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Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2421: The Stories We Missed in 2025 (AL Edition)
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- [00:04]
Meg Rowley
How can you not be pedantic? A stat blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death but they're sure to make you smile. This is effectively wild. This is effectively wild. This is effectively wild.
- [00:29]
Ben Lindbergh
Hello and welcome to episode 24. 421 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of fangraphs. Hello, Meg.
- [00:43]
Meg Rowley
Hello.
- [00:44]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, not much news in the baseball world, nor should there be in this week when most people are taking it easy. Only the Angels are making headlines and they're pretty small print headlines. They signed Kirby Yates and also they did indeed restructure Anthony Rendon's deal. So he is done. And I, I'm. I'm disappointed. Not that he is. He's Ren. Done, but also that the deal, they have restructured it such that the deferrals will only run for three to five years, I think. And I was anticipating the prospect of Rendone Day running for decades hence.
- [01:21]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [01:22]
Ben Lindbergh
And sadly, half a decade at most. I mean, not sadly for, for Angels fans, probably, but I, I was planning to savor Rendon Day every year for the rest of our natural lives, but they worked it out so that it will not linger that long.
- [01:35]
Meg Rowley
I think that's for the best. You know, sometimes it's. It's just. It's good to be able to move on, you know, you want to be able to.
- [01:43]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Especially from a contract like that. I think probably both parties have some incentive to move on with their lives.
- [01:51]
Meg Rowley
It just didn't work out the way anyone hoped or anticipated and it has gotten increasingly burdensome and nasty and it's good for everyone to be able to part ways.
- [02:04]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, we have a whole other league's worth of missed stories to get to. The only thing I wanted to say, I'm. I'm concerned about Kalshi. Are you familiar with the various prediction markets, poly markets, Kalshi, etc. They are places where you can go and you can bet on the outcomes of things. You can wager money based on whether you think something is likely to happen. And it's sports, it's politics, it's. It's everything really, these prediction markets. And, And I found myself drawn initially to the idea because I'm a data driven sort and so I find it handy sometimes to see what the consensus opinion is of the probability of something happening. Not that I will agree necessarily, but just to sort of see where the baseline is. And you Know, it's people putting their money where their mouth is and actually having something on the line. So it can be handy from a data centric perspective sometimes just to be able to cite, well, here's sort of the stock answer for how likely this thing is to happen. Not that it's infallible, far from it, but it is now encroaching into sports in a very big way. And it is essentially sports betting, but is not regulated like sports betting and is not treated legally like sports betting. And this seems potentially problematic. So I, you know, not that the actual legal regulated betting that we have talked about has, as if that hasn't caused problems enough, you also have a separate Pandora's Box of Polymarket and Kalshi and all of these other services where you can bet on the outcomes of sporting events. And yet you don't have to do it through some sort of legally regulated or at least the same regulation that other sports betting operators are subject to. And in fact, they had not really waded into this space until earlier this year, really until the Super Bowl. That was kind of the big debut for these services just to test the waters and say, can we actually get away with this? And it turns out that they can, at least so far they are able to. And it's sort of scary, I think. What, what could come of this, possibly. So there's lots of ongoing battles with state regulators who want to make this illegal or at least subject to the same sort of protections, quote, unquote, that that other things are subject to. And so lots of state regulators have issued cease and desist orders and there are a dozen lawsuits about these things and potentially a class action. But as of now, it is very much this sort of Wild west, this kind of no man's land, where these popular prediction markets and others just keep popping up and offering people the ability to wager on these things without the same sort of tracking that ostensibly will prevent or at least mitigate the risks of manipulation via various other channels, which obviously have been far from foolproof. So, so these prediction markets are federally regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the cftc. Yes. And, but it's, it's not the same sort of regulation really. And you know, this wasn't even allowed in the US for a while. And the sports betting, again, just, it wasn't really a thing until they just kind of did it and got away with it and have continued to get away with it. And so the sports leagues have had to now decide, are we going to go against this or are we going to embrace this or partner with these services. And there has been some disparity. So the NHL has reached a deal with Kalshi, has partnered with this prediction market platform, as have the Chicago Blackhawks, who I think became the first North American pro sports team to partner with the platform. And the idea is that each party can use the other's intellectual property for co marketing purposes and they'll kind of cross promote each other and you know, you'll see ads for this stuff if you're going to Blackhawks games or watching, watching Blackhawk games. And you know, they say like again they will kind of couch it as well. You can kind of trust it and the data will be reliable this way because you have official league partners and, and all the rest of it. But that is not a universal stance, fortunately. And I don't know which way this is going to go because mlb, to its slight credit at least has thus far taken a stronger stance against and actually issued a memo. It was reported by Front Office Sports that MLP sent teams a memo to make clear that players are prohibited from using these things to essentially bet on. Yeah, I guess they wouldn't call it betting is the thing. That's what all of this hinges on. Right, but trading baseball event contracts on prediction exchanges. Right. So MLB sent teams a memo to say, just to be clear, you can't do this either. Like this is not a, a loophole or something. You're not. Now, you know, sometimes the league will send out a memo and that memo will not be communicated or it will not filter down or various parties will say we never saw the memo, we never got the memo. But they have at least stated their position that you're not supposed to do this. And MLB has, has also I think in the NBA you wrote public letters to the CFTC expressing concern that there's no framework or you don't have to send information with monitors like the sort of services that could flag suspicious betting activity when there's a lot wagered on say a pitch being of a ball instead of a strike. That's just not really in place here. And so MLPs legal counsel did send a letter in March, I believe, to say that these protections are lacking and they need to be be applied. And there was supposed to be a roundtable on the prediction markets with the leagues and the cftc, but then the CFTC canceled that roundtable. That was in April. And so since then there's just this vacuum where everyone is just kind of rolling with it until told otherwise essentially. So it's this legal gray area, or I guess it's, it's permissible for now. And that just seems like the sort of environment in which nefarious activity might thrive.
- [09:00]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, I'll say that. I have concern about it in terms of the stakes. I find them to be more alarming in the election context, candidly, or potentially alarming in the election context than I do the sports context. But yeah, seems, seems bad. Just seems bad. I don't, I don't care for it even one little bit. You know, I don't. Enough with. And why, why, why? I guess you just have to cover your bases by saying this also is disallowed. But it just seems so obvious that it would be disallowed, like within the spirit of the rules.
- [09:41]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, right. You might as well make that clear though.
- [09:45]
Meg Rowley
Yes, you might, right? Yes, precisely. Like, don't leave any doubt in the minds of dopes. Assume everyone's a dope, even if that is a little infantilizing because they sure act like that.
- [09:58]
Ben Lindbergh
Assume everybody is a boob just to be safe. Yes. And boob. The platforms will say that they of course scrutinize the behavior and they have an insider trading framework to try to prevent, you know, people who know too much from making money on it. And, and also that people in sports leagues are not supposed to be able to use these services to bet on in their own leagues, etc. But yeah, I don't, I don't really know if. Because who's, who's really holding them to account. Everyone's just kind of making it up as they go along. And so this was, this was very much a, a case of. I mean, this is something that initially I did find kind of compelling, whereas sports betting I just never really had any interest in at all.
- [10:48]
Meg Rowley
Like, interesting to me.
- [10:50]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, I. Why people do. And, and I guess that speaks to the. It's a slim, thin distinction.
- [10:56]
Meg Rowley
I was gonna say. It just seems like it's part and parcel, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't wash over me as appreciably distinct, I think.
- [11:06]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [11:07]
Meg Rowley
A distinction without a difference.
- [11:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. To be clear. Yeah. I'm not actually using these things. I'm not actually putting money on anything because predictions are, are not my, my metier. But, but I do find it kind of handy sometimes. I guess maybe it's because, well, with betting, with gambling, you actually have to understand like all the gambling stuff. You have to understand like what, what do these lines mean? What are these odds being, what's, what's. The vig, you know, you have to do all these calculations to kind of back out. What do they think the, the probability of this event is? Whereas on these websites, I mean, you know, you don't have to use an app or anything. You can, but you don't have to. You can just go and it'll just present the probability and you can track that over time to see how it's. It's risen and fallen. And it's just available for a lot of things that maybe you wouldn't see at a sports book. For instance, it's not just will team A win this game, but it's just, you know, all sorts of things across culture and society and everything. So that idea of just, okay, I'm taking the pulse of what the populace thinks is likely to happen, I think that's kind of handy. But then, you know, there's all sorts of ways that, that could go wrong. And, you know, they're, they're kind of spammy and scammy, like the marketing of these things, you know, they, they've partnered with accounts on social media that are kind of like parody accounts, but not acknowledged as such. And then they will end those sponsorships when those accounts brand themselves as parody. But for a while they're just making stuff up and also promoting these platforms. And that was seemingly fine for them as long as it was leading to attention for them. So, yeah, there's just a lot of lobbying going on here. And I guess I'm. I'm glad that the major North American men's sports leagues, NHL aside, seem to be aligned on just kind of pumping the brakes here or exercising caution or at least signaling publicly that they are. Would it shock me if there was an about face on this and suddenly we get an MLB partnership with Polymarket.
- [13:11]
Meg Rowley
Or something next year?
- [13:12]
Ben Lindbergh
No, not in the slightest, because MLB will sponsor anything and everything. And so I would not be shocked if they fail to resist the temptation or if there's some sort of regulation, at least some sort of fig leaf to propriety that is put in place here to give them cover so that they can partner here. But yeah, it's, it's very much like it's called trading. But, you know, everyone knows what it is. It, it kind of reminds me a little bit of the daily fantasy debate, like, is that gambling or not? And that's obviously a game of skill to some extent, but there's so much randomness in it that it's, you know, it's, it's poker, I guess, basically. But yeah, there were a lot of legal battles about how do you classify these things that just chance plays an enormous role. So I don't know. You know, it's just, I guess another sign of the dystopia that we find ourselves in potentially, it seems rife for manipulation. I hope that there are some regulations put in place and maybe there is a world where this could continue to provide some insight into what people think about things, but not ruin the integrity of said things. I. I hope that they're able to thread that needle somehow, but who knows?
- [14:31]
Meg Rowley
This is such a. This is a much longer conversation and certainly a bigger sort of project than we necessarily have time for right now. But I just wish that we could kind of reorient people's relationships to these sorts of things. And I'm going to sound like, over probably overly moralistic here, and I don't know that I necessarily mean to, but I think fundamentally part of why it has never been appealing to me, the sports betting of it all, and I really wouldn't draw much of a distinction between these two activities here, is that it's just not how I relate to sport. I don't know that mine is like a better way. I'm embarrassed by the things I said at the Seahawks Rams game. But you know what? No one knew about them because I didn't put them on social media. It's between me and God and the couple of fans who are right around me. But there are a lot of ways to sort of engage with sports or art or culture or what have you, and they're. There doesn't need to be a constancy to that relationship. Right. Like, you can find different things valuable about the sport at different times, and it can activate different stuff in you depending on, you know, what's going on in the sport and what's going on with you as a person. But I just wish that we could make the. The joy of the thing or the excitement of the thing or the frustration of the thing enough in and of itself, you know, and that there wasn't this seemingly instantaneous first move toward like, secondary profitability, a secondary thrill. And, you know, people have bet on sports for a long time. It's not like this is a new phenomena. I think the mechanisms are obviously new, and I have some parts of them that are maybe uniquely dangerous, but. But getting your kneecaps whacked by a loan shark, also dangerous. So, you know, there's been issues throughout time, but I just, I wish that we could like, take everybody like a snow globe and shake them up and then, like, have a new reality settle when it was all said and done, because I don't care for this one. And, you know, like, I said, the parts of it that I find, and I don't think that we have any evidence that there have been integrity issues as a result of these betting markets existing. Like, but the. The election context is more concerning to me because, boy, that's not what that's about.
- [17:11]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, yeah, but.
- [17:13]
Meg Rowley
But I just, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't all have to be about this or it doesn't have to be so much about this. And this seems to be, like, the first move now. I wish we could go back to a simpler time, you know, where. Where the post season was sponsored by large construction equipment nobody needs, you know, have that be our. Our move to profitability.
- [17:39]
Ben Lindbergh
I don't know.
- [17:39]
Meg Rowley
It just kind of bums me out because it's like. Watched a lot of football over the last couple of days and. Ben, I know you're also watching just so much football now. Boy, are a lot of these guys really great, you know, and the things that they're able to do with their bodies are so amazing and completely foreign to me. Just like, really, really foreign to me. The capacity to be so agile or so strong, to have such precise control, to have your hands be that strong. Ben, I'm just sitting there watching Jackson Smith and Jigba being like, do people just constantly bring this guy pickle jars to open? Like, this should. This is nothing to you. This is so simple, you know, Whereas I'm sitting there, like, having to grab the glove and twist the thing to get leverage on it. And so, you know, like, that's so cool. This World Series, it was so great. It did. It doesn't.
- [18:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [18:34]
Meg Rowley
I don't know that it needs this extra layer. And again, I'm acknowledging the part of this that is me being like, well, if only you could relate to sport the way I could. But can't. Can't some of you relate to it that way or look like a couple more? Because I feel like if we had a broader consensus around that as like, the primary mode, that this other stuff could still exist, but it could be sort of tertiary to the. The. The main thing, which is like the wow of it. So anyway, I find myself exhausted.
- [19:03]
Ben Lindbergh
Funny that you mentioned pickles. Pickles will come up later on this episode and not in the baseball context. You might expect, like, actual pickles. Actual pickles, yes.
- [19:12]
Meg Rowley
Do you like pickles?
- [19:13]
Ben Lindbergh
I do. Specifically half sour. Those are some of my favorite foods in the world.
- [19:17]
Meg Rowley
Can't wait to talk more about this in the later context.
- [19:19]
Ben Lindbergh
Then there was an effectively wild ark years ago, I think, predating your time as a host, where I pickled my own pickles, or I pickled cucumbers and they became pickles, but diy, I did it myself and it was sort of satisfying. So, yeah, big pickle person. Anyway. Yes, I'm generally with you. I mean, I. I would imagine you'd agree that it's nice in theory that people can appreciate things in different ways and on different levels. And in fact, you do, right? You consume football differently from the way you consume baseball. And Jeff used to talk about how he watches hockey differently from how he watches baseball. And he kind of turns off the analytical side of his brain and just has sort of fan brain, you know, and just enjoys it in the moment.
- [20:07]
Meg Rowley
He wanted to be as. As dumb as possible about the whole thing.
- [20:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Right. And so. So I like that there are many ways that one can come to appreciate and enjoy sports, as long as those ways don't damage the integrity of the game and also society and yourself to some extent, I guess you're entitled to damage yourself if you feel like it, but rarely is it only damage to you and no one else. So, yes, and. And there are probably also people who are listening to this and saying. I mean, they would lodge the same complaints against us and the way that we talk about baseball, which is often, though not always through sort of a statistical lens, we talk about the saber metrics and we want to know the numbers and we want the projection systems and all that stuff. And I'm sure, I mean, I know there are many people who couldn't care less about that stuff and in fact find it to be an impediment to their enjoyment of the game and are saying sort of the same sentiment that you're expressing, just, hey, why can't you just watch the game and enjoy the green of the grass and the crack of the bat? And. And we do enjoy those things, but we also like that ancillary layer of. Of insight that the data grants us. And there is, I suppose, a distinction between that and betting and what we're talking about and something that could potentially affect the sport itself. But yes, as of now, the state of play at the end of 2025, there is very much a spectrum of along which leagues are embracing or rejecting these services. And so on the one end, you have the NHL, which is embracing it and saying, you know, the NHL's president of business which is kind of a funny job title.
- [21:50]
Meg Rowley
Said when president of business sounds like the title that, like a child gives themselves. If they're, like, playing bank, you know, they're like, I am the president of business. I am the biz pres. That's my job. What is the po? I mean, it's.
- [22:11]
Ben Lindbergh
I don't know. But. But yes, there is a president of NHL business. And said back in October, when the NHL struck these deals, these partnerships with Kalshi and Polymarket, said that integrity was paramount to the league and said that it was better to partner with the platforms to establish protections. You know, almost a. Not exactly a keep your enemies close, but kind of, you know, we can keep an eye on them this way. And also said that the NHL and these services are looking at using integrity monitoring services. So again, they're paying lip service to the idea that actually this will be better and safer for everyone. So that's one end of the spectrum. Then you have Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA and also maybe NCAA business. But back in December. Wait, we're still in distinctions without a difference. Yeah. Earlier this month, Charlie Baker came out more strongly against it and said, this whole thing is going to get worse unless somebody does something about it. You're basically talking about no rules, no oversight, no nothing. And that just feels catastrophic to me. Not just for us, but for everybody. So that's one side. The NHL is the other side. And then you have Rob Manfred sitting in the middle, essentially refusing to take a position, aside from that public letter that the league sent in November. When asked whether the league's thinking had changed since its letter to the ucftc, a spokesperson for mlb, I'm quoting from a Bloomberg piece here, pointed to Commissioner Rob Manfred's comments to reporters at owners meetings in November. Quote, we're in the process of looking at the predictive markets. We're well aware of the issues, the different regulatory framework, but not in a position where I want to articulate publicly a position on it. So not in a position to articulate a position. So we will see if that changes in 2026. Happy New Year, everyone. Okay, let's look back a bit at 2025 and some other things that we overlooked about each American League team. This time. We did National League last time. Let's start with the Angels going again in alphabetical order. We've already talked about the Angels, but we're going to talk about the Angels again. We didn't get a ton of submissions for Angels overlooked stories, perhaps unsurprisingly. So I supplied one myself and then also another one was supplied. But my main story that we didn't really talk about was Logan oh Happy. What happened? I I've been high on oh Hoppy for a while now.
- [24:37]
Meg Rowley
I've just hopped up on oh Hoppy.
- [24:40]
Ben Lindbergh
I would and I should have. And thank you should have. Yes. So I was hopped up on oh Hoppy. Also Ohtani. Perpetually high on Ohtani, but also hopped up on oh Happy. I just I thought he was good for a while for whatever reason and I've probably overrated him and I maybe should adjust my mental model of Logan oh Happy. But when I had to rank catchers over the past offseason last offseason on MLB Network, I didn't rank Logan oh Happy in my top 10. But he was like my first cut or they asked me for someone who wasn't on my list who I thought should have been or I I had regrets about or thought would make me look bad or something. And I, I shouted out oh Happy. Because I still sort of believed in him and he started great and I was kind of kicking myself for not ranking him. Not that anyone cares or remembers who my ranked but. But he started off really well and through the end of May he was tied for the Angels. Well, that's not quite true, but he had a 122 WRC plus and 14 homers in 50 games. 184 plate appearances. You know, that was a pretty hot start to the season. And at least minimum, let's say 120 plate appearances, he was tied with Zach Netto for the Angels team lead in WRC plus. And then he just completely cratered and was arguably the worst player in baseball after May. And he was playing most of that time. But from June 1st on he was at negative 1.6 war, which was. Yeah. Tied with Jack Caglion for the worst figure in the majors among any position player.
- [26:28]
Meg Rowley
1.6.
- [26:29]
Ben Lindbergh
Negative 1.6. Yeah.
- [26:30]
Meg Rowley
As a catcher.
- [26:31]
Ben Lindbergh
As a catcher. And it wasn't close. No one else other than Jack and oh happy were below one.
- [26:38]
Meg Rowley
That's so bonkers.
- [26:40]
Ben Lindbergh
And this is, this is just June 1st to the end of the season. Yeah. So he just crammed a lot of really sucking into that compressed period.
- [26:49]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [26:49]
Ben Lindbergh
And. And had a 37 WRC plus over that span. And also his framing is not his strong suit, but he at least looked like he was competent. And, and last year he was kind of like an average ish framer, but.
- [27:04]
Meg Rowley
Real bad this year.
- [27:05]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, one of the worst in framing too yeah. So just absolutely everything fell apart for Logan Hoppy. And, and that's concerning because he. He seemed like, you know, they got him in the Marsh trade, and it seemed like it was a smart pickup and that he was going to be part of that core and a real, you know, leader of the pitching staff type. And it started out well, you know, he had lots of injuries in recent seasons, but then this year started hot and just completely fell apart. And I was not aware of. Of the depths to which he had sunk. And there was just an article this week headlined, why the Angels believe oh, Hoppy can turn into an all star catcher. This was@mlb.com and the Angels are. Are still buying it. I don't know what other choice they have to than to run him out there and hope for the best. Perrymanese and GM said Logan had a tough year. There's no sugarcoating that he'd be the first one to stand up here and tell you that it was a rough last four months on offense, that's he had a rough time on defense. Receiving was not where it was the previous year. He's just like listing all the ways that Ohapi was bad. I do believe the game calling improved significantly. Okay. Which was the one part we can't measure. Yes, exactly. Conveniently, I guess. Anyway, he said, not making excuses, but, you know, tough position, second full year of catching. Breaking in a young catcher takes time. Oh, that's true. And you know, Kurt Suzuki, who's now the manager, former catcher, and in fact teammate of Ohapi himself, brief. Briefly thinks he can help. Oh, Happy. And that he's special and he's gonna get better. And I still sort of believe on. On some level, so I hope that that's the case. But. And actually they. They hired Max Stassi, another former angel, as their catching coach. So.
- [28:52]
Meg Rowley
Wait a second. Max Stassi's a coach now?
- [28:55]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Oh, is this gonna prompt another existential crisis?
- [28:58]
Meg Rowley
Yes.
- [28:59]
Ben Lindbergh
Oh, no.
- [29:00]
Meg Rowley
What?
- [29:01]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, that is. Yeah. I liked Max Sassy. He was really. I liked him because he was a good framer and it. It helped when Ohtani was throwing to him instead of someone who was not quite so good back there. But. Yeah. Anyway, that feels so bad. It's just. It's tough to.
- [29:18]
Meg Rowley
He was in Triple A last year.
- [29:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Well, I guess that was a sign that it was time to hang it up. But anyway. Oh, Happy. Hard worker. Still has supporters in the organization, but there's no one thing you can pinpoint exactly. It's not like oh it was this injury or it was this mechanical thing and so yeah, I, I don't know.
- [29:40]
Meg Rowley
Because he had a concussion but it was very late in the year.
- [29:43]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, that was after. Yeah, right.
- [29:45]
Meg Rowley
You know like in September. And so you know you can't even look at it and be like oh he's got. I don't say that like it didn't affect him negatively but you know sometimes guys like particularly catchers that can be sort of an under reported aspect of their struggle as if like they're dealing with post concussion and stuff but that doesn't seem to have really can't account for it at all. Man, all of the defensive metrics just hated him last year. Good grief.
- [30:12]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, so he's turning 26 in February and you know that is still young ish for a catcher. Hopefully he puts it together. But yeah, yeah completely fell apart late in the season. Not even late most of the season frankly.
- [30:26]
Meg Rowley
Most of the season.
- [30:28]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. The other Angels tidbit this was mentioned. Let's see Peach and Kyle contributed this on the effectively wild Patreon Discord group. Actually former Fangraph's writer Kyle Kishimoto Angels fan wrote in to shout out Bryce Teodosio who was at least on defense a little, you know, silver lining. Little, little high points for the Angels. Not on offense, don't look the offense but purely with the glove. Teodosio was quite good. He was 26. He is 26 and he came up I guess he briefly debuted in 2024 but he got 50 games in from August on this year and he batted.203, 248, 304 so not so hot. However, he was arguably the best defender after his debut at least according to the fan graphs defense stat which takes into account your and also your defensive performance relative to average. Only defensive savant Patrick Bailey had a higher defense rating at fan graphs from August 2nd on. That's when Teodosio debuted. So he's another standout defensive center fielder. Kind of a Denzel Clark. You know kind of like a. Just another AL West Denzel Clark equivalent who couldn't hit at all but made fantastic plays. And Kyle noted that he led all non catchers in FRV. That's the Statcast defensive metric. FRV per inning, minimum 400 innings which is a cherry picked number specifically meant to exclude Denzel Clark amongst it. Among center fielders only Pete Carr Armstrong had a higher percentage of five star catches made. So again will he hit? I don't know but at least they have a defensive find and that's something. Because it's something. Yeah. You appreciate center field defense. Ideally that would be paired with offensive competence as well. But you know, you can always take a fourth outfielder, I guess.
- [32:37]
Meg Rowley
Well, and the floor is low for. Yes, you know, for center field, especially if you're really an impact defender there.
- [32:44]
Ben Lindbergh
So, yeah, they're. They're talking about super running Trout back out there again sometimes, and I wouldn't dare at this point, so.
- [32:51]
Meg Rowley
Seems like a really bad idea. That seems like such an obviously bad idea that they will absolutely do it.
- [32:56]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, maybe. So maybe that was just meant to mollify Trout's ego or something and they're not seriously considering. But then again, it's the Angels, so you never know. Okay.
- [33:05]
Meg Rowley
You never know.
- [33:06]
Ben Lindbergh
Elsewhere in the AL West. This is just not exactly the story that we didn't talk about, but we didn't talk about it in these terms. This was submitted by listener Jules who pointed out that the Astros lost the most value in the majors to injury of any team this season. The most projected value, that is.
- [33:27]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [33:28]
Ben Lindbergh
So Jules was specifically citing the ZiPS projected value, which Dan Siborski published in mid September. So as of mid September, Dan projected that the Astros had lost almost 18 war purely from injuries. And that was. Yeah, that was the most in baseball. And if you look at the baseball prospectus, injured lists, ledger warp is on a different scale, a different baseline. So the numbers, different replacement level. The numbers tend to be a bit lower. But in terms of ordinal ranking, they also had the Astros number one or, you know, first loser when it comes to most value loss to injury. So at BP, they had it as about 12 and a half wins above replacement player. So this is just taking all the players who missed games and projecting what they would have been worth had they been on the field and uninjured. So they lost a lot of value. And that's. That's not news. You know, we talked about the fact that they were hurt, but I, I hadn't realized, I guess, fully that they were number one. Clearly, whichever war work you look at, because the Braves were up there, certainly, and Rangers were up there and the Dodgers were up there and the Orioles were up there, but no one could top the Astros value lost. And I guess as a Mariners fan, you're not entirely broken up about that.
- [34:55]
Meg Rowley
I mean, I never want people to be injured. I'm not advocating for injury.
- [35:03]
Ben Lindbergh
But you are advocating for the Mariners winning the AL West?
- [35:06]
Meg Rowley
I. Well, sure, I, I sure am advocating for that. But you know, if they can do it through their own prowess, more satisfying, I would argue.
- [35:17]
Ben Lindbergh
And it was a combination of their prowess and of the Astros both depriving themselves of some players through some moves they made on purpose and then also being deprived of players in a way that they did not intend to.
- [35:30]
Meg Rowley
And isn't that always the way? You know, like, that's always a factor. The degree to which it's a factor can vary year to year, but the injuries on other teams always have something to do with your ability to beat them. So there you go.
- [35:44]
Ben Lindbergh
This is, though, why I thought it was pretty impressive that the Astros came so close to making the playoffs and were even in contention for the division title until late in the season, because they were really doing it with smoke and mirrors late in the season.
- [35:57]
Meg Rowley
They just.
- [35:58]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, they really just ran out of guys. So I. I thought it was pretty impressive that they lasted as long as they did. And I guess if you want to be bullish about the Astros, you could imagine better health, better injury fortune next year, and maybe they'll bounce back. I don't. It seems like they're sort of just a franchise, a roster in decline, in gradual decline. But if you want to hope that they can keep contention going for at least one more year, yeah, then I guess that might be part of your. Your Optimus glass half full case. It's funny, I was looking at the remaining top free agents, and it's just like, all ex Astros, it's just Kyle Tucker, Alex Brickman from. Anyway. All right. And I assume, you know, as a Mariners fan, I mean, you'll. You'll take what you can get. You know, it's. It's not as if, yeah, you're not rooting for your division rival to get hurt, but if they do and if that plays a part in your team making it, you don't look at that as, like, there's an asterisk on this title or something, right? I mean, it's. You know, every team has injuries. Everybody hurts, as REM Taught us decades ago. So, you know, there are gradations, degrees of pain in any given season, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.
- [37:14]
Meg Rowley
It would be particularly challenging for me to say, oh, there's an asterisk on this. When they, like, advanced to the ALCs, you know, it's not like they won the division and then they got bounced. No, they arguably came real close. Yeah, made us all very nervous. But, like, they. They went farther in their playoff run than they ever have as a franchise. So I'm not inclined to second guess that. It is nice to be able to say, like, you know, they just, they've, they've gone so far. It would be nice to be able to say they've gone farther. But, you know, this, this far is nice too.
- [37:48]
Ben Lindbergh
Okay, for the A's. We've talked up some positive aspects of the A's, but this will not be that. This was submitted by listener Patriot supporter wiki keeper Raymond Chen, who suggested how about how the A's shot themselves in the foot by setting season ticket prices too high. They couldn't drop single game prices below the season ticket price because they promised that the season ticket package would get you the best prices, plus it would just piss off the season ticket holders. So despite low attendance, they couldn't lower the prices, but they did anyway and pissed off their season ticket holders, who were now underwater. Lawn seating officially sold for 10 bucks, but you could find them on the secondary market for just $3. And I guess that was the upside. If you found yourself in West Sacramento and suddenly a major league team showed up in your backyard and you could go ball on a budget, you could get cheap tickets and walk up and see those games. So I'm sure that was nice. But if you took the plunge and bought the season tickets because you thought that buying in bulk would get you the best deal, that did not turn out to be the case because attendance was not strong after the initial surge of interest, it was not really maintained. And they ended up with the worst attendance, which was not surprising, but, you know, given the capacity. But they weren't even selling out the, the low capacity. And then all those tickets just were on the secondary market for a pittance and you just, you couldn't get rid of them for anything close to what you paid if you couldn't go to the game. So there was an article in SFGate piece about this from the summer that I read, and some people were pissed about this and we're just like, we're getting pennies on the dollar for the investment we made here. And other people said, you know, I look at it as I'm just giving it away to friends and family. And it's, it's almost philanthropic, I guess, that I'm just sort of the ticket fairy and I'm just distributing tickets to A's games to other people. But yeah, like, you could get A's tickets cheap. And so if you bought in early thinking that that would get you a good deal, it did not. It turned out to be a bad deal. At least Monetarily Woof, woof. And you had to watch the ace. But, but there were some saving graces to that. It's just, you know, they, they did play worse at home, which I guess is understandable. Despite, despite home field advantage. Home field advantage probably presumes that you, you have major league quality facilities and such. And that was not exactly the case, but we did talk about that plenty. So that was not an overlecked story this year. They ended up going 36 and 45. That's a 4.44 winning percentage and 40 and 41. 494 on the road. So again, respectable road records. There's, there's reason to root for this team, I guess, not to have any loyalty to this organization, but to root for the members of this roster at least you might see some exciting baseball and maybe if you don't buy season tickets, you won't have to spend as much to see it. Okay, here's a team things went a bit better for this year, the Blue Jays. I think we might have touched on this briefly because I remember that we had a conversation about Max Scherzer and his demeanor and how we give him a pass for, for getting all ornery and aggro on the mound and why that is and why it might rub people the wrong way if it were someone else and how, you know, it's kind of that he's a relic from an earlier era, but also that he doesn't really seem to take it out on others. You know, he's steaming. He maybe has some, some words for his manager, but as far as we know, he's not taking it out on his teammates to any great extent. It's not like abusive or turning into a toxic workplace or something. But they did play a prank on him publicly that gave the impression that actually it was like that, that he is just busting chops and busting lips. If you talk to him on his throw day. So this happened, we can perhaps play some audio. Shane can drop it in. But Eric Lauer, this was, I guess, back in July, he, he hurt his lip. He had kind of a busted lip. Yeah, he went in front of the press and he was in front of the cameras and he accused Max Scherzer of giving him six stitches for messing with him on his start day. There's kind of this like, known thing to not mess with Scherzer on his start days, especially when it has his headphones in. And I broke that rule. I tried to talk to him a little too early so, you know, he wasn't very happy about that. And, you know, six stitches is what you get for that. He kind of played it straight. And some fans took this seriously. This. This was kind of a thing, I believe the Blue Jays fan base kind of questioning, wait, is he serious? Did Max Scherzer actually pop him one? Because he had the audacity to talk to him on his start day? And then eventually Scherzer cleared the air and said, I did not punch Eric Lauer in the face. Eric had something wrong with his lip, and he had to go to Dr. For something like that. And so I guess Bass and him were sitting in, you know, talking about it, and they're, you know, Bass is saying, like, dude, you can't go to the media and say that you have.
- [43:22]
Meg Rowley
Something wrong with your lip. Like, we got to come up with.
- [43:24]
Ben Lindbergh
A better story than this.
- [43:26]
Meg Rowley
So they come up with the idea to blame this. And they're good teammates.
- [43:31]
Ben Lindbergh
These are veterans that you're dealing with. And something that I would do, like, all right, blame another teammate. And so they. They say, all right, well, let's blame Max. And thus they did. And briefly. At least some people fell for it and. And thought that Max Scherzer actually might have taken his fiery start day demeanor too far.
- [43:53]
Meg Rowley
Why can't he just say something is wrong with his lip?
- [43:58]
Ben Lindbergh
I don't know.
- [43:58]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, understand the. The impetus for the misdirect in the. In the first place. Like, couldn't you just say, was he doing something? Was he, like, engaged in behavior he was worried was, like, going to get him in trouble with the team or something?
- [44:12]
Ben Lindbergh
Because, I don't know, I could come up with any number of reasons why someone might have to get stitches in their lip, but I don't know if they were. They didn't want to disclose the real reason or the real reason just wasn't that interesting. And. And maybe Basset thought, oh, you're. You're passing up a perfect prank opportunity here because you can pin the blame on someone and see if you can get gullible folks to fall for it.
- [44:36]
Meg Rowley
Basset does have that vibe.
- [44:39]
Ben Lindbergh
You know, he has made some statements in the past that. Yeah, those were stories we discussed in earlier years, probably. So, yeah, do your own research on that one. Probably Chris Bassett does, too. So. So that was submitted by either Mike or Marcus. And then there was one other that was kind of a follow up because, you know, we talked about Addison Barger to no end, of course.
- [45:04]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [45:04]
Ben Lindbergh
And his unwillingness to pay for a hotel room. And I think, yeah, we may have sort of speculated, well, maybe it was his upbringing. And you know, if you're, you're brought up in an environment where money's tight and even if, you know, you get a lot of money later in life, old habits die hard. And so you could be kind of, you know, stingy or just a little, you know, tight with, with money because that's the way you were raised and you had to. Right. Well, that doesn't appear to be the case with us and Barger. So Asan Barger, there was a story about his, his origins. This was back in May at sportsnet. And basically Azenbarger had a field of dreams to himself. So. Yeah, so I'll, I'll quote here. The tale begins with his parents, Adam and Leah, who started a successful software business. Okay, well, already probably, you know, not struggling to make ends meet. Seemingly.
- [46:01]
Meg Rowley
Kidding.
- [46:02]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Had their four sons in the Seattle area before moving to Florida to pursue Bible studies. The family bought a. Which, like can you not study the Bible in the Seattle area?
- [46:12]
Meg Rowley
I guess it's banned because of woke. Yeah, people go to church and Seattle.
- [46:17]
Ben Lindbergh
The family bought a large piece of land northeast of Tampa, another indication that they had some disposable income. And before a house was even constructed, Adam, an avid baseball fan, built a full size diamond on it. So Barger was also homeschooled. And from a very young age, his routine revolved around baseball. Adam hired Luis Arseno, a Dominican former catcher and first baseman in the Phillies minor league system, to work every day with his son, developing his body and advancing his skills. So. So yeah, he had his own personal baseball field. He had his own former professional player to be his daily coach. So. So yeah, I, I don't think money was particularly tight at that time in the Barger household. So I, I guess we can't chalk up the desire to sleep on the cot in someone else's hotel room to not having any, any money. So I guess we will have to continue to plumb the depths of Addison Barger and, and figure out exactly why and how that happened.
- [47:20]
Meg Rowley
Plum the depths, indeed. My goodness.
- [47:22]
Ben Lindbergh
There was also a garage that was outfitted not with a 6,000 gallon aquarium, that was Ozzy Albies, which we discussed yesterday, but a gym and a kitchen and just like a whole. Oh my goodness. They. Okay, so they've worked to find another way for Barger to level up.
- [47:41]
Meg Rowley
Up.
- [47:41]
Ben Lindbergh
This time they created a travel ball team. This was when Barger was a teenager, I guess. They created a travel ball team and invited 15 Dominican teenagers from the Prospect showcase to live and train at the Barger household while competing with him in tournaments against top teenage talent in Florida. And also they converted the garage into a gym with a kitchen and could be an apartment for the team. Adam estimates he spent roughly $30,000 over eight weeks on food, travel, and administrative costs and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, they had some money is the point. Anyway, I guess this just reinforces the idea that sports, there may be more of a meritocracy than some endeavors, but also it does depend who you know and who you are and what resources you have. To a great extent in any professional sport, if you had, you know, if you're. You have the genetic gift of, of maybe having a parent who is a professional athlete or just someone who had the money to coach you. I mean, that's, you know, the whole nature, nurture. Obviously, if you have a big league dad or something, then they're coaching you and giving you some genetic advantage potentially. But in this case, it was just, we have money and we're going to devote it to basically constructing a perfect baseball laboratory in which Addison Barger can become the best Barger he could be. So it's not entirely a level playing field is what I'm saying. Even if. Even if I'm sure the. The field in Asden Barger's backyard was level because they probably spared no expense. Well, sure.
- [49:13]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [49:13]
Ben Lindbergh
Okay, so now we know. All right, next team up is the Guardians. This was submitted by Adam, and it's just Gabrielle Arias's batting profile. Okay, that's it. So it's a little more detail. Adam says, I wanted to submit Arias's batting profile. There have been a few fangrass post about it, but I don't think it was discussed on the pod this year. Arias has been standing further back from the plate than any other hitter and whiffing at more high fastballs than any other hitter. And by further back from the plate, he. He means like, you know, standing off the plate, not back in the box, but just standing way out to the side. And that is. Appears to be true that he was way out there and it's not like he has some massive reach or something that would seem to make that make sense. So that's just his feel and, and his game, I guess. But I don't know how well it's working for him because he did bat.220, 274, 363, which was roughly in line with where he had been in the preceding two seasons. He's just sort of a 70, 75 OPS plus, WRC plus kind of guy. And there were a few surprising number of fangrass posts about him this season. There was a post in March by Ben Clements, let's dream on Gabrielle Arias. I guess those dreams did not really get fulfilled or they turned into nightmares of some sort, but the potential not fully realized there. And then there was also a post later in the year, this was from Esteban Rivera in June that was headlined wait, Gabriel Arias is standing where? In the box?
- [51:01]
Meg Rowley
Yes.
- [51:03]
Ben Lindbergh
And and then there was a final mention of Arias in a post I believe by Davey Andrews just recently because Davey did the Kit Keller Award for 2020 inspired by Dottie's scouting report on Kit In a League of Their Own having trouble with with the high cheese, the high fastballs and indeed Arius fit the bill. And I'll just read what Davey wrote here. In 2025, Aria swung at just under 60% of the high fastballs he saw, which landed him 21st on our list of 308 players. He whiffed on just under 54% of those pitches, which ranked fourth on the list. Put those two numbers together and 32% of the high fastballs he saw he turned into whiffs. No other player was above 29%. Arias also topped the list if you focus only on pitches above the strike zone, turning them into whiffs at a 29% rate, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, he's not great. Eric Langenhagen his scouting report on Arias back in 2020 was Arias looks like a stud at 5 o' clock when he's taking batting practice in infield, but his in game swing decisions have been a problem, so it appears that they are stuck. Still a problem. And he did strike out in more than a third of his plate appearances. So oh boy. Yeah, not, not the best really. And, and this was frustrating for him, but also I guess frustrating to watch because our listener who submitted this, Adam, said this leads to some uniquely infuriating at bats where he flails at a high fastball that he almost never hits, then flails at a slider that he cannot physically reach despite it being only an inch or two off the plate. Plate because he's standing so far away from the plate he cannot pull the ball in the air and still hit 11 home runs. Pretty much everything else was pounded into the ground. Probably the least aesthetically pleasing plate appearances I have seen in a while. So I guess he's kind of the the Blake Snell equivalent for batters basically in that. Well, except that Blake Snell is actually good. So.
- [53:09]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [53:10]
Ben Lindbergh
That's an important distinction. But yeah. Also so not pleasing to watch in addition to not being good, at least thus far.
- [53:17]
Meg Rowley
So that part. Yeah.
- [53:18]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Okay. Mariners. Is there possibly an overlooked.
- [53:23]
Meg Rowley
I was gonna say. I feel like we. Yeah, we gave them their appropriate do. Appropriate.
- [53:29]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. I would say we did justice to your Mariners these. These past several months. But we did get some submissions from Sean and Mark and Brad had one of them was just about the mustaches. The fact that the Mariners were. Were very mustachioed late in the season especially.
- [53:49]
Meg Rowley
Yeah. Toward the end especially.
- [53:51]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Which was one of their things. Like we. We talked plenty about the Etsy witch, of course. But.
- [53:56]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [53:56]
Ben Lindbergh
The Mariners, they did have multiple bits. Right. Or there's the Etsy witch. There were. There were lucky Cheetos. That was a thing that was happening. Right. It was like.
- [54:07]
Meg Rowley
I don't even. Didn't know about that.
- [54:09]
Ben Lindbergh
I think that was fan driven. I'm looking at.
- [54:12]
Meg Rowley
It was the Etsy witch.
- [54:13]
Ben Lindbergh
So is the Etsy witch. It's true. Right. It was not top down.
- [54:16]
Meg Rowley
This is the thing.
- [54:17]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes. It was grassroots. Yeah. There was. There was like a rally shoe on the head that was happening. There was the Etsy witch. There was like fans wearing sailor suits eating Cheetos.
- [54:31]
Meg Rowley
They are the Mariners after all.
- [54:32]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, there was a lot going on. But one thing that was going on was the mustaches. And that was something that the Mariners themselves were doing or at least some of them. And it's not particularly unusual, I guess. You know, you. You hear about the playoff beards these days. So many players are bearded by default that I guess you have to have a mustache if. If you don't already have one. Sub Mariners mustaches. Yeah, that. That was a thing late in the season. Just concocted to try to rally the team to successful. And there were some good looking ones, I would say a couple other little ones. Casey Lawrence was designated for assignment six times by mid June. Yeah, he just got stuck in one of those cycles then just kept pitching in aaa. He threw a complete game later in the season. He has already resigned with the Mariners for 2026. So just wants another go round, I guess. Just. I don't like Tacoma too. I don't know. But a pretty weird year for a guy who won the USA Baseball Performance of the Year in 2024. He pitched well in the Sub World Baseball Classic tournament, the Premier 12 last year. So. Yeah, sorry he got sort of stuck in the spin cycle this season, but.
- [55:44]
Meg Rowley
Clearly wasn't bothered by it.
- [55:45]
Ben Lindbergh
No, I guess not enough to seek another employer. And then also there was a shout out for Casey Legamina. Am I saying it correctly? Hopefully, yeah. So he made his Mariners debut in Cincinnati this year. He made his MLB debut in Cincinnati in 2023 when he was a member of the Reds. And evidently he got a tattoo of the Cincinnati ballpark's big smokestacks on his arm honoring the MLB debut. Oh, yeah. And I guess that's nice. You know, he's no longer on the Reds, so he's not pitching there anymore. But I guess it remains a special memory where you made your main. Yeah. And then when, when he goes back and now he makes his debut for another team in Cincy and then he can brandish the tattoo so, you know, he could repurpose it, I suppose. And then the last story, and this was nominated by a couple listeners over the period of a few weeks, I think. But the Mariners, they, they wanted to ban the megaphone preachers at T Mobile Park. Maybe this, maybe this is why you have to move to Florida to study the Bible, because the Mariners are trying to stop the preachers.
- [56:55]
Meg Rowley
I be clear that the preachers are annoying in a special way. It is not the way that everyone who practices their religious beliefs there, but those guys do big square suck.
- [57:09]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, I'm the worst. Yeah. Quoting here from your old haunt, Lookout Landing. This was published in September. The Mariners want the megaphones gone, too. Mariners Deputy General Counsel Christian Halliburton briefed the Ballpark Public Facilities District on Monday on a plan for to stop, quote, a small army of megaphone wielding preachers from verbally assaulting fans outside T Mobile Park. The preachers have long accosted crowds at venues across Seattle, but Halliburton noted a recent uptick in both volume and aggression before Mariners games, calling them dangerously loud and frankly, unreasonable. We're seeing more of the coordinated actors showing up. We're seeing louder and louder messages and unfortunately they're becoming more and more aggressive in really singling individuals out with truly hateful messages. So Mariners have been working on a bill that they hope that the Seattle City Council will pass, which would ban amplified sound before and after events at T Mobile and other high traffic venues in the city.
- [58:07]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, and I can't speak to the specific constitutionality of that or, or whether it's the best approach. My favorite way of dealing with the megaphone preachers, it actually came outside a Seahawks game where one of those guys was there, posted up doing his thing and there was another guy Standing there with a sign, being perfectly quiet. And the sign said, this guy sucks. And that was his approach to dealing with the megaphone preachers. But yeah, they, they've gotten, they were always obnoxious and have gotten as, as the story said, just like increasingly hateful and targeted with their rhetoric in a way that is like, really seems like it is going beyond sort of the normal bounds of free and even disruptive speech in public. So I wouldn't miss them because, boy, yeah, they must be able to find special off market megaphones. You know, you're like, I have an understanding of how loud a megaphone can be. No, you don't. No, you don't. Not until you heard these guys.
- [59:09]
Ben Lindbergh
This one goes to 11. The mega megaphones.
- [59:11]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, the mega megaphone.
- [59:13]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, you have a megaphone on this podcast every episode. But, but you, you use a reasonable volume level most of the time.
- [59:22]
Meg Rowley
And I never say the. Even, even about the rams, Ben. I've never said the things those go.
- [59:30]
Ben Lindbergh
We will not ban Meg preaching on this podcast.
- [59:33]
Meg Rowley
Meg.
- [59:35]
Ben Lindbergh
It says the city already regulates noise in public space. That the team believes the volume generated by the megaphones to be illegal. There was a report from Fox 13 Seattle that showed that the megaphones reach 122 decibels. Yeah, it's very wet.
- [59:49]
Meg Rowley
Yeah. And they're probably going at it from the right direction. Right. Because you can see how them trying to make it about the content of the speech may get a little noisy. Yep. But the sound, that's a content neutral restriction, I would imagine.
- [60:06]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes. Yeah, usually, usually the ballpark environment is very pleasant and convivial and, and you know, obviously amped up, but in a good way. That gets you hyped.
- [60:17]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [60:17]
Ben Lindbergh
The energy is contagious, devoid of slurs. Yes, but, but every now and then there's something that goes beyond the bounds. And this just, this reminds me of a Met story we didn't talk about, but there's been some concern about a dressed up dog that is. Is posed essentially outside of City Field. And you can take a picture with the dressed up dog and it has like Mets attire on and a cowboy hat and a little like pipe in its mouth and stuff.
- [60:45]
Meg Rowley
Is the dog okay?
- [60:46]
Ben Lindbergh
Well, that's what people are worried about because the dog has been there for a while and it's a photo op. But people are concerned that there's animal abuse happening here, that this dog is, you know, unnaturally posed or that the, the owner is making money by mistreating this dog. Sam Blum wrote about this for the athletic back in August. So I'll, I'll link to that, too. But, you know, you want the ballpark to be a friendly place where no one is yelling at you or mistreating pets. So ideally. Okay. All right. Next up on our cavalcade of teams is the Orioles. Well, we certainly talked plenty about the Orioles this year, but one thing, I don't know if we really we dwelt on this, but Danny submitted that the Orioles ran out seven different catchers. And I have verified this fact check. True. Seven different catchers. Gary Sanchez, Chadwick Trump. One of my favorite names in baseball, Jacob Stallings. I honestly forgot that some of these guys had spent time with the Orioles. Of course, Maverick Handley. I mean, the, the names. Chad, amazing. I, I approve of having this many catchers if you're going to have Maverick Handley and Chadwick Tr. But yeah, Stallings. Samuel Pasayo of course, came up. And Alex Jackson. And then emergency backup catcher David Benuelos also got a plate appearance, but as a dh. Yeah, but it was that kind of year, Danny says. And yeah, it was. I guess again, it's a theme of these episodes that when you use like, record number of guys or more guys than any other team does, then it's usually not great because, you know, if things are going well, then you don't mess with success. You stick with what works. So something must not be working. And I did check to see whether any other team used this many catchers. I didn't look at past years, but no other team used more than five catchers this year. So the, the mean and, and median for catchers used by a team was four this year. So that was standard. There were plenty of teams that used three. No one got through the whole season with just two catchers, but plenty of teams did get away with just three. Lots of four. A few five. But the Orioles just out on an island. Wow. Two more than any other team. And this again, was. Was not really a strength in numbers situation because collectively those catchers did not perform particularly well.
- [63:27]
Meg Rowley
Not especially well, no.
- [63:31]
Ben Lindbergh
Hopefully they'll straighten that out and Rutchman will write himself somehow or bio is the catcher of the future and maybe he'll be good. I don't know exactly how they'll split the playing time, but you would hope that those guys will take the lion's share of the playing time back there. They were 24th in catcher war in 2025. 1.2 war. And it took them seven guys to produce that 1.2 war.
- [63:55]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [63:56]
Ben Lindbergh
Not great.
- [63:56]
Meg Rowley
Wow.
- [63:57]
Ben Lindbergh
Another thing that I think we did note at some point was the hydration station. Right. They started the year without one because last year's got moldy. And. And this was. You rejected the term hydration station.
- [64:14]
Meg Rowley
I did.
- [64:14]
Ben Lindbergh
Right. Yeah. You. You did not want them to use the sanitized name. But also, it's a bong. Yeah. The hydration station itself was maybe not that well. And this was.
- [64:24]
Meg Rowley
This was my concern. I was like, how often are they cleaning that?
- [64:29]
Ben Lindbergh
Right.
- [64:29]
Meg Rowley
How often?
- [64:30]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, exactly. And.
- [64:32]
Meg Rowley
And sorry to interrupt you. This is your reminder, friends. If you're listening to this right now and you can't remember the last time you cleaned your water bottle, it's time to go clean it. Do it right now. Put us on. You know, you don't have to put us on pause, because what's. What's a better time to listen to a podcast than when you're doing the dishes? But go clean it right now if you can't remember. It's been too long. Long.
- [64:51]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Bacteria builds up stuff. Stuff grows in there. Yeah.
- [64:55]
Meg Rowley
So it can grow in there.
- [64:58]
Ben Lindbergh
Okay, so the Homer hose, the bong, whatever you call it, it had much more colorful names than the Hydration Station.
- [65:05]
Meg Rowley
But it was Hydration Station.
- [65:06]
Ben Lindbergh
It doesn't.
- [65:08]
Meg Rowley
Okay, so sorry we have to linger on this for a moment because you end up having to do so much talking in these episodes, and so I have to carry my weight wherever I can, which is to say, say, Hydration Station doesn't work. Not only because it is a sanitized version of what it is. I mean, even a Homer host is. But it's at least kind of winking because it sounds funny. Hydration Station isn't descriptive because the Hydration Station. There's a certain musicality to Hydration Station that I find pleasing, but Hydration Station makes it sound like they have, like, a place in the clubhouse where, you know, the big water jugs are, and maybe they have those, you know, those. Those powder mixes that people like to put that have, like, electrolytes or whatever. And I never know how that. It feels like bunk to me, but people like them, so that's fine. Maybe you have a little jar of those at your hydration station, but this is like an apparatus, you know?
- [66:03]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And.
- [66:04]
Meg Rowley
And it looks like a bunk, so just have the courage of your convictions. I don't know if Maryland is a legal weed state or not, but just call it what it is. Hose. I mean, you do need a. A. Like a. What do you. What would you. You can't call it a, a home.
- [66:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Run bong because that I believe it was labeled by some the dong bong.
- [66:24]
Meg Rowley
Dong bong. Dong bong is perfect. Dong bong that also has lovely musicality to it. Dong dong.
- [66:31]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes. Yes.
- [66:32]
Meg Rowley
It's a little hard to say, but you do have to slow down a little bit on the second word there to really articulate it. Or at least I do. Dong bong. But dong bong, call it adult, you know. And here I am saying we, you know, and you are the. The ballpark should be a place of, you know, of peace and it should have a certain amount of family friendliness. But like, you know, you can have a little, you can be a little naughty, you know, you can be a little naughty and call it a dong bong, but you can call it a homer hose and then have like the unofficially. But hydration station doesn't describe it because it's an apparatus.
- [67:08]
Ben Lindbergh
Right.
- [67:08]
Meg Rowley
Also wash it. Just.
- [67:11]
Ben Lindbergh
Recreational cannabis use legal in Maryland's problem.
- [67:16]
Meg Rowley
I mean, and Major League Baseball has an official CBD partner, you know.
- [67:21]
Ben Lindbergh
Right? Yeah. Speaking. Speaking of family friendliness and also cleaning one's mouth out, we were also informed that there was a hot mic moment back in April around the dongbang shortly after a Ryan O'Hearn former Oriole home run where he was caught on mic. Well, we'll play the clip and the hydration sucks.
- [67:42]
Meg Rowley
My ball.
- [67:48]
Ben Lindbergh
I guess should get cleaned out. That happened. Okay, next up we have the Texas Rangers. And this is where the pickles enter into it. Yeah, so this was submitted to us.
- [68:08]
Meg Rowley
So excited. Tell me more.
- [68:10]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, the Patreon supporter, Wandering Winder, he submitted a few minor Ranger stories. The team broke the AL NL record for fielding percentage. Not the MLB record because there was a Negro league team with 16 games and zero errors. But yes, the modern AL NL fielding percentage record, which that's one of those where it's a rising tide lifts all boats. Cuz sure, the fielding percentage, you know, errors rates are down, classification changes. So that tracks I suppose. But still it's a record. Also, Chris Martin repeatedly getting injured and re injured within the first plate appearance of returning or at least once in his warmup pitches before he returned. That stinks. We have talked about how deflating it can be when you work your way back from an injury and immediately get hurt again. But the headliner was the story of Kumar Rocker and the Pickle Juice. And in fact we got an email from Wandering Winder about this months earlier and there was a question which I suppose we can now Answer. And the question was. There was an incident in the White Sox Rangers game on Sunday. Fifth inning, Rangers starter Kumar Rocker apparently has cramps. This was inferred. Not sure I've seen it firmly reported. So between a couple pitches, the manager, pitching coach, trainer, infield ump, et cetera, all come to the mound to figure out what's up with him. They talk for a while, then first baseman Jake Berger runs over to the dugout, hollers, and someone, another trainer, grabs a couple small bottles, energy drink size ish. And tosses them up to him. Report is pickle juice. Yeah, he drains a couple of those, throws some practice pitches and continues. But after a later batter, the bat boy runs out with another one and hands it to him and he downs that as well. And then the trainer come back out again later in the inning. At which point, actually before then. Already I. As a Rangers fan, I'm getting surprised about how long the umpires are letting this go. So a couple questions. Have you ever seen something like this before? Should the Rangers have been charged a mound visit for the bat boy, as I think they were? Is there some point at which although a player safety is priority, the umpires can or should just say, okay, we need to play the game. You need to pull this guy. So yes, he was just downing chugging pickle juice to try to stay in this game. And I can read a little bit more information here. Rocker had not been slated to start. I think Tyler M. Was supposed to start against the White Sox. This was in June. And then Mali went on the injured list with shoulder fatigue. So they called up Rocker from AAA and he threw five scoreless innings. But he also had to just quaff plenty of pickle juice. And reliever Luke Jackson jokingly called it the pickle juice game after Rocker downed five bottles of pickle juice while suffering through cramps in the fifth inning. Yeah, so this is like. Like Michael Jordan has the flu game and Kumar Rocker has the pickle game. Yeah. So Bruce Bochi said Kumar had good stuff, but the cramping thing, he just couldn't get rid of it. I think he broke the record on how much pickle juice you can drink. I just thought he really was under control today and calm out there, et cetera, et cetera. He bounced back. He persisted with the help of pickle.
- [71:29]
Meg Rowley
Juice because it's it.
- [71:31]
Ben Lindbergh
It.
- [71:31]
Meg Rowley
I've heard of this as a. A solution to cramping before. This is not a new but five bought. So. Okay, now I have questions. Again, sorry, I have to so Are they buying jars of pickles, eating the pickles and then, and then holding on to the juice.
- [71:54]
Ben Lindbergh
Purchase pickle juice alone.
- [71:55]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [71:56]
Ben Lindbergh
I've never tried to do so, but I bet, I bet you can. Or maybe it's some sort of. Right, yeah. Synthetic pickle juice, pickle brine or. Yeah, I think, I think you can. I'm, I'm just searching quickly. Yeah, you can buy pickle juice. I've, I've never been seized with that urge, but. And I don't know if people just drink it for pleasure or for cramping.
- [72:17]
Meg Rowley
So like if, like if, if we go through a jar of pickles, I will keep the juice because it can be nice in cocktails, you know.
- [72:27]
Ben Lindbergh
Okay.
- [72:27]
Meg Rowley
You can like, like make a nice martini, but with it, you know, if you like a dirty martini, but instead of doing olive brine, you can do pickle juice.
- [72:34]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [72:35]
Meg Rowley
And that's nice. And some people like picklebacks. Although I've aged out of picklebacks, you know, like by quite a margin because that's a young person's game, not an almost 40 year old's game. So I, I just wonder like it. Are pickles a common Rangers clubhouse snack? And then they're like, you know what this is good for? You know, is the trainer like, huh, I can, you know, every part of, of the cow. Is it, is it like that?
- [73:00]
Ben Lindbergh
I would guess that training staffs keep it on hand if it's really so effective that you might want to have it as a preventative measure.
- [73:08]
Meg Rowley
Right.
- [73:09]
Ben Lindbergh
I assumed that this had something to do with electrolytes, but I'm, I'm learning that it might not be because of that, but because perhaps the strong taste triggers a reflex in the back of the throat via acetic acid that calms the misfiring nerves causing the cramp. That's interesting. So there might be more than one mechanism of action here.
- [73:31]
Meg Rowley
Somehow that feels like less real science.
- [73:37]
Ben Lindbergh
I guess that would explain why it works so quickly, but.
- [73:40]
Meg Rowley
Right. And here, you know, here I was impugning the, the, the good name of those electrolyte powders. So.
- [73:48]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, well, maybe.
- [73:49]
Meg Rowley
What do I know?
- [73:50]
Ben Lindbergh
Works in multiple ways, but. And mysterious ways evidently. But I. There was some disparity in the number of pickles juice bottles. Yeah.
- [74:02]
Meg Rowley
So I was right.
- [74:04]
Ben Lindbergh
So Bocce said five, but then an ESPN story said three. But I've realized that accounting for the disparity is that he had already consumed two in the dugout and so then he had.
- [74:16]
Meg Rowley
So he was already cramping.
- [74:18]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. So he had three during that fifth inning, but he had already been chugging a couple bottles, so that's a lot of pickle juice.
- [74:27]
Meg Rowley
Boy, that's just fine for me. I have a briny palate, you know, like all. All the. The Molly Bass heads out there. I'm like, squarely in my wheelhouse. Yeah, let's get it brainy and vinegary.
- [74:43]
Ben Lindbergh
I guess it's mostly for therapeutic use and not something that people drink for fun. I'm sure there's someone out there who likes pickle juice, but if it's. If it works by shocking your system such that it makes you stop from cramping, then, I don't know, maybe it's not so fun. But, yeah. Plate umpire Marvin Hudson, the crew chief, huddled with the other three umpires and they ruled the Rangers should be charged with a mound visit for the ball boys trip because, yeah, this was the third bottle of pickled cheese.
- [75:09]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. Like, if you're gonna say he's staying in, then I think you have to at a certain point, you know, pay the piper, as it were.
- [75:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. And you can't keep everyone waiting all day. Like, if someone has to have a. A pickle. Just a swig of pickle juice after every pitch or so. I mean, you have a limited number of mountain visits now, prior to the limit on mountain visits. I guess you could have just kept bringing pickle juice out there indefinitely until the umpires put a stop to it, but they would eventually put a stop to it and just said, look, if you can't function, then you need to. To be removed from this game. Seems reasonable to either really does unsafe or inconsiderate or both. This is delay of game. Yeah, right. Delay of game for the Rays. This is another one where we didn't really get nominations, so I sort of supplied my own. And it's a. A player we've talked about plenty in the past, but really may not have mentioned at all this year. And that's Yandy Diaz. Yeah. Old ground beef himself. That nickname didn't quite catch on beyond this podcast, though. I'm still sort of fond of it. But Yanni Diaz, he's underrated. Maybe this isn't that great a story. Yanni Diaz, underrated. But I think he is because we really didn't talk about him and he kept it up like he had another strong offensive season. Now he's. He's not going to be high on any war leaderboards because he's DHing a lot and, you know, he's not giving you much defensive value, even when he plays the field, and he's not giving you anything on the bases or anything. And he's not a huge power threat, despite being a big, beefy guy. Because he hits the ball on the ground so often.
- [76:52]
Meg Rowley
That is.
- [76:53]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, that's why we dubbed him Ground Beef. And he still does that. And there have been various flirtations with hitting the ball in the air and times where he seemed to have gotten the launch angle up and everything, but he's. He's just sort of settled into this is who I am. More than half of my batted balls will be on the ground. It's not, you know, 60% as it was in some seasons, but it's still like 54%. That seems to just be his range. But he hits the ball hard, and despite hitting tons of ground, he batted.300 this year. Yeah, he didn't have AS. Like, we talked about him a lot, I guess, in 2022, 2023. Like, you know, when he came over from the Guardians and then it seemed like, oh, the Rays fixed him like, he was very good in 2020. And then there was a time where he seemed to be hitting for more power. And, you know, he. He hit 25 homers this year. That's. That's not bad. That's a career high for him. Like, when he was with the Guardians, and even early in his tenure with the Rays, he was barely cracking double digits. And so now he's 25. That's not so bad. But still sub. 200 isolated power. You know, he's. He hits for average. It's kind of odd because he's like this big beef guy, but he doesn't hit that many dingers. But he makes tons of contacts. Like, he struck out only 14% of the time. There are very few true talent. 300 hitters, but he basically is that. He batted.330 two seasons ago. He batted.307 in 2020. He batted.300 on the dot this year. 135 WRC plus this year. And he's kept it up for. For quite a while now to the point that I just. I looked 2022 through 2025. So this is the past four seasons. And I just looked for weighted runs created, not weighted runs created plus, but weighted runs created, which takes into account how productive you were on offense, but also your playing time, because he's been durable, too. Here's the top 15 hitters in baseball. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, Kyle Schwerberg, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Jose Ramirez, Bobby Witt Jr. Pete Alonso, Rafael Devers, Francisco Lindor, Mookie Betts, Yandy Diaz, Manny Machado. So he's comfortably in the top 15 most productive hitters in baseball over the past four seasons. And I would say that all of those guys I listed there are, are like household names among, you know, baseball fans. Like, people know them, they're sort of stars. And I'm pretty sure that if you ask, asked people to, like, list the best hitters in baseball over that span, you'd have to go way more than 14 names until people started mentioning Yandy Diaz. Or, like, if you had some sort of sporkle, like fill out the top 15 hitters by WRC over the past four seasons, I think all those other names would come to mind much more quickly for most people. Yeah, and, you know, that's partly a product of the market where he plays and just like the weird offensive profile and him kind of, you know, being a late bloomer, but just also, he was an all star one time and he has gotten MVP votes in a few other seasons, including this past one. But it's just a, it's an odd offensive profile and so he doesn't really, like, lead the league in anything. And I, I think he's just kind of under the radar and, you know, not the most well rounded player, but still unsung by us. This year on the podcast deserves to be sung because he's still like an elite bat and that's pretty impressive.
- [80:34]
Meg Rowley
I agree, I agree.
- [80:36]
Ben Lindbergh
And now he's like overshadowed by junior Cameron Arrow and he should be like, yeah, they're young, exciting prospects and talents, but, yeah, you know, still doing his thing. Okay, Red Sox. Elsewhere in the AL east, we got a submission from Keegan and it is a prank played by Roman Anthony. Baseball players, they love their pranks.
- [81:00]
Meg Rowley
Sure do.
- [81:01]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. So sometimes, yes. This is the headline Jen McCaffrey wrote about this at the Athletic in March. How 76 coffee orders turned into a morning of chaos for two top Red Sox prospects. So they had to deliver 76 coffee orders to Boston Red Sox teammates, coaches and staff. At the end of February, Anthony was in the training room with Walker Bueller chatting about coffee. Given a chance to rib the number one prospect, Bueller decided Anthony would buy coffee for the team the next day. The whole team. I thought it was a joke, Anthony said. Until it wasn't. Bueller made sure the rookie included all of the coaches and clubhouse staffers, making for several dozen orders. A slightly overwhelmed Anthony started keeping track on his phone of every specialized syrup request. This is like Jonah Tong chiming in. I Canadian syrup in my coffee. Not Vermont cold foam addition, nonfat milk, whole milk, splash of this or that. But he soon recruited his teammate, Marcelo Mayer for help. And, you know, people were probably embellishing their orders for this. Right. Probably trying to make it as complicated as possible. He's like, we have to get coffee for every single person in the org, Meyer recalled. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He shows me a list. There were 40 coffee orders already. I don't know how Meyer got drafted into this. Like, it seems like Walker Bueller was picking on Roman Anthony specifically. And. And Anthony's like, we have to do this with. Meyer could have said, we. How did we do this?
- [82:32]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [82:34]
Ben Lindbergh
Like preparing for the next day's opposing pitcher. They had to develop a game plan. They picked a Starbucks on aliko Road, about six miles from JetBlue Park. And the night before, they drove there and asked for the manager here. I'm like, you better bring your A squad tomorrow morning at 5am because we're ordering 76 coffees. This is like some sort of. I think you should leave sketch 55 coffees.
- [82:55]
Meg Rowley
This does, this does preemptively answer my question. Because I was like, this is being put in terms of a day of chaos.
- [83:02]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [83:03]
Meg Rowley
For Roman Anthony. But the people. Right, Exactly.
- [83:08]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. So they Woke up at 4:30am to get to Starbucks right. When it opened. The four person staff was well prepared for the Thursday morning madness. But making the process more chaotic, Anthony had to read off each individual order and pay one at a time. Oh. Because that way each cup would have a player's name on it and they could keep track of who had which coffee. Oh, man.
- [83:33]
Meg Rowley
Okay.
- [83:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Is there not a more efficient way to do this?
- [83:35]
Meg Rowley
Yeah, I'm sorry, there's now, I think that the. The Starbucks employees, and to be clear, I support them in their decision. We're having a little bit of fun at Roman Anthony's expense.
- [83:42]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [83:43]
Meg Rowley
Even though keying in each individual order would be kind of burdensome, but surely they do group orders.
- [83:51]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. There has to be some. Some batching that goes on here, one would hope. Because even if you don't have 76, usually, you know, there might be someone who's making the run for the office or something. And you're not paying eight times, are you? I guess I've never been the gopher for the Starbucks, but that doesn't seem like the way I would do it.
- [84:11]
Meg Rowley
I don't know, I guess you don't normally require in that instance, like, the name. You just put the. The order, like the drink order itself.
- [84:20]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah.
- [84:21]
Meg Rowley
So maybe this was like an additional requirement that Walker Bueller imposed. But then here's the thing, Anthony. You lie is the thing. You bring a Sharpie and you do it yourself after the fact. So this is. This. This is. This is an amateur move on Roman Anthony's part, potentially.
- [84:38]
Ben Lindbergh
Maybe they're just. With 76, there are so many of them that it would be hard to find without your name on it.
- [84:45]
Meg Rowley
I just refuse to believe that the employee, if they aren't trying to take the piss out of Roman Anthony, would sign up to. I think you would say, hey, buddy, let's ring them all up once. And then I'm gonna sit here with this Sharpie and I'm gonna take care of business after the fact.
- [84:58]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, you could do that. Oh. Oh, man. It gets worse because after about 2020 orders, Anthony's credit card was declined because they suspected fraud. Because who would be buying 76 coffees?
- [85:09]
Meg Rowley
This is like when you used to have to call your bank when you were traveling to be like, hey, I am in fact going to be in the state of California, and this is not someone having stolen my card.
- [85:19]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, he needs a call. Meyer had to take over and. And pay for the rest, I guess. Oh, my gosh. Anthony said they did a very good job of pumping them out. You'd think they did that large an order every morning. They were really good. And there were a few unlucky customers who. Who came through the drive through while the Red Sox coffee crush was happening. But no one came into the store, at least, so that was good. The bill came to more than 600 bucks. Meyer and Anthony split it, making sure to leave the baristas a hefty cash tip for all their efforts. I would hope so. It doesn't. Doesn't specify this story, what that tip was, but it better have been big. I know these guys are still making league minimum or, you know, I guess their extensions in the works. I mean, yeah, you got to make it worth the while for the poor baristas.
- [86:05]
Meg Rowley
As I said to my brother when he was a teenager, if you can't afford to leave a tip, you can't afford to go out.
- [86:12]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Anyway, Meyer forgot in amid the chaos to use his Starbucks app so he didn't get credit toward future purchases. He said, I would have had free coffee for a month. And then they realized, they realized the day before that neither of their cars was big enough to Transport 76, fit all the trays. So they asked fellow minor leaguer Max Ferguson for help because he had an SUV. So they loaded the SUV up with 19 trays of coffee. Anthony sat in the back and held it to prevent spills. Well, yeah, you know, he's got good hands. So although you don't, you don't want your prospects scalded with 70.
- [86:52]
Meg Rowley
So that's a little funny.
- [86:54]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Anyway, then they, they drove extra slow for the six mile journey, like 15 miles per hour. We went 50 miles per hour with our hazard lights on because we had 76 coffees in the back.
- [87:05]
Meg Rowley
Yeah. If you were in line at the drive through, you would be like, what's going on? And then the question becomes, if you're Starbucks, you're not supposed to have non employees behind the counter, but if you're the barista, do you say to Roman Anthony, who, granted this was during spring training.
- [87:24]
Ben Lindbergh
Right.
- [87:25]
Meg Rowley
You said so who knows? But if you're, if you're a Red Sox fan and was he in uniform? Because often when they make them go to the Starbucks, they have them go in full uniform, like with cleats and everything. I would say to the, I would say to Roman Anthony, hey buddy, like, can you pop your head out the drive through and be like, hey, we're so sorry. Because then if it's a Red Sox fan, they're like, oh my God, that. But you might get in trouble because then that person's not going to be able to resist telling the story of how Roman Anthony told them. Thanks for being patient. And then you've invited them behind the counter and that's a no go. Although it's Florida, so maybe there are no rules, you know.
- [88:06]
Ben Lindbergh
And then there's the last mile problem. You get all these coffees to the park, but then how do you distribute them? So the clubhouse manager met them in the players parking lot, loaded the trays of coffee onto a rolling cart to push them to the clubhouse. And then they set up a folding table, like a little lemonade stand sort of situation, I guess. And they had all the hot coffees there. And then they put the iced coffees in the fridge.
- [88:29]
Meg Rowley
Smart.
- [88:29]
Ben Lindbergh
Then, then they got on the team bus. But before they left, they made sure that everyone got their order and every drink that didn't make the trip stayed in the place and was refrigerated. They didn't even get coffee for themselves, which I guess that's funny. They had enough coffee to handle. They, they almost pitched a perfect game with the coffee. They went 75 for 76. They screwed up Garrett Crochet's order. He wanted hot coffee, but instead got iced.
- [88:58]
Meg Rowley
But okay.
- [88:59]
Ben Lindbergh
Not bad on the whole.
- [89:01]
Meg Rowley
Not bad on the whole. I will say of all the people's order to goof like Garrett Crochet is maybe a suboptimal one to have gotten wrong just given his importance to the franchise. But that's a pretty impressive hit rate, candidly.
- [89:14]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, that's not bad at all, I guess.
- [89:15]
Meg Rowley
Not bad at all.
- [89:16]
Ben Lindbergh
They did also forget Garrett Whitlock's order entirely. Oh, I guess. I guess. What happened? Oh, I see. So in typical Garrett Whitlock fashion, he decided not to tell the prospects they had forgotten his order, assuming they mixed him up with Crochet and got only one Garrett coffee. And Whitlock said, I felt pretty bad. They worked hard.
- [89:36]
Meg Rowley
That's lovely. I will say, I think, you know, and we talked one maybe I think Ray Story we did talk about was the, the dress up day. But in, in general, I feel like we have had, you know, a little bit of gentle ribbing to the new guy. I think can, can build camaraderie rather than making someone feel bad. I think that, you know, there's balance to these things, but that tends to be on the right side of it. And I think the coffee thing is a good way to kind of keep the generic and sort of less harmful version of the traditional life. But it is nice when people kind of roll with it, like, hey, you just probably forgot. It's not a big deal, buddy, you know, that's nice.
- [90:22]
Ben Lindbergh
Don't crack down too much. So, yeah, it's a little light hazing, but not in an abusive way. I think, you know, 76 coffees, though, that's a lot.
- [90:34]
Meg Rowley
That's a lot of coffee. Coffees, man.
- [90:36]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Okay. Anyway, good spring training story. Glad that I'm now aware of it. The Royals. Robert submitted a few possibilities here. They were the only team this season not to lose a game in which they carried a lead into the ninth, which is, you know, it's a nice little distinction. Yeah. So. Huh.
- [90:56]
Meg Rowley
That's pretty cool.
- [90:56]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Royals review mentioned this too. The bullpen had just 20 blown saves, third fewest in baseball. And the Royals were the only team that did not lose a game in which they went into the ninth with a lead.
- [91:08]
Meg Rowley
Huh.
- [91:08]
Ben Lindbergh
And that's nice, cuz it stinks to lose a lead in the ninth. So if you can go a whole season without doing that, then bully for you. That's fun for fans. To feel like we've got this unlock when we get to that stage. Yeah, I guess their bullpen as a whole. Let's see where they, they ranked. They ranked in terms of bullpen war 14th, nothing special. And then in terms of bullpen win probability added seventh. So it wasn't like they were some historically elite all time great bullpen in particular, but they just happened. Yeah. Happens not to have a game go awry and, and lose one in which they carried a lead into the ninth. I guess they, they could have blown one but then won the game game anyway. But yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't have, I mean credit to Carlos Estevez I guess for mostly doing his job. Robert also mentioned that the Royals this season had two teammates reach 30 home runs and a hundred RBI for the first time in club history. When Salvador Perez and Vinnie Pasquantino reached that mark. Yeah, that, that sounds like something that should have happened before but that's, that doesn't sound that impressive. But I mean there was that fact for a long time that like the Royals hadn't had someone hit whatever number of home runs it was since Steve. Bye bye Balboni hit 36 in 1985. And like there was a long stretch where the Royals just didn't have great power hitters. Didn't have great on base guys either. You know still don't sometimes. But Kaufman, you know it's a tough place to, to hit homers obviously big outfield there and they have had a dearth of, of power hitters over the years. But I still, I probably would have thought, I mean I haven't checked to see if any other team has a drought this long. But 30 and 100 is. It's not like that high a threshold really. Just like you know, with the PD ERA and with the juiced ball and all the rest of it. We've had record home run rates. So. But I guess the RBI these days with the batting averages being low and, and all of that, it's maybe not as much of a formula for being a big RBI guy. Anyway, congrats to Salvi and the Pasquatch. The Tigers we must mention, I think this was a, a self nomination but the Tigers extremely successful minor league record. So yeah, we talked plenty probably about the major league team but the Tigers had the best record across the Minor Leagues in 2025 of any organization. Baseball America wrote about this. When the minor league season ended in late September, J.J. cooper documented this. The Tigers collectively, their minor league affiliates had a.589 winning percentage which was the fifth best of the past 20 years. Detroit's farm teams won championships in low A, the Florida State League and high A. The Midwest League. Double A Erie played for the Eastern League title. I don't know offhand whether they won that, but that had not been decided as Baseball America went to press. Got to figure out, did Double A Erie win the Eastern League title? Maybe you can Google that. I'm just very much in suspense here, but impressive minor league winning percentage. Also the tigers farm team's plus six. 50 run differential. The seventh best of the past 20 years. And that's good, you know, it's. It's good to have your minor league teams play well. I think I've looked at this in the past and it's like less predictive than you would think.
- [94:51]
Meg Rowley
They won it, it seems, in 2023 and 2024, but not in 2025.
- [94:56]
Ben Lindbergh
Ah, okay.
- [94:57]
Meg Rowley
Binghamton won it in 2025.
- [95:00]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, I remember talking about Tigers minor league teams at some point this season because of course they had the. The Moon Mammoths. Right, The John Oliver experiment. Yeah, that, that was a Tigers affiliate. That was Erie. And yeah, they, they had some other like, historic performances in the minors despite prospects being promoted. I vaguely recall either finding a study or doing one myself and learning that this wasn't super predictive of how good your major league team was going to be down the road. Like you'd probably rather know of teams farm system ranking than it's, it's minor league winning percentage because that could go either way. It could mean that you have a ton of great prospects or maybe it could mean that you have a lot of like minor league veterans hanging around who are good for that level but are not going to bolster your big league roster. And you know, of course, like in development, teams typically are not prioritizing winning number one. So you know, I'm not saying that they were trying to win at the expense of development or anything. I'm sure it's correlated with, with good things. It's better to be good than bad. Yeah. Bold. Bold take by me. But. But yeah, I'm not sure that it presages, you know, historic performance in the future. Yeah, but, but you know, Tigers do have prospects coming along, so salute to them and their minor league affiliates. Okay, the Twins. This was. We had a story submitted by Andrew and JD And a big one was James Outman and Ryan Fitzgerald being look alikes. So one, one email we got for as much as you two have discussed lookalike players in the past yeah, of course we, we talked about Dansby Swanson and Charlie Culberson with the Braves. Right.
- [96:45]
Meg Rowley
And well, they are pretty similar looking. Look at that.
- [96:48]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah, yeah, they are. And wow. Yeah, there have been some other funny instances, you know, separated at birth kind of big league players. But I was surprised you two never mentioned James Outman and Ryan Fitzgerald for the twins this season. In fact, they look so similar that not only were they displayed during a Target Field celebrity lookalike segment, but also a twins beat reporter later revealed by Bobby Nightingale Jr. To be Phil Miller accidentally interviewed Ryan Fitzgerald after James Outman hit his first home run as a twin.
- [97:21]
Meg Rowley
That's so funny. Oh my God.
- [97:23]
Ben Lindbergh
Gosh.
- [97:23]
Meg Rowley
Really?
- [97:24]
Ben Lindbergh
That's really good. Yeah.
- [97:26]
Meg Rowley
So, wow, they are so similar looking. I mean, I think part of it, part of it is definitely we had to talk about Dan Spy and Charlie Culberson because they were on the same team. And so you were just sitting there going, no, that's not two boys. That's one boy moving back and forth very fast. Chest.
- [97:49]
Ben Lindbergh
Right.
- [97:49]
Meg Rowley
To create the illusion of two separate boys. But it's one boy. And then they weren't on the same team anymore and our long national nightmare was over. So these, these are different team boys. So it's not, I mean they're young men. They're men. They're, they are, they're, they're just dudes, guys being Bruce, you know. Wow.
- [98:11]
Ben Lindbergh
Very similar. Yeah. Are there ages and, and builds? Because the facially they're, they're very similar.
- [98:19]
Meg Rowley
Let's see. Well, ryan Fitzgerald is 31, so James Outman is a little younger.
- [98:25]
Ben Lindbergh
Right.
- [98:25]
Meg Rowley
Like he's late 20s. Yeah. 28.
- [98:27]
Ben Lindbergh
Fitzgerald's listed at 510, 186 and Outman 6 2, 2 15. So Outman much larger and younger. So yeah, maybe if they're standing next.
- [98:38]
Meg Rowley
To each other, but if they're sitting down.
- [98:40]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. There's a photo of them sitting, sitting on the dugout bench and it is pretty much. Yeah, they look very similar. It's, it's not quite. It's like the Brady's Feigl. Remember Brady Feigls? The two Brady, the red haired pitchers who had all sorts of similarities and looked similar and had the same name but weren't actually related. That was a fun story for a while. But yeah, Fitzgerald and Outman did not notice how much they looked like each other.
- [99:06]
Meg Rowley
I guess we also talk about the, the, the, the many similar looking guys like on the Orioles.
- [99:14]
Ben Lindbergh
True. Yeah. And I guess, yeah. That they called up Fitzgerald after the trade deadline. After they traded their entire team in August and they called him up then. And then Outman was acquired in one of those deals for Brock Stewart and then called up. So they sort of arrived at the same time too, which is kind of funny. And, and they're mistaken for each other even within the clubhouse. I'm reading a Twin Cities.com story at a hitters meeting. Fitzgerald said bench coach Jace Tingler kept pointing in his direction while talking about Outman. So it's not just the beat writers, it's actual team personnel. Outman said, when I was on second base on Wednesday, I saw him standing in the box and I was like, oh, that does look like me. But the first time I ran into him I didn't think much of it just because I don't really see my face too much. Well, yeah, I guess. Good points.
- [100:04]
Meg Rowley
And I want to be clear. I'm, I'm aware that they, they were eventually on the same team but like for much of the year they weren't on the same team.
- [100:12]
Ben Lindbergh
Yes, yes. And they're both left handed hitters and Fitz Fitzgerald says their swings look somewhat similar and that they also have the same resting face. Fitzgerald said, I've seen him before but just being so close to him now, I can't stop looking at him. Yeah. I mean it was literally like looking at a mirror. Mirror. Yeah. Which I guess Outman doesn't look in a mirror that much because he said he doesn't see his face, but Fitzgerald evidently does. So yeah, okay. Fitzgerald said he's been getting the Outman comparison since at least last year cuz both spent spring training in Arizona when Outman was with the Dodgers and Fitzgerald was in the Royals organization. When Fitzgerald was out in public, confused fans would approach him. I would be out to dinner or I was at topgolf and people were like James Outman. Is James Outman that recognizable?
- [100:59]
Meg Rowley
I was just about to say I, I'm skeptical of that being a true story because that seems like it can't be real because I'm sorry, James Outman is not that distinctive looking. And I don't mean that as an insult to James Outman or even as a comment on his relative level of fame. I'm just saying he is like baseball player, pro athlete. Anonymous. You know, where it's like you or I might recognize him, him in street clothes, but maybe not even, you know, because he's just not remarkable looking. And again I this is not a knock on James Outman.
- [101:34]
Ben Lindbergh
It isn't that notable. A player in particular. Yeah. Right. So anyway, that's a fun little story. And yeah, they did the, the celebrity lookalike cam. And then so it says Outman was pictured as the celebrity. And a live shot of Fitzgerald came on the screen. The crowd had little reaction, seemingly thinking they were just looking at two photos of Outman. That's kind of defeats the purpose. I guess. They, they looked too alike. And then the next day when Fitzgerald was at the plate, the fun fact that accompanied his photo on the scoreboard simply proclaimed is not James Outman.
- [102:07]
Meg Rowley
That's funny.
- [102:08]
Ben Lindbergh
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, well that's something to watch.
- [102:12]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [102:13]
Ben Lindbergh
We learn so much when, when doing these things. It's, it's a fun time. I like these episodes over. Okay, so that's Outman and Fitzgerald and. And JD Also submitted Ryan Fitzgerald for non Outman related reasons, just his journey to slash debut with the Twins. Nightingale wrote a good column outlining his path from minor league journeyman to his debut. A 31 year old who went undrafted out of Creighton University, never gave up on playing in the big leagues despite remaining stuck in Class AAA for the past three seasons. He was set to play in Mexico this year after playing in the Dominican Winter League before the Twins offered him a minor league contract in January. He was briefly called up in May when Carlos Correa was on the seven day concussion injured list. And then he was recalled after Correa was traded to Houston. Got the call again in August after the Twins deadline apocalypse. And then yeah, he got the started third on August 10th and in the third inning he hit a two run homer for his first big league hit. Super cool moment. And Fitzgerald said the window is closing. The older you get, the less chance you have of making it it, etc. Etc. And then he made it and he found out that he had a doppelganger in the same clubhouse. And everyone seems to like him, seems to be a good dude from all accounts. And then there was the Outman factor.
- [103:26]
Meg Rowley
Okay, that's so funny. I, I wonder, would you like, would you feel like you were in Black Swan?
- [103:33]
Ben Lindbergh
Maybe so I mean, I guess as long as you don't have a evil bizarro version of you running around if, if you, you like your lookalike. Yeah. And also there's the potential for hijinks, I suppose having a lookalike in the same clubhouse, which seems like they didn't exploit the potential for hijinks, but hijinks happened anyway just of their own accord. So you end up with some, some silly situations. So that would be fun. Yeah. Okay. All right. Last two teams, the White Sox. This was submitted by Corey and it's just a general appreciation of Lenin SOS and his career year. Now, what's interesting is that Lenny and Sosa is the longest tenured member of the White Sox roster. He's been there for not that long, frankly, but there's been a lot of turnover on the White Sox over those years. So he came up in 2022 and still was there this year and just the entire roster turned over essentially. And he had himself a solid season and you know, he's been a utility guy and half glove will travel and plays a bunch of positions. And he still did that this year. Yes, he played first and second and third. So, you know, he'll. He'll play most of the infield positions at least, but usually he wasn't going to give you that much with the bat. But this year he held his own offensively. Not, not bad, Lenny and Sosa, he had a 100 WRC plus in a full season, qualified for the batting title for the first time in everything. 140 games, 544 plate appearances. And he did okay, you know, sub 300 on base, but.264 batting average, which in this era is solid and a little bit of pop too. He, he had 22 home runs. Lenny Sosa, who knew, probably plenty of White Sox fans, but not me. So he didn't walk. You know, he's. He has a 3% walk rate every year, but. And I guess he struck out at roughly a league average rate too. But you know, decent speed, decent BABIP and just made it to an average offensive performance coupled with positional flexibility and war wise was actually worth playing and valuable for the first time in his career. Yeah, so. So yeah, socks machine or southside showdown, called it an emergence. Not a breakout, but an emergency emergence, which I think is appropriate and you know, it's a measured term for what happened here. But he's 25. He's about to turn 26, age 25 season and got to be a starter, got to be a regular and really rose to the occasion. And so now according to this south side showdown post, the White Sox have an impossible decision to make about Lenny and Sosa this off season. Not sure it's impossible, but yeah, they do have to decide where he will play and if there is more within him or if they want to ship him out somewhere. But it seems like there was a general appreciation for Lenny and Sosa this season. He also had a socks machine post Back in August headlined Lenny and Sosa refuses to relent. So James Fegan did justice to Sosa as well. So good for him, I guess. I wonder how often the longest tenured member of a team this is potential stop last territory. Michael Mountain, Ryan Nelson if you're listening. But how often the longest tenured member of a roster would be as unaccomplished as Lennon Sosa? I guess that's a. I'm trying to compliment the guy, trying to flatter him. But you know, not only is he not that long tenured, but also he's not a great player. So I wonder how often that's the case. You know, know, don't have like some expansion franchise or some unusual circumstance. I guess probably there have been a bunch of fire sales in history so it's probably just like post fire sale whoever's still standing the longest. But I would guess that it's, it's often at least someone a little more, I don't know, acclaimed accomplished than Sosa. Although then again maybe it's like the last man standing after the fire sale is someone who didn't have a lot of trade value value. So maybe, maybe it is the guy who just kind of people forgot he was there. You know, like office space style or something. Anyway, good for Lenny and Sosa for, for getting an opportunity to play more and making the most of it. And lastly, this comes to us from Jessica. We are up to down to the Yankees and it's basically home run fun facts about the Yankees. The one submitted by Jessica was the that the 2025 Yankees hit four home runs in an inning three different times this season. They did that on March 29th. I guess that was back in the beating up on the brewers with the torpedo bats days. They did it a month later, April 29th and then they did it on August 27th. And according to Jessica, they are the first team to do so thrice within the same season. Four home runs in an inning. They did it three different times. And I guess relatedly they made some other sort of similar history where they hit back to back to back homers to begin a game twice this season. And you know, we've discussed the terminology of back to back to back.
- [108:54]
Meg Rowley
Yeah.
- [108:54]
Ben Lindbergh
And should it be back to back to belly etc? I've kind of copied John Sterling there. But if we just go with the terminology that was used. They began a game by hitting three consecutive homers and they did that twice and that was apparently unprecedented. They were the first team in AL NL history to open multiple games with three consecutive homers in a single season. And they did it again on March 29 and then a month to the day later. So Bronx Bombers hitting bombs in sort of a historic way. The homers came in bunches, as they say, for the Bombers, the sequel season. Okay, well, we've come to the end, hopefully, assuming I didn't leave out any teams there, but I'm sure people will let us know if that happened. Yeah, meant to mention for the Royals, also that it seems like the Royals stadium situation is kind of coming to a head because the Chiefs have now resolved their situation and they're getting a sweetheart deal and it's just race to the bottom, cross state lines, get billions of public funding to leave Arrowhead and relocate, and now the pressure's on. I guess the Royals can kind of hold that over the head and say, well, we will follow them out of state if you do not give us a similarly sweetheart deal. So that's something to monitor, but that'll be a story to discuss or fail to discuss in 2026 and beyond. So thanks to everyone who nominated. Couldn't do this without help from from everyone else and I'm sure there's plenty that we still did not discuss. But yeah, we tried to be be quasi comprehensive at least, and that won't do it for this week, but that will do it for this year. Yeah, that's the last effectively wild episode of 2025. And we will ring in the new year with a fresh new podcast at the end of the week. But for now, thanks for listening in 2025 and supporting the podcast. And happy New Year. We will talk to you in 2026.
- [110:55]
Meg Rowley
Happy New Year everyone.
- [110:56]
Ben Lindbergh
And actually, you'll hear me talk to you a little bit more in 2025 because I have to do the outro after all. What a journey that was from 76 coffees to the twins on the Twins and beyond. And what a journey 2025 has been. We tried to catch up with some of what we missed on the podcast this year. If you're trying to catch up with anything you missed on the podcast, may I remind you to check out the Only A Woman Ella Black Lost and Found series, the three part narrative historical series that I did earlier this year. I really love doing this. That seemed like a lot of people enjoyed it, but if you missed it at the time, maybe you skipped it in the moment and said, I'll come back to it. It was the beginning of the season. Well, this wouldn't be the worst time to check it out. It's pretty evergreen. That was episodes 2309, 2310 and 2311. Something a little different for us, but I hope we can do more like it someday. I will link to it on the show page for this episode, but it would please me very much if you check that out, if you haven't already and let me know what you think. It is the story of the first woman known to have written about baseball for a national publication, and we dug into her history to try to find out who she was, hopefully somewhat successfully. Also thanks to all the Secret Santa participants who have been posting the gifts that they've given or gotten in our Facebook group or our Discord group. Always brings me some holiday cheer to see those gifts. My Secret Santa sent me an autographed card of Nick Johnson, one of the players I had an affinity for in my youth and still do. Although I love Christmas, I'm not religious, but I am always happy to celebrate OBP Jesus, which was Nick Johnson's Excellent Nick oh, speaking of nicknames, more info on Boob Fowler, whom we discussed yesterday. I dug up an article on the origin of his nickname and mentioned it on the Outro. But listener Dennis found another article, an even earlier one. This was from The Cincinnati Post, March 17, 1922 headline How Fowler Received Name of Boob and the first sentence well, it's very matter of fact, Chester Fowler got the nickname of Boob by being a boob. Quote when I answered to the baseball call at Texas Christian University 3 years ago ago, I was making my first effort to play the game, he says. I sure was green kid. Nance, the university coach immediately called me a boob and the name stuck. All right then. Fowler is one of the best built boys in the country. One look at him and it is easy to understand why he has the reputation of being a great football player and also a reputation for being a pretty good baseball player and unfortunately, a reputation for being a boob. Last time we talked about Dodgers pitcher Jack Dreyer and his expertise in all things Rubik's Cube got an email from listener Ben Zipper, who is a linguist and lexicographer and a big crossword puzzler, both a doer and a designer of crossword puzzles. And Ben Notes, Another one of Dreyer's nerdy passions emerged later in the season. Crosswords. And he doesn't just solve them, he also makes them. As Sonia chen reported for MLB.com's Dodger Beat newsletter in August, Dreyer's crossword, featured in the newsletter is not a bad effort from a rookie constructor, he's no crossword boob, but honestly, I'm just as impressed by his penmanship. It's true. It's very regimented. I will link to the story. Also, speaking of crosswords, got an email on Tuesday from listener Pat supporter Daniel Carroll who said, well, you're about to get a ton of messages about the Tuesday New York Times crossword if you haven't already 48 down the clue was making a plate appearance. Five letters at bat, of course being the response they want. Daniel says, I would get annoyingly pedantic about this one, but I'm a little tired of the PA versus AB discussion. And it's worth noting that plate appearance was not capitalized in the clue. We actually didn't get that many messages about this, so maybe other people weren't that bothered by it. But I did put this to Ben Zimmer, who sometimes constructs New York Times crossword puzzles, and I said to him, I suppose this is kosher in that an at bat does constitute a plate appearance. And maybe making a plate appearance doesn't imply that at bats and plate appearances are synonymous. And as the listener says, it's probably not really referring to the stat and other other other. Ben agreed, yeah, I'm willing to give that one a pass, especially since it's cluing the phrase at bat, I. E. In the batter's box equals making a plate appearance rather than the noun at bat. It's certainly not as egregious as the no. 1 on goof in October. As you'll recall, that puzzle had the clue what every baseball inning starts with, and the solution was no. 1 on, which of course no longer applies to every inning. Thanks Zombie Runner Couple People wrote in to add another name or another couple to the list of MLB NWSL romances. This came up when Declan Cronin was on the pod. He just married an NWSL player. Densby Swanson, of course, is married to Mallory Swanson, NWSL star and Jeremy Pena just got engaged to Julia Grosso. Also, Julio Rodriguez is or has been in a relationship with Jordan Heidema. I don't know their relationship status at this moment, but they were together at least until fairly recently and may remain so important. Email from listener Scott Holland about mozzarella sticks, which we discussed on the last episode. Scott writes, Love that your cub story in episode 2420 was the Boog JD mozzarella sticks episode, a truly delightful happenstance that would have been the unquestioned highlight of a less successful onfield season. That said, I remain upset. The record remains uncorrected. What the Corner Tap Room calls mozzarella sticks are not the breaded SL fried string cheese delicacies Meg referenced during your discussion, but rather what the rest of the Midwest would just call cheese bread. It's basically a sauceless cheese pizza with the sauce on the side as a dip. As a native Midwesterner who lived in northeast Iowa about 10 years ago for college education work, I remain confused as to how any local establishment can make this error. Both appetizers are delicious in their own right, but we need to know what we're ordering. And another message from Patreon supporter Daniel who says on the subject of mascot families, referencing episode 2420 and the San Francisco Giants, we discussed Lucille it seems to me that at least several mascots have mama versions who appear on Mother's day. There's a Mrs. Fanatic in Philadelphia for sure. In fact, I just learned that her name is Phoebe Phoebe fanatic. There's a Mrs. Moose in Seattle, though I don't remember her name. Google suggests it's just Mama Moose. I'm not sure if it's common for mascots to have father mascots for Father's Day. I have no problem with mascots having families. I don't see why they shouldn't. And finally, we talked about the idea of a free agent signing that's supposed to set the tone or change the course of an organization, make a place a more desirable destination for future free agents. We talked about a few examples of that and solicited some others. This is a good one from Stephen as a Tigers fan, Pudge Rodriguez signing with the tigers after the 2003 season in which they lost 119 games. Games was the first example that popped into my head of a team paying above the market rate for free agent and subsequently changing the narrative surrounding the franchise. Three years later, the Tigers made it to the World Series, losing to the Cardinals in five games. That's a good one. That one should have come to my mind the way that Jason Worth going to the Nationals did. Kind of a classic example. So that will do it for today and this year. Thanks as always for listening and special thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com effectivelywatch wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. David Perry, Helix, Ben Shibleer, Izzy Hurstruit Licht and Daniel Sanchez. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, December episode Coming Soonish Playoff, live streams, prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, personalized messages, shout outs at the end of episodes, discounts on merch and ad, free fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings@patreon.com effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, your comments, your 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 our facebook group@facebook.com effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and 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 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 in 2026. For now, we wish you a Happy New Year.
- [118:47]
Meg Rowley
Only show I need hosted by ben lindberg and megan riley. I wanna hear about show ha or mike trout with three ar.