Effectively Wild Episode 2416: Oh Say Can You WBC

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2416: "Oh Say Can You WBC"

Date: December 19, 2025
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Effectively Wild focuses on recent MLB transactions and the evolving landscape of the free-agent market, as well as a discussion of the rapidly strengthening U.S. roster for the World Baseball Classic (WBC). Ben and Meg also touch on seasonal topics like Christmas tree etiquette, award semantics, and the perils of holiday baseball signings. They round out the episode with a deep dive into the Nationals’ youth-driven front office overhaul, the impact of MLB's Hall of Fame policies regarding ineligible players, and plenty of classic, meandering banter—birds, Muppets, and roast "beast" included.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Movie Banter and Baseball Easter Eggs

• Apo Taco in Pop Culture:
  • The episode opens with discussion of the phrase "Apo Taco" appearing in Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man—with Ben speculating it's an inside joke, as Johnson, a known baseball fan, scripted the commentary.
    • "It was kind of a jump scare, frankly, to hear Apo Taco where I was least expecting it." (Ben, 00:58)
  • Joseph Gordon-Levitt voices a baseball broadcaster in the movie; some of the broadcast audio in the film is scripted.
• Birdwatching Banter:
  • Meg is momentarily distracted by an "enormous seagull," kicking off classic pod avian banter.
    • "A seagull the size of a frickin albatross just landed on the roof..." (Meg, 01:46)

2. Free-Agent Reliever Market, Yankees-Mets Crossover (07:00–13:25)

• Minor Signings and the Caleb Exodus:
  • Discussion of recent reliever signings (Luke Weaver to the Mets, Brad Keller to the Phillies) and an ongoing trend in New York: former Yankees moving to the Mets, as well as the general lack of high-end relievers left in free agency.
  • Notion that “all the Calebs” have been signed, leading to some playfully dismal humor:
    • "Basically all the Calebs are spoken for. If you wanted a Caleb and you didn’t get one… tough luck buddy." (Meg, 07:39)
• Pitch Tipping and Bullpens:
  • The hosts debate the role of pitch tipping in the struggles of Yankees-to-Mets transplants and the psychological aspects of reliever choices.
• Bullpen Depth:
  • They list top remaining relievers and discuss lefty-righty bullpen dynamics for NL East contenders.

3. Baseball Market Dynamics: Surprising Contracts and the December Slowdown (13:25–25:38)

• Holiday Signing Banter and the “Transaction Freeze” Concept:
  • Meg floats the idea of enforcing a signing dead period over the holidays to preserve a peaceful holiday for baseball writers.
    • "I have long been an advocate of an enforced signing dead period around the holidays because these bozos just apparently don’t love their families enough." (Meg, 13:50)
• Christmas Tree and Holiday Season Rules:
  • Extended, light-hearted exchange on the etiquette for when to take down holiday decorations.
    • "You can keep Christmas in your heart year round, but you should perhaps not keep a Christmas tree in your living room year round." (Ben, 18:14)
• Dustin May Signs with Cardinals:
  • Ben expresses sympathy and cautious hope about Dustin May’s $13M deal and the unpredictable health outcomes after past physical and injury setbacks.
    • "I feel for Dustin May because literally, lettuce almost killed the man..." (Ben, 21:23)
  • Both hosts are “flummoxed” by the rising cost of even modest-offseason arms, noting the market is hotter than expected at some levels and slower at the top.

4. Nationals Front Office Youth Movement (30:05–37:18)

• Historic Youth Reset:
  • The Nationals have hired an exceptionally young front office and field staff:
    • Paul Taboni (35, POBO), Ani Kambi (31, GM), two assistant GMs in their early 30s, manager Blake Butera (33), and several coaches under 35.
• Potential Benefits and Concerns:
  • Discussion of the fresh perspective and possible downsides of relative inexperience—and whether hiring so young is partially cost-driven by ownership.
    • "I don’t know that we’ve ever seen something exactly like this..." (Ben, 30:35)
    • "If I were a Nationals fan, I’d be very encouraged by the direction that they’ve taken..." (Meg, 36:22)
  • Old guard (e.g., Mike DeBartolo, agm, 41; Michael Johns, bench coach, 50) are retained for institutional memory.

5. Age Discrimination, Baseball Hiring Practices, and Organizational Memory (37:18–49:11)

• Age in Baseball Front Offices:
  • Meg highlights the legal and practical risks of age discrimination, even as “cohort hiring” remains prevalent.
    • "Just because someone’s over the age of 40 doesn’t mean they can’t be like a valuable baseball executive." (Meg, 38:31)
• Value of Institutional Knowledge:
  • Ben and Meg make a case for blending organizational holdovers with new staff for knowledge continuity.

6. WBC Roster Revelations – Team USA's New Super Squad (50:26–58:06)

• Roster Additions and Rising Star Power:
  • The U.S. WBC team has notably improved its pitching staff:
    • Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Joe Ryan, Noel McLean, Clay Holmes, Mason Miller, David Bednar, plus star position players.
      • "This is dream team territory now." (Ben, 52:00)
  • Comparison to 2023’s weak U.S. WBC rotation (e.g., Merrill Kelly, Adam Wainwright) to underscore growth in event prestige.
  • Discussion of why more stars are signing up—including shifting attitudes toward injury risk—and brief lament that Mike Trout might not make the roster despite being a past captain.
• International Balance Concerns:
  • Ben wonders if, ironically, Team USA might be too dominant:
    • "I almost don’t want any one team to be too stacked... I kind of want to see good baseball." (Ben, 56:05)

7. WBC in the 2026 U.S. Political Climate (58:06–61:56)

• Geopolitical Context:
  • Meg voices concerns about the overlap between the WBC and a heated U.S. election year, fearing presidential meddling, politicized coverage, and even “jingoism” or disruptive enforcement actions.
    • "There are a lot of ways this can go fast in a bad direction and I think being clear eyed about that going in is important." (Meg, 61:24)
• Hope for Unity Through Baseball:
  • Both hope that players will use their WBC platform to highlight baseball’s global community despite the backdrop.

8. Awards, Nicknames, and Baseball Lore (62:48–77:57)

• Cal Raleigh’s Hot Streak and MVP Discourse:
  • Discussion of Cal Raleigh's “breakout star” recognition from SI—Ben approves of the “breakout star” label even for established stars when their fame skyrockets.
  • Semantics of "breakout" versus established excellence, and the cultural impact of awards beyond MVP.
• Nicknames: Value and Creation:
  • Follow-up on previous nickname discussions: sometimes great nicknames (e.g., "Big Christmas" for Johnkenzy Noel or "Big Smooth" for Drew Pomeranz) outshine the player's fame, and Players Weekend has seeded many poorly used nicknames.
    • "Would we even know [Justinson Garcia’s] name if not for the nickname [‘Password’]? Maybe not." (Ben, 68:51)
• Holiday Transaction Freeze, Roast Beast, and Grinch Critique:
  • Extended banter about creating a festive “transaction freeze,” the feasibility of a roast “beast” as seen in The Grinch, and the relative merits of different Grinch adaptations.
    • "The Grinch, the live action Grinch remake with Jim Carrey is… a low key precursor to everything that's wrong with media today." (Meg, 74:17)

9. Hall of Fame, Pete Rose, and the Forgetting of Non-Inductees (77:57–90:44)

• What to Do with Ineligible Players:
  • Question from a listener about how the Hall of Fame should handle past and future cases for players on MLB’s permanent ineligible list (like Pete Rose).
  • Ben and Meg note the inconsistencies and historic precedents, suggesting policy should focus on present and future infractions, and that a clear, consistent process may help set future standards.
    • “For me, Pete Rose is an obvious no. He is an obvious no go, but apparently that isn’t everyone’s perspective on him.” (Meg, 83:34)
• Does the Hall Unduly Cause Historical Amnesia?
  • Ben argues that the Hall of Fame, far from causing fans to forget great-but-not-inducted players, actually helps keep their names alive through debate and controversy:
    • “…More players would be forgotten if not for the Hall of Fame…all the controversy about guys who didn’t get in keeps their memory alive…” (Ben, 89:07)

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Memorable Quotes

• On Nicknames and Player Fame:
  • "There’s got to be some correlation between nickname coolness and just player and personality and performance coolness..." (Ben, 67:57)
• On the Nationals’ New Regime:
  • "They just hired… [a GM who] is 31. The assistant GMs… 34 and 31, respectively. So again, all of them, super young. Devin Pearson, that is not person." (Ben, 30:35)
• On WBC Spring Surge:
  • "This is dream team territory now." (Ben, 52:00)
• On Holiday Rituals:
  • "You can keep Christmas in your heart year round, but you should perhaps not keep a Christmas tree in your living room year round." (Ben, 18:14)
• On Baseball in Politics:
  • "If this becomes about that and about him, which frankly it would be an upset if it didn't at this point, then we will have to reckon with that as well." (Ben, 61:23)
• On Hall of Fame’s Purpose:
  • "Most ballplayers get forgotten regardless… I do think that the conversation about the plaque and all the intrigue about who's in the hall of Fame and who's not… does shine a light on some of these players." (Ben, 87:55)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:46 – Seagull anecdote and holiday movie plans
• 07:39 – “All the Calebs off the board”—reliever market discussion begins
• 13:25–17:52 – “Transaction freeze” idea and Christmas tree etiquette
• 21:23 – Dustin May's lettuce-choking injury, contract value debates
• 30:05 – Nationals front office hiring spree and youth movement
• 50:51 – WBC Team USA roster rundown
• 58:06 – Political overlay for the 2026 WBC
• 62:48 – Cal Raleigh’s SI “breakout star of the year”
• 68:51 – Nicknames, Big Smooth, and Password
• 77:57 – Hall of Fame eligibility for ineligible players debate
• 89:07 – On the Hall and the fate of non-inducted greats

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Tone and Style

The hosts’ interplay is conversational, tangent-prone, and whimsical, often blending incisive baseball insights with pop culture, holiday, and philosophical musings—creating a cozy, knowing, and highly self-aware vibe for listeners. They are both fastidious about logic but loose and playful in asides.

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For First-Time Listeners

This episode is rich in both substantive baseball discussion (particularly on offseason transactions, organizational change, and the WBC) and the pod’s trademark digressions—making it a perfect sample of the Effectively Wild experience.

Transcript

[Meg Riley]

With Ben Lindbergh and Matt Rowley. Come for the ball.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Banter's free baseball is a simulation.

[Meg Riley]

It's all just one big conversation.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Effectively Wild.

[Meg Riley]

Hello and welcome to episode 2416 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs Baseball Podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of Fan Graphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ring. Ben, how are you?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm doing well. And I'm realizing that I omitted something from my previous banter about the baseball in Wake Up Dead Man. Oh, this is again, non spoilery. It's more of a content warning, really. If you're contemplating watching the movie, the phrase Apo Taco does appear in Wake Up Dead Man.

[Meg Riley]

No, I never escape Apo Taco.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep. Yeah, it was kind of. Kind of a jump scare, frankly, to hear Apo Taco where I was least expecting it.

[Meg Riley]

Apo Taco.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I wonder if it's intentional. It's one of the times where there's just baseball in the background. I forget which of the scenes. But you know, there's a baseball broadcast on and you hear a snippet of the commentary and someone says Apo Taco very clearly. And I do wonder whether it's an inside joke, whether it's a reference. Cause I know that Rian Johnson did write and script some of the baseball commentary that you hear during those broadcast scenes.

[Meg Riley]

So it's not. Even though it's real. Okay. And again, I don't. Haven't seen it yet. I'm. This is. Look, I made a promise to my mom.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, holy.

[Meg Riley]

That's a huge seagull. Sorry, I'm in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You're not in Arizona, Clearly.

[Meg Riley]

I'm not from Washington for the holidays. I am in. In the bedroom of an Airbnb. And a seagull the size of a frickin albatross just landed on the roof of the building that I can see out the window. Anyway, be well, seagull pal. I've made a promise to my mom that, that we will watch Wake Up Dead man during the the holiday week next week. And so I don't know anything. But it's real, guys, right? It's like actual MLB footage.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, it's actual MLB footage, but at least some of the broadcast commentary that you hear while you're watching is not real. And Joseph Gordon Levitt, who is a frequent collaborator with Rian Johnson, appears in a lot of his movies and does cameos in all of the Knives out movies in some way vocal audio cameos. He is a Baseball broadcaster. He voices one of the baseball broadcasters. I don't think it was during the JGL scene that Oppo Taco appeared, but I forgot. But it is in there. And because Rian Johnson wrote some of that, I just. I wonder, you know, if he's a baseball fan. His wife's a baseball fan.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. Maybe he's been told.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, he listened to some baseball radio broadcasts and heard that over and over again and stuck it in an apo taco there. Didn't bother to define it for anyone who was watching the movie. I might not know what apotaco meant, but. Yeah, just. Just warning anyone who might be triggered by hearing that phrase. It's in there.

[Meg Riley]

I'm just. You know, this is one of the things I appreciate about him as a filmmaker. I feel like he. He has respect for his audience. Right. He's like, sure, abo Taco, but I don't have to tell them what that means.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, they.

[Meg Riley]

They know. Or if they don't, they'll exhibit one of the manifestations of intellectual curiosity, and they'll try to go find out. I'm surprised that they were able to clear broadcast footage, but opted not to just have the broadcast commentary. I also. And I have no evidence to this end, but I feel like, you know, because some of it is Cubs, Right. I feel like Rian Johnson and Boo could be, like, spiritual kindreds, you know? So I wonder if that is just like, a vagary of rights. This or that, that I'm failing to appreciate. Like, they were able to get the rights to the broadcast footage from the league, but maybe weren't able to clear the audio with Marquis or something, or.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He just wanted to script it himself for fun, or some of it might be real. I didn't pay that close attention. It's just that my ears perked up when I heard Apo Tak. Unfortunately, I've also just learned that sometimes there are seagulls in Arizona, especially during the winter when they're migrating. There could have been a seagull sighting.

[Meg Riley]

I've never seen a seagull in Arizona. I. I have never. And that. I'm not disputing that they could be there. I imagine they would. I mean, maybe like, over by, like, Tempe Town Lake or something, but, you know, I've never seen a seagull in Arizona. Grackles. Grackles.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

But never. See, the size of the seagull was really fun. I feel like I sound like Jimmy Stewart. The size of it, you'll never believe it is the season for Jimmy after all. But it was enormous, Ben. It was just a huge seagull. It was striking. I. I had to interrupt the pod to talk about it and here we are talking about it still.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there's a Jimmy Stewart biopic coming up soon. Trailer just came out. Big news for you.

[Meg Riley]

Anyway, who's playing Jimmy Stewart?

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's KJ apa. Not familiar.

[Meg Riley]

All right, well, here we are doing movie talk on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I see, I see a buzzfeed headline. The Internet has thoughts about KJ apa's voice in the Jimmy Stewart biopic. I don't know what the Internet's thoughts were. Maybe they were. This is great. It sounds perfect. Probably not though, but yeah, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

Oh, from Riverdale.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Ah, right. Yes. Maybe they'll. That's weird casting campaign for. For you to do some vo. You could do some pickups, some adr.

[Meg Riley]

The real answer. I've thought about this before.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Why?

[Meg Riley]

Who could say? I think the answer to any Jimmy Stewart biopic is to have everyone in the Jimmy Stewart biopic be played by a person and then have Jimmy Stewart played by a Muppet. I think that would be. I think that would be perfect because then you can make the voice a little silly and people are like, that's fine, he's being played by a Muppet. You know, I'm not saying, I'm not saying Kermit. To be clear, a Kermit Jimmy Stewart portrayal would not be credible to me. It would be distracting because then you'd have to do Kermit voice. Just in case anyone was wondering my thoughts on potential Muppet casting for Jimmy Stewart. Look, yeah, it's the holidays, we're being a little loose. But like you could make like a Jimmy Stewart shaped Muppet. Sort of like the news broadcaster.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Why not?

[Meg Riley]

Like in that bay?

[Ben Lindbergh]

They're bringing back the Muppet show for a special, so why not?

[Meg Riley]

Are they really?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm just breaking lots of news to you about upcoming film and TV projects. Yeah, I've also learned about birds in Arizona. I've just learned that it's pronounced KJ Appa, not Appa. So I'm correcting myself in real time here. I'm heading off emails from KJ APA fans, from birdwatchers, from ornithologists of all sorts. Yeah, we're a self correcting program here. Okay, so some news, some banter, bits of baseball here. There've been some signings, nothing super exciting, More of the minor, modest variety. Lots of, lots of relievers. There's been a real run every Caleb Yeah, all the Caleb's off the board.

[Meg Riley]

Basically all the Calebs are spoken for. If you wanted a Caleb and you didn't get one out of luck, tough luck buddy. You, you are not getting any other Caleb's because those Caleb's, they work for other people now.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. And the shelves are bare of Caleb's and really there's not a lot of relief left on the market in terms of actual relievers. So Luke Weaver signs with the Mets and Brad Keller signed with the Phillies. So we got some NL east rearming here. Identical contracts or you know, at least the top level guaranteed terms. The same years, 22 million top numbers.

[Meg Riley]

The same.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah. Lots of 11 million average annual values going around lately. We've talked about some. So Weaver and Keller Weaver just the latest former Yankee to migrate to Queens. It's like Williams, Weaver, Clay Holmes over there, Soto of course Carlos Mendoza himself is a former bench coach of the 80s. So for whatever reason maybe it's, it's like they're, they're stress tested, they're proven in New York. Except I guess not in all of those cases or sometimes with Williams.

[Meg Riley]

Seems like burrow dependent apparently.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, maybe there, there has been some we talked about like no one ever says can you make it in New York when you go to Queens. It's like Bronx and Yankees and Pinstripe specific. Some people have sent us examples of that same sentiment being expressed about the Mets. But I guess if you've played for the Yankees first, although there was, you know, with Williams like can he hack it here because he sort of poorly and seems like not a love lost really between Williams and Yankees fans. I think he had sort of a salty comments when people were commenting on him going to the Mets and he was like really like you're all upset about that. Didn't seem like you were so happy to have me on your team. Anyway, the late inning combo for the Mets will now be the recently departed late inning combo for the Yankees. Yeah, and, and they're both coming off kind of down years for them and they both I think were dogged by pitch tipping buzz. You know there was supposedly Weaver was pitch tipping too maybe and I've expressed my skepticism about that before but yeah, he didn't have quite as solid a season. So I guess the Mets are banking on bounce backs from both of them. But interesting strategy just to collect all the Yankees. I'm pretty sure we did a stat blast at some point about former teammates becoming teammates on a team or the most members of a team to have previously played with a former team. I think that was a stat blast not too long ago. So save your stat blast questions about that. That might be prompted by this bit of banter. But yeah, lots of familiar faces across town and always nice because you don't have to have a new living situation if you've purchased or rented or whatever. You know your routine. You gotta, gotta have a new commute. Got to figure out your way to a different borough and a different ballpark, but it's a little less disruptive.

[Meg Riley]

I love that you say that it. Got to find his way to a new borough and ballpark because when Williams was on MLB Network during winter meetings, he talked about like the change in his routine and he was like, yeah, and I had to like figure out how to get to the ballpark, how to get my family to the ballpark. And I was like, shouldn't the Yankees have helped you with that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, right. You know, just put it into Google Maps or something. It's not. Yeah, it's not that complicated, but I.

[Meg Riley]

Guess you don't want to drive up there. I mean, you don't want to drive anywhere. But I think that imagining a bounce back for both of those guys is completely reasonable. And I think that as we've talked about before, I never, I never know how much to make of the, the tipping stuff, you know, I just don't. I never, I never know. But if, if a lot of. Or even some portion of their struggle was tipping related and they figured out how to, to deal with that, well then, okay, great. I think you got two good relievers at reasonable prices and you can kind of go from there. What's the rest of that bullpen like? They have a better mix of lefties and righties than I thought. I was like, aren't they light on lefties? And you know what? They're not. Oh yeah, they have Dickie Lovelady. Dickie.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But if you have not signed your reliever yet, then Pickens are sort of good luck. Yeah, there's not a lot left. I'm looking at the Fangrath's depth charts, relievers projections, and yeah, the best ones left, at least by projected war. Hunter Harvey is at the top of the list. Pete Fairbanks, Sir Anthony Dominguez, Justin Wilson, Sean Newcomb, David Robertson, the other Rogers, Taylor Rogers, Tyler Kinley, Denny Coulomb. Yeah, yeah, it's not a ton. So hopefully you've, you've gotten your Christmas shopping done by now when it comes to the bullpen.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, it's a little. I mean, I Guess what? Pete Fairbanks is probably the best remaining.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Fairbanks, Dominguez. Yeah, I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

I'd rather. Well, which would you rather have? Like, Pete always looks so nervous.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And Sir Anthony is very stoic, but sometimes maybe should look more nervous than he does, just from a results perspective. So I can't decide who I'd rather there, but I think probably Pete. I was surprised when they declined that option, put it that way. When the, when the race declined that option, I was like, oh, buddy, I love how Andrew Chaffin is just knocking around. Still, man, good for that guy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not a lot else going on though. We know that the posting deadline for Murakami is coming up on Monday. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see some other significant signings pre Christmas. You know, know, whether it's Michael King or, or from. Or even Tucker or someone. I mean, I assume you're, you're hoping that either that happens very soon or not for a while, but.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, my, my preference, if I were to lay these things out, I mean, I have long been an advocate of an enforced signing dead period around the holidays because these bozos just apparently don't love their families enough. I think that's the only reasonable conclusion to draw. And granted, not everyone is celebrating Christmas, so perhaps it doesn't, it doesn't hit the same way for them and they don't have to write about it. You know, this is the thing. It's like you do the work of signing a guy, your job is done. You know, if you're a GM and you execute a free agent signing or a trade on Christmas Eve, bing, bing, boom, you've done your business. You get to go enjoy your roast beast. You have no obligations after that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There might be a physical, a press conference.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, but you're not going to do, you're not going to do the presser on, on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or the day after Christmas, you're doing that stuff. You're doing that stuff in the new year, in all likelihood, maybe, maybe the week between Christmas and New Year's, but you're not doing that stuff on Christmas Day. So you get to go tuck into your roasting beast. Meanwhile, some poor FanGraphs writer has to do the calculus of, is this deal significant enough that I might be obligated to write about it on Christmas? You know, and some poor signing editor at fangraphs, namely me or Matt, has to decide, is this, is this noteworthy enough that we have to disrupt somebody's holiday? And for that reason, I Think we should have an enforced signing deb period from. Well, really from, like, Christmas Eve through January 1st. People should get back to work on the 2nd. That's fine. That's reasonable. You know, you've had time to digest your Christmas beast. You've put away all of the, you know, wrapping paper detritus that's been recycled. Your tree's probably still up because you get to have a little holly jolly through the New Year, in my opinion. I know some people push it further than that. I'm of the opinion we don't have a lot to talk about, so we're just doing this today. Okay? It's. It's a. It's basically our Friday show, even though we're recording on Thursday. I am of the opinion, and I'm curious your opinion of this because you listen to Christmas music in August, and so I am prepared for a truly unhinged take from you, Ben Lindbergh. But I am of the opinion that you should feel free to leave your tree up through the new year, and then at your first weekend after the new year is when the tree does need to come down. So this year is sort of a raw deal because New Year's Day is on a Thursday. So by my logic, trees got to come down the weekend immediately after that. But if. If New Year's Day is on, is on like. Well, if it's on a Friday, you get grace until the following weekend because you have to recover from New Year's. You shouldn't have to put all the tree away, you know, before that recovery period has lapsed. And, you know, then you have to vacuum, you know, so it's like, it's not just putting away the tree. You got to put. You got to put away all the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Stuff, and then you got to clean up decorations. It's a whole production.

[Meg Riley]

It's a whole production, right? So you get until the weekend immediately after New Year's, unless New Year's falls on Friday. Now, you might say to me, what's the difference between Thursday and Friday? Shouldn't I get until the following weekend? And I'm here to say, you know what? That's fine. I'm not. I'm not an absolutist on these things. And I appreciate, especially now that I'm up in Washington when it gets dark at like, 2pm that if you need something to combat the big dark, well, you. You go. You go to town. Now, you do need to make allowances for whether you have an artificial tree or a real tree. And if that real Tree is getting crispy. Then you need to prioritize fire safety over lights combating the big dark. But you can leave the rest of your decorations up. This has been my treatise.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Your treatise.

[Meg Riley]

There you go, buddy. There you go.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'm. I'm not a hardliner on this, really. I don't know that there's a particular day, but I'm not someone who's, you know, leaving it up until March or something. I mean, it's, you know, what you. What you do behind closed doors inside your own house. It doesn't bother me much, but it's.

[Meg Riley]

Not really my business.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If I see it through the window and it's February or something, I might look askance at the procrastination, but I get the impulse because, yeah, it's a pain to get rid of it or put it away. And also it's sort of sad because I like the Christmas season and I like Christmas trees and I have a real one and it smells lovely and I will miss it when it's gone. But yes, it does become a fire hazard at a certain point and it becomes just a clearly dead thing in your living room. And that's kind of depressing in a way. And also it just reminds you that Christmas is gone and you feel like you're clinging to it and you're trying to stretch it and make it last and it's over. And you do just have to accept that and move on. You know, you can keep Christmas in your heart year round, but you should perhaps not keep a Christmas tree in your living room year round. But I. I understand and sympathize with the impulse to just hold on to it a little longer because it's a pretty thing. You know, we. We just have a pretty tree and the lights are on at night, and I like it, so I hate to lose it.

[Meg Riley]

And this year we got jobs by the calendar because Thanksgiving was so late. And so if you are an adherent to the idea that you shouldn't put Christmas stuff up until Thanksgiving is over, which I subscribe to, I know some people have their Christmas stuff out during Thanksgiving, which I think causes holiday confusion. And then you look at pictures and you're like, when was this from? Couldn't. Couldn't rightly tell you because the treason in the picture both times, you know, you can't identify when the meal was because there's a tree. It's insane. So I will extend people an additional week in years like this where Thanksgiving falls very late and then you don't have your stuff up, but I don't know. By mid January, I'm like, you can have lights on on the outside because again, we are in the big dark a lot of places. But I think that the Christmas piece of it needs to be. Needs to be done. But part of that is that I think you want to maintain novelty as a means of keeping it special. Yeah. You know, it's like I said to my nieces at Disneyland, if we got to go every week, it wouldn't be special. And they looked at me like, no, I think we found a way to make sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Let's test that contention. Yeah, we'll find out.

[Meg Riley]

I'm fine with finding out on that one, Auntie.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But, yeah, that's how I feel about immortality, which I've discussed on the podcast. Everyone's like, I wouldn't want to live that long. I'm like, you know what? But let's see what's.

[Meg Riley]

No, I. You know, that's bananas.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, it depends on your quality of life and the condition that you're in, obviously. I'm just saying I'm in. I'm in no hurry to. To test the contention that it's better to die than to live a really long time. I'm just saying I feel like it's. Cope to some extent. I feel like we tell ourselves that because we don't actually have the option of immortality yet.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. So back to baseball transactions.

[Meg Riley]

Anyway.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, not much has happened. Dustin May signed with the Cardinals. I like Dustin May. I root for Dustin May. I kind of keep buying Dustin May even though he hasn't been that good for a while. I feel for Dustin May because literally, lettuce almost killed the man, and it.

[Meg Riley]

Really almost killed him.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It sounds flippant, and I'm not trying to be because it really was serious and life threatening.

[Meg Riley]

It really did.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I eat a lot of lettuce and I'm there for. But the. The grace of whatever. The wrong piece of lettuce getting lodged in my throat go. I. So I. I hope that he will harness his stuff because again, like, he's had so many injuries, most of them non lettuce related. And just like every time it seems like, okay, he's putting it together, then something else strikes. And he was so good with the Dodgers before the Tommy John and. Cause it was like, oh, he's got great stuff, but he can't miss bats. And then he figured out how to miss bats, but then he got hurt and then he came back and he wasn't missing bets as much or you know, like the underlying numbers last year were just not that great and, and the Dodgers ditched him. At the time it seemed like, wow, the Dodgers are actually trading a starting pitcher. Are you sure you want to do that? Because you have like all of your other starters are hurt. And I guess they had confidence that by the time October rolled around they wouldn't need him. And that turned out to be true. They had all of their better starters were healthy by that point.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And so the Red Sox acquired him and he did not pitch well for them. So I don't know. You know, given the way he pitched, it's, it's almost surprising. He signed for 12 and a half million in 2026. And then there's a mutual option after that, there's a buyout on the option. So I guess he's getting a guaranteed 13 mil for next year. And again, I have to recalibrate, I guess because we're looking at what these guys are getting coming off of not very productive seasons. And there is some amount of projection and figuring that they'll be better, but that's far from a sure thing with Dustin May. So I mean, maybe it's just like a one win guy. That's, that's kind of what they go for at this stage, at least when you're talking about a one year short term deal. So yeah, maybe it's just that I have to like, this is what the market is now, which is, I mean, it's nice I guess, if, if guys are getting paid and teams are spending to some extent. But yeah, I look at some of these deals and I think, what do you think you're going to get out of this guy? Who knows?

[Meg Riley]

I think that they would probably say we don't really know, you know, but for that, for that little, it's worth trying to find out, you know, particularly when the upper end of the demonstrated like talent continuum is as high as Maze was. It's like 13 million.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You find out for 13 million, like, and he's 28. He just turned 28 in September. But, but he's coming off a year, I mean, by baseball reference where he was significantly below replacement level and even by fan graphs were he was below one win. Right.

[Meg Riley]

It wasn't even a one one player.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And it's not like you can even look at his late season performance and say, okay, he was coming around, he was figuring it out, he was putting it together. No. So you're hoping that he'll be the guy he was in 2023 and maybe he can be that or, you know, he doesn't even have to be quite that good. He could be the guy that he was in some years before that. But he's young enough and yeah, maybe this stuff is, is still there enough that you can sort of buy into it, but it's, it doesn't seem like it's the same. So. Yeah, I hope, I, I hope that they're right and that, you know, they get a bargain because he's good again. But that seems to be the price of admission now for just like, right. He's not even coming off a good year. It's just like, maybe he'll be good because he was kind of good once.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I'm flummoxed by this market a little bit, man. Like I, on the one hand, part of it is just that a lot of the, the big guys haven't signed, but like, the big guys have mostly signed for more than we thought they would, as evidenced by my contract over underdraft results so far. And there's been robust business in the, in the sort of mid to lower tier of arms and they are making more than we thought. But I don't know, I'm, I, I still feel like we're, we're experiencing some kind of pinch. Feels frigid in a way, but I guess we'll just see what Kyle Tucker gets and go from there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But, you know, yeah, there will be movement before the end of the year, I think. Maybe much to your dismay, but it.

[Meg Riley]

Doesn'T need to be tonight. I'm going to the Seahawks game tonight. It doesn't need to be tonight. And maybe, and, and Matt, Matt is a Rams fan and he wants to watch that game. And we're, we've agreed to not talk at all during that game for the purposes of, you know, conviviality, congeniality, any of the various words you might throw around at like a debutante ball. It's just better if we don't. Just better if we don't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And usually, I know there is a perception these days that sometimes free agencies stretch way into the new year and even into spring training. And sometimes that's true, but I think that we tend to remember the times when that happened and extrapolate it to the rest of the market. It usually doesn't happen. Those are still sort of the outliers. Joshean documented this earlier this month in his newsletter and kind of combated the perception, you know, because there was like the, the year when, well, Bryce Harper In 2018, there was like Alex Bregman. Last year there was Manny Machado. It was, I think it was like that year that Bryce Harper and Manny Machado signed in February or whenever it was, and it was just dragging on. And you know, if we put aside like the, the COVID period and the lockout, like there have been some odd off seasons in the past several years, but before that and after that, that is not the norm. That is unusual. And I think maybe we've kind of forgotten that because usually the, the big contracts, the guys who are getting 100 million dollar deals, and Joe, he tallied this up. So since the 2018-19 off season, there have been 40 $100 million contracts signed in free agency. Four of them in November, 25 of them in December. So that's the real hotspot. Three in January, three in February, and six in March. And if you take out the COVID and lockout off seasons, then it's even more skewed early. It's. It's three in November, 19 in December, one in January, two in February, one in March. So it's really just a trickle after the new year, typically. And, and even Scott Boris, because the perception is, oh, Boris will drag it out. And Joe looked into that and that's not really typically true either. There are. Sometimes it's true and it's a big story when it's true. And so we kind of anchor on that and we remember, oh, yeah, it's drags on forever and Boris. But no, it's a big story when that happens because it's actually fairly rare. Yeah. So December's busy. You know, you have the winter meetings and this December has not been super busy really, but there's still almost half of it left. It's, you know, the holiday period of it and maybe the slower time, but we'll see. I think more of those dominoes will fall.

[Meg Riley]

I think that they will too. And you know, I think you're right that we just tend to our memories sort of like over index on the. The late ones, because they are unusual. And what's been funny is that, you know, there have certainly been exceptions to this. Like, the reason Bregman is back on the market is that he didn't get the deal he wanted last year. But, you know, I don't know that we would look back to like the late signings of Harper and Machado and be like, oh my gosh, they didn't get what was coming to them. They signed huge contracts. They just came much later in the off season. I think you're right. That we tend to sort of misremember the, the real cadence of it. And this one maybe strikes me as a little bit slower than in some recent years, but I think that my perception of that has less to do with the free agent signings and more to do with us not having had like big blockbuster trades, she says, knocking on wood that we don't get one today. You know, that's the other part of the winter's activity that I think needs to be included in our accounting of sort of how active and vibrant the market is. Because those trades can, like trades can impact the cadence on free agent stuff too. Right. If you think you're going to be able to fill a position of need not through the free agent market, but because you're going to ship prospects out to, to someone and get a big leader back in return, well, that can, you know, if that doesn't materialize and then you have to pivot back to free agents, like that can change how teams sort of approach it from a cadence perspective also. So, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. What has been busy, the Washington Nationals hiring news. There's a lot of that. And they're all so young. They're so young. This is such an incredible front office and field staff youth movements. I don't know that we've ever seen something exactly like this because Paul Taboni, some listeners said Po Bony is perfectly fine. I think they've spoken on that, if we want to dub him that. But Paul Taboni, the Pobo, is 35.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He's the old man in the front office, really. So they just hired Ani Kambi, who was a Phillies assistant GM and is now going to be the GM of the Nationals under taboni. Columbia is 31. They have hired as their assistant GMs Justin Horowitz and Devin Person, who I believe are 34 and 31, respectively. So again, like all of them, super young. Devin Pearson, that is not person. They're ex Red Sox people who, who came along with Tony. So all the front office brain trusts there are in their early to mid-30s, 35 max. And then of course, Blake Butera is the manager. He's 33. Simon Matthews, pitching coach, 31st base coach, Corey Ray is 31. So the senior members here, they did retain the services of Mike DeBartolo, who was the assistant GM under Rizzo. And then the interim GM, he is 41, ancient. And then they have also hired Michael Johns as their bench coach. Another an X rays guy. He's 50, so he's. He's the true gray beard here. But everyone else is essentially in their early 30s or 35 in Taboni's case. And that's not bad or good, but it's definitely different because Mike rizzo just turned 65. So I mean, some of these guys barely remember that the Expos existed. Probably like these, these are some youngsters, these are some youngins. So, you know, there could be drawbacks to that. There could be downsides to a lack of experience though. You know, all these people have like been in baseball for a while and have done jobs before. But there's also the advantage of, well, if you want a fresh start, then I guess you're going to get one. Or if you want, yeah, new fresh thinking or ways of looking at the game. And if you want to turn the page on the Rizzo era, which had the reputation of, you know, being a bit more old school and you know, sort of older methods of player evaluation based, it certainly sounds like there's a new philosophy in place here. I guess if you wanted to be cynical and observe that the learners are pretty cheap, that, you know, maybe if you're hiring people who are doing this job for the first time in many cases, or getting a promotion to this title, don't have that experience, you know, maybe, maybe you're saving a little bit on the 35 year old's POBO or the 33 year old manager who's, you know, gonna leap at that chance potentially. I don't really know the terms of these people's contracts or whether that was in any way a motivation. Just saying, you know, it's. It's the learners, it's the nationals, you can't put it past them. But you know, it sounds like that they've hired people who are respected and have worked for successful organizations and everything so seems fine on the surface, but boy, they're so young.

[Meg Riley]

I also do not know the particulars of their deals. I would imagine that given that a lot of these folks are looking at title bumps, that they're probably looking at compensation bumps along with it and you know, leaving orgs that are post season contenders for one mid rebuild. Like you'd think that. Sure, you want to be able to put your, you know, your fingerprints on it and you want a title bump, but I would imagine that there's some sort of appreciation and understanding that you want. You want it to be worthwhile, right? I think that our ability, your ability and my ability to comment on the particulars of any one of these hires is limited. Just because we don't always know like the folks involved. And you know, even when I do know the folks involved, I'm often like triangulating. I, I know them as like, are they, you know, nice people to be around more than I necessarily, and do they seem smart about baseball rather than their actual execution? But I think that it seems like they, you know, they're trying to do something here. They like, are serious about improving and innovating within the confines of the organization. And you know, I think that that front office had talented people in it, but was pretty comfortably in the bottom third. At least that was the perception of them across the industry. And I think that that has change pretty materially with the rounds of hires that they've done since Taboni came in. So, you know that that will, assuming it's accurate, still take time to, to bear fruit in terms of the on field performance of the team and the record and what have you. But I think that the idea that, that there hasn't been meaningful change here would be, would be wrong. So, you know, we'll see, we'll see how they can, how they can do it. And it's also interesting because, because it's like, you know, that group previously, before the new sort of Taboni administration came in, it had pretty severe limitations from a player dev perspective. Things weren't going great on that front. And you know, they had important players who the sort of word on the street was that the relationship had kind of soured between the front office and the player or even just the front office and their representation, which is interesting. Interesting because a lot of those guys are Boris guys and the poorest Boris is like, you know, tight in with the learners. But, you know, I'll also be curious to see over the next couple of months, like, is there any shift and change in sort of their plan of attack for trading guys and trying to jumpstart a rebuild? Or are they able to say, like, hey, why don't you stick around with us a little bit and see, you know, if we can get something going. So it's just going to be a really interesting situation to watch. If I were a Nationals fan, I'd be very encouraged by the direction that they've taken and, you know, I hope that they're able to make something sort of happen sooner than later because they've just had to go through so many of these and, you know, there's been improvement, but they've been sort of like a, you know, like a dark horse wild card contender pick for a lot of people. Preseason over the last couple of years just because of the progress individual players have made at the big league level. And it's never really come together. You know, it's like, are we just gonna do another one of these? You know, are they gonna get anything out of this group before Abrams reaches free agency? And all of those guys they got back who are doing well and we're supposed to be the next great group or a lot of them are doing well, but they're getting older. So anyway, it's just gonna be a fascinating situation to observe. And.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah. Someone asked Butera about the age of his staff and he said that wasn't on purpose. We weren't trying to get a young staff. Someone made a joke like, did you tell Paul when you got hired that the staff has to be under 40 years old? You might not believe me, but no. And then he did hire a 50 year old.

[Meg Riley]

So also, just as an aside, like, first of all, what the hell else are they going to say? I remember talking to my mom one time. My mom's a school and employment law lawyer. And she's like, you know people, employers who do nasty with their employees, excuse me, I swear, like, they try to be kind of shifty about it. You know, if what they're doing is engaging in like, discriminatory behavior, try to be shifty about it in their emails so that like, if they're ever deposed or their emails are part of discovery, they. Yeah, they aren't like on record saying something really horrible. Age is the one place where people are really dumb about this stuff and they'll just be like, no, he's too old. And it's like, well, yeah, you are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of age, so watch out. Yeah, it's, it's always a funny thing in pro sports because, like, it is a relevant characteristic for athletes. But, you know, we've seen over the last several years, like, people bringing age discrimination suits against teams against the league, and I think people are a little loosey goosey with, with it. You know, just because someone's over the age of 40 doesn't mean they can't be like a valuable baseball executive.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, sure, yeah. And, and there are cases about this. Of course, there were scouts who alleged age discrimination. There was even. There was. I, I think this was settled. But there was a case against the Nationals for age based discrimination among ticket sales because there was like a, a special promotion, I think that was, it was like you get a millennial discount or young professional discount or something if you were under 40 when you bought a ticket or something like that. And I think they got sued over that. So, yeah, you have to be careful about that sort of thing. And you know, I guess there are times when it can be beneficial to be young and then there are times when it can backfire. And I always think it's interesting, the politics of hiring. This doesn't apply only to baseball, but someone like Mike DeBartolo, who I don't know, but you know, he's been with the Nationals for a long time and was like Rizzo's right hand man and then was the one who was in charge for a while after Rizzo got very summarily dismissed and like, you know, was running their draft and stuff, I guess for a while there. And then usually when that person gets passed over for the hiring of the top job, they move on because they just feel like, well, I hit the ceiling here, I guess, and they ultimately didn't want me. And maybe there's a little bad blood about that or something, but he seems to have stayed. And it works both ways where maybe that person can feel bad about the way they played out and want a fresh start somewhere else, where they might tell themselves that they'll be more highly valued or, you know, the new people come in and they don't want that person who was there before in a leadership position because they sort of want to start fresh. But it can be useful to have someone like that around just for the institutional knowledge and memory.

[Meg Riley]

Absolutely.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Like even if.

[Meg Riley]

Absolutely.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Even if you want to do everything differently and you know, build your own database or whatever it is.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Still just to like. No, like here's where we keep all this stuff, you know, like, here's where.

[Meg Riley]

The pine guards that thing done.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah. You know, not that you want to like keep on an assistant GM just to be kind of a glorified gopher or something like, yeah, yeah, here's where you find that folder or whatever. But you know, still it's helpful to know or even just like how did you do things before and what worked and what didn't? And here's what we can learn from that so that we could. You can't really plan to do things differently unless you know how they were done before. Exactly. So I think that's helpful. And just like everyone throughout your organization, you're not going to fire everyone, you know, at the same time. And so yes, you bring in your own people, but they're inevitably going to be some holdovers. And so it's helpful to have a holdover. And again, I know nothing about DeBartolo. For all I know, he might be perfectly happy just being an agm. Maybe he doesn't want to have the responsibility and the pressure of being a pobo. Who knows? You know, he did that job for a while.

[Meg Riley]

A bunch of yahoos on a podcast trying to fit your name into your title.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And like, yeah, I guess he was under consideration for the top job, too. So I don't know that he withdrew his name from consideration or was just like, no, I don't want that. Don't want that pressure. But still, like, you know, maybe it works out for both sides or maybe it's temporary and transitional and ultimately he moves on. But.

[Meg Riley]

But, yeah, I think that we tend to, and I hope that you and I don't do this because we are perfect angels, but when you have organizations in the game that exhibit a good amount of dysfunction, that have a long track record of failure, you know, I think that we can assume that everyone affiliated with the organization is sort of not able to. Isn't up to snuff, right? It's invariably not true. Right. There are smart people who work for every team in baseball. There are smart people at every team who would be, you know, sort of a value added higher at other clubs, including clubs that maybe are at a very different point on the wind curve than the dysfunctional organization they work for. It's not like everyone who works for the Rockies is in a good baseball sport. There are plenty of smart people for every team. And, you know, I always feel badly for those people because they kind of get ragged on and it's like, no, they. They're there. You know, you're right that when a new. When a new sort of head comes in, they bring in their own people. And invariably there's like, reasonable anxiety on the part of the people who work for a team about how much turnover there's going to be. But very rarely did they fully clean house or need to, you know, and it's not to your point just because, like, oh, well, he knows, you know, what the password is on that server. You know, they have important institutional knowledge and are able to provide insight on how the club operated before, what parts of it worked and what parts of it didn't, what's been tried with a particular player versus not. And so I think that there's a lot to be said for keeping those folks around. And I think one of the big projects of new regimes, administrations, what have you, is to do the talent identification and say, yeah, we should hold onto that gal. We should keep that guy. They have smart stuff to say and interesting experts, expertise to bring to bear. And how can we. Sometimes when I talk to people who have changed teams, it's like, oh, the infrastructure was so much better. The systems I had access to were so much better. This was architected in a more sort of interesting way, in a way that was more useful to me. And so I also think that part of what they will try to do is. Is say, like, what? You know, if we took that person and all that they already have in terms of expertise and we were able to give them more useful tools, like, what could we get out of them? And I think that's part of their process too, of not. And I'm not trying to speak to any particular conversations that the Nats have had, but I think that every time you see a GM change, like, this is part of what they're doing in that first couple of months is like, who are we keeping? Who are we letting go? What are we trying to bring to bear to get more out of this group? And, yeah, so, yeah, and don't discriminate based on age. I want to make clear that we are opposed to age discrimination, as opposed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

To, you might have an intention to let go of someone or replace someone, but then you. You come in and you have a meeting and you. Turns out you get along really well and you actually like their insight. And so you decide, oh, this person could be helpful to me. And yeah, that's the thing with, like, the age discrimination stuff and scouts. Well, scouting has changed a ton of. Over the past few decades, of course, and I think there's. There's absolutely a bias. And you might think that because someone started scouting in a certain time, they might not be receptive to new methods or they. They might be stuck in their ways or something. And if you're coming to that conclusion solely based on the age of the person, well, that certainly seems like discrimination. There are times where that's true, of course. Like you, you know, you learn your craft in one era and then you kind of don't do the continuing education and update how that works. And then if you get dismissed, it's not necessarily because of your age, but because you just like, didn't change with the times. I mean, it. It could be either. It's definitely the former. Sometimes with umpires, we saw that on the whole, younger umpires coming into the league have tended to be, quote, unquote, better as far as, you know, conforming to the rulebook zone more just because they came up in an era post quest tech, post zone evaluation system where they were getting graded based on the rulebook zone and they were getting that feedback. Whereas you still had some long tenured umpires who kind of were used to the more Wild west days, you know, Cowboy Joe west days where you could kind of do your own thing and have your own zone. And it varied very much because there was no real objective standard that you were getting based on. And so, so the younger umpires would come up and, and they would grade out better. And it wasn't because they were young. Exactly. I mean, maybe in some cases, but it wasn't necessarily because of like visual acuity or mobility or anything like that. And you know, that doesn't necessarily get worse with age for umpires anyway. But just it was because they came up in a different era and were kind of conditioned differently and got different forms of feedback and maybe, you know, weren't sort of stuck with the way that they were doing it. So sometimes that could happen. You're not kind of like imprinted on a certain way of operating that is no longer the, the current or best way. But then there are other times when you feel like you know everything and there are things you're missing and actually experience can be really useful sometimes. And just having gone through things and seen things and what worked and what didn't and seen things change over time. And just like having someone who could be that sort of sounding board can be really valuable. So, yeah, don't make decisions based solely on age is the takeaway. And often you tend to hire within your cohort kind of.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So it could be an old boys club or it could be a young boys club or ideally not just a boys club, but it's still baseball, so often it is. But you know, you come up with your peers and you then tend to hire them if you get, get a job. Right. Like, I mean, you might bring your, your mentor over or something, but often you're thinking about who are my contacts? And well, your contacts tend to be the people who you kind of came up with and associated with and socialized with and just had more common ground with because you were the same age or you were breaking in around the same time. And so yeah, it tends to be, if you're a young guy, then maybe you will also hire other young people because that's just who you know. And so that's how it, it often works. In hiring, as they say, there is kind of a cliche. It's who you know. Right. So, yeah, you know, I hope it works because they've had it rough lately and that's. Fans have too. It's. It's been about as bad for the Nats as. As any other team but the Rockies. So again, probably can't be worse.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, it does. It does. I will, I will say it does help that they won that World Series though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It does.

[Meg Riley]

You know, they did win that World Series.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Yeah. And it's not.

[Meg Riley]

So that's. Yeah, it was nutty.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's gone about as badly as it conceivably can post World Series, but they do still have that flag.

[Meg Riley]

I also think though, that. What do you. Okay. I have not studied this question to the point of having a definitive answer, but I think that there are World Series that we really remember and ones we super don't. And I would submit that that Nats World Series is in danger of falling into the don't remember category for some people just because people don't remember pre pandemic stuff very well. People are just like, remember a time before that. And I'm like, I don't even know how old I am. So no, I can't remember my own age. I mean, I can now because I'm just like staring down 40 in six months.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The actual series was pretty memorable. I mean, it was great.

[Meg Riley]

It was a great series.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It had the weird like road team keeps winning thing and then maybe she Shark. I prefer to forget baby Shark.

[Meg Riley]

They were doing the car thing in the dugout. The Gnats were. They were doing the like vroom, vroom thing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Remember that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I do. And, and you know, just the Howie Kendrick homer that, that will live on and sort of slaying the big bad Astros and everything. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a memorable series. So that Granky appearance. Also wanted to note another bit of news that we've gotten actually kind of a avalanche of news lately. We have WBC roster updates.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It turns out that the US WBC team actually has a pitching staff.

[Meg Riley]

It has some pitching.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Ben, man, really impressive pitching staff because you start at the top with the two best pitchers in baseball. I would say Paul Skeens and Tareks Goble. They will be anchoring that staff. And then Joe Ryan, you have Joe Ryan is your number three. And then Noel McLean's on the staff. Clay Holmes, you don't even need like a five man rotation exactly. In the WBC. But you start with Skeen Scubal Ryan and then McLean, Holmes, Mason Miller is on this squad.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

David Bednar was just announced and that's to go along with the great position players, which that's not new really. But you, you do have Cal Rally, Will Smith, who's the backup catcher there. Man, I mean, mean, that's, that's two first stringers. That's two great catchers. You have Gunner Henderson and Bobby Witt Jr. So I guess one of them plays third, presumably. And you have Bryce Tang. Your outfield is Aaron Judge, Corbin Carroll and pca.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You have Kyle Schwerber as your dh. I mean, this is. Get it. This is dream team territory now.

[Meg Riley]

It is, it's like, sure. Squad.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And yeah, this is pretty exciting because the, the, the US roster in the 2023 WBC. I'm looking back at the pitching staff. So David Bednar is the constant. He was there too. But the starters on the 2023 team were like Merrill Kelly, Miles Michaelis, old Adam Wainwright, Lance Lynn, Kyle Freeland. I mean, you know, these were the best and brightest that we were sending. And then, you know, a bunch like Jason, Adam and Daniel Bard, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Loop was on that team. Adam Otavino, Ryan Presley, Nick Martinez, Brady Singer, Devin Williams was on that team. So some pretty good relievers, but really the starters, like, who's the ace of that team? Meryl Kelly, like, it was not great. So now, man, I mean, that I think is a reflection of the fact that, that the WBC really matters to players now. I mean, they're really into it. It was huge in 2023. And this was something that we talked about at the time and speculated about, like, wow, this was a sensation. This was the breakout moment for this event. Now will we see pitchers wanting to sign up for this squad? Side note, sort of sad that the former captain Mike Trout, like, might not make the team. I mean, yeah, I get it. I get why. I mean, where's he going to play? He's not going to, to start over any of the guys I just mentioned, really. But you almost kind of want him there just like for old time's sake. But you know, former captain and star on that roster and now it's kind of like still, what. What's his state gonna be physically and can. Even though the Angels are saying he might place an actual outfield or even center again. Okay, good luck with that. But anyway, Trout aside, we wondered whether we would see more pitchers want to get in on this. And, and yeah, clearly, yes. I mean, last time around, I remember Clayton Kershaw wanted to but wasn't allowed to. Right. For insurance reasons or something. But Skeens and Skubal and Ryan, man, I mean this is a, this is a whole new kind of team.

[Meg Riley]

Obviously we will have to see which of them actually ends up doing it because guys get hurt. You know, maybe your stuff changes in terms of your team, team's willingness to let you participate, the ramp up, et cetera. But I do think that the excitement around the event has really changed and I do want to make sure we're differentiating. I think that Team USA was sort of late to the game on this. The WBC has been a big deal in other countries, I think for longer than even that most recent one. But it does feel like something shifted and, and yeah, it's, it's super exciting. It's a really fun squad. You know, I think, you know, my, my expectations of what they could achieve are meaningfully different now than they were even a couple of weeks ago because yeah, the pitching was just lagging so far behind what they were able to do on offense.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

So. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I almost. Yeah. I wonder also whether it's just maybe the perception that the WBC caused injuries or increased injury risk, which I always thought was fairly flimsy. Yeah, maybe that has receded too. I remember writing about. There's no real actual evidence that this is true. It's just that a lot of guys get hurt in spring training whether you're playing in the WBC or not. So maybe that, that there were not a ton of catastrophic injuries last time around. Perhaps that helped. I almost. Maybe this sounds American exceptionalist or overconfident or something, but I, I. Will this team be too good? Like, I mean, I almost relax. I know, look, relax. So much global game, international talent, but you still have more American players than you have anywhere else. Even with the incredible wealth of talent from the Dominican and Japan and Venezuela and everywhere else. And so if you do have the, the absolute best players from every country, all the eligible players play, then the American team is, is still probably going to be the best. I'm not suggesting that it's, you know, it's not like a actual old school dream team scenario where the other teams really were outclassed there for a while. But that was one thing I think that made the 2023 tournament fun is that there were a lot of teams that had a legitimate shot to win and it was close and, and I, I think it still should be close and competitive. But, but there is a scenario where you just have like scubal. And Skins going out there every time and just dominating. And maybe it's like, a little less fun in a way. Like, just, I want the teams, you know, if they're more evenly matched. I think that's for the best, too, because I'm not out here like, you know, Mr. Rah Rah will beat all the other countries. I just. I kind of want to see good baseball. So. Yeah, I almost don't want any one team to be too stacked, maybe so. Right. But, yeah, that's a very different. If that even is a problem. A very different problem than the.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Meryl Kelly is the best we can muster here.

[Meg Riley]

Hey, that's, like, pretty rude to Merrill Kelly, who is.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Perfectly good pitcher. He's still a pretty good pitcher. I don't know that he can make this team anymore.

[Meg Riley]

It's such a weird thing because, like, the last WBC was so fun and like this. This WBC will take place in a broader geopolitical context that is, well, not fun. Doesn't quite do it justice, now, does it, Ben? So I'm not in a particularly patriotic mood, but I do think it's a very cool competition. And I think having every team sort of be able to bring real standout talent is. Is great. And so that part of it is fun, even as the rest.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, Yeah. I forgot a few other people who I think have committed. I think Griffin Jax and Matthew Boyd, Garrett Whitlock, Garrett Clevenger. Well, those were the headliners I named. But you can still make this team without being a Cy Young Award winner is the point. But. But still. Well, it's. It's really a different kind of caliber of team. And yes, that is my concern as well. I'm really looking forward to this. I think they should do this even more often, though. Again, as you said, every day is Disney. That's not quite as exciting as going once in a while. If you had the WBC every year, maybe it wouldn't be quite as exciting. But then again, if the alternative is spring training and grapefruit and Cactus League, I'd still take it. But I get. It's a whole production. There are a lot of logistics and everything. I still think we're doing it. Not often enough. You know, just because it was so exciting and now we've. We've had three years since the last. Feels like that's too much. I know that, you know, there's like, Olympics and other international competitions, but even the Olympics. You have some Olympics every two years, you know. Yeah, I. I think we should have it even more maybe. But, but happening in this environment. I do worry that the good vibes of the 2023 competition. Oh yeah, yeah, we'll get trampled by Trump. That, that Trump will Trump all over this because that's kind of what he does with, with every international sporting competition. He is a very sports forward president. And we saw what happened with the four nations face off. Not the four nations puck drop. The four nations face off though as many people have written in to say, you can say puck drop.

[Meg Riley]

So validated by all of our. I was like, don't they call it a.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, you can call it a. There's the ceremonial puck drop. There's also just the puck drop which is. But you can also say opening face off. That's also acceptable. Anyway, we got many emails. Thanks for confirming that everyone, but thank you. But yeah, we saw what happened with the four nation face off and the Ryder cup and the World cup and it's just unrelenting and the jingoism and just you know, the self aggrandization and all of that. And it also frankly, if it were just Trump inserting himself into all of these things, that would be one place thing. But it is often just the sort of obsequiousness of the participants in those competitions that makes them a little less palatable. You know, because it's, it's not just him trying to make it about him but it is like coaches and players very much playing into making it about him. Yeah. You know, given their political loyalties in many cases that's not surprising. But it just becomes when everything else is about Trump, you want, you know, forget the, the stick to sports like you know, keep politics out of sports. Good luck because Trump is inserting himself into sports constantly. So if this becomes about that and yeah, you have this whole like you know, standoff with Venezuela and blockade and just all the ridiculous things that we're doing and just like if, if that, you know, not that that should be ignored but if, if the WBC becomes about that and about him, which frankly it would be an upset if it didn't at this point, then we will have to reckon with that as well.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. And you know, the things that he says about the participants from other country countries, the potential for you know, them to engage in like horrible like immigration enforcement activities around the events. Like there are a lot of ways that this can go fast in a bad direction and I think being clear eyed about that going in is important. Even as like the rosters themselves seem like they're really fun and exciting. Like this is the, you know, the reality that, that this guy is keen on creating. So we can't ignore that piece of it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But the baseball could be good. So there's.

[Meg Riley]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The baseball team sure is good anyway.

[Meg Riley]

And I, you know, I, I know that asking for pro athletes to say like thoughtful and conscientious things about politics and immigration might be a fool's errand setting myself up for disappointment and failure. But a lot of the folks who are participating in the WBC for Team USA will have teammates from their major league squads competing on other teams. And I think it's an opportunity for someone to point out there's a lot of really good and talented baseball players here and they make this competition better and they make the game better overall. So maybe everybody could, could prioritize that in their commentary. That would be great.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I just saw that Mariners PR announced or publicized that Cal Rally was named breakout star of the year by Sports Illustrated, adding to his list of awards that he has won that aren't the mvp. Yeah, and the number one reply from some salty Mariners fan I assume is Cal winning every award but the MVP is very telling that the writers are biased and awful judges of what the MVP really means. Actually, he wrote awful Judge. Probably not a play on words, but judge did win it. But that I think is the wrong takeaway. I think the takeaway is that Cal should win every award but the mvp. You know, he had a case for mvp, but I do think judges was probably unbound, stronger. But my point was that Cal should win like all the other awards that unfortunately for him, mean less to people. But still he, he was the player of the year. He was the outstanding player and he's collected a lot of those awards that, that you know, no one has ever heard of. But still he's the deserving winner and breakout star of the year. I am not going to do anything pedantic about breakout because. Well, first of all, they included breakout star, which I think is, that's nice. I think he was. And also I'm okay with calling the season that he had a breakout season. Even though he was already a really good player, he still had a breakout. I think he had, he can have multiple breakouts. When you go from five wins to nine wins or whatever and you know, 34 homers to 60 homers. Yeah, you had a breakout. You can. It's just that the bar has to be really high if you're predicting a breakout for a guy who is already a four or five win player. Then he better be like a MVP candidate. He better be a nine win player. And Cal was so. Yeah, perfectly fine.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay. And a few other follow ups here to things that we've discussed recently. We mentioned Hasan Kim's one year $20 million deal and how that was one of the things that made me do a double take. Wow, 20 million coming off a rough year. And we talked about why it made sense and there weren't many alternatives out there. And then it was subsequently reported, I believe by Ken Rosenthal with a classic. We tried that the A's offered Hasan Kim 48 million. They offered him a four year, 48 million dollar deal. So assuming that that's true and was a legitimate offer, I think Passen had reported that Kim had declined multi year offers. But 48, I mean, that's a lot. So either he really did not want to play for the ace, which, you know, understandable, or he just wanted to. Yeah. Bet on himself. And he thought, I'll take this pillow contract and it'll be a very soft, comfortable $20 million pillow and then I'll have a good year and, and then I can make way more. But yes, that's nothing to sneeze at. Four years. 48. I mean, you turned down more than double the total guaranteed dollars. That's. That's a lot. But it does validate that this wasn't some sort of outlier offer. Evidently, like there were other. There was big money out there for him and evidently a belief that he really will bounce back all the way.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that there is appetite for his services and they were definitely paying an A's premium. I will say that, like that's what they're gonna have to do, you know, and they'll have to overpay less in theory as time goes on. If they get the big. Overpay is done early. Does that make sense? Right. Because part of what guys are deciding is like, is this a real. Is this a going concern? You know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Plus once they. I imagine that their ability to sign guys might also improve once they actually break ground on their ballpark.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Legitimate break ground. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Done in a real way.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

In a non ceremonial puck drop kind of way.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I learned from the Discord Group and Raymond Chen, I believe that the home team always wins the ceremonial puck drop. Evidently that that's kind of the tradition that the home team wins the ceremonial one.

[Meg Riley]

And one of our emails pointed out, and I think this was sort of implied in, in some of our Commentary. But like, when you're doing the puck drop, when you're doing the tip off, you're determining possession with that action. We know who's on offense and defense in baseball, and this is maybe another wrinkle and another sort of argument or example in my argument that there isn't as much uniformity in this as. As. As we maybe were assuming. Because like, in football, you kick off now you can do things as the return team that will cause the possession to change. Right. Like you could, you could turn the ball over and then the. The team that would have been on defense first will suddenly be on offense. But you. You have a sense of. Of possession there too. So I think that there's just like a beautiful, diverse ecosystem system of approaches to these things, and we should let it stand, man.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sure. Yeah. And there's still up there a beautiful, diverse ecosystem of nicknames. We got some nickname responses when we talked about that last time and what the value of a nickname is to a player, to a team. And I was saying that there's got to be some correlation between nickname coolness and just player and personality and performance coolness and that. Right. You know, maybe if. If you have a cool nickname, it's because you are already cool and thus the nickname would not confer that much of an extra advantage on you. But some people did point out exceptions to that. And guys who have great nicknames and aren't maybe actually that great, for example, John, Kenzie, Noel, Big Christmas. Right, right. Great nickname. Not. Not great player to this point. And. And password. We talked about password the other day. Right. So.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You know, he was. Has been a decent prospect. Justinson Garcia. But would we even know his name if not for the nickname? Maybe not. I mean, maybe again, like, maybe we'd just be aware that he had a really hard to spell or pronounce name. But. And that's how he ended up with his nickname. Of course. But yeah, to this point, the nickname awareness and coolness outstrips his accomplishments as a baseball player. And we got another nomination there from Sam. The nickname coolness versus personal coolness gap. Drew Pomeranz has to be the most boring, mediocre player with the coolest nickname. What on earth did this guy do to deserve being called Big Smooth? Sincerely, Sam, a Red Sox fan who's still upset about that trade and thinks Anderson Espinosa could have been somebody. Drew Primeran just signed, by the way. Right. With the Angel. Angels. Anyway, his nickname is Big Smooth. And I tried to figure out why that was and I think this was one of the the ones he used this in Players weekend in like 2017, but it seems like it was a real nickname, Pomeran said at the time. I'm quoting from mlb.com I didn't even ask or think about the name I would use. It was going to be Big Smooth. No avoiding that one. No one would let me get away with not putting it on the uniform. The origin goes back to last season when Pomeranz was traded to Boston. Teammates David Price and Rick Porcello worked together to come up with the nickname. That is his nickname. No one made it up. Chris Young said that.

[Meg Riley]

Well, every.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that's nickname was made up. Right. That seems to contradict both the existence of nicknames and also the preceding sentence which said that David Price and Rick Porcela worked together to come up with it. I guess they made it up. Yeah. Maybe what he meant is that that no one made it up for Players Weekend. Specifically that it was a preexisting, I guess. Okay. Okay, okay. And he said that's what everyone in the clubhouse calls him.

[Meg Riley]

Gotcha.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Gotcha Andrew. Ben Tendi said it's one of his favorite nicknames on the team. It is funny. I think it has to do with the way he pitches and really taking his time. Ben and Tendi said I call him Drew, but a lot of guys call him Big Smooth. So I guess that's why he was Big Smooth. Although, yeah, there are a lot of kind of of not real like illegitimate nicknames on Baseball Reference. Like we were talking about the kid for Mike Trout and the way that.

[Meg Riley]

You say that is horrifying. I don't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How would one say it?

[Meg Riley]

I mean, I don't know. But any other way but the way that you're doing it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, no one ever actually does say it, so we'll never have to find out because it's not really his nickname. But I got a message from Matt True Blood who said that. That kid. Sorry I said it again. Comes from the biggest pool of terrible baseball reference nicknames. Things that were on the back of guys Players weekend jerseys in 2018-2019. So many guys have nicknames listed that were really just honoring their mother or were weird in jokes or something. It's a disaster. So yeah, maybe there has to be a nickname call of some sort. Like yeah, are you actually called that or did you make it up up as on a lark once?

[Meg Riley]

I can't believe that the Guardians cut Jonesy Noel the week before Christmas. Yeah, it's just you Fade him.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Brutal.

[Meg Riley]

You know, you know what might have prevented that? A transaction freeze.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, it's true. Yeah. And it's even like you could, you could market it because it's, you know, it's freezing out. You could like have a cool little graphic of the ice and the snow and just call it the transaction freeze.

[Meg Riley]

It's just, it just needs to be. First of all, we would get like, like a wild flurry of activity. Flurry of activity like the day before. Because people would want to get their business done before the holiday. You know, it's like when people send me emails and freelance pitches at 5pm on a Friday and I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? You can schedule emails, you guys. You're allowed to schedule them. I know. You need to get it off your brain.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Before you go into the weekend. I respect that. I think that that's normal. I don't need a pitch at 5pm on a Friday. Come on now. Come on now. Anyway, there would be this flurry of activity, would be very exciting. So that would be fun. And then everyone could rest, you know, they could rest and enjoy their Christmas beast.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You say beast so as not to. To specify beef because it could be any creature that someone might be eating.

[Meg Riley]

Cuz in. In how the Grinch Stole Christmas. Don't they have a Christmas beer beast? They have their roast beast. It's not roast.

[Ben Lindbergh]

They don't specify.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, no, they say. I'm pretty sure it's roast beast.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I believe you. Unless you've been mishearing it all these years. I haven't rewatched this to be clear.

[Meg Riley]

So, so possible that I have been. Now I have to Google.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, I think you're right. I think you're right. It's. It's the roast beast. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Beast Grinch. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Oh, thank you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, I see.

[Meg Riley]

It's their fe. It's their. It's like they're the centerpiece of their meal. They're not having a turkey because no one has told the who's about brining.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Exactly.

[Meg Riley]

You know, although I think it does have little legs in the. Yeah. See the way that it is put in the cartoon. And here we're gonna get a couple of seconds of Meg Grinch thoughts. First of all, in this household, we only acknowledge the cartoon Grinch. The Jim Carrey thing, that's an abomination. The Grinch didn't need a backstory. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The.

[Meg Riley]

The. The Grinch, the live action Grinch remake with Jim Carrey is An is a low key precursor to everything that's wrong with media today. So there's that. But the funny thing about the roast beast in, in Dr. Seuss's Heather Grinch Stole Christmas, the animated version with, you know What I mean, Mr. Grinch, is that it has little turkey legs, eggs, but it cuts like a, like a non poultry animal, you know, because he's cutting it and it looks like he's had. He has like a slab of roast beast that looks much more like, you know, like a prime rib or something, you know. Yeah, you know, that's a great one.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And I like how those little who's get so small when they're bringing out the roast beast. There's like a whole little train of a little line of, of who chefs. And, and some of them are very tiny. And then the little tiny one is carrying strawberry for Cindy Lou who. Oh, have you not seen how the Grinch Stole Christmas?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not recently, but yes, of course I have. And there was a. I don't know about.

[Meg Riley]

I don't know if I believe you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I. I don't. We don't know exactly what sort of, what manner of beast it is, and maybe that's for the best. And, and are they right?

[Meg Riley]

It's like who's hunting it?

[Ben Lindbergh]

And yeah, it's. It can be whatever you imagine it to be.

[Meg Riley]

It looks like a combo. It's like it's got legs like a turkey and it cuts like a prime rib.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Mythical. Yeah, like a griffin or something. It's just like a combination of. I don't know. Anyway, there was a griffin. Vulture did a very, very lengthy and in depth oral history of how the Grinch Stole Christmas. The live action one just last week. Wild movie, wild production.

[Meg Riley]

It's so unnecessary. Why does he have a bad backstory? Unnecessary. And like, you know, Jim, I. Jim Carrey. I have so much respect for Jim Carrey as a comedic actor. To be clear, this is not an anti Jim Carrey take.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He went through a lot to embody the Grinch in that movie.

[Meg Riley]

He's doing so much. Jim Carrey as the Grinch. And here's the note that I would offer. Jim Carrey. Hey, buddy, this isn't about you. You know, we're gonna get so many emails about this episode. There have been no transactions. What else are we gonna talk about? How have we been talking for an hour and 19 minutes?

[Ben Lindbergh]

The sports Illustrated breakout star of the year. I just noticed they define, they, they specify that it should go to an athlete who unexpectedly dominated the sports conversation. Making the leap from skilled performer to household name.

[Meg Riley]

Honestly, he did pitch perfect.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Perfect. Yeah. That's great.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, that's great.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I like that because it specifies that.

[Meg Riley]

It'S about the way in which they broke out.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And about the fame. Because so often when. When people make breakout picks, it's about the performance, but then it kind of gets conflated into like, well, yeah, he was already great, but people don't know about it. But you're kind of like, you're mixing and matching, like, people who aren't good yet, but you are saying that they're going to be good, they're going to make a leap on the field, and then you're also including players who were good, but maybe people don't know about it. And so you're saying they're going to take a leap in fame. And those are kind of two different things. I guess they both could be breakouts, but I. I tend to lean towards one of them. Unless you specify that this is what you're doing, in which case I have no problem with it. Okay. Some other people wrote in about Nacho and Ignacio. I. I know that Nacho is a. Is a nickname. Yeah. In case that wasn't clear. I was not. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And I. Maybe I. Maybe when I expressed it, didn't make clear that I knew that, but I. I. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

But I just love the name Ignacio. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I feel like I like both Nachos. Fun to say, too, but yeah. Okay. And then, last thing, some responses. One thing, when we answered a listener email about ways that the hall of Fame could keep Pete Rose out, and one of the proposals was they could just say that if you have been on the ineligible list at any point, then you're never able to be inducted into the hall of Fame. And I objected to that just on the grounds that, well, it seems kind of inconsistent. If you take someone off the ineligible list and they're no longer ineligible, then why should they continue to be ineligible for the hall of Fame? What if they were redeemed? What if they were exonerated and their name is cleared? Then why should they still be ineligible for the Hall? And I should have noted, and a couple people did that. There's precedent for that already. Because Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were banned from baseball for a while because they were, like, greeters for.

[Meg Riley]

At a casino.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right, right. You know, back when that could actually make you Persona non grata to, like, be associated with betting on sports in any way or any kind of gambling. And. And that was controversial at the Time. But Bowie Kuhn was pretty liberal with the. The handing, you know, dropping the ban hammer. And so Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were on the ineligible list for a while and Fergie Jenkins was because of a drug thing. And so, you know, they're all hall of Famers. And actually Roberto Alomar is currently on the ineligible list and he is in the hall of Fame too. And you know, that's another thing where it's like character clause. There's no mechanism for removing someone. If suddenly you find out that their character was not so great or there's additional evidence that their character was not, not worthy, then what do you do? Like, you can't. There's no, you know, processed. I'm not saying like you have to remove their plaque or something, but note it at least or I don't know. Right. There's. There's no. Yeah. And so that's part of why I kind of hew toward that maybe it would be better and cleaner not even to make that part of the criteria. Anyway, worth pointing out that, yes, that would apply to a few treasured hall of Famers who are already in the hall. And Roberto Al Mar currently, if we were to go with that. And we got an email from Patreon supporter Jason. Jason said, since Manfred's announcement about Rose, I've thought the obvious answer was if you die while still on the permanent eligible list, you will not be considered for the Hall. Manfred's ostensible and BS reason for repealing the ineligibility was that it didn't matter. For practical purposes, Rose and Shoeless Joe can't attend games or get jobs as a coach. Fine. Also, theoretically, while alive, someone could do something to improve their image or make restitution. I could imagine a player like Rose, but not actually Rose, really taking responsibility for their actions and spending years in advocacy against gambling or whatever and then being reinstated. That can't happen. Once someone has died, they both can't apply for a job and they can't make amends. So the hall could just say, hey, as of their death, they hadn't done enough work to change MLB's mind. And given that, we will honor MLB's final judgment when that person was alive, to advocate for themselves and leave it there. Seems simple and clean to me. That's. That's a possibility. I guess there's always, you know, someone could be kind of cleared postmortem. Like something comes out after death. Even that rehabilitates their image. Usually it goes the other way where something comes out after their death. That. That tarnishes the image, but it could happen the other way around. And. And your position on this was basically like, we don't need to do all that. You know, you can just. Just if you really want to keep him out, you could sort of stack the deck and have people who are opposed to having him in there at all being the ones who are voting for it. I. I was trying to think of this in terms of, like, what would lead to less blowback, like, just making him ineligible or making him eligible but excluding him anyway. And you don't necessarily need to care, I guess, about what big Pete Rosevants think. But, you know, if. If you want to avoid, like, endless rounds of discussion of Pete Rose forever, if you came up with some reason why he's just still ineligible, then you can sidestep the whole induction process and the voting and everything. And in a way, that would be better because, like, I don't know, if. If they elect other players who are less deserving statistically and they keep Rose out, then will people be even more up in arms about that? Or will. Will they say, oh, clearly they stacked the deck and this was biased and he didn't get a fair shake or whatever? Maybe. Then again, I guess you could say that if you keep him from even being on the ballot, right. Then you might say, oh, you know, at least give him a chance. Like, let people vote on it. And they. They pulled strings and they, you know, kept him off. Off, out of consideration. And that in itself was worse if you're a big Pete Rose fan. But I don't know. We. We probably talk too much about Pete Rose. We'd rather not talk about P. Rose at all. It's just that it's going to come up. So, you know, so we're kind of anticipating that, I suppose, but we don't have to worry about it, at least for a little while, because he's not up for induction.

[Meg Riley]

I don't think that managing blowback is something that. I guess I shouldn't be naive to it being a consideration for every institution to a certain degree. But it's, you know, I think that if you're the hall, the thing you should be prioritizing is getting the decision right and having a process that stands up to scrutiny, which, you know, is a standard that sometimes with these committee ballots, they fall short of with less controversial candidates than Pete Rose. Right. So that's an ongoing project for them, I think. But I mostly think that giving people, giving players a hearing on this stuff Rather than having their eligibility necessarily curtailed after the fact is probably the way to go. Now, I would be fine. I would be fine if the hall were to institute a policy tomorrow saying, hey, if you were put on the permanent ineligible list for gambling related activities, you are disqualified from any future hall of Fame consideration and have that be sort of a going forward pronouncement on their part. Because I think, unfortunately, we're going to deal with a lot more of these. Right, right. I think that if they wanted to make that a rule going forward, I'd be fine with that. But in Rose's case, they didn't have that rule. They had this rule around, you know, if you're on this list, you can't be considered. And I think that they should consider him. I hope that they will say he is not worthy of induction because of his violation of this rule. But for me, Pete Rose is an obvious no. He is an obvious no go, but apparently that isn't everyone's perspective on him. And so, and I'm. I can imagine there being circumstances for other potential hall of Famers where I might view it as necessary to have a conversation and a debate about it and a real assessment by a panel of. Of serious experts. And it would be a no go for other people. So I think that the, the best way to deal with this stuff is to just, just like have them have their hearing and then, you know, go from there. And it means that who you put on the panel is important. And I don't mean that in a cronyism way, but in a way where you're going to have people who really give serious weight to the conversation. But yeah, I just think that you gotta, you gotta give it its due because it's an important question. And precedent around it, I think is important to establish, you know, if, if, if Rose is considered and the panel says, no, we're not doing this because of this thing. It does, I think, establish precedent that we can point to in future conversations and be like, well, we know how this stuff goes. You do this, you don't get in. Look at Pete Rose, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep, yep.

[Meg Riley]

Assumes he doesn't get in.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. Yeah. I do think, even as someone who doesn't care much about, and I hate that hall of Fame is synonymous with plaques, the plaque room, because it's right.

[Meg Riley]

He's in the Hall. He's in the museum right now.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And it's a small part of the museum and a lot of the valuable work that the museum does and all the archiving and Everything. I support that. And it's inevitable that, yeah, who's in the plaque room is gonna dominate the discussion because the museum, it's a nice place, but it's in Cooperstown, New York, and most people are not going there, so, you know, not often at least. And so if you're engaging with the hall of Fame, then you're much more likely to be engaging with the plaque discussion. And who deserves to be enshrined there than you are Anything else? Even me. I live in the same state as the National Baseball hall of Fame and museum and I haven't been there in years. I feel bad about that. I should go again. I'd like to, I will at some point. But, you know, even though I'm in the same state, I'm a four hour drive away and, and as you noted, I don't drive anyway, so. 21 hour bike ride, you know. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

So how long would it take you to walk?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Let's see, 66 hours according to Google Maps. So, you know, good exercise, but it's probably not the time of year to do it. But yeah, like the fame of the hall of Fame, it's, it's tied up in the plaque room and I'm sure they consider that a good thing on the whole because even though it generates controversy and anger and blowback, it also generates interest and attention and attendance and donations, et cetera. So it's, you know, you take the good with the bad, I guess. But one thing that I sometimes see people express. I know Craig Calcatera has said this, he's no big fan of the, the hall of Fame discourse either, but he thinks that the hall of Fame leads to non hall of Famers being forgotten, essentially because we just hyper fixate on the guys who get their plaques and everyone else gets forgotten and maybe unfairly overlooked. And I think that's actually not true. I think, I disagree with that. I think that it's true that we should just value players based on the value of their career and their contributions, regardless of whether they pass this bar or not. You know, this kind of inconsistent, hard to figure out bar with multiple ways to get in. I think, yeah, if you're not a Hall of Famer, that doesn't mean we should write you off or anything, but I think that most ballplayers get forgotten regardless. Most people, most historical figures just aren't going to be widely remembered. And so only the scholars or the real hardcore sickos are going to really remember you at a certain point. And I do think that the conversation about the plaque and all the intrigue about who's in the hall of Fame and who's not. I think that that does shine a light on some of these players and. And more players would be forgotten if not for the hall of Fame. I think that's actually a benefit of it. And even though the distinctions are kind of arbitrary, I do think that. And there are guys who are in the hall of Fame who are themselves pretty widely forgotten. You know, like, there are a lot of obscure hall of Famers who, you ask your average baseball fan, and they're not going to know anything about them, but they're better known, I think, than they would be if they weren't in the hall of Fame. And also all the controversy about guys who didn't get in, that keeps their memory alive, unfortunately, in Pete Rose's case, but more fortunately, in a lot of cases where we probably talk more about Lou Whitaker because he's not in and is clearly deserving than we would like. How often would Lou Whitaker come up on this podcast if. If he was not one of the obvious snubs from the hall of Fame? So that actually helps, I think. And, yeah, it does lead to division and kind of like, you know, talking about this guy is better than that guy, and then you're focusing on the flaws of players instead of celebrating their accomplishments and everything. But I think on the whole, it does lead to more baseball history and more baseball players being remembered than forgotten. So even though I share a lot of the apathy and indifference and objections to the process and everything, I don't. I don't share that objection that it. It leads to players being unfairly forgotten. I think everyone gets forgotten, really, and that the hall of Fame helps preserve some of those memories a little longer than they would be otherwise.

[Meg Riley]

I think that's right. I don't think I have anything to add except to say I think you're right. I think you're right. Lou Whitaker sounds like a name that should be in, like, a musical lyric to me. I don't know why.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, Lou Whitaker does have a nice flow to it. Yeah, it's pretty mellifluous. Okay.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. All right. Well, that does it for this week and not quite for this year for you, but. But you'll be off next week quite sensibly and understandably as.

[Meg Riley]

As just watching Dead man over and over and over again with my mom.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Over and over over again, reacquainting yourself with Apo Taco and communing with the Seagulls, etc, and then they don't have.

[Meg Riley]

Seagulls in the mountains, Ben. There aren't going to be any seagulls up there.

[Ben Lindbergh]

See, I can guess. Yeah. But some other scenery that you will see. And, and then we will talk the week after that and we will do some of our year end stuff. Oh, and, and I'll put out a little call here, preliminary call for stories we missed because that's traditionally our last episode or two of the year. Or among them is what did we not talk about this year? So we tried to collect little tidbits, little stories about each and every team that we overlooked for whatever reason this year. And I know that we do a lot of podcasting, we talk about a lot of things, but we are just sort of scratching the surface of everything that happens in baseball. So if there was something we ignored, please do let us know and we will shout it out on those year end episodes. And while you are away, I will podcast, but I will try to take it easy. I, I often overcompensate when I don't have a co host. Because, because when you're here, I just figure, okay, we'll banter and we'll figure it out and we'll talk about Christmas trees and you know, it'll, it'll all work out. But, but, but when you're not here, I'm like, well, I can't monologue. I, I, I need help. What will I do? I, and then I overcompensate and co host and I end up with like three people and three guests. And I'm going to try to take it easy this time. I'm going to, going to try to, you know, not take the week off, but take the week easy, at least by my standards. We'll see if I can live up to that.

[Meg Riley]

I think, I think, Ben, what I would offer.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

Is that you should take the week easy by Shane's standards.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'm sure he'd appreciate that too.

[Meg Riley]

Let Shane's standards be your guide because our wonderful producer Shane, he does a great job. And you know, Shane is game Shane. When we have bonkers drafts, Shane's like, let's go. I'm gonna edit this. But I'll tell you, Ben, I hope I'm not blowing up Shane's spot when you were gone, which is very rare.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And I'm co hosting on my own and I turn around an hour long episode. Shane's like, that was nice.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Meg Riley]

So I'm just, I'm just saying, I'm just, I'M offering. And look, I'm the one who's like I can't pod next week cuz I don't think that the mountain. The mountain is not.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, the WI fi won't cooperate.

[Meg Riley]

No some I I was able to do it one time while you were in Sweden.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

And it was Daisy. You know, Craig had to start and stop a couple of times with me. So it's just not. Yeah, it's a. It's a place of peace, not pod and I so appreciate you carrying on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

In my stead, but potting brings me peace.

[Meg Riley]

You know, I know you love to. You love to pot and I don't want anyone to think I don't like potting. I love to pot.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But you don't live to pot.

[Meg Riley]

Maybe I don't live to pot. I don't live to pot. I love to pot. I don't live to pot. Sometimes I need to piece from the pot, you know.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, after we recorded, Logan Webb was added to the US WBC squad so that starting staff gets even stronger. Also, one of those big dominoes that I mentioned expecting to fall, did indeed topple. Michael King resigned with the Padres three years 75 million. I did have the under on 80 million for King in the free agent contracts over underdraft. That one just barely went my way. Nothing shocked. But we'll break it down next week. I will remind everyone that if you are giving gifts this season, you can give the gift of an Effectively Wild Patreon membership for that special listener or prospective listener in your life. There is a link on the show page in the episode description for every episode that says give a gift subscription. So just click on that or go to patreon.com effectivelywild gift and make someone's holiday season and make our holiday seasons in the process. That link on the show page is immediately below the link that says Sponsor us on Patreon and you can do that by both clicking the link and 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 Tess, Jeff, David, Mole, Jeremy and Katie. 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, shoutouts at the end of episodes, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the [e-mail] 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 podcastangraphs.com you can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r effectivelywild and you can check the aforementioned podcast posted fan graphs or episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats and gift subscription sites that we discussed today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Thanks to you for listening. That will do it for today, today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. And yes, I will be back to talk to you next week.

[Meg Riley]

Sometimes I still feel like that little girl hearing grandma's handheld radio collecting baseball cards before I could read. They say I waste my time tracking all these deadlines but it's here I found my kind all effectively one.