← Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2406: Hal and the Hall
01:29:56
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- [00:00]
A
Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise from small sample size. These fun facts must lie.
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B
It's Effectively Wild.
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A
A strange but good hang.
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B
Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2506 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast, brought to you by our patrons, Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer. Ben, how are you doing?
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A
Well, another day, another trade. Nice to have something to banter about. Teams keep supplying us with a bit of material and today it's the Cardinals and the Red Sox matching up on a sunny Gray to Boston trade in exchange for a muse of ours, maybe Richard Fitz, the right handed pitcher whom we have only ever referred to as Richard, and left handed pitcher prospect Brendan Clark, whom we have no funny nicknames for or anything. But I'm sure he'll be fine too. And there's some interesting money salary stuff involved here. This trade though, is, I think, less surprising and easier to make sense of than the previous two major league deals that we talked about. The Orioles and Angels trade with Taylor Ward and Grayson Rodriguez and then the even more flummoxing Brandon Nimmo and Marcus Semi in Mets Rangers trade. This one seems more straightforward to me.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I'm debating if I want to make my crude little jokes.
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A
I know you want to. The question is whether you will if the dick fits.
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B
Look, I vetted that joke with multiple text threads and all of them were like, you should do it, Meg. You should make that joke. You should make that joke in public. I did have a moment of reflection because I. I think the first post that I saw was Friend of the Pod Alex Spires about this trade. And I was like, I'm not going to tag his. His work post with my dick joke.
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A
You know, Considerate.
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B
Yeah, I respect Alex. He's a great reporter. He's a tremendously nice person. He didn't need that smoke and so I spared him it because I'm magnanimous and funny. Really?
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A
Something like you said, Meg Nanomus.
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B
But you didn't know. I didn't, but that's what I heard. Glad to cue you up for a good tee up for a good joke there, bud. No, I think it makes a ton of sense, especially once you balance the money out, which actually makes this trade make better sense for both sides because it would be absurd. There are complexities in Sonny Gray's deal that backloaded it tremendously. I cannot wait for the joke that Michael Bauman made about that to make its way onto FanGraphs.com, which will be happening any minute here. But I won't spoil it. I'll just let you all go find it yourselves. But the way that it was originally structured, particularly once you brought in the money that he was guaranteed from a buyout of an option, the Red Sox were looking at something like paying $40 million for one year of Sonny Gray. And I think Sonny Gray is a serviceable starter. Still certainly useful to might end up starting playoff games for them, not game one of the playoffs. If everything goes the way that Boston.
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A
Wants, one would not.
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B
One would hope not because that would indicate bad things that happened to Garrett Crochet. But you know, a playoff starter, right. Not a guy you're relegating to the bullpen come October, but not a $40 million guy. That would be absurd. So the Cardinals are spend sending some money with Gray to Boston and that makes also makes this deal make more sense for the Cardinals based on where they are in their cycle. Because rather than it being just like money and about shed money, they are also getting Richard Fitz, who insists upon being called that. And we will respect that coward's choice. Now, I completely understand the decision to not make yourself a laughingstock. We are already doing it for him and Brandon Clark, who is a very interesting prospect. Potentially not a starter long term, but maybe a high leverage reliever. And considering where St. Louis is not likely to contend for the postseason in 2026, but sort of getting their feet under them for the next competitive Cardinals team, guys like Fitz, prospects like Clark are really interesting for them and you know, even if they don't end up being like build around guys, very useful and you know, guys obviously that Heim Bloom is going to be quite familiar with. I think it just, it makes a lot of sense. You know, this one, this one's. This one. We're not going. Huh? We're going. Oh, yeah. Okay.
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A
Yeah, I had to. The most confusing part of it was the contract, but once I got over that aspect.
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B
Very strange.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's a mutual option and there was. Yeah, like an option where even if the player option was like. Even if he had exercised the option, he still would have could have been a free agent if he had wanted to if the team had exercised the option. And then there were buyouts for options and so they just. They worked it out. Yeah. And yes, the Red Sox aren't on the hook for as much as they would have been otherwise. And really I had to remind Myself at first how Sonny Gray pitched this year because he fell into the St. Louis Bermuda Triangle, where I just forget everything that happened with the Cardinals this year because as we established they were, we think the team we talked about least this year. And I felt a little bit bad about that and I threw it out to Cardinals fans and said, did we overlook anything? Is it fair and right that we neglected to talk about the Cardinals? And most of them wrote to us and said, yeah, yeah, you did good. Like, there was just nothing, not much to say about this team. Don't blame you. Don't hold it against you one bit. And so I kind of had to reacquaint myself with Sonny Grace stats this past season, which were actually probably better than maybe you remember them being not you, but the listener.
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B
Just I don't remember them at all.
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A
Yeah. Okay. Well, then might apply to you, too. Applied to me also because the ERA was not flashy of a 4.28, but yeah, under the hood. Still pretty impressive stats. Like, doesn't seem as if he's slipped much at all. He's still striking out 10 per nine with excellent control. Maybe a little bit homer prone, as you might expect from the ERA gap there. But. But yeah, like the other stats, the XFIP and the FIP and all the rest are kind of in line with what Sonny Gray has typically been. I mean, he's only two years removed from being a Cy Young Award runner up, which it seems like longer than that. And that was kind of outer character for him anyway, and that was. He signed this deal with the Cardinals after that last year with the Twins. Good timing for him. So, okay, he's not a Cy Young candidate, but he's as solid as they come. And granted, he's in his mid-30s, he just turned 36, but the durability in this era, it's pretty darn solid. He's made at least 24 starts in each of the past five seasons. And the last three seasons, 32, 28, 32, 180 innings this past year, two of the past three years. By the standards of modern starters, that's. That's pretty darn durable. So, yeah, like, he's. He's maybe lost a little stuff, but the results, at least under the surface, the peripherals are still pretty impressive. You said serviceable, and I might even go above serviceable.
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B
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think I was being ungenerous potentially.
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A
Well, I've seen some Red Sox fans being up in arms, not pitching arms, but upset that they didn't get a better starter and they still could. By the way, the off season is young. I know that the Red Sox haven't really earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to splurging, but I think given that Craig Breslow had come out and said, basically we're not going to make some rinky dink starting pitcher move. He said we need starting pitching help and that's the priority. But he said, I don't think we're going to spend a ton of time trying to add a number four or a number five starter. If we're going to make a starting pitching addition, I think it should be somebody who can pitch at the front of rotation and start a playoff game for us. Well, define front. I guess. You know, there's nobody better than Garrett Crochet, really, who you're going to acquire. Unless you're going to trade for Tarek Skubel. But a number two type, like, I think, you know, maybe he's a three. I don't really get into the who's a two? Who's a three. What does that even mean, really?
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B
But they're all number ones to me.
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A
Sure. Sonny Grace, he's better than a number four or five.
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B
Oh, yeah, he's.
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A
He's a mid rotation starter.
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B
He's an October starter, definitely. Yeah.
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A
Oh, yeah, absolutely. In a good playoff rotation, if he pitches like he usually does, then yeah, you'd be happy to have him take the ball in a game. Two or three behind Crochet and maybe Bayo and, and they could still add. And they have subtracted some salary, some money has come off the books and who knows if the Red Sox are going to reinvest that these days. But there's room to maneuver and there are free agents available. Certainly you still got Cease and Valdez and Suarez and Gallon and other guys. So it's a, it's a strong start to a rotation, that top three. And they have a bunch of other interesting guys, too, because they're the rookies they brought up late last year, Connolly early and Peyton Toley. And then they're just a bunch of other arms just kind of in the mix. And maybe someone emerges from that mix. But, you know, I, I think if they wanted to be safe about things, then they should probably try to sign another starter. But this gives them insurance in case they don't do that. And it's not like they're just rolling and pitching depth here to the point where adding Sunny Gray precludes them from adding a free agent. So if they added a free agent to the rotation they have now, I would say that that's a pretty strong unit. So we'll see if. If they rest on their laurels and declare the winter over. Now that they've got Sunny Gray, I could see that being a bit underwhelming, but it's a strong start to the off season. And you know, you're still paying a pretty penny for him, but only on a one year deal, so not a whole lot of risk there.
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B
Yeah, I like it. I like it for both sides. You know, sometimes, sometimes you do a deal and you know what, you know what else is seasoning my impression of this deal. You know what day of the week it is? Tuesday.
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A
Beautiful beer.
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B
Perfect deal. Never been a better deal than this deal. This is a great deal. Happened. Happened for me. Happened for me very early in the day. Happened for me early enough in the day that I was able to turn. Turn an edit of a blog post around about it in between. Pod business clean. Gonna go pick up a turkey. Beautiful deal.
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A
So nifty. Very considerate by everyone. And works out well for Sonny. Great too because he signed with the Cardinals expecting that they would be in contention and that hasn't really. He waved his no trade and he's, he's gung ho. He's eager to go somewhere where he'll have a better shot.
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B
Picks up an extra million dollars for the, for the privilege.
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A
Beautiful.
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B
Great for him. Good for. Good for these, these various Fitzes and Clarks too. Right. Because right now, sure, the Cardinals are in a little bit of a step back. But like this is a club that takes contending seriously. That is very often in the postseason. Pitcher, pitcher picture. They hope to be post season pitchers in the postseason picture.
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A
Yes.
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B
But you know, it's not like they're getting traded to insert club that never goes anywhere here. Right. Like this is a team that is generally serious about contending and so might not happen for them in 2026, but you can imagine that both of these guys would envision themselves as playoffs pitchers as well.
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A
Yep. Nailed it.
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B
I don't normally struggle to say that, but then, you know, sometimes you get in your head.
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A
Yeah, you do.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay. Well that's, that's that trade and we totally explained it to at least our own satisfaction.
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B
I'm satisfied, squared away.
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A
Makes complete sense. The only other bit of banter I have relates to another AL east team because Hal Steinbrenner made some headlines on Monday. And what I want to know from you when one of these Owners talks about how hard pressed they are to spend and woe is me in my financial situation and I'll say exactly what he said. But do you think that it is purely PR and trying to pull the wool over people's eyes and trying to put the narrative out there that they want to be the dominant one and excuse their lack of spending, relatively speaking, or do you think that they sincerely believe it and that they are high on their own supply and they have talked themselves into it and they just feel put upon to have to spend on anything ever and thus they feel aggrieved and wounded. And so when they are saying it's, they're not trying to spin anything consciously, they actually believe what they're saying.
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B
I think it just super depends, you know, I think that owners former rich tapestry and the degree of self delusion versus self promotion, the justification and instinct toward it versus trying to put pull one over on somebody somewhere really depends on the guy. And it can often depend on the particular moment in time. Right. Like I don't, I don't think of Steinbrenner as being, well, they're all self aggrandizing, right? Because they're very rich men and that tends to be a personality trait that drax endemic to the demo, as it were. But, but I don't know that he strikes me as any more or less inclined to bullshitting than anyone else in ownership. I do think there are guys who are unintentionally honest about their situation, although they tend to not be specific, like from a math and numbers perspective about payroll and profits and all of that. But I think the thing that's useful, this is sort of a long winded way of answering the question. I think the useful thing to remember about any owner talking about money, whether it's payroll and what they can afford, whether it's how lucrative owning a baseball team was for them, they can be doing both things at once. They can be telling the truth and lying to you because it's so easy to get creative with accounting. And so do I think that Hal Steinbrenner was lying purposefully? I don't know. Do I think he was telling the whole truth? Probably not. You know, it's a little bit of talking about both sides of your mouth which like you can't do, you know.
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A
Like physically hard if you try to do it. Yeah.
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B
Is that how ventriloquism works? Is that what ventriloquism is, Ben? Talking out both sides of your mouth? Are you just talking and not moving your mouth?
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A
I Guess you're. Yeah. You're not supposed to appear to be talking at all.
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B
Out of either side. Yeah.
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A
At least sometimes. But, yeah, if I tried to do it, I'd probably just sound like I was mumbling, so I won't really try. But it's a skill that you have to cultivate and.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And owners have cultivated it, at least in a figurative sense. I don't know how their ventriloquism skills are.
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B
Right.
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Yeah. It has always ever been thus. And I do think that there is. There's a level of wealth and privilege where you do start to sincerely feel like you don't need to justify yourself or defend yourself and that it is actually impertinent for anyone to question you about anything.
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B
Right.
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A
So it's not purely an act at that point where your. Your feathers are ruffled. They are legitimately ruffled. They shouldn't be. They're not justifiably ruffled, they're genuinely ruffled.
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B
But they're not legitimately ruffled.
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You're so unaccustomed to being ruffled that the lightest little ruffling really gets you all out of sorts and. And you lash out in response. So I think that's part of it. It's just kind of. You're not entitled to know anything, and how dare you question anything. And the way that this came up, it's not the first time that Hal Steinbrenner has said something that put him in stark contrast with his dad and made it clear that for the Yankees of this era, money is an object. And so he was talking on a conference call with reporters about how he would prefer to spend less money on payroll next year. Well, what owner wouldn't, I suppose. And then he was pressed on that a little bit and about how much room they have to spend and what's the budget going to be. And he hemmed and hawed and sort of said that he hasn't set a number yet. And then a reporter pressed him on something and. And asked, said that they had seen it, suggested that the Yankees revenues were over 700 million in 2025, which I think was a reference to Forbes, which estimated that the Yankees were at 728 million in revenue. And so this reporter asked if it was fair to assume that the Yankees made a profit this year.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And Steinbrenner said, no, it's not fair, actually. And then he was asked, well, did you lose money? And he said, I don't want to get into it, but that's not a fair statement. Or an accurate statement. And then.
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B
So then you do want to get into it. You just want, well, mostly you just want the person to shut up is what you actually.
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A
Yeah. Or you want to get into it your terms and not have to ask or answer any follow ups, I guess. And then he was asked, I think directly later on the call they were trying to pin him down on whether the Yankees made or didn't make Money in the 2025 season. And he said, I'm not going to get into our finances, which is pretty rich, literally and figuratively. But obviously, I mean, I guess he didn't totally start it. He sort of started it by saying that he wants the payroll to be lower. So you kind of got into your finances there and then people maybe some questions that you didn't want them to ask.
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B
Questions, brother.
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A
Right. And so it's, it's always a black box and, and we never know. Exactly. And that's the way the owners want it. And so unless it's the Braves who are the only publicly traded team in their own public company, then we don't have access to the books. And the Players association in theory does. They can see stuff that we can't see. But there is so much creative accounting and you know, what counts as team revenue and what doesn't count as team revenue. And the whole question of whether you turn to profit or not is pretty immaterial if you're the New York Yankees. It just, it doesn't matter if you were barely in the black or you were just in the red in 2025. It's, it's surrounding error ultimately because your franchise is worth so much money and is appreciating all the time. And friend of the show Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus, he did a good rundown using his own financial background to parse what Hal was saying here. And yeah, it's true that they may not have been profitable, at least by some definition. And in 2024 Forbes said that they lost 57 million measured by operating income. And that was when they won the pennant. And that's as defined by Forbes. That's before depreciation and all of these other accounting things and you know, non stadium interest and taxes and all sorts of things. So yeah, by some definition they may have lost money in 2025, but the Forbes estimates they're the best we have or among the best we have. But they're, they're imprecise and they don't include all the sources of income. So Forbes includes rights fees earned by the yes. Network, which is Yankees owned, but not overall. Yes. Revenues, which does go to the club. And then Forbes also excludes income that teams might get from MMB, Advanced Media, and the Braves got 20 million from them. And the Baseball Endowment LP, which is an investment fund that all 30 teams own equally. And that was another 5 million for Atlanta. And so all these little things chip away, and they're just not even included in those figures, really. But beyond that, it's just the appreciation so dwarfs the figures that we're talking about here when, you know, the operating revenue. It's like in 2024, again, just using the Forbes estimates, the Yankees franchise value increased from 7.55 billion to 8.2 billion. So that's, that's $650 million. Yeah. And so, okay, they technically quote, unquote, lost 57, but the value of the team increased by 650 million. So, and I get that, okay, they probably don't plan to sell the team, and maybe they don't want to sell the team. And so that franchise value is on paper to some extent, and you do still have to, like, have some cash flow and everything, but, you know, you can just, like, leverage that franchise value and you can just go into debt and you could get such favorable rates.
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B
And then also, I'm sorry, like, it's the New York Yankees. The idea that they are not making money is ludicrous on its face. It's just, I mean, like, I think trying to go through the numbers we have and explain. You know, I always appreciate the, the careful work that Rob does. I think that, you know, it's, it's good to be able to show people the ways in which all of this is illusory in some way. But it's the Yankees. It's the. Are we not just, just. It's the Yankees. We're not just you. I'm sorry. Like, we can just. I, I, again, I appreciate all the work that Rob is doing. I think your explanation of his work is very useful for our listeners. But also, I'm sorry, it's just they have to show, they have to show proof that they lost money. They need to show it before we. Because it's the Yankees. Right? There are other clubs where if they were to tell me, hey, we lost money last year, I'd be like, you know, okay, I get that. I can, I can imagine scenarios. Very, very pla. Plausible scenario. They're the Yankees. So, like, what are we doing here?
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A
Yeah, there's a part of me, even though I retain no tie other than distant and fond memories of my childhood Yankees fandom. But even so, being raised as a Yankees fan, this is just, it's unbecoming, it's untoward, you know, thank you.
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B
That is the perfect way to describe it. Like, have some, have some self respect. What would your father say? You know, that's what you want to say when you hear this. I know you're like, what would, what would your dad be saying right now? He's spinning somewhere and people who are.
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A
Like, oh, if George were still alive and, you know, like, probably he would run the franchise into the ground in some other way. He was not a good, good owner, and the Yankees got good when, when he was briefly banned from baseball. But he was not gonna scrimp and save and skimp on the payroll. He was, he was gonna spend some money and he wasn't gonna come out and talk about how his hands are tied and, you know, oh, the competitive balance, tax and all these things that Hal has consistently talked about. It's just, you know, you're not gonna catch the Dodgers saying stuff like this. I mean, people would massacre them if they tried, but the Yankees should similarly be massacred, and they have been. Really? Yes. You know, even though I think the whole, like, World Series are bust and we're special and we're exceptional and we're the Yankees, you're just another franchise, competitively speaking. You have a rich history, but in this era, I don't know how helpful it is to cling to the rings and to, to think that you're entitled to win every year, but you are entitled as, as fans of the Yankees, to expect your team to spend and not be going over, you know, rinky dink little losses potentially on paper that have no actual ill effects on this family whatsoever. Like, that's part of the covenant here, is that if you're, if you're the Yankees, just sound like the Yankees, you know, goodness, just please at least show me some bluster. You know, just project some confidence. Be the heel even. I almost miss it. Just splash your cash around. This kind of quote, it's just, it doesn't fit coming out of a Steinbrenner's mouth. Any Steinbrenners? The other part that was borderline duplicitous, I guess, where he was talking about how, you know, you have to consider the Yankees expenses too. You can't just consider the, the revenue. And fair enough, he says. It all starts to add up in a hurry. Nobody spends more money, I don't believe, on player development, scouting, or Performance science. These all start to add up. If you want to look at the revenues, you got to somehow try to figure out the expense side as well. You might be surprised. I love the somehow figure out. Like, I'm not going to tell you, but yeah, good luck with that, I guess. And, and then he got into the, the yearly bond payment that the team makes to New York City to finance Yankee Stadium, which He said costs 100 million this year. And that sounds like a big number. And.
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B
Oh, okay, the bond payment cost 100 million.
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A
That's. Yeah, that's what he said. The 100 million payment the Yankees make on bonds issued by New York City for Yankee Stadium. And so he's complaining that the Yankees have to make payments on these bonds every year, even 2020 when the season shortens. And however, it's not like, unique to the Yankees, as Rob pointed out, that they have to pay these things. And also there was like refinancing, so it's at a lower rate. And that saved the Yankees a lot. But. And here's where Rob has expertise that I don't. The bonds are called pilot bonds for payments in lieu of taxes. And then seems like a pretty important caveat.
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B
So it's like it's reducing their tax burden.
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A
Yes. And Rob writes, according to a report from Sports Business Journal, The Yankees in 2024 made bond payments of 84 million. Okay, fine, Hal. That rounds up to 100 million. And received tax exemptions of 122 million.
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B
I'm going to do a big swear. I want everyone to prepare themselves. Get the, out of here with this. Get the, get the. I'm exhausted by this nonsense. I am. Yeah, it's, it's like you said, it's unbecoming. Right? It's unbecoming because is. This is like just an out and out, like bit of, of duplicitousness. And also, don't we. Look, there are a lot of. There are a lot of dopes out there, but we're not all dopes. Stop talking to me like I'm dumb. I. Yeah, everyone's getting away with this now, you know, or they, they think they're going to get away with it now. They, they all think they're getting away with it now. And I. No, no, you can't get away with.
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A
It if you're the Yankees. Nobody is buying this. That's the thing. When Hal tries this, there are teams that either it's closer to true or you can at least convince people maybe they just aren't as aware of These numbers and, and most people aren't reading Rob Means breakdown at Baseball Prospectus or the Sports Business Journal or Forbes for that matter. And so often historically, they would just take the owners at their word. But you can't get away with this if you're the Yankees and your family has spent decades of ownership of this franchise trying to project the image of we're the big bad Yankees and we can outspend everyone and then suddenly you're kind of crying poor or at least talking about how you really have limits here. I just don't think that you can ever make that convincing. And I think every time Hal has tried, he's just been been roundly criticized for it and it hasn't seemed to penetrate. I don't ever really hear Yankees fans saying, ah, you know what, he has a point. Like, I guess, yeah, poor Hal, he's done all he could. And look, the Yankees spend a lot relative to almost every other team.
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B
Oh sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
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A
They are the Yankees and they have greater resources than almost every other team. And relative to the rest of the league, they don't spend anything close to what they used to to outspend everyone else by. So it doesn't seem to me that this message resonates with its intended audience. It doesn't seem like any fans are mollified by this or are sympathetic to this argument and are saying, yeah, you know what, don't make a run at those top free agents, Hal, because we we really want you to be able to, to pay that, that bond payment there. You know, I would hate to have you incur any debt additionally or you know, run into hard times or anything. So yeah, we'll just lower our expectations accordingly. Don't hear that happening.
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B
Here's the thing about all of these folks and look, I understand you're running a business year to year. First of all, there are going to be some ebbs and flows like that sounds like a biz problem that you might just have to handle. But even if we took them at their word, then sell if this is a bad business for you, right? If you think that this is bad business, if you don't want to own literally the New York Yankees, then sell, you know, then sell. If you can't, if you can't maintain this team to the level that you have invited people to expect. And again, I don't take him at his word. I think that this is nonsense. I simply refuse to believe that the Yankees are not a lucrative outfit. It, this is not a going concern. But let's pretend it isn't, then sell. You know, I'm done. I'm done with all of this nonsense. This is ridiculous. And, and, and the, the teams that are owned by, by biz people, right? By finance types, they're doing payroll stuff, they're doing spending stuff. And guess what? They were dying to be in that business. So get out of here. Get out of here. And if, and, and literally if you don't want to be in the business, then get out of the biz. Guess what you'd make. How much would the Yankees sell for? The Royals sold for a billion dollars. The Yankees would sell for.
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A
Had them at 8.2 billion. And I'll take the over.
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B
I'll take the over.
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A
Seeing what happened with the Lakers. There are just only a few franchises that are that kind of history and name brand value, recognition, all of that. So.
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B
Yeah, you know, I appreciate. I, I used to. Ben, I used to do business. You know, I used to be, I used to be in biz.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I understand that fans can get a little loose sometimes. Sometimes they're like, well then just go massively into debt and it's different when it's like your money. I understand that I'm not in. I'm not indifferent to the realities of biz, but I'm also unsympathetic to the notion that the New York Yankees are not good.
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A
Bizarre.
- [32:46]
B
That's ridiculous. So don't talk to me like I'm dumb. Hal. Hal. What is Hal short for? His name isn't Hal like Hal isn't on his. Halbert.
- [33:00]
A
It sounds like it should be Halbert, but I'm sure that Hal is Harold, I assume. Harold. I think it's Harold.
- [33:06]
B
Oh, Harold. You gotta get, you gotta lose so many letters to get to Hal from Harold.
- [33:13]
A
It's true.
- [33:14]
B
I think his name should be Halbert. I think we should call him Halbert. From now and being again I'm being a little bit, you know, catch as catch can because it's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I get to be a little loose. I got to go get a turkey. But I'm just saying like talk to, talk to people like they're grown ups. You know, treat your fans with some respect. I know you don't care to treat the media with respect and like that's a negotiation for a different day, I suppose. But like treat your fans with some respect. Treat them like they're adults. You have told them that they are the most special fans. Fans because they root for the most special team that is full of the most special boys. And that comes with an expectation that you are going to spend big. And it's simply beggars belief. Is that the way that word is said? Beggars? Beggars belief. That's a fun expression that you're not making money. I simply refuse to believe it. I don't. I. I like. I don't want to call him a liar, so I won't. But I might think he is one.
- [34:14]
A
Yeah.
- [34:15]
B
Just based on what he said.
- [34:17]
A
Doesn't matter if you're making money by that extremely narrow definition or not. Because in the long run and even in the short run. Yes. Right. And if you need a bailout, then you just put your team up for sale and you will be rolling in riches. So there's an easy way out of this predicament for poor Hal. Really. It comes back to that famous or infamous quote from 1979 from Paul Beeston, who is a Blue Jays executive and then an MLB executive and at the time was VP of the Blue Jays, and said, anyone who quotes profits of a baseball club is missing the point. Under generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss and I could get every national accounting firm to agree with me. Still true today, if not truer, what with all the real estate developments and everything that aren't included in team revenue often. So, yeah, they're moving money around. And really, you can't even call how a liar. Exactly. Because he didn't say anything. Exactly. He didn't say we lost money. He refused to say that. He just sort of weaseled out of saying anything while saying that it was unfair to say they made money. At least make a claim. If you're gonna go with woe is me, just. Just say it with your chest. Say it like you mean it. It's not like the reporter can call you on it, though. Maybe Tony Clark can. Anyway. Okay, let's take a quick break and we will devote the rest of this episode to a conversation with Fan Graft's own Jay Jaffe. We will have our annual State of the Cooperstown conversation. We'll talk about who is newly on the ballot, who is oldly on the ballot, who will be on the ballot in future years, the errors committee. All of the good stuff that Jay writes about for fangraphs and comes on to talk to us about, we will get into in just a moment. Effectively wild. It's war with a smile. Effectively. Effectively. While it's the good stuff, it's baseball nerd stuff. We hope you'll stick around for a while. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Well, the ballots have arrived. Ryan Thibodeau's team is tracking and player profiles are being published@fangraphs.com this can mean only one thing. It is hall of Fame season, and that must mean it's time for our annual Cooperstown conversation with the estimable Jay Jaffe, author of the Cooperstown Casebook, creator of Jaws, which stands for Jaffe Borscore. So it would be weird if he weren't the creator and senior writer for Fangrass. Jay, here we go again.
- [37:30]
C
Hey, good to be back.
- [37:32]
A
We've talked at all different times and parts of the calendar. Sometimes we do a preview, sometimes we do a postmortem recap. But we don't usually do this conversation this early. And this is says timely, I guess, because we can arm people for conversations over the holidays with older relatives or maybe if they are the older relatives, younger relatives, if hall of Fame conversations come up, maybe it's good to do this pre Thanksgiving so that you will be prepared. Yes.
- [38:01]
C
Your holiday arguing kit here. Anything to steer the topic away from politics. Probably preferable at this juncture.
- [38:08]
A
Yeah, you'd think that hall of Fame would be divisive, but. But by comparison, it's probably pretty safe territory. Do people hit you up family over Thanksgiving or the holidays, or do they just leave you alone because you're doing it 247 for work?
- [38:22]
C
I mean, in terms of hall of Fame stuff, my family could not care less who's in the hall of Fame. I mean, other than just, you know, are you like, how's work going? Are you, you know, are you enjoying yourself? I mean, I don't have to convince them either way. They are more or less agnostic on it. Except maybe my brother who might ask a question now and then just sort of randomly about, you know, Roger Clemens or somebody like that. Just, you know, it's the recesses of his baseball mind from 25 years ago.
- [38:50]
A
Well, I guess that's good. It gives you a bit of a breather. It's tough when, when work crosses over into the personal life. So I guess there's maybe a little less to argue about or debate this year than in most years. Because one of your big questions when the ballot came out and you did, your reaction to it was, is this the weakest ballot ever? And maybe it's not the weakest ballot ever, but it's up there or down there, depending on your perspective. So how does this rank?
- [39:20]
C
Yeah, it's it's certainly one of the weakest that I can remember. I mean there's no, you know, there's no first ballot guy who's going to get elected this year. It's possible that none of the first year candidates on this ever gets elected. Although, you know, as I always say, you know, never and forever or a very long time. And you know, I do think that, you know, as the conversation steers towards adjusting our standards for starting pitchers, Cole Hamills actually looks pretty good. You know, the second best new candidate is Ryan Braun, who's got a particularly odious PED related suspension that I would believe rules him out. You know, as well as a comparatively short career. So on down. I don't think any of the other new candidates have a prayer or will even be back for a second ballot next year. But Hamill strikes me as an interesting one. But in terms of fewest guys who meet or exceed the jaws standard or who have a jaws of at least 50, which is kind of close enough for argument that if you're not going strictly by the numbers, you could still probably justify a vote for this guy. We are at the lowest we've seen in over a decade and a half here, I think depending on which of those you're measuring by. It's been a long time since we had a ballot this small and with this few candidates that I think are strong.
- [40:51]
B
You mentioned Hamels as a potential interesting guy in the first year crop. I'm curious how you think his career and Felix's career parallel one another and how voters might make sense of their cases sort of in conversation with each other. Because I think you're right that Hamels isn't a no doubter by any means. I think the same is true of Felix. And I was, I think pleasantly surprised by Felix's vote share last year. Not because I necessarily think he'll eventually be inducted, but because he certainly seems like someone who, whose valedictory should maybe last a little longer than one ballot cycle. So how do you think those guys will sort of be compared and thought of as a pair?
- [41:33]
C
Yeah, it's funny, I mean, you pull up their player cards, they have very similar win totals. 169 for Felix, 163 for Cole. Very similar eras, 342 to 343. I mean like extremely similar. The context when you adjust for ballpark is a little bit different. Obviously. You know, Felix pitched in a more pitcher friendly environment. Cole Hamels had a postseason presence. Felix won a Cy Young. Cole Hamills Never finished higher than fifth. But, you know, the thing for Hamills is that, you know, he had this great durability in the first half of his career, and, you know, it coincided with the Phillies being a perennial playoff team. And he pitched well, you know, helped them win a World Series and in fact was MVP of both the NLCS and the World Series in 2008 when they won, and helped them get back to the World Series the next year, although he was routinely thrashed throughout that postseason. You know, I think we would say Felix was the more acclaimed pitcher during his day, you know, with the Cy Young and two runner up and another top five finish. But from a distance, I think Hamill's has the stronger case because he had a bit more longevity. He was still pitching pretty well when the injuries started mounting to the point that he couldn't stay on the field. And, you know, the kind of the showbiz adage always leave him wanting more, I think sort of applies there. Whereas Felix was just, you know, progressively worse and worse and worse, adding another run to his era every year before fading out at 33.
- [43:11]
A
Yeah, that's why Felix has the feels like a Hall of Famer more than Hamill's, or. Or at least felt like a Hall of Famer when they were playing and when they were at their peaks, I think people probably assumed, oh, yeah, Felix, he'll get in. But they also assumed that he would pitch well after age 29, probably, and that didn't really happen. So. But Hamill's is more of a. In retrospect, yeah, okay, I see it. It does make some sense, but I think a lot fewer people would have seen him that way while he was pitching, or at least were at similar ages. So that's something to overcome, I think.
- [43:47]
C
I think there's definitely something to that. I think maybe, you know, Hamill's was at times overshadowed by the guys on his own pitching staff. I mean, Phillies assembled a pretty formidable rotation there, you know, getting Cliff Lee and Roy Holiday and Roy Oswalt at times there. And, you know, they kind of underachieving once. Once they got all those guys together compared to, you know, the World Series team that won in 2008. Yeah, I think he holds up pretty well. And I was a little bit surprised a couple years ago when I started eyeing this ballot how well he held up. But we're talking about a difference of eight WAR over the course of a career. Obviously, that shows up in jaws. Both guys had, I think, impressive peaks in terms of the top few years. There. But when I look at it in the context of a seven year peak, Felix has, Felix has a little bit more value there, but still not a value on par with the average hall of Fame pitcher. But he doesn't have much value at all outside of those seven years, whereas Hamills has more. And I think that's what kind of shapes the argument is Hamills was an above average pitcher for longer.
- [45:02]
A
Where do your ERA adjusting starting pitcher efforts stand S JAWS or is the that ready for primetime fully now?
- [45:10]
C
Yeah, I've been using, I've been using it, you know, for the last few elections here. And I think the thing that I keep coming back to right now is okay, we've got Verlander, Kershaw, Scherzer and Zach Granke who's now two years into retirement here. Those guys are head and shoulders above anybody. We're going to see that we know that we can identify at this point. Unless like Paul Skeens puts out like a kind of career that we can't really imagine given the workload restraints on him or the fact that he's a Pittsburgh Pirate right now, you know, we're just not going to see numbers like that. You go down, you know, CC Sabathia got elected last year. He's several rungs below those guys in terms of JAWS still, I think, you know, borderline, you know, hall of Famer top. I have, I have him 55th in jaws. The next active guy is Chris Sale, 61st. He's got an S jaws of 49 and a half. Hamills is at 48.2. And then you look at who's on the ballot here aside him and you know, you've got, got Pettit and burley are both 47 point something or about a point below Hamill's and then Felix 44 point something. So it's all very compressed and that's sort of by design in that like I, I reduced the impact of those, you know, massive inning peaks seasons that kind of distort things in favor of the 19th century guys. But I've been pretty satisfied with, you know, where it, where it keeps the 21st century guys. The reality though is they just, they don't have the volume. I mean we're talking about guys who didn't even make it to three innings. And if you didn't make it to 3,000 innings, you probably didn't get to 200 wins or 3,000 strikeouts or all of those goodies that I think are sort of secondary markers of a Hall of Fame candidate at least. I do have other ways of looking at this, but I wish I had a magic bullet that would really separate these guys more than they do. But they are kind of clustered together and they're all kind of clustered with a lot of guys from the 80s and 90s that never even really got much attention when it comes to the hall of Fame. But you look back and it's like geez, probably should have voted for Brett Saberhagen there given we just don't see a lot of two time Cy Young winners with that kind of, you know, that those kind of credentials these days or you know, or Johan Santana who got kind of buried on, you know, the 2018 ballot and won't be eligible again until the 2029 contemporary baseball era Committee ballot. Ballot.
- [47:37]
B
Let's maybe step away from pitchers and new hall of Fame candidates for a second and talk about some of the returners because I think that if you're expecting anyone from the writer's ballot to get in, this might be where we get that grist for the mill. So tell us about how Carlos Beltran's candidacy has tracked. Have you been surprised by his vote share? Because I think we all were kind of curious. You've written about this a good bit. How the sign stealing scandal would impact this candidate candidacy, sort of how would that sin be weighed against ones that have proven to be dispositive like performance enhancing drugs. So where does he stand and sort of how has the shape of his vote share growth washed over you?
- [48:23]
C
Yeah, I'm very surprised that he is on the precipice of election here in just his fourth year of eligibility. I thought that he would be treated like a ped test guy. I suspected he would get enough to stay on the ballot but a low share of the votes. This is a guy who did not get to I think the traditional milestones that we associate with the hall of Fame. He doesn't have 3,000 hits, he doesn't have 500 home runs, doesn't have a.300 batting average. But he does have a great power speed combination there, a lengthy career high percentage based stealing 70 war. He's ninth, I believe in center among center fielders in jaws. So you know, statistically he's there. He's kind of a Andre Dawson with, with, with better on base percentages, you know, and gold Gloves and stuff like that. But you know I expected, I expected him especially with the freshness of the allegations regarding the sign stealing scandal to, to really struggle for attention. Beltran's last year was 2017, he wins the World Series. And at the time it's kind of like he's going out on top. And then it's the winter of 2019, 2020, that we learned about the trash can scheme. It was still fresher than say, a positive test for Alex Rodriguez's suspension to make a single comparison here. Or Manual Ramirez's suspension, which basically ended. Or second suspension, which ended his career in, in 2011. It was closer. And yet he got 46.5% on his first try. And that's the percentage of a guy who's going in one way or the other. He passed the 50% marker, which has been historically significant, blew past that, gaining 11 points on the 2024 ballot. And then he's up to 70% now. And there's only, I think since the voters returned to annual balloting in 1966, I think it's something like 22 out of 26 candidates that landed between 70 and 75% and had eligibility remaining got in the next year. And the four exceptions concern two pitchers, Jim Bunning and Curt Schilling. Bunning just had some bad timing and was kind of a, you know, a shilling like character in that he didn't have 300 wins, but he had a ton of strikeouts and was like a dominant guy who bounced around, leaving the politics aside. Although we know he did become a Republican senator later in his life and went kind of kooky there at the end. And then the Schilling who found unprecedented ways of sabotaging his own candidacy and gave voters every reason to reject him there at the end. You know, Beltrad doesn't have that. Whatever his sins, you know, he has remained, I think, media darlings probably too, too kind or maybe too backhanded of a term there. You know, he's been visible but not overly visible. He's done some tv, he's a special assistant for the Mets now. You know, he's mostly just resumed being Carlos Beltran and kind of low key guy who doesn't call a ton of attention to himself. And I think voters have respected that. I found it very interesting that, you know, when all the reporting came down and it was, it was Joel Sherman and Ken David who pointed out that he had lied directly to them and they're voting for him. You know, pull up the tracker they're voting for. They don't hold, they don't, you know, they haven't held that against him. So I think, I don't think anybody's happy about the sign stealing scandal and I think it is a bit of a black mark against Beltrant. I don't think of him in the same terms as I did before that.
- [52:08]
B
Sure.
- [52:08]
C
But I don't see it as a deal breaker for his hall of Fame case, you know, because I have my suspicions not only about what the Astros were doing and how the weight of the blame landed on the guy who was retiring and, you know, there was never going to be any discipline handed down and the fact that, you know, we all heard whispers about other teams doing things, maybe not to the degree that the Astros did, but that there was a lot of this stuff going on in the game. You know, we've even heard discussion that Beltran was doing this back when he was with the Yankees before he got to the Astros. Two teams before he got to the Astros. So the baseball media seems to have kept its perspective on this. And now he's. He's probably the most likely candidate to get elected this year. And it's a. I am surprised. I will be. I'll be happy when he gets in. I hope he does discuss his role in it a little bit more and gives us some more perspective on what he's learned from that and whatever. And I also hope that, you know, at some point he can resume managing if that's what he wants to do, because I thought that it was kind of a raw deal that, you know, if A.J. hinch and Alex Cora get to go back to managing, why doesn't Carlos Beltran get to manage again? You know, he didn't even get to manage a game for the Mets before being fired, and he hasn't even been interviewed for a job, for a managerial job, I don't think, since then.
- [53:33]
A
Well, he's the best chance for there not to be a shutout on the BBWA ballot in. And the only other guy who, probably, correct me if I'm wrong, but has a realistic shot to get in this year is Andrew Jones, who was at 66.2% last year, which was his eighth year of eligibility. And you'd think it would benefit these guys, maybe that there's just not a compelling new class and no one is coming on to crowd anyone out, or you're not going to really have to worry about strategic voting or any of that stuff. So it's just going to kind of come down to whether people see them as hall of Famers or not.
- [54:12]
C
Yeah. And Jones, I think, you know, his candidacy has, you know, has, I think, some. Some things that give people reservations, but reservations that have largely been overcome, I Mean, this is a guy who got 7.3% on his first ballot. If and when he gets in, he will have the lowest first year share of anybody elected by the writers if he gets in either this year or next year. You know, we saw Billy Wagner supplanted, I believe was Scott Rowland and Larry Walker. You know, we have seen this happen again and again in recent years. You know, with the way things have changed in the voting. There's just, it's, it's more volatile, it's easier to overcome these slow starts. Maybe it's because the logjam, you know, it's log jams clearing, it's advanced stats like war and jaws making a stronger case that gets more widely circulated. There's actually, I think, a confluence of factors there. But Jones, he's got, I think, a couple problems. One, he didn't hit for average, just.254. Two, he fell short of 2,000 hits, which has been, I think, a litmus test for the writers, especially when it comes to the hall of Fame. They haven't elected a single player with less than 2000 hits whose career took place in the post 1960 expansion era. He and Chase Utley are kind of racing to be the first. And he's got a sizable lead on Utley right now. Jones's career kind of collapsed in his 30s and was out of baseball more or less by his mid-30s. He also has a domestic violence related arrest on his record. And that's something that a lot of people aren't comfortable with recognizing a player, a candidate who has that. And I think all those things are there and they've given people ample reason not to vote for him. And yet here he is, 66.2% going back to the recent history since 1966, recent six decades, it's usually about a 50, 50 shot from here as to whether he gets in this year. When I've done this research, I have not controlled for the number of other candidates, returning candidates who may have out, out shared him on the ballot. But I suspect that situation like this, where there is no obvious first ballot candidate would work in his favor as a returnee. So it's entirely possible. I think the other thing though he's is he does have the drawback of having a direct head to head comparison as being, you know, he's the second best center fielder on the ballot, not the best. There may be something in play there in terms of like we've only got one, one center fielder here that's going into the hall of Fame this year, and that's this. Although I'd point out that Jones, because of his defense, has the higher peak according to war.
- [56:57]
B
Another guy who seems like he's poised to maybe pick up vote share but not make it on this ballot is Chase Utley. So where does his candidacy stand and do you think that he is headed toward eventual induction?
- [57:10]
C
Yeah, I've been pleasantly surprised with Utley, who, boy, reviewing his profile for publication here this week, has none of the baggage that all these other guys seem to have. I mean, Utley had kind of a short career. You know, he, he arrived late and he left early and he had some injuries in between, so he didn't get to 2000 hits either. But, man, he packed a lot into his career. I was concerned he wouldn't get a huge share when, when he first got on the ballot and he got in the high 20s, which was, I think, again, better than I expected. And he's up to 39.8% after his second year. And, and that again, that's the share of somebody who's more likely to go in than not. There's only a few guys who've gotten to 40% and not gotten in at any point. Steve Garvey's one of them. Roger Maris is one of them. Jeff Kent, who didn't get to 40 until his last year on the ballot. Maury Wills, Marty Marion, I think are the other two. With the exception of Garvey, all those guys took longer to get to 40% than oddly will. So I think he's in good shape again. I think he's going to benefit from this being a comparatively weak ballot because he'll stand out. And I think he's probably going to pass the 50% threshold this year, which again, is generally a very strong indicator of future election. When you look at the guys who have gotten to 50% or higher, or even 40 something percent or higher, just about all of them, with the exception of Schilling, are in play this year on one ballot or the other. Omar Vizkal, who was knocked down by domestic violence and sexual harassment allegations during his time on the ballot. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Gary Sheffield, all with PED connections. You've got Jeff Kent, who, like I said, didn't get to 40% until his last year on the ballot. So, yeah, there's like, Otley has none of that baggage and that's, you know, good, good for him. You know, I'm sorry, Beltran and Jones are the other two, obviously, and we just discussed them. So, yeah, you know, I think this should be smooth sailing for Utley. I think it's interesting that there are so many of his Phillies teammates on the ballot, too. And I'll be interested to see whether Jimmy Rollins starts riding his coattails, whether Cole Hamels picks up any of that. That hasn't seemed to help Bobby Abreu any, but Abreu kind of predates that because he wasn't part of that championship core, unlike those other guys, because of.
- [59:32]
A
The weakness of this year's class. I've seen even some big hall voters who. Who typically check off 10 names every year saying that they're going to have a hard time getting to 10 this year. And one of those is Joe Posnanski. He, I think, said that he. He would hope that there would be some mechanism by which players who were overlooked during the peak PD backlog could somehow come up for election again. I guess, other than the ERAS Committee, which I suppose is what that's for. But. But it's just the last vestiges of that PD pile up clearing. Now, this is Manny's last year on the ballot, and then a Rod is about halfway through his run. Right. But Joe wrote something about how he wished that there could be a second chance ballot, basically just for guys like Kenny Lofton and Santana and Jim Edmonds and. And all those guys who kind of just went one and done or. Or were quickly wiped away because it was just so crowded. But that doesn't seem like the sort of thing that the hall of Fame ever does, right? I mean, it's sounds like a nice idea, but.
- [60:38]
C
Yeah, you know. Well, what's interesting is that when the 5% rule was first formalized in the late 70s, you got two chances. And even then they were kind of lax about it. And then it wasn't until 1985 that they kind of. They did a second chance vote, actually, where you've got. I think it's something like 11 guys who had fallen below 5% in the previous five years, including Ron Santo and Dick Allen, Wilbur Wood, I think Curt Flood might have been in that group. So a whole bunch of them, basically, and they got another look, and then it was. They were held to that, with the exception of Wood, for some reason, who persisted despite getting 4.1%. But I think record keeping was a little bit more lax then. I don't think Jack o' Connell's predecessor had things quite on lockdown the way Jack does. But yeah, so there was sort of a. There, you know, there briefly was this, you know, one time mechanism in place, you know, the problem now, the ERA committees are now dealing with the backlog, the fallout from the PED clogged ballots. You know, we've got Bonds, Clemens, Sheffield, Kent, Shillings is in the candidate pool, but didn't even. They couldn't even find room for on the ballot this year, you know, and then you've got a whole bunch of guys from the 80s and 90s who can't even get a second shot, like Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans. So structurally, it's really hard. I mean, you know, I wish, I wish they'd drawn the lines differently. I wish the process were different. It's just not suited to handle this kind of volume. Now, the hall did put a new rule in place this year, which I think has an eye towards maybe making room for these guys within the contemporary ballot cycle. And that is, if you get less than five votes on an ERA committee ballot, you're not eligible to be included on the next one. Had this happened last time on the 2023 ballot, then bonds and Clemens wouldn't be on this ballot because they were below that line. If it happens twice, you are out of the pool completely, which I find that to be a bit problematic. But I think that if you just have the first part of that rule, you do allow space for some of these guys to slip in there. You know, next time you get Whitaker and Evans on. Maybe we should have had. If this, if this rule had been in place going back, we wouldn't be talking about the ERA committee candidacies of Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly because each of those guys finished below that threshold three times and yet they got hauled out last time and fared much better on a committee that appeared kind of rigged to give them that sort of acceptance while knocking Bonds and Clemens down a peg. But yeah. So I wish there were more mechanisms for. To get back to what your question about Joe Pzdansky, I wish there were more mechanisms for this, especially in a lean year like this. It would be nice if we could, you know, talk again about even Tim Hudson, you know, guy whose credentials are right there with Mark Burley and Andy Pett and hit the dollar around the same time, but fell below 5%. And now we're not talking about him. And, you know, he looks pretty good even, you know, when you talk about that kind of Cole Hamill's level group. I mean, he had 200 wins for one thing. So baseball talent is not evenly distributed treated when it comes to the hall of Fame ballot eligibility.
- [64:22]
B
So a lot of your analysis and some of our conversation Today about the likelihood of a guy making it in is based on historical comps.
- [64:31]
A
Right.
- [64:31]
B
Once a player has cleared a certain threshold, we've seen that almost certainly mean his induction. There's sort of a new wrinkle this year because we are getting a huge influx of new voters, somewhere between 40 and 50 new voters, which I don't know how that stacks up to sort of the typical new group every year, but it seems like it has to exceed anything that we typically see in a single year span. So I'm curious, sort of what effect you think this new group, which is primarily going to be folks from MLB.com, what that might be mean for not only this year's ballot, but ballots going forward?
- [65:14]
C
Yeah, that's a really good question. And I don't think anybody entirely knows. I don't think we've seen, if it is 50, I don't think we've seen that kind of growth in the annual balloting for a long, long time. I'm looking at this. There was. We added 42 voters for the 2011 cycle, and that was when we hit the peak 581 voters for the BBWA. And then eyeballing my chart here, you have to go back to 1971, there were 60 new ones. 1969, there were 57 new ones. So it's been a very long time since we got this kind of influx. And when The hall in 2015 introduced a rule to exclude active voters who were more than 10 years removed from active coverage to sunset them, you know, we lost. We instantly lost over 100 voters. 109 from. From 2015 to 2016, and we've since lost about another 46 since then. We had just 394 ballots in the 2025 election. Yes, there are people like Ben who elect not to participate for whatever reason, whether it's, you know, personal preference or their publication won't. Won't let them or whatever.
- [66:34]
B
Cowardice. You can say cowardice, Jay. You're allowed to call him a coward.
- [66:42]
C
If we can't get educated voters in the pool, what hope do we have? Ben, come on. No, I respect Ben's decision, even if it's not one that I could pull off myself. I'm too full of to not to forego the privilege here. So this is, I think, a needed boost to the roles of the BBWA first and foremost and to, I think, the hall of Fame process. I think it'll be interesting to see what happens. I suspect that this is going to underscore some of the trends that we've seen in recent years. I think these writers are not necessarily all younger writers because many of them have been@mlb.com for much longer than 10 years. They're just finally getting, you know, they finally run the 10 years off the clock since the BBWA let them in. You know, thinking of somebody like my friend Matthew Leach, who's been doing this for over 20 years and would have been qualified to start voting probably around the time that I joined the BBWA had things been different there. So, you know, I think that we'll see, you know, less. Less attachment to the old school metrics, more, you know, I think more contemporary analysis. I mean, mlb.com after all, is the home of Statcast and the analytics and that stuff. You know, not every person on the beat references those things. But, you know, it's, it's part of the company. It's certainly something, you know, where you're exposed to it and you become at least somewhat familiar with it. So I would expect they're going to be maybe more generous with their votes than the private ballot people that they're replacing in the pool that have been sunset over the last several years, for one thing, and that may be more candidates favored by advanced stats, less attachment to the traditional milestones. It may be just what the pitchers need when it comes to the Cole Hamels of the world, the Mark Burleys and whatever of the world for their candidacies. I don't think we know yet. It's going to be fascinating to see how this shakes out. I'm kind of eager to look, especially when we've got some demographic data coming to us from the tracker guys once this is all said and done.
- [69:01]
A
You touched on this earlier, but the ERAs committee ballot this year, it's the contemporary baseball era that's 1980 on and it's Bonds, Clemens, Carlos Delgado, Jeff Kent, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Gary Sheffield and Fernando Valenzuela. And even as someone who's not nearly as invested in this stuff, I find this very frustrating in a way that I don't the BBWA ballot, because at least on the BBWA ballot, everyone has a shot. They're all on the ballot and they get their hearing. And sometimes it's confounding who gets support and who doesn't, but at least they're not passed over. They have a chance. And granted, all these guys have been on the BBWA ballot, but this is their shot at this point point. And it's so opaque just figuring out who gets on and who doesn't. And as you noted, there are guys who've been up for this before who didn't fare well before. And so why are they back there? I mean, I have no problem with giving them another crack at it, but there seem to be better candidates who would have a better shot and have a better case. And, and then there's the whole just hall of Fame kind of cook in the book sometimes when it just putting that committee together and, and wanting to get certain guys in or keep certain guys out and you never know who's going to be on it. And we'll find out about this sooner. This is during the winter meetings this happens. And we, we find out about it on December 7th. And you know, there's the whole math problem too, where it's just really hard to get enough votes to get elected. You just, you need at least 12 of the 16 votes to get in. And it's hard to clear that threshold or for multiple candidates too. So that's whole process, it's just, it bothers me because it just, it doesn't seem sensible really. There doesn't really appear to be any rhyme or reason to who is up for induction in any given year.
- [70:48]
C
Yeah, it's like trying to explain the ins and outs of a very gerrymandered system. You know, like why Dale Murphy and Don mattingly, you know, two guys who were MVPs and who were very wholesome, put forth very wholesome Personas in what unfortunately turned out to be injury shortened careers, keep getting chances after chances after chances despite not faring well on the ballot, despite not making a dent on the writer's ballot. And then guys who did make a dent who quickly disappeared from the writers ballots but then did make a dent when they got a chance on today's game ballot, the predecessor to the Contemporary ballot, Lou Whitaker and Dwight Evans, who I mentioned before, can't get on. And then you've got Bonds and Clemens yet again. You've got Gary Sheffield and Jeff Kent who were slowly accumulating momentum that had the hall of Fame not reduced the candidacy length from 15 years to 10 unilaterally without the BBWA's approval, might have gotten to 75% by that route. And then you've got two interesting guys. Everybody else I feel like have talked into death about. And when Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were on three years ago, the hall brought out Jack Morris, Ryan Sandberg, Rest in Peace and Frank Thomas. And those were three of the most vocally anti PED players of their era. And so you could see which way this vote was going to go with regards to Bonds and Clemens. And then I think it was set up to humiliate them. And Fred McGriff got elected unanimously by the same committee which also had multiple personalities connected to his career, fitting in the grand tradition of cronyism that goes with veterans committees and ERA committees. So yeah, explaining that again and again. And like I can explain it, which does not mean I could defend it, but it's just a, you know, if you're going to obsess about it the way I do. So it's just part of the topography that you have to explain year after year. Now the two interesting candidates here I think are Carlos Delgado and Fernando Valenzuela. Delgado is interesting less because he is statistically got a strong chance, but he is sort of a poor man's. Fred McGriff hit a ton of home runs. In fact, he is I think the highest home run total of anybody outside the hall who's not connected to PEDs and currently qualified for election. A distinction that will change once Miguel Cabrera and Albert Pujols become available or become eligible. I should say he went one and done. And it's historically very rare for guys who went one and done on the writer's ballot to even find space on these ballots, so that's a plus. Would I have liked Lou Whitaker? Another one and done. Who did better last time to be on there? Yes. But I loved Carlos Delgado. I think he was actually one of the few two players who spoke his mind about non baseball stuff, very powerfully about the Iraq war, the proliferation of God Bless America. I was at a game at Yankee Stadium where he did not stand for God Bless America and that turned into a thing. I think he's just a really interesting dude. He spoke out against the test bombing in Puerto Rico islands. Just a very interesting socially conscious guy. And I'm glad to tell his story again in this context and also again to see one and done guys getting on here. The other one's Fernando Valenzuela, who I think statistically does not even fit into the group of pitchers that we've got on the writer's ballot. But I think whose import as a pioneer for bringing Mexican and Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball is just massive and almost hard to grasp unless you take a step back. I think Fernando should be in the hall on that basis. And I don't know whether this committee is nimble enough to think along historical lines in that way rather than comparing numbers and thinking about steroids. Fernando Valenzuela is more of a Buck o' Neill type candidate than he is a Roger Clements type candidate, if you will, you know, or even a Cole Hamills type candidate. Although he did have, you know, one great season that brought awards and the world championship and a mania, in fact, and you know, not to be, not to obscure anything here, Fernando was one of my all time favorite players. I was 11 years old when Fernando mania was running wild, so. So I was an impressionable youth, but I never thought I could mount a convincing hall of Fame argument for Fernando in 20 years of doing this. And I was pleasantly surprised that some thoughts that I had that were marinating kind of started looking at things a little bit differently and was like, you know what, this is a pioneering candidacy. It makes sense. Like the Buck o' Neill candidacy did a few years ago. You're not recognizing him just for one thing thing, you're recognizing this massive impact he had across several things. And Fernando, it was not just his pitching, but also his broadcasting and his role as an ambassador at times. I'm a little bit hopeful here, probably just going to get my heart broken if I get too emotionally invested in it. But I do hold out some hope there that if not this time that the committee will at least understand that these are the stakes and, and that this is the framework by which he should be judged and that maybe he gets in someday.
- [76:27]
A
Yeah, I'm always on board for more pioneer type people or yeah, ambassador perhaps, or you know, I guess there are other halls and organizations to recognize those people. But I'm never upset really when one of those guys gets in. And yeah, it's very frustrating. Whitaker, of course. I mean, probably preaching to the choir with everyone who's listening to this podcast, though I don't really know who's not in that choir at this point. So it's very confusing to me or, or Evans for that matter. But Whitaker, probably even more so. So maybe lastly, there are some guys who you probably are sick of writing about and will get even sicker of writing about, but will probably keep having to do that as long as they have this sort of structure. And I mean Bons and Clemens and also I guess what 2027 would be. Pete Rose. I'm sure you're already getting people asking you about that. Yeah, yeah, I can tell how excited you are to contemplate that possibility. But I guess it's just like you almost have to keep putting these people on the ballot just based on their playing credentials. But do you foresee any thawing in the receptiveness to the mm. And maybe Rose is a different case because there are a lot of old school baseball people who wholeheartedly support Pete Rose and, and would be opposed to Roderick Lemons and Barry Bonds, for instance. But yeah, I wonder whether you see history making a different judgment with these guys anytime soon. It's, it's hard to say ever, because who knows, right?
- [78:02]
C
The PED guys, I don't see much of a change yet. I do. There is a slight chance because Gary Sheffield got to about 65% and Gary Sheffield kind of stands out because he has a plausible story about his use of PEDs and his stopping of PEDs that he briefly trained with Barry Bonds and Greg Anderson, the trainer gave him the cream and Sheffield thought it was a balm for his scars and his arthritis or whatever and was just, you know, didn't know it was, it was, it was a, it was a ped. And that's the story he told to the grand jury. And even Tom Verducci, who is pretty hard line when it comes to the PED stuff, found that story compelling enough to write about it at length several years ago. I don't know that Tom has voted for him because I don't think Tom reveals his ballots if Sheffield gets in. I think that's, that's, as with David Ortiz, that's another little wedge there that I think you start to see. Not only that this is all happening along a continuum. This PED use all happened along a continuum. Some guys did it for longer. Some guys did it before the testing was in place, some guys did it after the testing was in place. But also there's sort of this incongruity where you've got DH type, to be quite frank. I mean, David Ortiz was not half the athlete that Barry Bonds was in terms of all the things that he could do on a baseball field. And Gary Sheffield's glove was, you know, made out of lead. And he would have been better served if he could have been parked at DH for much of that career to have these less fully dimensional guys in the hall of Fame while Bonds, this great all around player, is not. You know, you'd think it would stir some thinking there among the voters and maybe it would. I don't know. As for Rose, here's the thing.
- [80:08]
A
I keep back filibuster until we ended the conversation. No. As for Rose.
- [80:13]
C
No, I actually, I think this is the point I'm going to continue making until they drag me off and that is this. There is no way a voter owner could look at Barry Bonds and decide that he is subject to the character clause, not living up to the integrity, sportsmanship and character aspect of the voting rules. But Pete Rose, who was banned for committing baseball's only capital crime. I don't know how you could square that. I don't know how you could possibly see Pete Rose as satisfying the character clause. But Barry Bond's luck, not Barry Bonds, was never suspended. Pete Rose did the one thing that will get you banned for life, and it. It did last his lifetime. My thinking on this is there's two things. One, if the hall can stack the deck against Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, it could certainly stack the deck against Pete Rose. I don't think. I honestly don't think the hall wants Pete Rose in there. And I'll tell you why. I mean, there's. And certainly there's a windfall to behave had in terms of tourist dollars and visitation and stuff like that, and publicity, a lot of free publicity. But, you know, the hall has resisted that. I mean, the hall could have pushed much harder to be open during the pandemic. For, for example, they were very social, you know, very socially conscious, very careful, you know, canceling elections, even, and induction. And that's, you know, that's a blow to the whole town, not just to the museum. I think that if Pete Rose were to get elected, you would never be able to hear anything about the character clause and believe it to be valid. It's a dead letter if Pete Rose is elected, because there is no way Pete Rose has the character for the hall of Fame. No way. He had the integrity for the hall of Fame. The man bet on baseball. The one thing you can't do. So I think the hall, which has always viewed its membership, know, as comporting itself properly to the. Living up to these high ideals, would have to shut the up when it comes to that. Not to put too fine a point on that, I don't think they could ever. I don't think they could ever convince anyone that they were sincere about that if Pete Rose were in. And if Pete Rose is in, then I think you have to let Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and every other miscreant who has the numbers in because there's no character clause anymore. So, you know, why are you holding these guys out?
- [82:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, the fact that they were happy to defer to sort of the lifetime ban concept. Right. They can make whatever rules they want. Right. They're the hall of Fame. They're not governed by Major League Baseball. So the fact that they were Happy to defer to that for as long as they were. Suggests to me that this is a person they don't want in. And yeah, I imagine to speculate that we might get some vocally anti gambling folks on that committee when he comes due. Like, I just think that they're going to be keen to be done with him as soon as they possibly can because, I mean, he's in the museum part. Right, Right. It's not as if he has been erased from the record and he shouldn't be. He was an important part of the game. But I just don't imagine imagine them being stoked on the idea of honoring his career given the black marks that it carries. And that's before you even consider the person of Pete Rose.
- [83:39]
C
Yeah, we haven't even touched on the person of Pete Rose. I don't think we need to. But I do find it interesting that even the guys who have, I think, tried to help Rose get a fair hearing, like Mike Schmidt. Schmidt, for example, his former teammate in Philadelphia, also Johnny Bench, who I think carries a big stick when it comes to hall of Fame stuff with regards to the board of directors and whatever is. I don't think they're 100% in Pete Rose's corner here. I think they have some ambivalence and they see what kind of damage could be done to the institution if Pete Rose were elected. I said that's the sense that I get based on things that I've read them saying or whatever and things that I've heard secondhand. So I don't know that there are a ton of true Pete Rose champions out there with at least within the hall of Fame sphere, you know, the people who are, who could possibly sit on that committee. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens. And by interesting I mean terrifying. And yeah, I don't know what's. I don't know what to do. But I do know that there's a lot at stake there and it is going to be larger than Pete Rose and it is going to have a very big impact on what comes after with regards to the hall of Fame because for the ramifications of that character clause are basically at stake there.
- [85:08]
A
Well, I hope your read is right and we can console ourselves with thoughts of Buster Posey being on the ballot next year. Yes, Albert Pujols and Yachty Molina the next year. And we can just not have to deal with the boogeyman, at least for now. But always happy to have you on to run through this and forecast and always encourage people to pick up the Cooperstown Casebook makes a good stocking stuffer, good holiday gift giving material, and we always look forward to reading your coverage throughout the Cooperstown cycle rest of this year and into early next year. So thanks as always, Jay.
- [85:47]
C
All right, thanks for having me and to put in a plug here. Case books are hard to come by these days, but if anybody would like a signed book plate, you can get in touch with me through fan graphs and I will do my best to fulfill it. We will discuss the logistics of that.
- [86:03]
A
Okay, thought I'd read a couple of the several responses we got to our conversation last week about baseball lifers. We were debating the definition, the prerequisites. What do you have to do? How old do you have to be? How long do you have to have served to qualify as a baseball lifer? Patreon supporter Jason says, I think of that less in terms of age and more about a willingness to do whatever to stay in the game. A lot of people will go linearly upward and if they can't do that, they might sit things out for a while. We can all think of managers who get fired or at a baseball for a few years and then come back. A life lifer to me is someone who will take jobs up or down the prestige ladder to stay around. It's Ron Washington leaving the Rangers as a manager to be an infield coach with Oakland again, or Ruben Amaro going from GM to first base coach. There's a sense with these lifers that they do anything to stay around the game and if there isn't an upward or sideways move to do so, they'll take a lesser position. Yeah, I don't know if that's necessary. I think you could be a lifer without making a lateral move or accepting a demotion, but I think that helps. I think that adds to your lifer cred. Also, Evan said perhaps baseball lifer is used only for older people because it's a forward looking projection rather than an accounting of the past. It's less what percentage of the person's life they have devoted to baseball than it is a commentary that they've been doing it for so long that they're unlikely to do anything afterward. That's not a bad point either. I guess it works either way. But now we've reminded you of the rotten slog to rigor mortis. So our work here is done for today and we hope you will help us keep doing that work by supporting the podcast on Patreon Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing 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 Na Brindle, John Noonan, Andrew Guthrie, Hannah and Adam Bacall. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, prior prioritized email answers, playoff live streams, personalized messages, autograph books, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad free fangraphs 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 podcastangraphts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild. You can join our facebook group@facebook.com group effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast post at fangraphs or in the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. And don't forget a link to Effectively Wild Secret Santa Deadline December 10 thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and producer production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week and before Thanksgiving or at least on Thanksgiving we will see. The point is, we won't leave you hanging. If you have holiday travel, we're happy to provide a podcast soundtrack to it and so we will talk to you soon. How do you calculate more? Does it come from the heart? Should we use defensive runs saved or follow the OAA way? Who's gone away.
- [89:34]
C
With their quips and opinions? It's effectively wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild.
- [89:44]
A
Effectively Wild it's effectively wild.
- [89:50]
C
Effectively Wild.
- [89:54]
A
It'S effectively wild.