Effectively Wild Episode 2418: The Challenge System Challenge

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2418: The Challenge System Challenge

Date: December 24, 2025
Host: Ben Lindbergh
Guests: Craig Goldstein (Baseball Prospectus), Joe Sheehan (Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter)
Main Theme: An exploration and debate of MLB’s forthcoming Automated Ball/Strike (ABS) “Challenge System,” along with lively discussion of recent MLB transactions and the shifting landscape of contemporary baseball analysis.

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Episode Overview

Episode 2418 features a spirited roundtable about the upcoming implementation of the challenge-based pitch-calling system in MLB, with a range of viewpoints on whether half-measures are progress or problematic. Before diving deep into this tech-driven rules debate, the panel also breaks down several key offseason transactions and reflects on broader baseball trends — with their characteristic humor, depth, and generosity toward each other's work.

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Main Discussion Points & Key Segments

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1. Introductions, Context, and Epistemology of Debate

• [00:13] Ben opens the show solo (Meg Rowley is off), bringing on guests with “outsider” but expert perspectives: Craig Goldstein (BP) and Joe Sheehan (noted substack newsletter writer and BP co-founder).
• [00:45–03:21] Ben recaps the origin of the challenge system debate: Both guests independently viewed the challenge zone as a “half-measure” compromise, but Joe sees that as a bug, Craig as a potential feature.
  • Quote, Ben [02:51]: “You saw the challenge system exactly the same way, described it in the same terms, until you came to diametrically opposite conclusions about whether you liked it or not.”

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2. Quick News & Banter

• [03:43] Craig is congratulated (tongue-in-cheek) on the “retirement” of nemesis Joe Kelly, now a podcaster himself.
• [05:50] Tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Seitz decision (MLB free agency).
• [06:07] Transition into reviewing hot stove developments.

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3. Hot Stove Transaction Roundup

(Extended, in-depth breakdowns follow. Not every signing is timestamped in the transcript, so these are rough cues.)

a) Munetaka Murakami Signs with White Sox

• [07:51–25:32]
  • Consensus: The contract (2 years, $34M) is a big bargain given Murakami’s past NPB hitting prowess, but his swing-and-miss issues raise big MLB translation questions.
  • Joe [07:51]: “He has egregious flaws… maybe not even pay off at 2 and 34… but why not take the chance?”
  • Craig [08:50]: “I’m very surprised at the dollar amount and the years, but it makes sense… No one could really allay those concerns [about first base defense, swing-and-miss].”
  • Ben [10:55]: “I’m kind of a believer… even as a league-average hitter, that would be a bargain compared to other recent deals…”
  • Joe [14:48]: “I like the signing, don’t love the player.”
  • Projection systems discussed: Steamer (115 wRC+), Oopsie (123), ZiPS (126), BP’s PECOTA (129 DRC+).
  • Interesting Takeaway: Even with risk, the consensus is the White Sox inject watchability and upside; the transaction also highlights player agency (short-term contract, re-entering free agency at 27).

b) NPB/KBO Integration and Globalization Worries

• [24:54] Growing trend for Japanese/Korean stars to come straight to MLB or even bypass their home leagues entirely; concern for sustaining robust, independent baseball cultures abroad.

c) Padres’ Moves – Michael King and Sung Moon Song

• [28:03–37:06]
  • King’s deal is a “one-year deal in disguise” (opt-outs).
  • Padres’ talent drain and ambiguous direction post-Seidler; AJ Preller’s willingness to keep “pushing” admired, even amid resource squeeze.
  • Craig [35:35]: “Hard to sell when you have tent poles like Machado and Tatis… but hard to really pivot.”
  • Joe [37:06]: “Appreciation for Preller: At least he hasn’t punted for five years.”

d) Orioles-Rays, Three-Team Trades, and Rotation Upgrades

• [38:38–47:00]
  • Baltimore gets Shane Baz (but he’s more an innings-eater than an ace); there’s impatience for a true top-of-rotation move.
  • Joe [41:54]: “We have to update our priors… Baz is 27… one full season in the majors… just a number three if he stays healthy.”
  • Craig [41:35]: “Too many similarities to the pitcher they dealt away (Grayson Rodriguez); floor is raised, but at significant cost.”
  • Recap of Rays/Astros/Pirates three-way trade, focus on Brandon Lowe to the Pirates ([48:20]): “Brandon Lowe would have been the second-best hitter on [PIT’s] team last year.” (Joe)

e) Wilson Contreras to Red Sox

• [53:13–58:23]
  • Seen as a high-value move: solves Boston’s 1B/DH need and adds a rare righty bat.
  • Joe [55:06]: “Contreras is just underrated… this is a really good pickup.”
  • Consensus Boston’s quietly improved; now legitimately in AL East race.

f) Miscellany: Yankees’ Quiet Offseason, Strom Trade, Mets Roster Turnover

• [60:05–66:45]
  • Yankees, despite anxious fans, may not have urgent fits for splashy FA signings right now.
  • Matt Strahm to Royals [62:18]; reliever for reliever trades are “modern baseball” as teams hunt for skills/pitches, not “actual” value.
  • Mets: Losing Jeff McNeil (“baseball zygote” returns as a phrase for undeveloped lotto-ticket prospects acquired in such deals); David Stearns is remaking the roster.

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4. Cell Phone Scandal & MLB’s “Policing” Paradox

• [66:45–71:12]
  • Controversy over Emanuel Clase and phones in the bullpen/dugout.
  • MLB can’t – or won’t – fully enforce phone bans. “Feels like pretending to treat a symptom.” (Craig)
  • Joe [69:04]: “You’re not going to keep phones out of the clubhouse ten hours a day.”

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5. The Main Event: The Challenge System Challenge

A deep, philosophical, and policy-driven debate about the value and shortcomings of MLB’s incoming “ABS challenge” system.

Key Stakes:

• How much “automation” is enough, or too much?
• Should baseball aim for perfect justice (“get every call right”), or is traditional semi-randomness actually worth preserving?
• Where should the human element reside: players, umpires, or neither?
• Is the challenge system actually a compromise, or a cowardly half-measure?

a) Opening Statements & Philosophical Baselines

• [72:29]
  • Joe: “Pitchers should be called based on where they cross the plate… [Current system] is unfair to the hitter who cannot possibly have that information… Umpires are calling catches; ABS would call pitches.”
  • Craig: “I largely agree… but I’m more unsure about wanting the ultimate consequences of a fully automated zone at all times.”

b) Rubber Band Zone, Fairness, Offense, and Game Flow

• [74:08–78:55]

  • Craig and Ben both note that the “expanding and contracting” strike zone (umpires ‘helping’ batters or pitchers per count) has subtle, real effects on game tension and offense.

  • Craig [74:57]: “It used to be I wanted every call to be correct, now I want everyone to agree and move on quickly.”

  • Ben [78:55]: “There’s a subconscious ‘helping hand.’ If you went to full ABS, you’d have fewer comebacks in the count.”

  • Joe: “If you call a rulebook-width plate, you’d put offense back in the game… right now, pitchers can just value stuff above all else and exploit this hole in the game. If they had to throw it over the plate more, you get a more entertaining game.”

c) Walk Wave, Pitcher Adaptation, and Unintended Consequences

• [82:28–84:13]
  • There would likely be an initial surge in walks; pitchers would (over time) adapt, maybe with even more “stuff.”
  • Craig: “If you force pitchers back in the zone, you incentivize the kind of stuff that can survive — not necessarily better command.”
  • Real-world implementation is not strictly the “rulebook zone,” and past minor league experiments revealed that the ideal isn’t always easy to define in code.

d) Randomness, “Correctness,” and Aesthetics

• [94:22–98:08]
  • Craig muses about whether randomness is secretly part of the fun: “I think… it’s good that we don’t know for certain whether some of those balls on the edge are balls or strikes. That randomness — that uncertainty — is something fans do seek in sports.”
  • Ben worries that intentionally coding randomness would drive people crazy; they’d rather have a system that is trying to be right, with some margin of error.

e) Replay, Challenges, and the “Skill” of Challenging

• [104:57–108:34]
  • Ben: “There’s potential metagame interest in challenge decisions — but is that a meaningful or artificial skill?”
  • Joe: “Getting players/managers involved in officiating the game is bad… Challenge systems everywhere are bad… You end up strategizing your leverage, not fixing the call itself.”
  • Craig: “If you can fix the really egregious ones without too much delay, maybe that’s enough. I’m not convinced missing a tight call in the third is so terrible.”

f) Consensus, Compromises, & Evolving Positions

• [116:19–125:04]
  • All agree: the ABS challenge system is a half-measure — but maybe that’s the right starting point.
  • Joe expects the public will push all the way to full ABS; Ben sees the challenge system as “a stop along the way.”
  • Ben [116:21]: “There’s something to that — some people seem to enjoy [the suspense of the challenge].”
  • Craig [121:52]: “If it works that well… it might just set point to ‘do it all the time then.’”
  • Joe [118:41]: “MLB needs a lab league… try all kinds of nonsense before treating MLB as a beta test.”
  • All agree the metagame of challenge “hoarding” and metrical analysis will emerge, but no panelist is actually excited about that, as opposed to just getting calls right.

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Notable Quotes / Memorable Moments

• “I’m picturing Portia de Rossi and David Cross… maybe it could work for us!” — Joe Sheehan, [03:21]
• “It’s a fetish.” — Joe, on Ben’s affection for catcher framing, [90:23]
• “Challenge systems are bad... in all sports... You end up strategizing leverage, not fixing the call.” — Joe, [106:16]
• “Is it better than the current baseline?... In this case it is.” — Craig, [102:33]
• “Our minds are somewhat open… and hopefully it’s illuminating for listeners whether they agree or not.” — Ben, [125:04]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:21] – Challenge System Debate Introduced
• [07:51] – Murakami Signing Deep Dive
• [28:03] – Padres' King/Song Signings
• [38:38] – Orioles/Rays/Pirates Trades
• [53:13] – Wilson Contreras to Red Sox Analysis
• [66:45] – Mets Turnover / Cell Phone Scandal / Policing
• [72:29] – Challenge System Deep Dive Begins
  • Joe’s Opening Anti-Framing: [72:29]
  • Craig’s Opening “Half-Measure” Philosophy: [74:08]
  • Discussion of Aesthetics/Randomness: [94:22]
  • Replay & Challenge System Critiques: [106:16]
  • Consensus & Closing: [116:19–125:04]

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Final Thoughts—Product Plugs, Mutual Endorsement, the State of Independent Baseball Writing

• [125:43–130:59] Generous cross-promotion of Baseball Prospectus and the Joe Sheehan Newsletter.
• [128:06] Joe: “Whether it’s BP, me or Fangraphs… subscribe to somebody. Everybody’s doing great work. We all work in the toy department, but support somebody.”

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Summary for Non-Listeners

This episode represents Effectively Wild at its best: smart, patient, deeply informed baseball talk that never condescends but always explores. The panel takes listeners through the nuances of new MLB tech, the ways changes ripple through the game’s strategy, culture, and watchability, and why subtleties like randomness and human error are — maybe — still part of baseball’s strange magic. The hosts disagree but model true debate, and reflect live on their own minds changing. Whether you care about cutting-edge sabermetrics or just want to know who’s on first in the AL East, this one is both a holiday treat and a solid primer for the 2026 baseball landscape.

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For Further Listening/Reading

• For those interested in the technical details of projected translations for NPB/KBO hitters, look up articles by Jordan Rosenblum and the Oopsie projection system at FanGraphs.
• Baseball Prospectus and The Joe Sheehan Newsletter for more on what goes into modern front office and statistical analysis.
• Effectively Wild’s forthcoming Year in Review episodes for deeper dives into each team’s 2025 stories.

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In sum:

• Fireside, good-natured, and sharp — this episode takes one of MLB’s major forthcoming changes and breaks it down from every angle (statistical, aesthetic, practical, and philosophical), while offering fly-on-the-wall access to the judgment and humor of some of contemporary baseball’s best analysts.

Transcript

[A]

Maybe if you're lucky, you will cold call.

[B]

By the chance. You never know precisely where it's gonna go. By definition, Effectively Wild.

[C]

Hello and welcome to episode 2418 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, not joined today by Meg Reilly of fangraphs, who is very sensibly off for the week of Christmas. And so I have guests who have the difficult assignment of following Jeff Passon. They're not insiders, they're just outsiders like me. First, I am joined by Meg's editor in chief counterpart at Baseball Prospectus, Craig Goldstein. Howdy, Craig.

[B]

Hello.

[C]

And we are joined by one of the people who made it possible for me and Craig to become editors in chief of Baseball Prospectus by co founding the company, the proprietor of the Joe Sheehan Baseball newsletter, which sort of ends the suspense about who I'm introducing. Joe Sheehan. Hi, Joe.

[A]

I wish I look back. I wish I did what Craig Calcatera did and given it a different name. Because looking back, like, man, it's really egotistical to name something after yourself, but hey, here we are.

[C]

Yeah, it couldn't be more aptly named, really. It's truth in advertising. It's a real does what it says in the tin sort of situation. It's Joe Sheehan writing a newsletter about baseball. You. You get what you pay for. You get a lot when you pay for either of your products. But we will get to that a little later. I had a grand plan for this episode because back in early Octo, one of Craig's colleagues, Patrick Dubuque, wrote a piece for BP headlined various great philosophers and how they would feel about the automated ball strike system. And the subhead was gathering the greatest minds of two and a half millennia to embrace a little debate. And I could not book the greatest minds of two and a half millennia. So instead, I called up Craig and Joe. And I did that because in late September, a Patreon supporter who goes by Cold Coffee in our Discord group suggested that it might be interesting to have these two on to the merits of the challenge system. And he made that suggestion because back on episode 2379, I noted that Craig and Joe were in complete agreement and complete disagreement about the challenge system. Simultaneously. They each independently described it as a half measure and a compromise. Joe wrote, this is a half measure that won't have much effect. It is in fact, designed to not have much effect, but rather to win the press conference and added, this program is A compromise. And it should serve as a reminder that not all compromise is good. Meanwhile, Craig wrote, while half measures are usually anathema, this one just might work. And perhaps this is the mythical compromise where neither camp is happy and it's also for the best. So I was tickled by how you saw the challenge system exactly the same way, described it in the same terms, until you came to diametrically opposite conclusions about whether you liked it or not. And so today, I have you here to hash out your differences or agree to disagree. But you respect each other. You read each other's work. So I'm. I'm sure you're aware of your respective positions on this issue and have come prepared to debate.

[A]

I'm picturing Portia de Rossi and David Cross and the arrested development mean it could work for, but maybe it could work for us.

[C]

I think Craig actually linked to that.

[B]

That is what I am picturing too. Yes, exactly. We are in agreement on that as well.

[C]

Yeah. And after that, you can debate whether one subscription dollars are better spent on Baseball Prospectus or the Joshi and Baseball Newsletter.

[B]

That's.

[A]

That's a why not? That's the girl with the why not?

[B]

Both.

[C]

Yes. Why not both? I'm sure that you will both graciously suggest that you should buy both if you can. And of course, I will give you an opportunity to plug your products and various discounts and such that are available for the holiday season. But first, some news. Well, okay, this is minor news, but major news probably for Craig Goldstein. I feel like I should congratulate you on the retirement in quotes of your nemesis, Joe Kelly, though he is not using those words. But I assume that you were informed of this, if you didn't already have alerts set up to listen to every Joe Kelly podcast appearance. But this week on the podcast, Baseball isn't Boring, which Joe Kelly co founded. He said his playing career is over, but he put it this way, I ain't playing. Athletes don't we just stop playing? Okay, let's cancel the word retirement. So he refuses to concede that he is retired, but for all intents and purposes, it's over. He will haunt you no more.

[B]

Cancel. Culture is alive and well. Poor retirement. And I'm looking forward to that. Let's not cancel that. Yeah, I was alerted to that by several helpful people. I did not know he co founded that. I didn't know he co founded any podcast. So that's a little bit of news.

[C]

He's one of us. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, right. He's not retiring. He's just turning into one of us.

[C]

Are you suddenly warming up to him now that you know he's a podcaster like us?

[B]

You know, I warmed. I had begun the process of warming up to him even as he haunted my dreams. But it's nice to have the security of not being haunted so much. I have other people to do that now. I mean, Tanner Scott is, is alive and well. Michael Conforto not coming back to the Dodgers. So that'll be, that'll be nice. But you know, there were stand ins. It's always exciting to see who the next the next. It's almost like Doctor who, right? Like there's just a new one. So we'll find out who that is for the, for the upcoming season. Season.

[C]

Yeah. Well, Disney just decided that it doesn't want to make any more Doctor who, but the BBC still will. So that's good, I guess. And I know you Dodgers fans. You have it hard. Your life is torment. So I, I hope that things look up for you sometime soon. And Joe, as you pointed out in your newsletter, this week we are recording on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Seitz decision, the arbitrator decision that paved the path for free agency in Major League Baseball. So what better time to talk about free agents? Because since Meg and I last recorded, the weather has been cold, at least where we are. But the stove has stayed hot. It has gotten hotter, and we have some transaction action to catch up on, if you will oblige me with some banter about baseball news and moves which both of you relish breaking down. So I don't know where to start because there are so many momentous moves here. But maybe we can start with Munetaka Murakami, because this was a huge windfall for Meg in our free agent contracts over underdraft. I don't know whether you're aware, but every year we take the over or the under on a bunch of players, their predictions for their earnings from MLB Trade Rumors, and then if we pick the right direction, then we get credit for the difference between their actual guaranteed dollar amount and what MLB Trade Rumors predicted. And Meg was really lagging behind until Murakami signed with the White Sox because MLB Trade Rumors had pegged him at, I think $180 million and he got 34. So that may very well have won that competition for Meg. But more importantly, the White Sox are now the proud employers of Murakami. So were you all as surprised as I guess we would have been if you had told us back in Late October, early November, that these would be the terms. Joe, did you think that the dollar amount would be anywhere near this low?

[A]

No, I don't think it'd be this low. I thought the. I think Bowden and MLBTR both had it way high, though, because this is a player who has egregious flaws. And in modern Major League Baseball, they're going to see those flaws very quickly. They're going to understand that they're not getting the baseball card stats that Murakami was putting up in Japan. They're going to get the underlying skills, which, frankly, I mean, might not even pay off at 2 and 34. I think it's a fine move for the White Sox based on where they are. You take a chance at having an NPB star, it's a position that's basically open for them. And even if they have to move into first base, they have plenty of places to put him. And you can take the risk that he's actually, as I referred to him in Slack, Russell Branion.

[C]

Like, man, that endears him to me because I really loved Russell Branion and I probably loved him too long and was usually not rewarded for that, but he was a big fantasy guy for me back when I was a fantasy player. Craig, are you any higher on this move or on Murakami?

[B]

Probably a little higher than, than potentially Russell Brandon, but I think that exists. I mean, I think there's. The floor is very low for Murakami and I think, you know, I am very surprised at the dollar amount and the years, but it makes sense once you think about it for a second. In the sense that I thought he was going to get. I didn't think necessarily 180 million or anything like that, but I did think he was going to get a longer deal. And you could see the concerns that, that Joe was talking about. I mean, the swing and miss is a big deal, especially against velocity. I guess I thought there would be a club or two that would talk themselves into being able to fix him and then talk themselves into saying, like, if we, well, if we can fix him, we want to have him under contract for a substantial number of years, even if the dollars are like. Because if it does. Click. If you can fix the holes in, in his swing, then you're talking about a real, a real potential steal in terms of his overall production because his damage on contact is really good. He has, you know, absurd power numbers, especially for the, the NPB ball and things like that. So. And I understand, you know, I, I assume there's there's usually one team that thinks someone can play, you know, can hang at third rather than play first. It sounds like they're already just saying he's a first baseman is. I thought I, I read that. So I guess. But you know, the way you end up here is no one could really allay those concerns and everyone thought he was a first baseman and not a third baseman at all. And that really does change the dynamic. I think this is great for Chicago. I mean why not take the chance? I don't, you don't really have a better option anywhere. And it's not like their money is, is going to better use than figuring out if it can be him. I don't know if the White Sox are the team to fix his swing, but you know, it makes sense for him too to then focus on short term and potentially reach free agency at what age? 27 again where he could line himself up for a big deal if he can figure out how to mitigate some of the issues in his swing.

[C]

Well, if it doesn't work with the White Sox, they can always trade him to Milwaukee. And they can, they can just Andrew von Ify him. But Joe, you often describe yourself as low man or high man on particular places players and I guess I'm high man on Murakami, at least on this podcast. I don't dismiss any of the concerns that you're mentioning and that many people have mentioned but I really like this signing. I think yes, it could not work out but I think there's real potential for it to be a major bargain. And we should mention, yeah, I mean you know, two years, 34 million. There is about a six and a half million posting fee that the White Sox have to pay to the occult swallows the former team of Murakami. But nonetheless, you know, Jeff Passon, my last guest reported that though teams tried to get in for lower dollar long term deals, Murakami opted for a higher dollar short term offering, allowing himself to prove his ability to adjust to superior MLB pitching. So presumably he could have gotten more money if he had just wanted to maximize that surface figure. But instead he went for the shorter term and still it's, it's not really that high dollar, you know, 17 million. I mean everyone gets 11 million now. You know, sub replacement level players get 11 million seemingly this offseason. So 17 on a two year deal is just not much and I do understand the flaws and the, the end zone whiff rate and all the rest. The power we know will translate. I mean he may not be able to to actualize it. If he doesn't make contact then the power won't help him. But we know that the power is real and he hits the ball really hard and would hit it hard by MLB standards as well. So it's just a question of can he get the bat on the ball and if you look at the typical translations or the hit that an NPP player takes when they come to mlb and there's just an article on this by Jordan Rosenblum who operates the Oopsie projection system at Fan Grafsen and it's a pretty sizable hit. Depending on how you look at it. It could be 30 to 50 something points of WRC plus if you just say that Murakami will suffer the same penalty. Well, he's coming from 211 WRC plus in his most recent season, a partial season after he returned from injury. I guess the concern though is that he'll be more like the 150something WRC plus guy he was in the preceding two seasons. And then if you lop off 50 points then he's like a league average hitter with no defensive or base running value and that's just not very valuable. But I'm kind of a believer that they can unlock something or that he can unlock something if you just look at the projection systems. So Steemer has him at a 115 WRC plus and oopsie has him at a 123. I just feel ridiculous saying Oopsie, but it appears to be a pretty good projection system. Zips has him at 126. So even if you sort of split the difference, if you figure that he's like a 120 WRC plus guy, I mean, what if we cop him to Wilson Contreras, another guy that we will probably talk about in just a second here. Contreras has 411 1/2 million coming to him over the next two seasons, which is more than the White Sox are paying Murakami. Even including the posting fee, Murakami is almost eight years younger. There's no real defensive or ancillary skills difference, and the WAR projection at Fancraft's even slightly higher for Murakami than Contreras. I understand that Contreras is is proven. He's been a good hitter in MLP for a long time and with Murakami it's somewhat speculative, but if you think he'll be in that realm then I think this is way better than the going rate. And that's assuming that he doesn't have more in him, which I would not write off that possibility.

[A]

I know this is going to sound like hedging, just not something I like to do. But you're making the case for the signing and I agree with all of that. I don't particularly like the player. I like the signing. It's 2 and 34 for a team that can just run him out there for 300 games and you know, 1100 plate appearances over the next two years. And it almost doesn't matter how he honestly doesn't matter how he plays. But The White Sox 20, 26 World Series chances are not hinging on whether Murakami works out. This is exactly the team.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

To. It's not affecting their payroll. They're nowhere near the luxury tax thresholds. The signing itself is fine. I don't believe the player is going to work out. But you know, this is exactly the situation where, you know, if it does, you know, we'll say this is a good move. It's good to see the White Sox doing well. Anything. I just, I completely agree with everything you're saying. And you know, I think the floor. Well, the floor is he washes out of the league. But let's say a somewhat more optimistic floor is Schwaber's 21 and 22, which was basically, I want to say he's worth maybe two, two and a half wins over the two seasons. Yeah, like that works out. Like if Murakami is worth three wins over the next two seasons, that works out fine. And I think that is from where you're coming from. You're saying, okay, let's lop off 50 points from his MPB WRC by Oopsie. And my God, that's a sentence I don't ever want to say again. I think that's where he could reasonably win. I think 200, 275, 410 with average first base defense. You know, that probably comes out to like a 95, 90, 95 WRC plus and you know, maybe one win a year. I, I think that's a reasonable expectation.

[C]

Yeah. And I, I want to say that there could be more in there just because of the youth and because of his past performance, which is now a few years past him. But in a way that makes it even more impressive because he was so young when he did what he did. And so that just makes me think, well, that's in there somewhere. The guy who is an MVP who is hitting 56 bombs 22 season with a 225 WRC plus. And then there were injuries. And maybe those injuries had lingering effects or maybe there were mechanical changes. You know, in the past couple years, the, the strikeout rate has spiked. He wasn't that kind of hitter back when he was in his early 20s. And it just makes me think, you know, if you figure NPP is at least triple A level, generally believed to be if, if not better, then I got to think that kind of performance at that age, you know, if he had become a free agent then obviously if he had been posted then he would have gotten an enormous deal. I, I wrote a piece years ago at the Ringer about Murakami and Sasaki, Roki Sasaki, and basically said, you know, these are the best baseball prospects in the world. These are the best young baseball players. And since then they've each had injuries and things have happened. But I have to think that maybe that's in there somewhere and maybe he will adapt in some way. And you know, if you're just looking at his surface stats in npp, of course you have to remember that it's extreme dead ball era over there. So the kind of power that he has produced relative to the league is pretty impressive even at his down years. And a lot of people have comped him to Joey Gallo and said, okay, maybe he's peak Gallo at the plate. And I love Joey Gallo. I was fascinated by Joey Gallo and just the extremes, the power, the whiff. Could he make it work? He made it work for a while. He was a peculiar player and he had a short shelf life and obviously he had more defensive value than Murakami. He's actually a, a good defensive outfield and maybe a pitcher at some point, we'll find out. But Gallo managed a 117 WRC plus from 2017 to 2021. That was his age, 23 to 27 seasons and you know, just the bat. He was about 50 runs above average as a hitter in those years. And if that's a good comp, if Murkham is even Pete Gallo, well, that's worth Way more than 34 million in this market. I mean, one of the White Sox division rivals just signed Josh Bell to play for them for less than Murakami got. But still, Josh Bell, he's 33. He's been a barely above average hitter over the past three seasons. So I'm still sort of a believer that maybe he could get back to what he was a few years ago. And there's sort of like a Bill James signature significance element to that. But even if not, even if he's just a kind of above average hitter and that's all. I think that there's not a ton of downside here and it makes the White Sox way more interesting. I don't know if, if Murakami sells a lot of season tickets, but I know that I'll be watching way more White Sox baseball just to see how he pans out.

[A]

You'll be watching four additional at bats a game. Let's be real.

[B]

Just, just for what it's worth, I was able to pull up our Pakota projection, or at least the current one since it's not not released. But we have him for 129 DRC plus, so. Right in.

[C]

That's sexy.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, look, DRC plus and Pakistan have always loved the, the elite hitters from npb. Generally speaking, when we look at kind of our projections every off season before the release at the players that, including players that don't come over, they've always rated extremely well. I think just to add on really quickly, you guys have covered it, but this really comes down to our projection has him a 34% strikeout rate and a 14% walk rate. And I don't know that those coexist for him. If he's striking out 34% of the time, I don't know that pitchers are avoiding him such that he's going to get a 14% walk rate. And so that's where you see this kind of dichotomy of, of views on him. I think if, if he can get that under 30%, sure. I think we can talk about the real upside that he offers. And I think we all agree like he offers that if he can do it. And you go back to his, you know, everyone looks at his 2022, but even 2020 and 2021 for Murakami, he was striking out 22% of the time, walking 17 of the time. That's. That's gonna play. Something changed after 2022 where he just started striking out a lot more and, and walking less. It was 15 in 2023, 14 in 2025. He. He was back at 17 in 2024. But it's just going to be hard. It's hard for me to imagine that he's going to strike out at 34% and be able to get on base to support the kind of WRC plus or DRC plus or whatever your metric of choice is in that, in that sense. You know what I mean? And Joey Gallo did that. But Joey Gallo is a freak. And even Kyle Schwaber didn't really do that. Right. Kyle Schwaber in. In that time was. Was not quite striking out so much. He was 29 and a half percent in 2020, 27% in 2021. Right. So I think he needs to get into that area before we can even start making like, the. The not current Kyle Schwaber comps. And I'm not saying it's a bad one, but, like, he needs to do some work to get there.

[C]

Yeah. And part of my optimism is probably that I imprinted on Murakami when he was so successful, so young, and maybe I haven't updated my priors and I. I'm too hyped. And I'll acknowledge that there's some scouting the stat line here, I guess scouting the more flattering aspects of the stat line, the surface stat line, that is. But I'm cautiously optimistic, I guess, just because everyone has been kind of doom and gloom about whether this will translate, and I. I want to believe so.

[B]

Well, I. I think the. I think that's okay. I think the flip side is that everyone is focusing on the negatives and. Or overly focusing on the negatives and not really coming to terms with what it looks like. If he can make these adjustments and he's a per. You know, he's a. He's a human being. He can change things about his swing. Now, there's risk associated with that, which is what these clubs care about. And I think it shows in the way that the. The signing ended up. But he can make these adjustments and. And honestly, he's probably better suited than a lot of guys who have come over to make these adjustments because he is only 25. Right. So I think we shouldn't preclude that, but we should also understand that there are a lot of risks kind of concomitant with needing to do that.

[C]

Yeah, I, you know, you could look at it if you're a pessimist and say, well, this is a league where people still prize contact and discourage extreme strikeouts. And the fact that he was still pretty extreme relative to the league, that that would be worrisome. You could also say, though, that he didn't really have to change over there with the pitching he was facing. It was working. At least in his most recent season. It was. It was working. And maybe if he goes to MLB and he knows that it won't work as well against the pitching that he's going to see in the sor of Velo that he'll be facing regularly, then maybe he will have to adapt and maybe he is well aware of that and maybe he will actually have the skills to it. It does give me some pause that it seems like the usual suspects for just high profile NPB players weren't really in on him or just weren't really big believers. But I'm holding out some hope. And you know, the White Sox, they're going to be kind of fun to watch. They're not going to be good yet, but they did bounce back from the low of 2024. And you wrote about them at some point in pretty optimistic terms. Joe. I remember, you know, when they were calling up some of the young guys and you look at the lineup and even if you don't believe that Colson Montgomery is going to repeat that performance long term, I guess he, he might be kind of a Murakami esque hitter. But you know, you have Kyle Thiel in that lineup and you have Edgar Caro up and you just have like a bunch of young guys who are showing up in a surprisingly solid staff. And I'm kind of liking the way things are shaping up for them and maybe I will eat my words and we've seen a impressive group of White Sox young talent fizzle before anyone expected in the not distant past. And presumably Luis Robert will be on the way sometime soon to some other team. But I'm kind of in on the White Sox at least the compelling product that they might put on the field next year.

[A]

Certainly a more watchable version of the team next year that should be even more, a little bit more watchable next year to cap Murakami. If his name was Mike Miller with these swing and miss rates, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. And the idea that he's going to come to the league that has optimized his pitchers for swing and miss and fix that particular problem in a way that turns him into all of the numbers I've heard so far from Oopsie and Daisy and all the production systems we're talking about. I'll take the under on every single one.

[C]

Okay. Right.

[A]

And that, and mind you, there's a lot of gap between under those numbers and still a viable major league player. I just, I think those numbers are really, really too high.

[C]

Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet on the signature significance of, of what he did when he was super young. But we will see.

[B]

You just lost a bet on the economy. You're going back to the well so quickly.

[A]

In fairness, he didn't lose it so much as Meg to wanted yeah, throwing.

[C]

Good fake money after bad here, I guess. Sunk cost. Anyway, I do. I worry about the future of. Of NPB a little bit. I've. I've mentioned this before, but when stars like Murakami are constantly coming over and then others are bypassing the league entirely, which is maybe more concerning because that was another recent development that a young, promising prospect over there, Gane Sato, he is skipping npb. He's a. A college pitcher who is projected to be one of the top picks in the NPB draft. Instead, he is transferring to Penn State and he is sitting out the upcoming college season and then plans to pitch for Penn State in 2027, after which he'll enter the MLB draft. Sort of. What? Rintaro Sasaki, previous top prospect in Japan. He did the same thing. He went to Stanford. He skipped the MPB draft. There's some precedent for this, but if this becomes more common and you're both losing the established superstars after several years in the league and then also missing out on the pipeline and the feeder system of the young guys who are just coming across when they are prospects, still, that's, that's kind of concerning. I mean, you know, you might take a global view and say, well, as long as the best baseball players are playing somewhere, then that's fine. But I do like the fact that there is a healthy, thriving baseball ecosystem in Japan with its own rich, storied history, and as we've seen in recent years, just an absolutely rabid fan base that just, you know, can't get enough of the game. And I, I don't want anything to happen to sort of SAP that enthusiasm, because I do think baseball's stronger when we have all these different baseball cultures that are kind of existing independently and then also at some point will maybe send their guys over here to mlb, but not before entertaining the home crowds for a while. So that would worry me a little bit if I were someone who was more invested in the future of Japanese baseball. But. But even to the degree that I am, I hope that it remains robust.

[A]

Would a worldwide draft eventually come to drafting Japanese kids?

[C]

Yeah, I'm sure that would be simple and not problematic in any way.

[A]

And sorry, we're a half hour in on one player. I shouldn't be introducing side quests.

[C]

Well, we just had a preliminary Murakami debate before the challenge system debates, but yeah, speaking of players coming over from Asia, I did want to pivot to the Padres here. The headline move for them was that they resigned Michael King. They also signed a Korean player Sung Moon Song. So King, in theory, he signed a three year contract for 75 million. That's the top line guaranteed figure. But it's a weird one where he probably will not actually be with the Padres for the duration because they're just opt outs after every season. And so this was sort of, you know, maybe buying low on, on him or when his value was depressed a little bit because of the injuries that he sustained this past year. And then as for Song, this is another bet on a KBO star, hoping that that bet will translate and that I'm less optimistic about because there's not as much of a track record of, of that actually happening. You know, we, we've talked about some Korean players and we, we talked about the Brave shortstop signing of Hassan Kim. You know, Hassan Kim's been a good valuable player, but not so much because of the bat. He's, he's held his own when healthy, but he's really a glove guy. So the flashy offensive stats that he put up in the kbo, which is more of an offensive league than NPB is these days, by far, those haven't really translated. So I guess my main takeaway here is that I'm pleased that the Padres are still able to retain players. I guess that's good players that they traded for and they don't immediately have to watch them walk away. So they, they still have some resources, evidently, even if the, the King deal is, is not quite as big a number as it appears to be in theory. So what do you think of these signings, Joe, and how the Padres set up?

[A]

Yeah, I agree with you. It's probably just a one year deal. They desperately needed to hold on to King though if you look at, you know, Darvish is going to be out for next year. Dylan C. Signed with the Blue Jays. I mean, they have trouble filling out that rotation. Looks like right now you've got at the back end Randy Vasquez, Kyle Hart. I'm forgetting somebody. They traded two starters to get Freddie for Mean, which is a choice. I think we just don't know what they are right now. The Padres for a five year period tried to play with the big boys and it paid off. They drew 3 million people to Petco the last three years. So even if they didn't necessarily win a World Series, I don't think you could. I think they're the argument for signing free agents for going out and taking big swings. But if the Seidler family, I mean the Seidler family, once Peter passed, it seemed to be unsure of what they want to do. And now they're looking to possibly sell the team. So certainly some uncertainty, but at least for 20, 26, I think any chance they had, they needed to bring in some starting pitcher, and this is probably as cheap an option as they were going to be able to get. This keeps them in the wild card mix. Craig, what was it down to? Maybe three games in August, September, when you guys were trying to hold them off?

[B]

Yeah, it was really. I mean, they had a series late in the season where this division was in the balance.

[A]

Yeah, I don't think that'll be the case next year, I don't think. I think the Padres are the third best team in the division at best. And, you know, you could probably squint and make a case for the Giants ahead of them as well. So I think we're talking about a team that's going to be in that wild card mix with, with the Reds and maybe the Pirates, the Mets, teams like that, as opposed to challenging for the division again. But, you know, as somebody who's, and I'm sure you guys have both been to the ballpark, that is a really great place to watch a game. It is a great crowd, It's a great environment. I don't need to sell anybody on San Diego, presumably. So I'm glad to see them extending this run because it is a fantastic place to watch a game. And certainly those Padres Dodgers games, I mean, over the last five years, they've just played some epic games down there, so extending this rivalry even one more year will be. Will be fun.

[B]

Yeah, I largely agree with that. I think it's just hard for me to, to get a grip on what the Padres are. They've been fairly consistent even after Peter Seidler passed away, but obviously have drawn back some. And I, I keep thinking at some point, this is the year they're going to have to switch gears and they just kind of don't really do that. But it's. Every year is kind of a little bit more diminished version of the year prior, and so at some point it's going to fall out. I mean, I, I think this is a good signing in terms of. I, I really like Michael King as a pitcher and they, they need him along with a healthy Joe Musgrove. And. But that's a lot of, that's a, It's a lot to gamble on. Right. Like, these guys have not been particularly healthy, obviously, and even if they are, you still have Randy Vasquez in this rotation somehow, who is Is I, I mean, just a living up front to fip. I think, like, I don't, I don't really understand how this is all supposed to work. They basically didn't have half a lineup much of last season, which is why they traded for o' Hearn and Loriano and for mean. They're. They're largely in that same situation again. And I don't know that, you know, for example, Song solves that to your point. I don't know that it's a bad signing necessarily. I think he'd be fine as a utility guy. He'd be an improvement over Jose iglesias, this in 2025 as a utility guy. But the KBO hitters have not translated. And if they have, they generally have not translated in their first season. Right. I mean, we just saw even Hison Kim for the Dodgers was not bad early on, but the book got out on him and he, he went from kind of a very Babbitt heavy.400 average to, to Anonymous. He couldn't. I was going to say get on the field.

[C]

Yeah, he ended up with a 95 WRC plus, which that'll play. But he had a 31% strikeout rate with a 4% walk rate and it took a 400 BABIP basically to keep those numbers respectable. So he's. Right now he's penciled in as the Dodgers starting second baseman on the roster resource depth chart. And yeah, if he's in a utility role, then that seems fine. But if you're counting on one of these guys to start, I would be wary.

[B]

Exactly. And. And I just. I don't know what the Padres plan is. And I guess that's just life under AJ Preller in a lot of ways. Because. Because they also have Nick Pavetta. But you're hearing about potentially trading him. Right. So it depends obviously what they would get back and what they would prioritize. But it's. It's almost like they don't really have a firm concept of what they want to be for next year, which is potentially fine. Their roster is in a very awkward spot, but it's hard to sell when you have kind of the tent poles of Machado and Tatis. And I don't just mean on production, but I mean on their books as well. So it's just a tricky spot to be in for them.

[A]

Yeah, you've got Bogarts and Darvish who are sucking down almost $50 billion and untradeable. And I don't think Machado is necessarily tradable. So I mean, do you want. If you want were to trade Fernando Tatis Jr. And an email from somebody last week, basically crafting some Tatis Jr. Trades. That's telling. That's just chasing everybody away for five years. I don't think they can realistically trade Tatis, and that's the rebuild move. But I agree with you. I think they're trapped by. And I keep coming back to the Bogarts deal, which even at the time we all kind of went, huh? And that's the one I think keeps them locked into this. We got to try to win now, but we don't have the resources or any longer, the farm system system to do it.

[C]

Yeah, I, I think the. The nice thing about it is that they did spend some money and, you know, they're kind of in that situation that the Twins were in where they're exploring a sale. And when the Twins were in that position, they didn't do anything. They just completely stood pat, never upgraded their roster, didn't bring guys back, didn't make moves at the deadline, and they just squandered the chances that they had. The Padres may also be exploring a sale, but it seems that that does not preclude them from making some moves, which it always seems to be. If you want to enrich the value of the assets that you're selling the franchise, then wouldn't you want not to tank it? Wouldn't you want not to drive it into the ground and. And just lower your attendance and your revenue and all the rest? So if they can at least keep up a credible attempt to contend while they're going through the motions of exploring a sale, then, well, that's better for Padres fans than it's been for Twins fans. And I, I don't have many concerns about King from a performance standpoint because he's been really good. Aside from late in the year when he maybe prematurely, he's not fully healthy. Yeah. Right. So if you assume that that wasn't the real King and that he'll be back to his usual self, he's been great. He's been, you know, a top of the rotation type guy when he's been healthy. So if, if he can have another 20, 24 season, then this is an absolute steal and he'll be back on the market next year. And, you know, the possibility that he won't have a 24, 24 season because he just won't be available is why he had to settle for a contract like this.

[B]

The only other thing I wanted to add on this is Just a little bit of appreciation for AJ Preller. I don't always agree with what he, what he's done. I don't know that I'm saying that he's one of the top GMs in the league or anything like that, but we see a lot of GMs willing to just take that five year punt. Right. And he has not done that so much, at least recently. Right. Like he's, he's put, put his foot on the accelerator quite a number of times over the last few years. And so I just, I appreciate in an era where I think these guys are paid a lot of money and are supposed to be really good at figuring out how to compete, they often remove themselves and their teams from the situation for an extended period of time. Predator does not do that. Right. He actually figures out he's figuring out in the midst of a sale and these kind of anchoring contracts how to compete with very limited budget. And maybe it's not going to work. And we can talk about kind of the hazard of the next few years beyond it, but between Pavetta last year and, and King this year, he's finding ways to, to keep his team at least in the wild card hunt. Again, this is probably not a division contender, but you know, he's trying, he's putting his, his talents towards something rather than just taking several steps back out of the spotlight and, and saying we'll see you in three, three to five years. And, and I appreciate that.

[C]

Yeah. Well, Preller probably doesn't have three to five years.

[B]

No, I mean he's not, he almost never has. But then he's still here, right? I mean, that's kind of the thing of it.

[C]

Who would have expected that he would last this long and go through this many managers and rebuilds and rosters and entire farm systems worth of prospects that he has traded. Speaking of trading prospects, let's talk trade here. Craig, you just wrote about an intra division swap between the Orioles and the Rays. The Orioles got some pitching. Meg and everyone else on the baseball Internet has been imploring the Orioles to acquire some pitching for quite a while now. I have joined her in that. And now they finally have acquired a pitcher. At least Shane Boz cost them four prospects and a draft pick. So since you have already published the transaction analysis, maybe you can and adapt that to podcast form.

[B]

Sure, yeah. I think this is both. It's an interesting move. I don't know that I love it. They definitely needed to get a pitcher in my view. And I think I'm probably a little bit of an outlier on this, but I think there's maybe too many similarities to me, to the pitcher they dealt away to get Taylor Ward for this Boss just through 166innings. So the biggest difference is that he's available and Grayson Rodriguez is not. But they've kind of between the trade deadline where they dealt away Ramon loriano and Ryan O'Hearn for six prospects and then traded Grayson Rodriguez for Taylor Ward and then traded five, well, four prospects in a draft pick for Shane Boss, they've done this, this little dance and I think they've moved forward and not insubstantially, but they've kind of paid a lot to do it. And I like Baz a lot. I've long been a fan of him. I loved him as a prospect, as a major leaguer. There's nothing he does exceptionally well. I'm not sure that he's a front of the rotation guy. I think he's a fine third starter, but I'm not also confident that he's going to throw 166 innings again next year. And they really do need the innings. I think they need to continue to fill out this rotation, ideally with someone at the top of the rotation. There are only. I don't. I guess from Valdez is the kind of the one guy who fits that. Maybe Imai, I guess could fit that, that role. Ranger Suarez kind of more in the. The good middle of the rotation profile to me. So I don't know. I, I think this is. Again, they, they continue to raise their floor, which they need to do, but they are going up against Boston which is improving themselves. It sounds like we'll get to that shortly. And, and Toronto continues to. Obviously they've added Dylan Cease. It sounds like they're in on Bregman. I don't know if they're still in on Boba Shet. So I don't know that it's kind of big enough steps forward, especially for the price that they're paying. I absolutely think these are improvements, but they're paying a lot for the amount that they're improving, in my view.

[C]

Yeah, it's. I feel like a broken record. It's just constantly like Orioles gotta get more pitching, gotta get more pitching. And now they did. And so I want to sort of slap him on the back and say, well done, you did it. But also you got to go get more pitching.

[B]

Yeah. Right. Please keep going though.

[C]

Yeah. It can't be done. Yeah. What do you think, Joe?

[A]

I think there's similarities between Boz and Rodriguez, the guy they were replacing, getting Boss to replace in that I think we all need to just update our priors. We've been talking about these guys forever and we think of them as, ooh, Grayson Rodriguez and ooh, Shane Boswell. Shane Boz is 27. He's thrown 80 innings in the majors once. He's got a 425 career ERA, 428 career fit again. He's one full season in the majors and that season he wasn't very good. As with Rodriguez, we kind of like we all went, oh, oh, Grayson Rodriguez, he was a top 10 prospect, right? But he's a guy who didn't pitch last year. And I just think with a lot of these guys, we kind of get caught up in what they once were for us and not look at what they are now, which is, you know, Shane Boss looks like a number three if he can stay on the mound, which he's done exactly once. And I don't mean to. I mean, I kind of dumped on Murakami and well, we get to the Red Sox, I'm not going to dump on a guy. I actually like that move, but I feel like we're just not. And maybe this is just the nature of pitching now. Maybe it's just too damn hard to find a guy who's been healthy and effective for three straight years. And that's. You just got to always be hoping that this is the year. The guy is either 130innings of good or 180innings of middling. And almost not expecting him to be 100 innings, eight innings worth of good. I remember a couple years back when Jacob deGrom signed, I pointed out that there's just never been a contract like this for a pitcher with a platform year like he'd had. He'd had like 100 innings in his platform year year. And it may just be now that teams are almost giving up on getting full time good starting pitchers and committing to resources, to guys like King who threw 70 or whatever was 80 innings last year, or, you know, Boss, who was very good in 80 innings two years ago and then not so good in 166 innings this year. I just, I think it's a weird time for pitching, which is really what I'm getting at.

[B]

Boss is also just a weird pitcher, right? Like, his ERA was obviously well over four. He gave up a ton of home runs obviously in the minor league park. So you can. I wrote this in ta but there's a lot of contradictions. In him. He. He had an 85 DRA minus last year, so you get 166 innings of 85 DRA minus. That's. That's almost a number two starter these days. Right. But the surf, the actual production obviously didn't reflect that. But maybe getting him out of a minor league ballpark where he gave up a ton of home runs would help him. Right. But also you can go deeper. You can go into his. His stuff. Pro ratings are very good. His, I think his stuff plus stuff is also very good as well across his five pitches. But also he doesn't even generate a 30% whiff rate on, on any one of his individual pitches. So there's like, he's. He's a kind of a walking contradiction in and of himself. And so I don't know how to feel confident about what he's going to give Baltimore next year. This isn't like when they acquired Corbin Burns, where it was like, okay, you know what to expect, according Burns and Corbin Burns delivered. Right. So I, I don't know. He's. He's just a tough one.

[C]

Yeah. If you look at the depth charts, projections for starting staffs at fan graphs, the Orioles, even with BOZ are number 19. So if you say, okay, Rogers and Radish will pick up where they left off last season and Boz will be as good as he's ever been and they'll all stay healthy. Okay, sure. Best case scenario, there's a decent ceiling here, and. And those aren't a bad three guys to go into a playoff series with. But. But what are the chances that everything works out perfectly with pitchers? So if you can add Framber or Ranger Suarez or maybe even Zach Gallen or am I or someone to that mix. Okay, then we're talking, you know, then maybe that looks like a rotation that could contend in the AL east, but I don't think it's quite there yet. It's. It's a start. They hope it'll be a lot of starts, and it's the right idea to trade some prospects to shore up a weakness while you're within your competitive window. So hopefully Michael has learned that lesson. And, you know, coming on the heels of the Alonzo signing and the Ward trade and Helsley and all the rest, you can't say that they haven't been active. You know, they have clearly turned over a new leaf compared to last winter.

[A]

But Elias is acting like a guy who's playing for his job.

[C]

Yes. And he should be.

[B]

It feels unfair, like you're saying Ben for years to be saying like, do more than you're. Do something. Like do more than you're doing. And then he does it. And at least for me, I'm kind of like. But not like that necessarily, you know, which is like completely unfair. But also, I kind of stand by it. And I would also add, you know, this, this trade they sent out Slater De Bruyne, and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing these names and Katy and Bodine and those are the 30th and 37th picks in the 2025 draft. And they sent a 20, I think the 33rd overall pick currently in the 2026 draft, plus Michael for it, who is kind of a breakout arm in their system.

[A]

System.

[B]

It's. This wasn't a light payment, right? This wasn't. This is a lot to give up in a lot of ways. And obviously, look, we don't know what's going to come of these guys. You can like or dislike their profiles. I think there are flaws in, in all of these guys. But to trade the, the three picks in the 30 to 40 range is, is a substantial price to pay.

[C]

Yep, you're almost there. One more move. Keep pushing. Don't stop now.

[A]

And do we like what the Rays have done on.

[C]

Well, yeah, we should talk about that. So I guess I didn't know whether to go to the Red Sox trade or the other Rays involved.

[A]

We're going to get to all 30 teams. This is going to be whatever the record is for fan graphs. We're breaking the effectively wild.

[B]

We're breaking the record.

[C]

Well, so you wrote about the three team trades, Joe, so I guess we can cover that kind of quickly because the headliners aren't in as big print as the ones we've been talking about or Wilson Contreras for that matter. But this was a complicated one. The Rays, the Astros, the Pirates, the big names, relatively speaking. Brandon Lau is going from the Rays to the Pirates along with Jake Mangum and Mason Montgomery, who is a favorite of Joshean. The Pirates are shipping out Mike Burroughs, who is, you know, mid to back rotation starter, controllable. He's going to Houston. And then there are prospects who are changing teams here. The, the Rays are getting a couple of good prospects from the Astros or at least what passes for prospects on the Astros these days. And then the Astros, yeah, they're getting burrows. There are a lot of moving pieces here. But I guess the main takeaway is that not very good hitters can still be big upgrades for the Pirates lineup.

[A]

Yeah, Brandon Lau would have been the second best hitter on their team last year and even in decline at second base, you know, whether he stays there, play some DH for them, it's going to help their lineup, their stuff. Still probably two hitters short, but hey, you've started the process and you didn't give up much. Maybe we can debate what Mike Burroughs is. I think He's a number three and he's a number three for $750,000 and that's valuable. But on the Pirates he actually probably would have four or five. Remember, they've got so much pitching established. Plus you've got Jarrett Jones coming back, you've got Chandler coming up. This to me, I don't think they gave up anything. I really don't think they gave up anything to get loud, to get Mangum, who's basically a fourth outfield. I'm curious to see how they deploy him with o', Neill, Cruz, because Mangum's a much better center fielder than Cruz. I'm a much better center fielder than Cruz. And you know, Montgomery, it's funny, they signed Gregory Soto right before they did this deal and I just think if you knew you were getting Mason Montgomery, there was really no reason to sign Soto. To me, Montgomery has, you know, he's not going to be grabbing crochet that you're going to put him back in the rotation. I don't think he's been a couple of years now removed from starting, but he's got a chance to be me. Just would have kind of come out of nowhere to be one of your electric left handed relievers. So I think they got three pieces who are among the, you know, Laos, probably one of the six best players on the team. Well, take the pitching staff into account. Maybe not that high. You know, Mangum's a good, a good player for them and you know, Montgomery could be one of the best relievers. I love the trade for them. I see it for the race. You know, obviously anytime the race can have an opportunity to spend less money, they'll do it. But you know, you kind of getting Milton and Breido again. Two of the three best prospects in the Astro system. Yay. Brito was a pop up guy, kind of came out of nowhere. He's only slightly bigger than your four year old Craig, but I mean the power arm picked up a lot of mph this year. Melton's probably just another. He's like a gambling replacement. He's younger, he's a fourth outfielder. He had an 81% ground ball rate, which I don't think I've ever seen on anywhere for any player, even a small sample. I think the bet on Brito is worth it. And then, like I say, for the Raid Astros, I just don't get it. It's a lot to pay for a cheap, controllable starter who doesn't have a lot of upside. I think Burroughs just doesn't have a high ceiling. He's not going to step up and make that jump to be the Valdez replacement for them. To me, it's another indication that the Astros would rather, rather trade too highly rated prospects in their own system for a in an expensive starter than go out and sign Mi gallon Valdez Suarez, one of those guys. They have definitely made the step that the Padres to go back to what Craig was saying earlier, haven't made, which is we're retrenching from a payroll standpoint and we'll make the baseball work around that.

[B]

I just think the Astros are kind of in a similar position for me to the Padres. Obviously, they've, they've had a little bit more success related to the division and playoffs in, in recent years, but I keep looking at them and wondering when they're going to throw it in reverse. And they don't seem to, but they're kind of just idling. And, and this move. Okay, I, I can. When this first came down, I kind of thought, oh, like, this is an arm the Astros can optimize in a way that the Pirates might not like. That's maybe not a bad get for them. They, they've already said they're going to give him a sinker kind of of the, the Hunter Brown treatment. I, I don't know that he has that kind of upside. At the same time, they don't really have a full rotation at all. Like Lance McCullers factors into their rotation right now, and you don't really want to be in a position where you're relying on him to be on the mound with any consistency. They keep just kind of losing pieces and I just wonder when the time comes that they're either going to put in, put it in reverse or, or at least give a nod to the fact that like, like there's, there's, there's a year beyond the next year and they don't seem to be doing that and it just seems like it's going to be crashing down. They also don't seem to be committing, you know, to your point about signing someone, like, am I? Or something like that, like they're not really going in on the current year either. They're just kind of moseying along and I, I don't know what the plan is. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. That's. That's kind of, to me, the most pressing question coming out of this. I understand it. From Pittsburgh side. I agree. I think they did pretty well. I don't know to what end. You know, what are they going to keep going? Like, they're not even a wild card contender to me at this point. And the Rays, this is what the race do. I mean, they're going to figure it out, and they're restocking and moving guys off their 40, man, whenever they can, and, and, you know, going from there. Brandon Lau could not have been more available for probably a year now. So they finally pulled the trigger, and I think they got a nice deal out of it. From their perspective, we'll. We'll see what they do, you know, in their lineup and in rotation. But I, I'm least concerned about them of the, of the three teams, even if I, if, if they're not getting any major leaguers back here.

[C]

All right. The last major move to discuss is the Wilson Contreras trade. And by the way, I should say that since we started recording, Jeff Passon reported that the White Sox have signed Sean Newcomb. So that happened there.

[A]

Now we have to go back.

[C]

That changes everything. Now let's revisit the entire sighting. Yeah. So Wilson Contreras goes to the Red Sox from St. Louis. So they recently synced up on the Sunny Gray trade, and I guess the Red Sox like that so much they went back for more and they plundered that Cardinals roster for one of its better hitters, Wilson Contreras for Hunter Dobbins and a couple of starting pitching prospects. Very amusing to me that after all the drama about Hunter Dobbins's dad and his grudge against the Yankees, which was seemingly some sort of fiction, now, Hunter Dobbins will not have to be part of the Yankees Red Sox rivalry anymore. But the Red Sox, crucially, did acquire a first baseman and one who can really rake. So this does not add to their collection of great gloves, but it does fill what was a glaring hole for them last year with a guy who's getting up there in years and is basically bat only, but it is a really solid bat. So this makes a ton of sense to me from their perspective. And clearly the Cardinals are just rebuilding and kind of casting away their veterans and getting what they can in prospects as Heimblum puts his stamp on the roster. And of course, you have written many a time about the stamp that is still on the Red Sox roster because of the work that Heim Blum did there before he was dismissed, which could maybe give Cardinals fans some hope that he'll be able to pull that off again. Another X Rays guy as well. So this seems to me to just be a big addition for Boston, and maybe that is obvious, but, Joe, do you have anything less obvious to say about it?

[A]

Yeah, I thought this could pick up for the Red Sox. Wilson. Wilson Contreras is just underrated. I mean, I. There was the whole controversy when he first signed with the Cardinals about, you know, they moved out from the catcher because the pitchers were complaining. And whining is really the word I would use. I don't think Wilson Contreras ever should have been moved out from beyond catching. I think the Red Sox should catch him 50 times next year, especially if that means getting Connor Wong off the roster. I think that this is the player he can be for them. And also that would create some opportunity for Tristan Castis to somehow get his job back. I think there are some moving parts there. The Red Sox still have to figure out. They still have that crowded outfield. They have to figure out whether Christian Campbell's going to come back and be the second baseman. There's a lot of moving parts there, but this trade alone, I think it fit what both teams were trying to do. But when you actually look at Contreras skill set, the contract, the fact that he adapted well to playing first base, this is a really good pickup for them. It's tough. The Red Sox were a playoff team last year. I don't think we think of them in those terms, but they made the playoffs last year. They're running back pretty much that entire roster, and now they've upgraded it with Contreras. I can't say I know a ton about the pitchers other than Dobbins. I'm not a prospect guy, and I feel like that's something I should say here. Craig was mentioning the prospects the Rays picked up in the Bosnia deal. I just don't have a great grip on the talent that the Red Sox traded here, other than Dobbins, who's, you know, back end starter. But I think they're better. I think they're better than they were six weeks ago. And what is a fairly crowded top of the AL East? If we had to pick today, I'd probably be picking them to win the division.

[B]

Yeah, I. I love this room. I'm, I'm actually in full agreement with, with Joe. I, I think I've been talking about the Red Sox potentially acquiring Wilson Contreras for a year now and, and I agree. I would catch him some. I, I was going to say probably like 30 games at least. But I, I very quickly. I fully agree with that. I think he's a great bat. He's had a number of injuries. They've all been kind of weird. Like they're, they're not the kind that you would necessarily think like, oh, this is going to happen again. I know he missed time with like a broken wrist when he, when he was catching. He got hit by a, a bat back there. I think he broke his arm this year getting hit by a pitch or something like that. But yeah, I, I love this. He's a right handed bat. They're very lefty heavy at the top of their lineup. He's a right handed bat that you can pick put right in there. I don't know, you know exactly how he's going to translate to Fenway. It's obviously a quirky park, but I, I think he has the kind of swing that, that should translate basically anywhere. And yeah, he was I think something around a scratch defender at first base. So if you're, if you are just going to keep him there, he's an upgrade over Casas. I don't know what I, you know, I still kind of like Casas but he wasn't good and then he was hurt and he's been hurt a lot. So I think this makes a lot of sense and I thought, yeah, I think it makes sense for St. Louis as well. I like, I really liked. I think it's Joyker, I might be wrong on that, but I think it's Joker Fajardo. He's got a high velocity fastball. It doesn't have great shape but it's two secondaries that are really good. You could potentially see if you can, can get to work on the fat on the fastball shape issue and you could have a breakout guy in that mold. And they need guys to soak up innings. Obviously they traded Gray. I, they, they just need guys who are going to be back end guys who to get through a season. So I think Dobbins offers at least that if not a little more. Makes a lot of sense for both sides.

[C]

Yeah. And you know, this also makes me just remember how wild that transition to St. Louis was for Contreras. And we talked about it a ton at the time, but there was it was just Yadi or Molina broke people's brains. And I, I, I guess it, you know, he was a great defensive catcher, but you had to sign Wilson Conteris with the expectation that he wasn't going to be Yachty back there, but he was going to be serviceable. And from all appearances he was. But there just seemed to be a mass revolt among Cardinals pitchers and they just could not acclimate to anyone other than Yachty back there. And I think prematurely moved him off that position and, you know, hurt his feelings seemingly at the time and he soldiered on. I, I gave him credit for how he handled the, that I don't know, maybe it's, it's too late for him to strap on the chest protector at this point, but I think he certainly could have held his own at that position for longer than they let him. And, and the bat was a big addition back there especially, but good enough to play at first base. And that was just such a glaring need for the Red Sox. That, that's huge. And I, I gotta think, you know, watching what Toronto and Boston and Baltimore have done this offseason, Yankees fans gotta be getting antsy, right? I mean, not that that they're ever otherwise, but they've done so little. They had Trent Grisham take the qualifying offer and they have resigned Ryan Yarborough, Paul Blackburn and Ahmed Rosario. That is essentially the sum total of major league moves that the Yankees have made. And there's plenty of off season left, but they gotta keep pace. You know, it's, maybe they, they didn't have as much to do. Maybe they've got Garrett Cole coming back, but boy, they've just sat out this offseason, essentially.

[A]

I've made this point in other off seasons and you know, fans always want their team to go out and do stuff, but sometimes the market doesn't fit what you need. There's just no good place to spend money. And I think the Yankees might be there right now. They could sign Kyle Tucker because Kyle Tucker fits everywhere. But you've already got Judge as a Corner outfielder for 40 million a year. I think you'd have to move Tucker to left. If you move Tucker to left. Okay, now you've still got Grisham. You've got Jason and Dominguez who really should go back to center. You've got Stanton, who's got, then is locked into dh, which he should be, but it's a roster building issue. There's just not what the Yankees really need. I guess if I was going to say you know, what do they really need? They've got, they retain McMahon, so they've got a third baseman, they've got Jazz at second. Yankee fans are really mad at Anthony Volpe who I think just played hurt all last year and should just be left alone at shortstop. There's just not a lot for the Yankees too. You go out and sign Valdez, but do you really want a third, very expensive left handed starter at the top of your rotation? It's just a bad market for the what the Yankees need to do.

[C]

Okay, I'm not going to make you discuss Matt Strom. He was traded. Yeah, who doesn't? Matt Strom? Yeah, he's been excellent for the Phillies and also you know, we've ragged on Phillies players recently. So I'll say Matt Strom seems to be a level headed fellow. And I remember back a couple years ago and we were reminded by a listener, Katie Davenport, who emailed us Strom objected to MLB teams extending alcohol sales and going beyond the traditional seventh inning cutoff because that was something that teams were interested in doing in the pitch clock ERA because not as much time to go get concessions. And he made the point that well, this seems like the opposite of what you should do. If you have a faster paced game that the game's going to be over more quickly, then shouldn't you actually cut off everyone sooner so that they can sober up and drive home first? So you know, that was sort of a good point. In contrast to whatever alternative treatments Bryce Harper is pursuing these days. And Strom, he was just really effective for them. He's going to the Royals for Jonathan Bolen. That's, it's kind of a rare, I guess reliever for reliever trade. I said I wasn't going to make you talk about it. So I'm actually not unless you have pressing Matt Strom thoughts.

[A]

Well, he's a spare room either. Spare bowling spare.

[C]

I get it.

[A]

Craig, was it one of your staff? I think it was one of your guys. I saw, I retweeted on Blue Sky. Okay, that's a weird phrase. It's talked about bowling like throwing a lot of sliders and actually having pretty good swing and miss. I thought it was one of your guys.

[B]

His, his fastball has, has a lot of. I think he had a 40% on his fastball and, and he throws that a lot. I, he, he's certainly interesting, right? I mean the, the, they're going to get a lot of control but he's 29 already. But this is, this is kind of Modern baseball, right, is that you're trading for specific attributes that these guys have. And so the Phillies get a lot of control. I. I don't think five. We talk about this a lot on five and die. But like, five years of control over reliever is nothing. Like, you don't. You're not getting five. Right. I remember when the Yankees traded for Scott Frost, it was like, oh, he's been really good. And they get five years. Well, how's it that going? You go back to anyone, basically, for five years as a reliever, you're not getting actual, you know, five actual years out of them. Either good years or they get hurt or, you know, whatever. This is just how relievers are these days.

[A]

Can I make the point that I feel that way about all pitchers? I don't think you're getting five years.

[B]

But yeah, I think Boland, I think this is. Obviously there was some, A little bit of discord or whatever going on, disagreement with the clubhouse and whatever was going on. Strom is really good. There are some markers, you know, could see that maybe not as good as. As he was at his peak. And so they're getting out from that early and they pick up a guy with some upside in Boland with a fastball that guys just don't see if you can teach him a breaking ball or a better breaking ball. And that's, that's what they've been able to do. In a number of cases, you, you know, you might really have something. They've. They've gotten really good years out of guys you wouldn't expect. You know, Tanner Banks was very good last year, and, and Tanner Banks was kind of an afterthought for. For several years. So. So at this point, I kind of trust the Phillies and their ability to analyze that the way that they've done. It's surprising because they had obviously one of the most implosion heavy bullpens for an extended run, but they've been pretty good for the last few years.

[C]

And the last move, which we already kind of talked about, the circumstances that contributed to it, was the latest sign of the Mets. Mets Metzedis, as Michael Bauman has labeled it. They've lost a lot of guys and now they have lost Jeff McNeil, which, unlike some of the other departures, was not really a surprise because once they acquired Marcus Semian, and given the clubhouse issues and the performance issues for McNeil, I'm pretty sure I said, when we talked about the Semian and nimmo trades, that McNeil's days on the roster seemed to be limited, but they have now shipped him out to the a's for a 17 year old Dominican Summer league pitcher. So you know, total lottery tickets, ticket there. They just kind of wanted to clear space, clear payroll room, etc. So what is your, your great takeaway if you have one from the Mets turning over a large portion of their roster here?

[A]

Joe I get to use the phrase baseball zygote which is what I, I love these. These guys are in the dsl. I'm like you don't know what you're getting. They're just baseball zygotes. But I'll be the 900th person to mention that McNeil tried to hit the ball ball harder and pull it more in the air in recent years. A play that might work really well in Sacramento. The A's might get a decent amount of value for this. It does seem to me too that David Sterns Mets fans are obviously upset. They've lost a lot of players that they've been rooting for for quite some time. David Stern seems to be making a very clear statement about what he thought about that core. The core that he inherited. You know, it's his, it's going to be his team now for better or for worse, these are now the David Stern Mets.

[C]

David Stern Mets yeah, I don't think Francisco Lindor will Ms. McNeil. Seemed like not a lot of love lost there. So maybe there's a, a clubhouse benefit too. But there are probably more Mets moves to be made. But we did a whole stat blast recently about the precedent for turning over your roster, losing this amount of war produced for your team and long tenured players in a single off season. And, and it has happened before. It's not as uncommon as it seems but it's 1914 as yeah, I think they came up but it's, it's jarring for fans obviously when that many familiar faces get shipped out or leave of their own accord in quick succession like that.

[A]

You win and they'll be fine.

[C]

Yes, exactly. It changes the team identity. But if the identity goes from team that collapsed to team that actually wins and makes the playoffs, then I think you'll learn to love the new guys pretty soon. Okay. Okay. Did want to just note did you guys see the report at the Athletic by Evan Drelick and Zach Meisel about MLB having warned Emmanuel Classe about breaking the cell phone rules during games prior to his being caught here? Joe, we, we both wrote about this, but this was another little wrinkle that evidently the Players association has protested some of the constraints on players being able to use their phones in game. And so post sign stealing, if we can safely say that we are post sign stealing and you never know because it, it always comes back like the killer in a slasher film. But if it's gone thanks to Pitchcom, etc now they've kind of loosened the restrictions and yes they have monitors and they have people roaming around but you know, they can't be everywhere at all times. And also are they actually going to get on every player because they're seemingly sending a quick text which is probably innocuous in all cases, but does seem as if class A was warned at some point that this behavior of his was detected but obviously not prevented. So that was interesting. Doesn't make MLB look any better, I guess. You know, the Players association not entirely innocent here either. And it, it seems like the sources cited in this piece just kind of threw up their hands and said well what are you going to do if, if guys want to send a text, they're going to, you know, they'll stash a second phone in the bathroom or something. And, and I guess you could be kind of fatalistic about it or you could, as other people mentioned, you know, there's precedent like you, you go to a Bob Dylan concert and you have to put your phone in a bag for a few hours, right. And if you're a player, maybe you're, you're paid well enough to, to do that because ostensibly you're not supposed to be using it anyway for the, that small portion of your day. So I do wonder whether this coming to light and the fallout from that scandal will lead to some sort of crackdown here. Even if it's just for show, just for appearances sake. Because not great that they evidently sort of saw him doing this but didn't take any steps to, to stop him.

[A]

I don't know how realistically, how realistic it is to take these guys phones away. I mean, I know where Ben, you, you live in the city and there's a movement to keep not let kids have phones in schools, which is something I actually agree with. My daughter doesn't go to school in the city. But Sloan's about to start, I'd imagine. I don't think you can force that for adults in a major league clubhouse. And not least because these guys put in long days. It's not like they're getting there at 6:30, putting the uniform on and playing baseball for three hours, two and a half hours. They are there at 11 or whatever. Or 12 to kind of do their workout and hang out. You're just not to going. Going to be able to keep phones out of the clubhouse for 10 hours a day. Could you have a pouch system? Doesn't seem realistic. As we note. It's not like these guys can't buy a second phone. They make pretty good money. It's not a problem. You can reasonably police at the level of 26 guys across 30 teams for eight hours a day. Wasn't the initial real impetus for that rule somebody using Instagram during a game?

[C]

That has happened too. Yeah. So there was.

[B]

Wasn't someone. Was it Sandoval in the Red Sox? Pablo Sandoval used it like in the bathroom mid game, Something like that.

[C]

Yeah, I, that might have been it. Yeah. And it was something kind of embarrassing, right? Because it was like. Yeah, it was Pablo Sandoval. It was like he was. Yeah. Like in, like in women's photos on Instagram.

[A]

Oh, like when they cruised like a porn site or something. Like something.

[C]

Yeah. Fat finger. Purely an accident, I'm sure. Yes. So that has happened. You know, that's much more innocent, I guess, ultimately. But it does feel like, you know, if you're trying to cut this off and, and curtail this behavior by, you know, taking their phones away like their kids, you're playing whack a mole at that point. And it feels better to address it by sort of stemming the problem at the source and removing the incentive to do this.

[B]

Feels like treating a symptom and like not even actually treating it. Feels like pretending to treat a symptom.

[A]

You're going to tell me MLB's going to treat a system symptom and not address the actual problem? Come on, guys, Come on. That wouldn't pass the Barry Weiss test. Come on.

[C]

Well, I guess that's actually a pretty decent segue to why I ostensibly brought you on here to talk about whether this is actually treating a symptom or the cause by implementing a challenge system.

[A]

Folks, this might be a good time to get a drink, get some food.

[C]

Guessing we won't go quite as long on the actual debate here. The, the main topic, as we did on the transactions, because teams have been busy, they've been doing a lot of last minute Christmas shopping, so what can we do? But I am interested in hearing your perspectives on this because they do differ somewhat from mine and, and Meg's. I mean, you know, we are pretty pro challenge system, but partly largely because we're just kind of pro catcher defense and catcher framing, which is Anathema to Joe. And so we, we have different philosophies on that. And, you know, I see some of the same benefits that Craig does. So I guess I'll sort of recuse myself a little bit. I'll. I'll be more of the. The moderator kind of teeing you up to explain your positions here. Maybe, Joe, you can start and you can explain, I. I guess both your opposition to stealing strikes, as you sometimes refer to it, and then you know, what you want the actual recourse to be and why this does not address the problems that you see with pitch calling.

[A]

There are two primary statements that I use to kind of frame my position here. The first is this. Pitchers should be called based on where they cross the plate, not what happens after that. That has long been my main opposition to catch pitcher frame to the whole framing debate. The pitch should be called based on where it crosses the plate. And one of the things that framing statistics have revealed is that that's not the. The case. The catcher. The pitchers are being called based on what the catcher does, and that's unfair to the hitter who cannot possibly have that information. That's one. The second is little more pithy. I think umpires are calling catches. An ABS system calls pitches. And again, I go back to the framing stats. We know without a doubt that umpires aren't actually calling the pitches. They're calling the catches. They're calling the receiving.

[B]

They're calling the.

[A]

What the catcher does with the pitch. And I think both of those things are bad for the game. They're bad for hitters. They contribute to the imbalance rate we have right now in a league that's hitting.245 with the imbalance between the pitchers and the hitters. So fundamentally, I think the fact that framing exists at all, and of course, we only had the technology to fix this in fairly recent history. In 1987, we couldn't have done anything about this, but now we can do something about it. We can ensure sure that pitchers are called based on where they cross the plate. And that's what I want to get to. I want pitches to be called based on where they cross the plate.

[C]

Okay, well, you make it sound so reasonable. Craig.

[A]

We're done. Good talking to you guys. Happy holidays.

[C]

That's it. I don't know if you want to rebut Joe's points or just express your own position in sort of an opening statement for our challenge system. Challenge here.

[B]

I don't want to rebut those because I largely agree and I Largely agree with, with Joe on, on a lot of this stuff. I'm. I'm just a little more unsure that we want the ultimate consequences of a fully automated zone at all times. And I think it is extremely frustrating to watch umpires screw up obvious calls or important calls or the nexus of the two of those things. And look, I think it changed. I think you can go back to the Yankees, Dodgers World Series and I think it was a strike to Glabor Torres, right? I think that was called a strike and wasn't and it was exceedingly consequential. I think in both in the game and I think you could argue in the course of the series, fastball up.

[A]

That was either just clipped the top of the zone or I don't think.

[B]

It just clipped it. I don't think it was close really.

[A]

Hey, you're the Dodger fan.

[B]

No, no, I'm saying I think it was a ball and they called a it strike. And I don't think it was really honestly that close. I also think we can. I guess my view is less of. It's more about what we actually want out of the sport and the game overall. And my view is not. It used to be that I want every call to be correct and now it's more that I want everyone to agree on the call, whatever it is, and move on almost as quickly as possible. I think there are, are damaging aspects to, you know, replay. I really wanted replay in general and it has not gone how I wanted it to. And I've kind of tried to take that into account when I look towards other, you know, technological adjustments towards getting every call right. I think automatic zones aren't going to be burdened with kind of the, the time wasting that we get out of other replay. It's fairly instantaneous. But I also think umpires do a number of important things in terms of controlling the pace of the game in non close games. And I understand if people disagree with the kind of the value of this relative to just getting the calls right in the most important moments. But I also think that's why the challenge system is kind of a compelling half measure in this case. It absolutely is a half measure. I think they often don't work and I am Tobias Funke saying, you know, maybe it, maybe it can work for us in this case because it allows, you know, I think the 30 strike or the O2 ball or whatever, it kind of gives us more opportunity to get players to put the ball in play in certain situations. And I think overall that's to the game's benefit. I'm not saying this is the most important thing in general, but I think things like that, the way that they control pace of game and, and kind of act as a kind of rubber band effect in certain situations is actually a good thing, even if it is not the fairest thing.

[C]

Yeah, I've made that point too. I do think that there will be some sort of unintended consequence there. And yes, it seems completely ridiculous that the zone is a different size and shape on 02 and 3O. The plate has not changed, it has not shrunk or expanded. It seems unfair. I think the effects of the unfairness are mitigated a bit by the fact that everyone involved knows the drill and so they know that it expands and contracts in that way and they can plan for that. And maybe you say, well, they shouldn't have to, and that's reasonable, I think. But, but I'm with you, Craig, that I do think there will be a real effect there because, I mean, you've written about how when you get to two strikes these days, Joe, or you get down, oh, two, it's over, you know, and, and that's even with the advantage of, of the strike zone shrinking to benefit the batter who's down. And so it is this rubber band effect. It's essentially subconsciously or otherwise, the umpire just extending a helping hand to the party that is currently at a disadvantage in that plate appearance. And I think we would see faster exits essentially. You know, once you fall behind in the count, whether you're the pitcher or the hitter, you're going to have a lot fewer comebacks in the count, essentially. And, and comebacks in a plate appearance, I think are, are sort of exciting too. We, we don't tend to think of comebacks on a plate appearance level. It's more of a full game thing. But I think it, it does happen on that micro level too. And that, that would have some effect just on how watchable a plate appearance is. You know, whether you're still kind of glued to the screen when a guy's down 1, 2 or 02. And I think the league wide splits will probably reflect that. I'm not saying that's a deal breaker or that's, that's the reason why you can't make a change. But if you went to full abs, I do think that would make a meaningful difference.

[A]

I disagree that the strike zone should change on 3002. I don't expect to convince you guys of that. But let me ask you this. On Balance. Do you think the current model where umpires are largely calling pitches based on what the catcher does versus calling the rulebook strike zone, which is what an ABS system would be, adds or subtracts offense from the league?

[C]

I do think it subtracts.

[A]

Okay, so let me do. I'm not trying to got you here, but so you guys, the argument you're making then this is really more, Ben, is that by, you know, calling the 30 auto strike or calling the 202 auto ball will help put offense back in the game, put balls and play back in the game. My argument is consistent with that. My argument is that if you were to call a consistent, consistent rulebook strikes. I want to make a point here that I'm largely talking about width. My issue is almost entirely with the width of the plate with pitches being called strikes that are not designed to be hittable by the rules of baseball that are an inch, 2 inches off the plate. I think that if you call a rulebook width of the plate, which is what the system is largely designed to do, you would put offense back in the game. Because so much of pitching right now is getting ahead in the catch out and then exploiting this massive hole in the game where the hitter has to cover an 1819 inch plate when pitchers just can have. So their stuff is so good now that hitters are dealing with the velocity, they're dealing with the spin, and now they're dealing with having all this surface area. I am 110% convinced that if you simply called a rulebook strike zone an ABS strike zone the entire time, you would add balls in play and you would add offense back into the game, not just because of the strike zone itself, but because of the decision tree you would create for pitchers. I think it would force pitchers to value control and command. I'm not saying everybody's going to be Jim Cox, but I'm saying right now pitchers can just value stuff above all else and exploit this hole in the game. Whereas if they had to throw the ball over the plate more, we would have a more entertaining winning game.

[C]

I'm, I'm with you. I think you're right. I think it would benefit hitters and I am generally in favor of boosting offense a little bit and, and giving hitters more of an edge because goodness knows they need it. And I've even advocated for certain changes that might help them. I guess with the, the expanding and contracting strike zone, it's, it's not even so much that I think it will suppress offense overall as as just like, like might make each individual plate appearance a little less entertaining, which is kind of tough to quantify. But I, I just, I think they.

[A]

Won'T get to 3, 0 and 02 as often.

[C]

Maybe. Maybe so. And yeah, and they'll know, of course, that they can't count on the zone benefiting them if they get down. Yeah. So there it's, it's tough because you, you know, you could kind of run this experiment in your mind, but then humans are involved. There is still a human element, even if you are removing some of the human element of umpiring. And so players adapt. Yeah.

[A]

The other thing is we center the umpires in this conversation way too much. We should center the players. The players and the ball, if you will. I think the umpires really almost be a non factor in this. I mean, talk about, you know, people talk about the human element for as long as I've been alive. You know, the players are human too.

[C]

Yeah. Oh, that's true. And they're the ones that we're actually, except for Ohtani. And the players are the humans that we're most interested in seeing. And in fact, when we see too much of the umpires, then it's an ump show and everyone gets upset about it. So it's, it's true. I do think it would benefit the offense. I also think that based on what we've seen in the minors, a lot of that would come in the form of walks, at least in the short term, which is true.

[A]

There's going to be a transition period. There will be no question.

[C]

Right. And maybe there will be an acclimation in the short term. I think there will be more walks and, you know, you'll take offense wherever you can get it, I guess, if you're a team. But from a spectator perspective, maybe that's not quite as compelling as if you're suddenly seeing strikeout rates plunge. And, you know, batting averages go way up. So it just be in the form.

[A]

Of free passes if it create, if it creates 1933. Is that really that under. Not unentertaining. That's almost a word.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, maybe it's better than the league batting.240 and, and not having any of the secondary skills that sort of prop up that line depending on whether the ball is dead that season or not.

[B]

So just a couple notes. One, I, I agree that, that it would improve offense and I think it would mostly be through walks early. I also do think pitchers would adapt in ways that would exploit the way that whatever the Zone. Zone ends up being. I, I don't know that it's calling the rulebook zone. Right. The rulebook zone is what the umpire, it's the way the strike zone is written is, it's what the umpire calls based on some very vague parameters generally speaking. Right. Especially on north to south. And I understand you're talking, talking the width of the zone, but I, I also would point out that like the way the ABS works is hanging a box in the middle of the plate. It's not when it crosses the plate, it's the middle of the plate. Right, right. And that's fine if everyone agrees with it, but it's not traditionally what we've talked about of like, it's, it's not that 3D box that sometimes ESPN shows after a pitch or whatever where it's like the entire plate raised up in, in a three dimensional shape and if the, if the ball clips a part of it, that's not the way that ABS works and maybe that's for the better. Maybe it's, it's not. I don't know. But I just think we should be clear on that.

[A]

Right, but it's also not the way umpire.

[B]

Sure. No, no.

[A]

The idea that the umpires. I agree the ball is over the plate for 6, 1000th of a second. There's not a, there's not a human being alive that can discern whether it clip the front or the back for sure.

[B]

And I also just would say like, I don't know that I agree that, that it would prioritize command over stuff because if you have to pitch, if you're being forced into the zone, which is essentially what you're talking about there, you have to have stuff to live in the zone. You, you can't just do it on, on command because hitters are going to punish you in, in the areas that they can reach. And I think you're right that they're responsible for too much, too much plate right now or, or plate and then some. Right. But, but if you're forcing pitchers back in the zone, I think what you're incentivizing is the kind of stuff that can survive it. And so I think you're going to see more, you know, and, and the, ultimately the difference between a ball a quarter inch off the plate and a ball a foot off the plate is, is nothing. Right. I think you're actually incentivizing pitchers who don't have command because when they get it over the plate is successful and when it's not over the plate because, because you're talking about a, an automatic system. No matter how little you miss by, it's a miss. And I think I, again, I think this would be good for offense and that, that's, that's fine if that's what you want. I'm. I'm not saying one way or the other, but the way that these. Max Muncie is never going to swing at a ball out of the zone. Once he learns an automated strike zone, right. He's going to know, you know, these guys generally are going to know exactly where it is and are going to be able to have some of them. The. What you know now would we would call like the ballsiest takes you've ever seen. Because they know. Some of these guys just know the zone zone that well. And I don't. Again, if that's fine with everybody, that's fine with me. But I think I, I just don't know that people tend to think through the second and third order effects of, of. Of how all this works. I also do think in the, in the areas that the ball can clip, you know, the smallest amount of zone possible in the, in the corners and things like that, you're gonna see certain pitchers over time. I don't think it's going to happen early on on be able to take advantage of that. And there are going to be. Again, this is all about responding to responses and things like that. But, but I don't know how. And I don't mean you on this, Joe. I think you have thought about it quite a bit. But I don't know that generally when I see this, talked about that, that people are thinking of things like that. And just lastly, in terms of what the zone is and the automated zone and how it's called, we've actually seen. They went and implemented what you might conceive of the rulebook zone very early on in this process in the Miners, and it was a mess. Everyone hated it. Pitchers didn't like it, hitters didn't like it. And they've been slowly adapting it to the way that current umpires call the zone, which I think is both reasonable and also pretty funny if you're trying to get away from how umpires call the zone, you know what I mean? So I don't know. I think there's a lot of.

[A]

Of.

[B]

There are a lot of levers here in the, in this discussion. And ultimately it depends. I end up kind of looking at it more of like an aesthetic level and I think about it a lot. Like I'm very philosophically against restricting the shift. Right. And I think you were the same.

[C]

I don't remember you were all aligned on that one.

[B]

I'm extremely philosophically against it. I don't, I think teams should be able to position guys how and where they want to, to, to. To play the best defense. I also, when this came down I kind of said like, I don't know that I'm going to mind it that much aesthetically in my, in my day to day experience. I'm not going to regret not seeing a guy, you know, in, in between, in short right field or whatever. And, and largely I don't, I don't mind this the, the way it's, it's played out. I don't agree with it philosophically, but I think it's generally fine. I don't know that I agree philosophically with the idea that we should, philosophically I think every call should be right. I also think this might actually be a very livable half measure as it.

[A]

Plays out a lot to get to there. But I think the one thing that if I want to focus on. You talk about pitchers exploiting clipping the edge of the zone. If the pitch is a strike, it's a strike. And I'd much rather see pitchers exploit clipping the edge of the zone then pitchers exploit 2 inches outside the zone. I'm fine. I mean if the pitch is a strike, it's a strike. And hitters guys have been dotting the corners. It's dotting not the corners that drives me nuts. So let's make the game better. And again I really do go back to the gap between pitchers and hitters right now. One of the secondary effects I'm trying for here is to say I think the game would be better with an automated zone. And you get to the point like they've been tweaking the automated zone for years now to make it, you know, quote, more like the umpires call it. However we want to do it. If we want to say let's use the strike zone to build the game that we want to see. And this gets into. You guys point about 3.0 and 02 and I understand that, but I just think if we can. There's no way to talk about this without talking about making life harder for pitchers. And it sounds like you're biased against pitchers, but I approach this from the standpoint of the guy sitting in section 320 pitch framing is. It's just completely. It doesn't exist if you're sitting there. But you know what does exist, a double. What does exist is a ground ball. What does exist are the balls in play. And I want to try to tweak, use this system to get the calls right. But the more I think about this, I want to use it to make the game look more like baseball, and I really do believe that. I agree with you guys. The walk rate would spike initially, just as it has in the month miners, but I think over time, it would force more actual hittable pitches to be thrown and we would end up with more balls in play and a more entertaining game for the guy in 323.

[C]

Yeah, and I'll say, as the framing fan, it's a niche interest and I acknowledge that. And there are many more people who are.

[A]

It's a fetish.

[C]

You could call it a framing fetish.

[B]

I'll.

[C]

I'll acknowledge that. But, yeah, it's a vanishingly small percentage of people who pay attention to that or care one way or another compared to the people who care about getting the call, quote, unquote, correct. And I acknowledge that. I'll even say that, aesthetically speaking, I don't find framing as pleasing these days.

[A]

Well, I was going to say when you first started talking about framing, and I want to say, what was it? Fast, or I'm going to forget the gentleman who originally did the research back in like 2008, 2009, there were a lot of.

[C]

Yeah, there were. Dan Turkenkopf was involved. Mike Fast, Max Markey.

[A]

That's the name I keep forgetting.

[C]

Yeah, there were others. And I found out about it when I was an intern with the Yankees before it even really became publicly widely known. And so part of my attraction to it was just. Just that it was the cool thing that, you know, was the, the new hotness in, in sabermetric circles. And we felt smart and, hey, we learned something about the game. And it was so, so eye opening.

[A]

But I think it was more of an art and more of a skill. And now it's just a bunch of guys yanking every single.

[C]

I agree. And, and it's odd because when I was writing about that weekly for a while, I. I always made the point that it's not yanking, that yanking is bad, actually, because yanking is obvious and that draws the umpire's attention to it. And what you really want is the subtle, barely perceptible movement of a Jose Molina. And that's, that's poetry to watch. Jose Molina. If you ever just settle down, this is where we get into fetish territory. But, yeah, if you can cue up a Montage of Jose Molina frames for me. I'll watch that all day out here.

[A]

Writing Jose Molina fic.

[C]

I mean, I've considered naming a child after Molina. If I were to have another, but. And it wouldn't be the Molina that everyone expected, but. But the only one who's been a guest on this podcast, in fact, of the other more famous Molinas, but they don't look like that anymore. And, and evidently it works. Somewhat to my disappointment that, that it's. That the wool is pulled over umpire's eyes even when the movements are so demonstrative. And so that has sapped some of the appeal for me. I think most people at any given time are watching the game from the center field camera, so you can see that you're not the guy in section 3 23. Although, you know, but I do think.

[A]

Baseball should, should do more for the guy, for the people.

[B]

I agree with that.

[C]

And I do think most people would rather see balls in play than a, a sweet perfect frame. And I, I just think, you know, there are some cases where philosophically the idea of just getting the calls right, I mean, that sounds fair to me. I think there are some cases where my philosophical inclination is one thing, and then in practice I see something else. And I think, think this, this actually is more entertaining, even if it's sort of inconsistent, even if it seems unfair to some degree. Now, you know, one reason why framing doesn't bother me the way it bothers you is that that is still a player having an effect. It's not the umpire screwing up. Now, the umpire screw up sometimes too, to be clear. But when it is the, the player having that impact, you know, it's not just an umpire seeing it wrong and, and calling a fairball foul or something. There's a player's perceptible impact there.

[A]

Framing stats. Framing stats are umpire stats. I'm just not going to move off.

[C]

Well, I. It's a bit of both, obviously, but, you know, clearly there's some signal there that it's, it's persistent for players.

[B]

We know, like, some umpires get fooled more than others. Right. So, like there h. There has to be.

[A]

And they, and they have jobs for life, so I guess it doesn't matter.

[C]

Yeah, and it's something that, you know, if, if you are aware that there's a certain umpire with certain traits back there or a certain catcher with certain traits, then you should study the scouting report and adjust accordingly.

[A]

Yeah, but this is where it gets into like you're, you're praising flopping yeah.

[C]

Well, yeah, we've had this conversation.

[A]

I don't think framing is, I don't think framing is cheating. I don't think framing. I kind of, I kind of don't even really think it's flopping. But once you start talking about exploiting the umpire, is that really why you're going to a baseball game?

[C]

No. Yeah, I see what you're saying. And I do think though that there's kind of a metagame aspect to these things that is, that is important.

[B]

One thing I've been thinking about is, is like these balls on the, on the edge that in a lot of. Because we have different umpires calling their, their own zone or their interpretation of, of the rulebook zone or whatever, right? We have balls that we'll talk about are 50, 50 balls, right, that are on, they're, they're in the, the, what are you called, the shadow zone, right, or, or whatever. I, I think for my entertainment value, I think it's good that we don't know for certain whether some of those balls are, are balls or strikes. Like, I think the certainty of knowing whether a ball, you know, an eighth of an inch inch off the plate is, is a ball versus usually is a ball, but sometimes a strike. Like, I think that, that randomness is something that we actually as fans do seek in, in our sports. Because if it, if it just went how we know and I under. And again, this is just a philosophical kind of like what you want out of the game. And I think people can reasonably differ. I don't think people who disagree with me on this are wrong. But I think as I've kind of been reflect reflecting on what I want, I think this idea of a 50, 50 ball or a ball, even if you coded it into the system, I would be happier than, than saying like anything that like just use again. I've been advocating for this, this kind of challenge system or replay since Hawkeye was being used in tennis. And they recreate the, the, the shot and zoom in. And sometimes they have to zoom in. And again, that's a fake. That's a recreation, right? It's not what actually happened. But everyone sees it and says, okay, fine, we all agree that either missed or that was in by the smallest of pretend margins. And I think that is ultimately a benefit. But the idea, but ultimately we don't know whether it actually hit the zone or didn't or actually hit the line or didn't. It's just something that happened and we all agree and move on. And I think that is the better part is that everyone can agree and just say like, well that's what this thing's says and that's fine and you get that with abs. But I also kind of like the, the uncertainty that comes with certain areas of the zone and I think I'd be even happier if you could code in that like 60% of the time this is a strike. 40% of the time it's a ball. 50, 50, whatever it is in certain areas of the plate. That would honestly make me happy.

[C]

I, I wouldn't. I, I think that would drive people batty.

[B]

I'd love it.

[A]

Yeah, well this came up. This came up. Somebody said something to the effect of I'm misremembering an athletic article probably, but there was a question as to whether if you challenged a pitch and it was within a certain tolerance of the strike zone, it would naturally be overturned. Which my head actually exploded. I had to react. I actually physically put my skull back on because you're going to have this system and then say well no, good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades, nuclear war and pitches on the black.

[C]

I, yeah, having a system that could.

[A]

Actually get the call right and then deciding that eh, you know.

[B]

But what is right? No, but ultimately like what is right? Because again it's not, it's not necessarily. Look, these things are not. They are extremely fine tuned and they're also, they are also somewhat estimated.

[A]

No, it's not. The plate is 17 inches wide. Did the baseball cross over? And again, I know we're doing 2D but that doesn't bother me because umpires do it 2D because umpires 2 have. That can't get to that level of detail. So the fact that it's gonna be a 2D box doesn't bother me at all. I don't think it actually matters in.

[B]

Terms of gameplay, whether it's, it doesn't bother me. It's just. I want people to know.

[A]

Well that's the reputation like you've been against K Zone. You and Will Leech are the great warriors against Kazone. And I think that's the same thing, right. This representation on the screen that gets everybody all worked up and I'm guilty of this myself, doesn't actually necessarily reflect what I've seen actually happen.

[C]

Yeah, I'm, I'm with each of you on something here. I'm with you Craig, I think on your opposition to the K Zone because even though sometimes I think I like it, I think when you take it away from me, I don't actually.

[A]

I Don't miss it at all.

[C]

Yeah, it's like a shift.

[A]

It's like you said about the shift.

[C]

And I think it has negative effects that, you know, just because it gets people riled up and it's inaccurate and etc. Right. But. But the thing that I agree with Joe about, and we've answered listener emails about this, the idea of programming randomness into the system to sort of mimic the way that umpires actually call these things. The reason results. And I think that there's a big difference between, yes. Having in practice with human elements that there's going to be kind of a coin flip aspect to some of these pitches on the border. But when you're telling the computer to randomize it, I think that would frustrate people immensely. Now, you should absolutely acknowledge that there's inevitably going to be some margin of error and there's no perfect precision with any system, but you still have your best estimate. Estimate. Right. And so, you know, unless it's like perfectly, you know, out to seven decimal places, it's 50. 50.

[A]

Like home run distances in the Home Run Derby.

[C]

Yeah. They could call. Right. You know, as long as it's 50.1 and. And 49.9, you know, it's. It's a strike. Right. And I think as long as you're aware that there's. It's not perfect. But then what is perfect? We're certainly dealing with an imperfect system now. And that's the other thing, is that some people will say, well, the system's not perfect and it's not. It's.

[A]

Sometimes this argument.

[C]

I hate this, too. I think there was a time when, yeah. There were enough kinks in the system that you couldn't completely trust it. And sure, there might be a moment every now and then where the system goes down and you miss a pitch, you know, improbably.

[A]

Which happens now.

[C]

Yeah, Every. You know, very rarely. But. Well, right. With a computer.

[A]

I mean, what happens now, guys, with umpires, once a week, an umpire will call a fastball down the word. I'm not going to say a strike.

[C]

I've said many times on this podcast.

[A]

I don't remember what your cursing policy is. Sorry.

[B]

Well, he cursed to open. Well, he quoted Joe Kelly.

[A]

All right, well, a fastball down the deck will be called a ball. And it's like, wait a minute. What? Or a pitch completely. 3 inches off the. 4 inches off the plate. We called a strike. We do get those burps every now and then. I think one of the best arguments against full ABs. And this is more of a long term concern. But would calling balls and strikes become a recessive trait so that we actually would not have. And I have an umpire who reads me, great guy, reads me forever. And he's been an umpire and he makes this point that, well, what is going to. Cause why would people learn this skill in little league, high school, minor, college, adult baseball if at the major. There's no advancement to the major league level? Even if you're not on that track initially? Why would you necessarily do that? Why would you learn how to call balls and strikes in AA if you're not going to be able to. We do need guys to have these skills, not just at the lower levels, but for the day that the Internet goes down and all of a sudden the system isn't working. I do think that's an argument against us.

[C]

And if there's a blip, if there's one missed pitch, then even if in theory you're telling yourself, hey, if the computer goes down here, I have to be ready in practice. This, it's going to be 100%, almost. Yeah. There's no way you're going to be keyed up and glued to that. Right, Exactly. But, but yeah, this is the point I was making is that the standard shouldn't be perfection. The standard should be, is it meaningfully better than what we have now? And, and it would be, clearly. I mean, this is. This comes back to something people say about driverless cars. Right? Which is something that I have a vested interest in. As a non driver without a driver's license, who's hoping that those robots will save me.

[A]

Is this the first time non drivers have outnumbered drivers on the podcast?

[C]

Maybe. Well, a couple. Couple New Yorkers. I guess it makes sense. But yeah, no, I mean, you know, I'm hoping those robots bail me out in that situation before the other robots ruin the rest of my life. But. But, you know, that's something where whenever there's an accident that involves a driverless car, it's a huge. I mean, you know, and you can understand why, because we're primed to, you know, the robots are coming to kill us and it's Skynet and everything. And. And of course, if there's a single incident, then that's tragic. Now, often when that's the case, it turns out that there was some human error involved also. But. But the point is, have you seen humans drive or even something more benign.

[A]

Like a car that drives around a parking lot because it can't figure out where to Stop. But you're trapped in it or something, right?

[C]

Driving is incredibly unsafe as it is. So even if the computers aren't perfect, they're, they're bound to be better.

[B]

I'm with you on, on. Is it better than the current baseline? And I think in this case it is. And the, and the risks are not as substantial as, as driving, although you can also argue the benefits not nearly as substantial as robot drivers. But my biggest contention with robot drivers, to your point, Ben, is there's a responsibility ultimately, if there's an accident, who's responsible? Right? And when you look at cars that use, let's just say full self driving or something like that, they are constantly seeking to avoid responsibility for things that do go wrong, wrong. And ultimately the way our current system is set up is that there needs to be someone responsible. Or obviously there can be situations where it's deemed no fault or whatever. But the point is that someone somewhere along the line can be held responsible. And the way things are set up for current drivers or for automated driving is that it removes responsibility from basically anyone and you're just stuck with a tragedy. And you're stuck with a tragedy either way. But, but there's kind of no reclass, right?

[C]

You got to regulate it. It's not like I want to put my life in Elon Musk's hands either.

[A]

So I understand the parallel, but I'm having a.

[B]

No, no, I'm not saying that applies to baseball.

[A]

I was going to say I'm having a hard time seeing what the recourse is against bad umpires.

[B]

No, no, no, I, I don't think that's the same thing. I'm just saying I think that's a difference here in, in, in as a difference between the two.

[C]

The one thing I wanted to ask Joe though, do you get interested at all in the metagame aspect to this? Just the layers of analysis that would be possible with a challenge system because if you just have full abs and it works as designed, all the calls are correct. Okay, it's. Yes. No, there's nothing to analyze really. There's nothing to, to get upset about. You know, there are people who think, oh, it's better actually to have the entertainment value of managers yelling at umpires and everything and you know, get, getting, getting rid of that, even that sort of sideshow. Just, you know, you're like, you're someone who loves the analysis and digging deep into things and the strategy. And there is a great strategy and tactical aspect to the challenge system in theory, right, where you can analyze, hey, our teams not being aggressive enough? Are they hoarding their challenges when they should be using them earlier? Who's actually good at this? You know, which players should be challenged more? Okay, so you're not interested in that at all, which is interesting to me.

[B]

Because that I'm not. I'm not either.

[C]

I am kind of interested in that because I always, you know, even like framing, umpiring. There's so much analysis, you know, ways that we can break these things down. And I get that. It's not for everyone. We're the sickos. Right. And so even if, if the sickos aren't even interested in this, then I guess I'm. I'm the upper percentile sicko. But I'm just saying they're a lot of interesting to me, at least wrinkles to this system and the strategy and the implications and the decisions and all of that. That if you do away with the challenge aspects, then there's nothing to that. And there's. There's player value too. You know, maybe you substitute some framing value for challenging value. You have to know when to challenge. And that is interesting to me. But it seems like that just does not resonate with. With you, Joe, at all.

[A]

Craig, you want to jump in? Because when I start talking, I might not stop for a while.

[B]

Sure. Well, so I, I'm. I'm not really interested. Interested in that at all either. I will also tell you, from the early stuff I've seen, basically nobody should challenge the.

[C]

That's the way it'll work. Yeah.

[B]

Beyond that, I don't like limiting the number of challenges. If you can turn this thing around in like 10 seconds or whatever in terms of, of getting the replay done, then like just, you know, again, to the point of getting the calls right. If you can get them right. Like let's try and do that to some degree. I want to just step back to the K zone point. So I think Joe should be answer that direct question. But I do want to add something.

[A]

After I mentioned a couple of first principles at the start of the conversation. Here's another one. The players should play the game, the managers should manage, and the umpires or whatever technology you've deputized should officiate the game. So I think getting players and managers involved in officiating the game, which is a challenge system, is bad. It's just bad on a first level. I don't like it in any league. I think that the fact that the NFL started with a challenge system system has caused the other leagues to Create challenge systems. Challenge systems are bad. Everything people hate about replay. Craig, I want to say you're one of the more vocal ones about the plays on the bases where the foot comes off the bag for a second. Okay, I'm not. I'm actually fine with that because the rule is you got to be on the bass slide different. I've never had a problem with that. My problem is that you're at that point, you're not fit. You're not centering the baseball game, you're not centering even the call. You're centering what's best for your team. So if you had a fifth umpire system, which I've been screaming about since I don't even know third grade, I think that you would never even have those calls be reviewed because they're not the design of the system. Systems should be designed to correct errors, but once you put a vested interest in getting a call overturned, you've turned it into what should Ben is talking about here, which is leverage and decision making. How efficiently are you using your challenge? I don't want any of that in the game. I think the challenge systems that we have in all sports are bad because they're not designed to officiate the game. They're designed to make things get you your team the call. This just extends that idea. We already have a challenge system that shouldn't exist in baseline, which has caused, like I say, all of these really frame rate, frame level outs and guys being safe. And it wasn't really what we envisioned when we talked about a replay system in baseball. But it's not the replay system, it's the challenge system. And we're going to get the same thing in baseball because instead of we're going to get the call right, it's going to be, well, do I want to challenge this call with my.650 OPS hitter, or do I want to save it for my.900 OPS? Do I want to make challenge this pitch that was egregiously wrong with a two one count and nobody on in the bottom of the third, or do I want to save that challenge?

[B]

Managers. Managers can't do it, right?

[A]

No, that's a part what I'm saying, but that's going to be the top. It's actually not even going to be the match. It's going to be the top level. The analysts and kind of working on a piece going to look at this now, but you're going to have the analyst level tell the manager to tell the players that, okay, only these three guys can change challenge only. Can only do it in these. It's going to, it's going to look like a blackjack. You ever see one of those little blackjack cards that tells you how to play? Every blackjack hand I have 16 against a four. What should I do? It's going to look a little bit like that. It's not in any way, shape or form going to be about getting the calls right. It's going to be about the skill of the player and the leverage of the situation. Which means now we're not talking about the calls at all. We're talking about the leverage leverage. We're getting into what Ben is talking about a little bit here. But it's not at all. When you only have, as Craig points out, two wrong challenges a game, you have to hoard those. So we're still going to see hundreds of bad calls a day, hundreds of missed calls a day across the league. And a very small handful of those are going to get challenged. And frankly, I don't think many teams are going to have challenges left for the highest leverage spots. Craig. Was it Craig or Bennett? One of you talked about how Baseball America did this study where the pitchers were bad at it, the hitters were average and the catchers were the best. My fear is that this is going to turn into a catcher only system. And instead of adding offense back to the league, we're going to take offense out of the league because it's going to be catchers challenging balls, getting them called strikes and it's actually going to be even worse for the hitters. But I don't think the system as currently announced, as currently planned for 2026 is really going to be about the calls at all. It's going to be about these leverage spots. It's going to be about. We have this limited resource of challenges. Challenges tend to be about 50% overturned. So your expectation would be I think 4. If I'm doing the math right, you'd expect to get four in any given game if you just flip a coin, you know, keep flipping a coin. Start with two challenges. By the time you've used the fourth one, you will have used them all up. You're just, it's just not enough. And again I if Anthony Van Volpe not to dunk on him, I like Volpe. Just reflexively challenges a pitch with one out and nobody on in the bottom of the third. And that challenge isn't available to Aaron Judge in the eighth inning. That's bad. That's bad for my team. These challenges have intrinsic value. So again, it's gamifying something when we can just say, get the damn calls right.

[B]

I largely agree with all of that. I guess my view is, like you said, there are going to be however many wrong calls a week.

[C]

Week.

[B]

Anyway. My view is generally that's, I, I don't, I don't know that that upsets me that much, honestly, anymore. It used to it, it really did. But I think these are honestly generally low leverage misses and that you can, you can fix the. Agree. I, I, the other part of this is like, yeah, sometimes there's going to be like there, there's going to be, like you said, there's a fastball down the dick and, and the umpire misses it because the catcher dropped it. Right. Or, or whatever. Well, that can be fixed now and it can be fixed in low leverage or high leverage or whoever it is. When it's obvious, it's obvious. And those are the ones that really tend to rankle. I think again, these 50, 50 balls that might matter in the third inning. I don't mind that. It's, that's close enough to me and it washes out, generally speaking, over the course of a season. And that's just a place where I've found myself recently, right. That it's more. There was a time in my life I absolutely wanted every single call. Right. But I think in general, I don't mind this and I do want to go back to the K zone aspect that you guys both talked about. Joe, like you said, when you get a chance to watch a game without it, you don't miss it. And my guess is it doesn't bother you when a pitch an inch off the zone gets called a strike the same way because the zone isn't there to tell you that.

[A]

No. Look, we are in the, not to be egotistical here, but we're in the top 0.01 of baseball observers and I think we all recognize can watch a game and know when it pitches, pitches a ball even without the case.

[C]

Depends on the camera angle a little bit.

[A]

But yeah, it's easy. It's easier in Texas than it is in some other places.

[B]

Yeah, but it, but it also depends by how much I think there are balls where it's like, well, that's, that's right there. That's both a good pitch and that that can be an incredible pitch. And it might be, you know, a ball by a fraction of, of, of an inch or something like that.

[A]

You know, I'm okay with that being.

[B]

Called a ball well, and I'm okay with it being called a ball, but it also doesn't bother me if it's called a strike.

[A]

Let me see if I can kind of figure out where our difference is here. You're talking about the 50, 50 balls, and I'm focused on the 9010 ones. And I think there are still a.

[B]

Lot of 90, 10 gets challenged, Joe.

[A]

I do, and I don't, because I think there are going to be a lot of situations where 90, 10 balls, and it's going to be a situation where you just don't want to challenge. Because I only have two. Two of these. I might have four of these. And it's.

[B]

I think there should be more than two challenges. I think that is.

[A]

I can't. I can't fix that.

[B]

I mean, no, I.

[A]

You think there should be more than two? I think they shouldn't. I guess technically I think there should be zero. But, you know, I. I think making the number two is wildly unrealistic based on the baseball that I watch.

[B]

Agree. I think there should be at least one per inning. Right. I think that would get.

[A]

That's a good number.

[C]

I do think that, you know, one of the insights coming from the front office will be you don't save these for the last possible second because we're, we're passing up value here. And it may be tough to talk catchers into that, but if there is a clearly egregious call, then you're not really risking that much because you're not. You're not wasting that challenge. You. You get to keep it. If you're correct, this is where.

[A]

This is where I think pitchers should never challenge, because they do. They're. They're moving. They're the worst people to possibly make this cut. And hitters, look, I think hitters have good eye. You mentioned Muncie earlier, and I think they're going to be hitters that are better at this. But I also think it's risky a lot, too, because, remember, it's supposed to be instantaneous. It's not just going to be, hey, do I think that would. No, you got to make that tap.

[C]

Gesture immediately, and you won't have time to pull a card out of your pocket that tells you whether you should challenge or not, which is why I.

[A]

Do think it's going to be. It's going to be literally telling hitters, look, you don't challenge three up. You don't challenge with nobody on base. You don't challenge if we're up, up or down four runs. You don't challenge if you're not one of the five best hitters we have. Have. I really.

[B]

I kind of question whether players are going to be able to.

[A]

I do, too.

[B]

Right. Tapping their head. Their head when they, they think, you know, they. Because they have a lot of certainty in the moment whether they should or shouldn't. Right. But they do. And, and, but to your point, like, if it's, if it's three inches off the zone, and to you, that's definitely, that's definitely a ball, and it is definitely a ball. If it's 3 inches off the zone, then, like, what, what is the risk? And I think players are going to learn that pretty quickly. They're going to learn what the, what the zone is, is versus what's being called. And I think you're going to see more aggressive challenges in these situations, except for when they don't actually matter that much, in which case we can all just move on. And that's, that's kind of where I think, again, this is a half measure. And look, I admit this could go very poorly. I'm not, I'm not trying to say otherwise. I don't, I'm not trying to say with any certainty this is going to work out really well. I think it could, though, I think.

[A]

Go very poorly is probably. There's a limit to how bad this can go. And I think you're talking about the shift earlier is probably a really good example. I can point to all the ways that shift. Banning the shift is making baseball worse by encouraging deadpool hitting. And I've talked about this with you, Ben, but I don't think that there's that much downside risk to the automated system. And there's an argument that, oh, fans will love it because there's video animation on the screen. I got to figure that's going to get old two weeks into the season. It's not going to be like, I mean, can you, you bet on it? Because then you might actually be encouraged then. But we will get, we will get one challenge in it.

[C]

I was going to make that point. There is some entertainment value there. It may wear off. Maybe the fun will wear off, but for now.

[B]

Well, but you go to tennis and they do.

[C]

Yeah, that has persisted, incorporated it for years.

[B]

And they have, like, the suspense and.

[C]

The big reveal and it'll be sponsored.

[A]

Oh, it absolutely will be sponsored.

[C]

Yeah, of course, of course. Yes. But, but there's something to that, that some people seem to enjoy that. And I will say, say I think your position is Pretty persuasive. Joe, I think you're talking sense here. I think probably most people are aligned with you. I don't know. I mean.

[A]

Or no, I don't. I don't. I think people are enthusiastically behind the system. It reminds me of the pitch clock, which I was pretty. Pretty against and everybody in the world loved it. It's turned out to be a positive for the game. The shift is a similar example. I just. It's the half measure part because to me it's also consistent with how MLB has run itself for 50 years, where you're just not actually addressing the problem. And I just. I think the downside risk is going to be realized when teams run out of challenges and then Doug Eddings gets involved. I do think there's. There. You're going to see this reaction to. Wait, what do you mean? Why. Why can't we challenge it? Because you're out of challenges. Because in the third inning, Fred Stanley decided to challenge a ball.

[B]

And we already see that now. Right. We see teams run out of replay challenges and then. Then essentially just say, hey, can you look at it anyway? Like, I'm not making you, but can. Can you.

[A]

There's not that back. First of all, I don't see teams run out of chall. I don't feel like I see teams run out of challenges all that often. And there is the back door of hey, guys, you know, we think you might have gotten this wrong. I don't believe that's in place for this.

[B]

No, I don't think it is. And, and again, I, I think you're going to see. I don't know that they're ever going to get to. To one per inning. I think they're going to move it up to four or five in after a couple seasons.

[C]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Press. Yeah. And on the pitch clock, I, I didn't really see your side of things, Joe, but on this, I absolutely. I was clearly wrong.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

To me it's, it's almost personal preference really. And, and if you're very much in the camp of just get all the calls right, I think that that makes perfect sense. And you might just not be as entertained by certain things as I am. We might just have different things that kind of get us excited.

[A]

Jose Molino.

[C]

Yeah. As baseball fans. And I might be getting too clever about all the complexities and layers and intricacies I may be wrong about.

[A]

I might be wrong about the downstream effects of what full automation would do. I am kind of betting on the come here that it would make for a more entertaining game and it's possible that Craig's right it would just be eaten up by walk so I'm speculating a bit here. I want MLB to create the beta league. I really want a six team league where they just try all kinds of nonsense 88 foot base paths lab league.

[C]

As Meg has called it. Yes, lab league. Perfect.

[A]

Exactly. Megan, I disagreed on the 2019 experiment with the Atlantic League, but you're going to eventually want a test bed for a lot of and Lord knows MLB can afford this. MLB can afford to pay a bunch of recently retired X ball players or college kids who never made it 20,000 bucks for a summer to play 50 games under these whatever different rules we want to try rather than having to treat MLB as a beta test.

[C]

All and I do think a lot of this if we had somehow had a system that just called all the pitches correctly from the start, then I probably would not be out here suggesting what if we got some of them wrong though? And, and that would be more interesting. So.

[A]

Well, I think I firmly believe if you just implement an ABS and didn't tell anybody next year.

[C]

Yeah, no, I think a lot of these things that I've talked myself into enjoying, maybe if they weren't there I would say yeah, this is fine, you know, and maybe it's even better in some way. So I'm not that much of a hardliner on this. And another thing that I agree with you on, Joe, I mean both of you I guess, is that this is a half measure and I do suspect that once you open this box, you could call it a Pandora's box or you could say that it should be opened all the way. But I think it will be because I do think even though all the surveys seem to say no, people prefer this system and I've kind of done a double take when I've looked at that and even doubted MLB's data there on how many people seemingly prefer the challenges. I get why players do, but, but, but fans even supposedly just overwhelmingly prefer the challenge system. I think in practice, if it all goes smoothly from a technological perspective, which I expect, and if we do still have some glaring calls because I think you're right, that that won't be an extremely regular occurrence. Craig. But I think you're right Joe, that it, it's still going to happen sometimes and it's going to be even more bothersome when it happens when it's clear that we have a way to undo that and you know, know if it's the playoffs and, and it's a big moment and your team loses on an egregious call because you ran out of challenges and, and maybe, yeah, you can give people more challenges and that won't happen all that much, but to the extent that that happens at all, it'll bother people even more. Just the way that having replay, once you had replay, you couldn't maintain a system where replay wasn't used in games because we could all see it and we, we could see it in super slow high def replays as many times as we wanted. And that was just not sustainable to have the fans have the correct answer and the umpires be wrong. I think we've seen the same thing with, with pitch calls. And once the system is in place and you don't have the objection of oh, what this could happen or that could happen, or it could just self destruct or something, if it works fine, then it'll be very, I think, tempting to say, hey, we could just have this work fine all the time. And so I, yeah, I suspect that this will be just a stop along the way and, and maybe I'll be okay with that. And I'll be curious to see both how the challenge system evolves and also how our views on this evolve. And maybe we completely come around to Joe's way of thinking or maybe you find that, hey, this challenge system, this is actually kind of cool. It's still, I think, malleable and it could kind of go in either direction. But I think that, yeah, once you introduce it at all, then it's a slippery slope or if, you know, that makes it sound negative for you, you're, you're hoping to slide down the slope.

[B]

It wouldn't surprise me at all. And I'm very open to being convinced that if, if this, if, if this works that well in a lot of ways it might just set point to, well, just do it all the time then. And, and I'm, I'm very open to that, but I do, you know, I'm still looking, I'm looking at the article I wrote about the K zone and like there's a, there's a, you can go pull up on game day. These pitches that you still, I, there are pitches on game day that they show up and I'm like, well, is that clipping the zone or isn't it? I don't know. And I'm looking at the, the circle of the ball overlaid on, on what it would be the called strike zone. Right. So I think you're still going to find people who look at this and say like find a way to disagree with a call on the field even if that call is being made robotically. Right. I do think that's still going to happen. And I do want one benefit of this by the way to me in like an unabashed benefit is it seems like they are going to take the, whatever K Zone is espn, but that's why I'm using it for all of them. But the superimposed strike zones off of televisions because, because they think as, as Ben does, that there is a, there is a, an entertainment value to not knowing what it is until a challenge actually happens because they don't want the.

[C]

Players seeing it and possibly being able to challenge because of, you know, someone shouts out there won't be enough. That's a strike.

[A]

There won't be enough.

[C]

There might not be enough time. But there's so much sensitivity around all that stuff post signed stealing scandal that yeah, I don't think they want to mess with any of that.

[B]

But, but so it sounds like this superimposed strike zone is going away. And what I think people will find is that their tolerance for these edge calls is going to go, go up essentially in the sense that they're not going to mind these. It's not going to rankle when you don't see something telling you, you that's out of the zone. And look, this happens to me all the time I'm watching and I was like, oh, that was a ball. What, what are you swinging at or what are you calling? And it's like, oh, I think if that zone wasn't there I would have been like, well, you know, hard to. That's a tougher one than I.

[C]

Except for the fact that people have been pissed at umpires since before TV existed, before radio existed.

[B]

Oh, I'm not saying no one will be. I think the tolerance will be higher. I don't know that again from, from the baseline. I don't. I'm not saying people aren't going to get mad at us. They will.

[A]

Baseball perspectives invented kill the umpire higher in 2009.

[C]

Yeah, so.

[B]

So yeah, I don't know. But I'm very open to where I am. My perspective has evolved already and it would not surprise me if it evolved further or went back or whatever. I am excited. I think this is at least a step along the way and I think it will be a positive. It might not be positive enough.

[A]

Mostly though it's because of the case oncoming like Most the of. Most of your wanting this is because it will take Hazone off the national broadcast. I want to make a point is I don't think they're going to come off the local broadcast as much because not to run back a joke but they're sponsored in a lot of places. It's money, it's revenue for these.

[B]

I don't know that the league is going to allow them.

[C]

I suspect that that's the case but look, I don't know if any of us has changed anyone else's minds, maybe some listeners minds but I think we have some common ground here clearly.

[A]

And Craig, did you hear him earlier say I agree with Craig and I agree. Is that not some professional hosting or what? Agreeing with both guests.

[C]

We're all pretty persuadable on this issue I think to some extent and our minds are. Are somewhat open and I'm glad that we could air all of this and hash out the differences and hopefully it's illuminating for listeners whether they agree or not and maybe we can check back in in a year and see where we stand and how it went and, and whether our minds have been changed at all. But this was fun.

[A]

I think we're going to know pretty.

[C]

Quickly maybe so I think by the.

[A]

End of April in much the same way was the case with the pitch clock. We're going to have a pretty good sense after one month of real baseball how this, how this is going to play out.

[C]

Okay, well this has been great. Glad we did. The debate, the challenge system challenge. You both rose to it. Plug your products, please hock your wares. Craig, give the quick pitch for baseball prospectus short.

[B]

Well now, now is the time. We are unfortunately but. But necessarily raising our prices as of January 1st. So if you want to sign up for baseball prospects this to get our analysis. It's not just me talking about my feelings, I promise. We have actually great writers and great analysts. Prospect coverage, fantasy coverage, all of it. Now is the time to do it. It's. It's. The price is raising as I said of January 1. If you are a subscriber and you want to extend a subscription, the only way to do that is through our BP360 promotion which is ending today. So I don't know when Ben is getting this out but it's December20 so if you missed it, I apologize but I've been trying to promote it as much as possible. I figured I'd toss it out here. So please give us a shot. I promise you will not regret it. It's some of the best value out there, as is the next guy you're going to hear from.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. It's obviously no secret that I've been reading Baseball Prospectus for quite some time and the package of writers that you get, I mean, literally some of my favorite writers in the world. Patrick debuted Duke and Rob Baines, Russell Carlton. Craig doesn't. I don't think Craig writes as much as those guys in more of an editorial role, but he's a wonderful writer.

[B]

I should, but I don't.

[A]

It's just a tremendous package of writers and I want to make the point here. Ben's with fan graphs and the ringer. Maybe I'm not your cup of tea. Maybe Joe Pustanski is more Or Craig Alcatero or Prospectus. Support somebody. Mark Normandine. It doesn't matter who you're supporting, but reach into your pocket. Support one of these independent outlets. This may be the week to mention that independent journalism is kind of important. I've been doing the newsletter since I left BP back in 2010. Coming up on it's in its 16th year now. You can go to joe sheehan.com and get all the information. There's actually a 25% off discount for one year. Go running right now. Go to the site, go to My Blue sky. Get the information there. But support some type of independent, even if it's not baseball. Marissa Kabis, if Am I saying that name right? She's been running lists of independent journalists. Not even just sports. You know, baseball, sports actual real world important. You know, we all work in the toy department, but support somebody, please reach in. And whether it's baseball, whether it's sports, whether it's politics, anything.

[B]

Volt Smag is a good one.

[A]

Yeah, just get out and just go out. If you can support at least one of these writers, if you can support them all, support them all. See, I don't think it's competition. I really don't believe that promoting perspective Prospectus or fangraphs or Calcatera or Poznanski or any of these people that are writing about baseball is bad for me. If people want to choose one or the other, that's fine. If you want to choose them all, great. But I really do believe that there's enough out there for all of us to succeed. And Prospectus has been around for 30 years. Fangrass for coming up on 20 or just had 20. I think just turned 20. Yeah, I've been doing mine for the newsletter for 16. There's plenty of room out there for all of us to succeed. Succeed. So like I say, just support someone in a moment when independent. And as we go into next year, certainly independent baseball journalism is going to be very important.

[B]

Joe is very magnanimous, but I'll put it his output is absolutely incredible. And I would also say I am a subscriber or reader and I bring up your newsletter all the time on the podcast. No one makes me think as much. We don't always agree, but I he's extremely good at explaining where he's coming from and it it's a newsletter that really makes me consider my stances and, and I learned something and I think about things a lot more after reading your newsletter, Joe. So hopefully, I mean, yeah, I couldn't recommend. Joe is absolutely right. Sign up for somebody. But you should also sign up for Joe.

[A]

Thank you.

[C]

I will second both of those endorsements. And of course you can catch Craig and his podcast five and Die Dive, which is also on Patreon, as is effectively wild. You can give gift subscriptions to Patreon too, if you're looking for something last minute, last second Christmas gift if you're in the market. We're both on it. And I am a a happy, satisfied customer of Joe's newsletter for many years. And I guess Craig still comps me because of my past service to bp. So if you need some extra revenue, you could cut me off and I would would happily subscribe. So I probably should just do that. You've just given me free BP all these years.

[B]

I don't know, is that still happening? I'm going to have to talk to somebody.

[C]

I think so. Yeah. Maybe I earned it.

[A]

But I'm going to safely say my comp is lifetime.

[C]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And I want to I please if I could. You know, you're promoting our stuff and that's really cool. But you know, Ben Clemons is an essential read for me. Jay Jaffe is an essential read for me. I love Davey Andrews. You guys do incredible work at fangraphs too. So again, whether it's bp, me or fangraphs, subscribe to somebody. Everybody's doing great work.

[C]

All right, well, you've issued a challenge of your own to support independent media and I hope people will. That's how we've been doing this podcast all these years. People have come through and continued to and I appreciate it very much. So we had our cordial differences on this podcast, but in the end we all came together for a mutual love festival. And so glad I could get you guys on to do this finally thank you so much gentlemen.

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

Well, I did say I was going to take it easy when Meg was away this week and I did try. I said I wasn't going to get three guests per pod and I'm sticking to that two guests max on the episodes this week, but apparently that doesn't preclude long episodes. Actually, we stopped recording and we all almost simultaneously said we could have kept going. What can I say, we just like talking about baseball. Hopefully you like listening to us talk about baseball. Baseball. And I stuck to the two guest rule for our third episode of the week, the upcoming one, which is already mostly recorded. So hey, teams do me a solid. Refrain from making major moves between now and then, though. There was one more move that we could have covered had Joe and Craig and I kept talking a Pirates signing. The Pittsburgh Pirates signed Ryan O', Hearn, former Oriole, to a two year, $29 million deal. That's real money by Bob Nutting spending standards. Another guy you could comp to Murakami and got kind of a comparable contract coming off a three war year, but that was a career. Worse projections than Murakami and several years older but also plenty of MLB experience didn't get much less money than Murakami did. And again, I'd take Murakami over o'. Hearn. Speaking of Joe Posnansky, I was reminded that Posnansky came up with a little widget, almost a flowchart sort of thing related to the MVP race and his reader's preferences. Judge versus Cal. He just constructed this questionnaire and you could rate how much you care about various aspects of value and that it would crunch those numbers and spit out you support Judge, you support Cal Rally. You could probably come up with something similar for human Umps versus Challenge System versus abs. Just weighing various considerations to say, well, if you're this type of fan and you find this aspect of the sport entertaining, then you should support that Challenge system. Could be cool. Then again, maybe people don't need a widget. Maybe they can make up their own minds. And I'll remind everyone that we are soliciting submissions for stories we missed about each and every team in 2025. We'll be collecting and recapping those in the last week of the year, so keep them coming. Anything interesting that you think we may not have discussed this year but should bring up now? Couple follow up emails. One from Patreon supporter Wandering Winder who says, aren't there two kinds of nicknames? The kind that's something people call you when they're talking to you, I. E. An actual nickname. But then that in print old timey thing. For example, the Millville Meteor is more of an apple. Examples from my beloved 1990s Rangers Pudge was a nickname. Rusty Greer was a nickname. The Red Baron was an appellation for Rusty Greer. The Doctor of Defense was an appellation for Mark McLemore. I miss appellations. Yes, that is a useful distinction. We haven't entirely lost appellations, but it is more of a media creation kind of an affected mostly for print phenomenon as opposed to something you might call someone in casual conversation. For one one thing, it's usually longer than their actual name. And Patreon supporter Michael says, I was listening to episode 2416 and wanted to add a note on the A's ballpark. I'm all for calling the A's organization out for their multitude of issues, but the stadium is actually under construction counter to what was said. As of now, they have constructed portions of the concrete for the first deck. It's not much, but it's more than the ceremonial shovels full of dirt. Fair enough. We do strive to be accurate, even where a figure as loathed as John Fisher is concerned. Concerned? They have done a bit more than broken ground in a purely ceremonial photo op, but I believe the project is still far from fully funded, so I guess Fisher is hoping he'll figure it out. As he goes, he is at least keeping up appearances. And finally, as to the question of whether Rian Johnson inserted the phrase oppo taco into Wake Up Deadman on purpose, I have it on good authority that he did. Someone who knows him reached out to him on our behalf and he said that yes, it's been his favorite baseball phrase for years, so perhaps predating the endless litany of definitions of apo taco on radio broadcast this past season, Ryan Johnson enjoyed apo taco before the phrase drove us mad. And as I've said, he is a big baseball guy. In fact, this past October during the World Series, he posted on Blue sky to anyone not into baseball. I'm sorry, but also get into baseball. Good advice. You can support effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some free perks. As have the following five listeners. Nicholas Brindle, Tim White, Trevor Howit, Andrew Guthrie, and Hannah. 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, personalized messages, potential podcast appearances, shoutouts at the end of episodes, discounts on merch and ad, free Fangrass memberships, and so much more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectively wild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. You can join the Effectively Wild Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectivelywild. You can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or in the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats and subscription signups we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, but after Christmas. And so I wish you a Merry Christmas if you are celebrating the holiday, or even if you're just enjoying a day off, which is also a reason to celebrate. I'll be back to talk to you soon.

[B]

Does baseball look the same as it does to me?

[A]

When we look at baseball, how much do we see?

[B]

Well, the curveballs bend and the home.

[C]

Runs fly more to the game than meets the eye to get the stats compiled and the stories filed.

[A]

Fans on the Internet might get riled.

[C]

But we can break it down on Effectively Wild.