch prop and making it look like that pitcher was doing something illegal. Put a bunch of money on someone throwing a Rick writes the reason the betting scheme likely wouldn't work is the bets would need to be correct to implicate the pitcher. If a bunch of bets were placed on a first pitch ball but the first pitch was a strike, it might raise some alarms, but it would be clear the pitcher wasn't involved in any wrongdoing. That's true. That is a complication. There might still be some suspicion. Maybe it would look like you agreed to throw a ball and then thought better of it at the last second or something. Also, as I said to Rick, there's a pretty decent chance that you would just get that correct by chance. First pitches this season have been balls. Almost 40% of the time league wide and with the right combination of batter and pitcher, you could probably get your odds even higher. Maybe you could get it to the point where it's close to a coin flip and then if you did it a few times, then you'd be right eventually. It's probably an overly elaborate scheme anyway. Also Raymond Raymond Chen, effectively Wild Wiki keeper Patreon supporter, wrote in about other precedents for mid doubleheader trades because Sir Anthony Dominguez was traded between two teams that were playing each other in the middle of a doubleheader. He pitched in the second game, not in the first game, of course, but I mentioned that there was some precedent. Cliff Heathcote and Max Flack, outfielders who switched teams and jerseys, I believe the Cardinals and cubs back in 1922. Raymond's research paid dividends, he said on mid double header trades I found this On Monday, June 8, 1952, Cal Abrams, a spare outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, was traded to the Cincinnati Reds between games of a double header. The funny part is that before the first game started, the Dodgers manager, Charlie Dressen told Abrams that if he wanted to stay with the team, he had to heckle the opposing team and their manager from the dugout for the entire entirety of the double header. After doing this for the entirety of the first game, Abrams was told between games that he had been traded to the Reds and had to immediately report to the manager, Rogers Hornsby, he had been heckling throughout the first game. Hornsby not the greatest guy to begin with. Also, Raymond says Jose Cardinal went from the Phillies to the Mets in the middle of the July 2, 1979 doubleheader, but spent the second game on the bench. So he missed out on being a trivia question answer. Until now at least. You don't have to miss out on being a Patreon supporter of this podcast. If you go to patreon.com, you can be one too. You can sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners Cody B. Trevin, Tom Myers, David Vero, Gorbitz and mz. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and activity, free fancraft memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastancrafts.com you can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple podcasts and Spotify, YouTube Music, etc. Your positive reviews and ratings do help us. You can also find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild Wild. You can join our facebook group@facebook.com group effectively wild and you can check the show notes at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That'll do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week.
[109:37]
A
It's Effectively Wild and it's Wildly effective. Perfect perspective, impressively smart and impeccably styled. It's the wildly effective Effectively Wild Spin Rain Long Shango. You might hear something you never heard before.