← Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Effectively Wild Episode 2426: The Hot (Stove) Corner
01:41:22
Loading summary
Transcript183 lines
- [00:00]
A
More than 2,000 episodes retrospectively filed. And at each new one, we still collectively smile. That's effectively wild. That's effectively wild. Hello, and welcome to episode 2426 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fan Graphs and I am joined by Ben Limberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you?
- [00:33]
B
I am nourished by the sweet nectar of transactions providing us with offseason life and fodder to discuss. Our cup overfloweth runneth over. Suddenly we have stuff to talk about. It's a nice change.
- [00:48]
A
Yeah, I'm grateful for that. I am weirded out by your particular way of introdu introducing the idea of it, but I am, I agree. What, what deals have been done, what transactions have transacted, this infield market.
- [01:03]
B
It's just when you thought we were going to have to do an episode on the Braves bringing back Tyler Kinley. Fortunately, we have been obliged with a couple of big third base moves and some interesting rumors and some fence dimension changes and more. So I guess we can start with Alex Bregman. There is now a Chicago Cub.
- [01:26]
A
A Chicago Cub.
- [01:27]
B
How about that? So it's, it's a five year, $175 million deal. That's a big number. But 70 million is deferred, roughly. So it's more like 150 million in present day value. So 30ish annual value, roughly on average. So what do you make of the terms and the fit? The Cubs, they splurged. We talked last week about, hey, Cubs, you know, you're able to spend some money, have to solely subsist on trades. You can also wade into free agency. You are, after all, the Chicago Cubs baseball powerhouse. And I guess they heard us.
- [02:07]
A
Yeah, they did.
- [02:09]
B
You don't sound bowled over.
- [02:11]
A
So, okay. I'm struggling with this, with this contract, Ben. Yeah, I'm struggling because here's the, here's, here's, here's the source of my struggle. Here are the, the parts of my struggle. I think that Alex Bregman is a very good baseball player. I think that Alex Bregman will make his next team, in this case the Chicago Cubs, a better team. I am heartened to see the Chicago Cubs remembering that they have money and can spend it and that money is fungible and baseball players are not, you know, so those are good things. We talked last time. Well, was it last time. We talked a time recently. We talked a recent time about how, you know, the, the Cubs have some needs. And you know, we were sort of bemoaning where they ranked in terms of their third base defense. Although, you know, also, and I don't know if I articulated quite as sort of directly as I ought to have, like really an issue with the other people who played third base for the Cups last year, not Matt Shaw, who grays out fine, but is a less good player or at least the less good player right now than Alex Bregman. So an upgrade at the hot corner. But also it's a little weird, right, as a roster fit goes and also a lot of money for a guy his age, which is fine, except I worry about. Well, I made. I maybe said something to this effect about the other team that plays in Chicago when they signed Andrew Benintendi. And we can acknowledge the limitations of this comp. There are several. But if you're a club that isn't in the habit of spending big money, I wish you would just spend more. But it does mean that how you spend the money you spend is fairly important because who knows if you're going to spend more of it. So I don't dislike it in a, in a vacuum. And I don't think that Bregman, you know, he, he has injury issues and we should, we should also say something about the fit of Bregman and his swing for that park. But you know, he's a good player and I think he'll make them better. Even if I think as, as Davey Andrews noted in his write up of the deal, like you, you want, you think that Wrigley is going to be a good fit for Bregman. And then you remember there's that weird little cutout. And so it's not quite a fit as you would necessarily think, say, you know, the Crawford boxes were in Houston or Fenway was for him. There are those limitations. But like a good player and one who's likely to make them better. But also, I don't know if signing Bregman addresses the team's biggest offensive need. And I still wish that they would sign one more starter.
- [05:12]
B
So yeah, I had a sort of similar reaction actually. So maybe we're aligned, fairly aligned. My reaction sort of proceeded in st. I saw the news and I thought, hey, kudos to the Cubs. Yeah, they landed a big fish. This is a tool in their toolbox. Now they know that free agency exists and not just for rebuilding a bullpen, but they can actually go get one of the top free agents available. That's great. Then I saw the terms And I thought wow, 175. That's. That's a. Yes, that's a pretty big number for Alex Bregman, a player who is, I think it's fair to say, in decline. You know, in decline from a. A high peak and still a very productive player, but probably on the downside.
- [05:56]
A
And turn 32 just after opening day.
- [05:58]
B
Right. And some skills slippage and production slippage. So. And that was kind of addressed by the deferrals. When I read about the deferrals, I thought, okay, 30 million a year over five. That sounds a bit closer to what I would have thought than 35 million a year over five. And there are no opt outs, by the way, this time around and there is a full for no trade. Right. So. So, okay, that sounds like kind of a lot. But then I, yes, I eventually landed in the same place you did, which is glad to see the Cubs remembering that they can spend this kind of money. But if they were going to spend it on someone, it just seems like they would have had better bang for the buck without Bregman. That's a lot of bees. But yeah, I don't know if Bregman gives them the biggest bang for the buck. So. So it did sort of perplex me that this is the guy who convinced them to spend. Because if you could just kind of do the whole off season over and just say, well, we have this 35-ish-million a year to spend on someone, where would that be best applied to make our roster better by the most? I. I don't. Yeah, I don't know if it would be at third base.
- [07:15]
A
Right.
- [07:16]
B
Partly because of the kind of player Bregman is and the ballpark fit and partly because of the personnel and just, you know, even though they didn't get much third base production last year, Shaw was pretty good. And Shaw presumably is getting better as Bregman is presumably getting worse. And maybe they will kind of converge in the not too distant future. And, and so, you know, there might be another move to be made here and no one would be surprised if Nico Horner is traded and if that then opens up a spot and Shaw could shift over there. Because if this relegates Shaw to a utility role, well, he'd. He'd be a good utility, he'd be a good bench guy to have. But just the projected upgrades from Shaw to Bregman. And I know that Bregman's like a, you know, potential hall of Fame type player, and Matt Shaw has barely accomplished anything, is better known for his politics, probably than his play at this point. But yeah, just in terms of pure projected production, marginal upgrades, kind of that cold calculation, it wouldn't seem to be the biggest leap. And so yes, if, if you had, you know, and, and we talked about the trade that, that they made last week and we were pretty complimentary about acquiring Edward Cabrera and but if they had said at the start of the off season we're going to put this money toward something, someone then yeah, maybe going and getting a top of the rotation starter or even bringing back Kyle Tucker perhaps. Or yeah, it just. So that's. I am also similarly conflicted I guess. And, and they are currently like right on the knife's edge of the lowest competitive balance tax threshold which is what 244 for this year and Roster Resource has them at 2:43 right now.
- [09:13]
A
No, I want to, I want to be fair. I mean it sounds like to your point like there is likely to be a trade out of the rest of that infield group. Horner makes obvious sense insofar as like he is coming off his best year as a big leaguer. He was very productive. He's a good defender. I think the Cubs are better as a team if they keep Horner and Chip Shaw just from their current, the way that they're currently constituted for 2026. Shaw might net a good bit more from a prospect perspective because there's so much team control remaining. He is, you know, a, a good player. It also sounds like, you know, some of the reporting is that the, the stuff this past summer has made him, you know, there's, he might not be the most popular guy in that clubhouse and I don't even mean like specifically about his politics but just his absence. Like it doesn't seem like that's necessarily a group that's shelling around him. I don't want to overstate the cases on my reporting, but it does seem like, you know, there's, there's some possibility that he's on the move. Right. So maybe when we think about roster fit we should think about it from the perspective of those two guys in addition to Bregman. I am fascinated and dying to know does something happen with Kyle Tucker in the Cubs? Like it. It's weird to me that if they're, if they're willing to spend this kind of money and we're seeing some of the rumored AVs that are surrounding Kyle Tucker and some of the.
- [10:43]
B
Yes. Mets reportedly offering 50 million average annual value for a short term deal.
- [10:48]
A
A short term deal. And so it's like you're going to spend what amounts to $150 million in sort of real present money. Right? Because they have the deferrals with the Bregman deal. And Tucker is sort of in this weird. He's maybe entertaining and who knows what Kyle Tucker will end up doing, but perhaps entertaining these very high AAV short term deals. Like, well, don't you just want to bring Tucker back? And again, it takes two to tango. Maybe Kyle Tucker doesn't want to be in Chicago. So I don't know. That part of it's odd. I do like the piece of this that is bringing some sort of long term stability to the position player group in Chicago because they do have a couple of guys, not just Horner, but Suzuki and others who are kind of in line to become free agents in the near future. And so maybe this gives you good continuity. And I do feel like we're underselling how presently productive Alex Bregman is. You know, it's not like he's a bad player and like he was really good with Boston in the first half before the. It was a quad injury, right?
- [11:58]
B
Yes. And then a slump.
- [12:00]
A
And then a slump. And it's like, well, was he fully healthy? And, and you know, that cuts both ways. You, you could say like, oh, well, maybe he wasn't fully healthy. You could also say he's gonna be 32 right after opening day and is starting to get hurt. So maybe you worry about that. So I just feel, I feel a variety of ways about it. Ben. I don't dislike it, but I don't know if from a pure like optimal allocation of salary dollars perspective, if it's like the best that they could have done. But we also know that the Cubs have kind of wanted to be in the Alex Bregman business for a while. They were one of the heavy players for him last offseason and they couldn't get a deal done. And so like some of this is maybe them just getting their guy. But I do think that there's value in front offices not being stubborn around that stuff sometimes because maybe it leads you to be like over committed to a dude. And again, I feel like I'm underselling Bregman again, present Bregman and you know, there are parts of his profile as a hitter in particular that you could say will probably age well. But also you could say, as Davey did in his piece, that like he kind of has old man profile now. So, like, how much room for error does he have on the back end of the seal, I don't know. So it's a lot of money for a guy who I think is good right now and will help the Cubs be a better team in 2026, regardless of how they kind of shuffle that. That infield. Boston, I guess, has to go get Boba Shet now, right?
- [13:30]
B
I wonder. Well, yeah, we can talk about the rest.
- [13:33]
A
They're not trading for Nolan Arenado. We know that.
- [13:35]
B
No, that's true. Yeah, I see. In a way this signing would make sense, like in retrospect, even more, or make Bregman look like a bigger upgrade. If they do trade Horner and they have that vacancy. I don't think they should trade Horner.
- [13:51]
A
I don't think they should trade Hoarder either.
- [13:53]
B
No, I. It reminds me very much of when they traded for Tucker last year and then everyone sort of assumed that they would trade Bellinger. And I was thinking that they could just keep Bellinger, like it'd be better to have both. And the idea was, oh, they'll trade Bellinger and then they'll be able to put that salary towards something else and sign someone. But they didn't really, really, they. They just kind of kept that cash. And I know that at the time it seemed like, oh, where's Bellinger going to play? And they have people at all these other positions, but he's versatile and flexible and he's good and it just, it can't hurt to have Cody Bellinger if you can afford it. And I thought they could. And I feel that way about Horner too. Where, yeah, if they want to trade him now, coming off a really strong season with only a $12 million salary for 2026, even though he's a one year rental, they could probably get a pretty good haul for him. And if they think that, leave, okay, I understand the temptation. And. And of course they could get something back that is valuable for him too, that could improve the roster. So. But I. I hope that if they do trade him, it's not because they want to ensure that they stay under the competitive balance tax threshold now that they have signed Bregman. I know I saw some reporting that ownership had given the go ahead for them to be over that limit. But yeah, if they do trade Horner and it's not for an immediate upgrade in the rotation or somewhere else, and I know it's a pretty crowded rotation, so it's not as if they're obvious vacancies, it's just that you could do a bit better at the top of.
- [15:21]
A
That rotation as we said they need a dude.
- [15:23]
B
Yeah, it would help to have like a, A real rotation topper. And I don't know whether you then trade someone else you already have or. It's kind of been a problem in a sense for the Cubs for a while now. Not even so much in the rotation as position players, but they've kind of had like, decent players everywhere. And so there haven't been like, really obvious, just gaping holes on the roster where, oh, we can get better here. And sometimes it's. It's like a pretty good problem to have to have like a, A high bar, a high baseline. But also sometimes if you have an obvious area of needs, then you can get a whole lot better with one move. Whereas with the Cubs, it's like, sign Alex Breman. Oh, that's good. But, oh, maybe it doesn't make you that much better. So I think they should keep Horner and they should just figure it out and someone will get hurt. And if Horner leaves in a year, well, yeah, then you have Bregman under contract and Shaw and you can figure things out then. But I say if you're, if you're a Cub like the Cubs, then you should use your financial wherewithal to just keep someone who might possibly be dispensable or a luxury for some other organization. You can afford to keep that person as depth and redundancy and just added strength. So I think they should, unless they find a perfect fit that makes them better in the present elsewhere. And you look at their off season as a whole, I think you have to be pretty encouraged probably, if you're a Cubs fan. Cause, you know, you. You come off of the playoff loss and then you're thinking, oh, you know, Tucker's almost certainly going to leave and are they going to do anything really? And they've been pretty busy, obviously, so, you know, they have, they have made significant upgrades both via trade and via free agency, and that's what you want. But yeah, after they went and got Tyro Austin and I understand, like, he's been abroad for a while and who knows how it will. Will translate. And then you had Shaw. It just felt like it's not the area of most acute needs for them. But still, you look at it as a whole and you have Kabir and you have Bregman and you have Austin and you have Harvey and Maton and all these guys and. And you have to be pretty happy, I think. And don't forget Hobie Milner. Never forget.
- [17:35]
A
Don't forget Hobie. Don't you dare, don't you dare forget Hobie. How would you forget Hobie? How could you possibly. His name is Hobie. He's an adult man named Hobie. Yeah.
- [17:47]
B
And you keep shot at Imanaga and it's, you know, just, it's a good strong off season and maybe they project to be the best team in that division, though I certainly wouldn't count out the brewers. And they have learned that lesson before, but they have, they've strengthened their position.
- [18:03]
A
It is funny how quickly these things can change though, because, and you know, I don't know what the consensus, like Cubs fan opinion is of the roster now that these two big, you know, high profile moves have, have been finalized, bringing in Cabrera and signing Bregman. But my impression at least was that there was a good bit of discontent as people were saying, like, hey, remember how you can spend money, though? And now maybe people have less discontent, but also maybe they still have some, you know, it's a discontented time. So it's easy to have discontent and.
- [18:43]
B
At least it opens the possibility of future signings now that they have shown that they are in fact capable of this and willing to spend that kind of cash. And even if you have some, some quibbles and some notes on how they spent it, still, it's, it's good to see them acting that way again, within moderation at least. And yeah, as for the park, that's also kind of confusing because on the one hand, Minute Maid and, and Fenway have been the perfect places for Alex Bregman because you've got the Crawford boxes or, excuse me, Dyken Park. Although when he was playing there, I.
- [19:22]
A
Guess it was minute made when he was there. And I'm gonna hold on to that, Ben, because, you know, you know what has not been able to, to, to penetrate my, my mind space. Dyken Park.
- [19:33]
B
Yeah, well, let's just, let's call the whole thing off. Let's call it Enron, we'll just agree on that. But I think those have been perfectly tailored parks to his swing, which is, you know, he's not that big a guy. He doesn't hit the ball that hard.
- [19:49]
A
Right.
- [19:49]
B
And so, you know, he's kind of like a Isaac Predis light. Like just, you know, get the ball in the air, pull it and. And so this is a less favorable place for him perhaps as evidenced by how Predis played in his short time in Wrigley. But you look at Bregman's career splits, right? And, and it's like neutral home in a way right.
- [20:11]
A
More thump on the road in fact.
- [20:13]
B
Yeah, he has 134 WRC plus at home career and 133 on the road. So it's not like he's some sort of mirage or purely a product of his environment. Obviously he has been able to to make it work away as well. So maybe it would be discounting him to think that he can't adapt to this environment.
- [20:34]
A
It's all very confusing, Ben. Mostly I find it quite confusing. But it did give Bauman an excuse to write another college baseball ephemera piece. So in that respect I am a big, big fan of it. Actually, I think it's the perfect signing because we should have more of those pieces. I know that they're your favorites because of how big of a college baseball head you are.
- [21:01]
B
Huge. And as many people have pointed out, Alex Bregman will be playing with Dan B. Swanson right alongside him in the infield, in fact. And they were drafted first and second overall in their draft class. And Bregman because he's Bregman. And this is the kind of guy he is. He wears number two because he wants to remember that he was drafted number two, not number one. And now he will be playing next to the guy who was drafted number one. And there are four previous pairs of teammates who were selected first and second overall in the same draft and that's most recently Carl's Correa and Byron Buxton the past few years for the Twins. Prior to that, Tim Beckham and Pedro Alvarez for the 2017-18 Orioles. Paul Wilson and Ben Grieve for the 2001-2 Tampa Bay Rays or Devil Race, I guess at that point. And BJ Sirhof and Will Clark for the 1999-2000 Orioles. Credit to Sarah Langs and possibly others for the blasting there. So save your stat blast questions because it's been blasted already.
- [22:10]
A
Or just go read Bauman's piece about how they need to sign Brendan Rogers so they have the top three, I should say.
- [22:16]
B
Oh, was that the thrust of his post? I have not read it yet. Yeah, okay.
- [22:19]
A
I don't think there have respect disrespect on the bot.
- [22:23]
B
Yeah, you published it one second before we started recording. We were waiting for you to finish editing that so that we could record. So it's this was disrespect.
- [22:31]
A
This was published six hours ago.
- [22:33]
B
Oh, this was the earlier post. I see he's been busy. Busy Bauman blogger now. My apologies to Mr. Balin then I will catch up with that. But yeah, there's never been a 1, 2, 3 draft pick teammate triumvirate. So, yeah, they should make that happen. Maybe they should. Yeah. And as for the Red Sox, I, I had Bregman going to the Sox on our mocked Free Agent Destination episode last week, not thinking that I would necessarily be right about that or about anything, but it did seem to make some sense to me that he would go back there. And I know they kind of have a positional log jam too, especially in the outfield, but even in the infields, they're young players and you want a place for them to play and everything. But. But given some of the uncertainties there, it just seemed to me like he would still be a fit and that there was some mutual interest and that he had fit in well there, both with the ballpark and with the clubhouse and the mentorship and all the rest. And so I don't know if I'm shocked or surprised that he didn't go back there, but I'm sure that some Red Sox fans are somewhat disappointed that they didn't bring him back. And the Red Sox and the Cubs have been in sort of a similar boat spending wise recently, I guess, when it comes to like both being big baseball juggernauts that in theory should have huge payrolls and in the Red Sox case, have had huge payrolls, but have kind of cut back a bit lately. And as Joe Sheehan noted in his newsletter, he just wrote about the Red Sox and they had a comment just recently from team president Sam Kennedy, defending the team's off season because, you know, sometimes they talk a big game when it comes to the offseason and they have not always delivered. Now, you know, this off season, I think they've done fairly well for themselves and they went got Sonny Gray and Wilson Contreras and, and that's nice. But if someone was expecting them to break the bank with a big budget signing, they have also worked via trade in kind of a Cubs like fashion prior to the Bregman signing. And Kennedy said, if you go back a year ago to this date last year, I believe our organization has taken on close to $500 million in contractual commitments. We've added $40 million in payroll through trades. And as Joe noted, when you cite the lump sum, just the 500 million, that's commitment, but it's over many years. So it's not as if they just forked over 500 million, signed a $500 billion check that that will be distributed over quite a long time, plus some of that spending was signing young guys to extensions, which is good. That's absolutely something they should be doing and laudable. But if you're signing Christian Campbell or Roman Anthony, you're hoping and expecting that you're going to get a good deal on those guys. It's going to be below market rates, if anything. And then also, you know, you should be doing those things. You're the Red Sox and it's an investment in your roster and being good and putting a compelling product on the field and everything. Anyway, not saying the Red Sox are, are cheaping out by not signing Bregman and perhaps there are other teams that would have been even better fits for him, but I do think that he, he would have worked well there too.
- [25:44]
A
Yeah, I agree. So it'll be interesting to see what their pivot is now. I mean, they'll just go get Boba shot probably.
- [25:50]
B
Maybe. Or maybe they'll just live with what they have and they'll trust Campbell and Meyer and, and Story and hope that that works out for them. Like, they already have a couple players who I just, they fit really with Tristan Cassis and you know, after the Contreras trade, Casus doesn't really seem to fit that well. And then Masataka Yoshida hasn't fit there for a while really that if there's like one player I could just kind of port to another roster, it. It might be Yoshida because I like Yoshida and I'd to see him be able to play, but I don't want him to like block the Red Sox young guys.
- [26:25]
A
And yeah.
- [26:26]
B
Don't want Rafaela to have to play out of position. And, and Yoshida just seems like if he were on the Pirates or something, he'd be good for them. Like he'd be one of their best hitters or the Rockies or whoever. Right. But with the Red Sox, if anything, they should just. I mean, ideally they would trade him for pitching or something, but they might just be better off without him if even if they just released him and, and took the hit just in terms of being able to devote playing time to other people who were part of their future. But I hope he he somewhere else where it just kind of fits more efficiently for all involved.
- [27:03]
A
Yeah.
- [27:03]
B
Okay. Well, our other third base move, this one was a long time coming. Nolan Arnado has finally been traded after being a trade candidate for more than a year. Just a long time. They have found a taker that he is okay with and he is going to Arizona. He is going to play for the Diamondbacks and This is just about a straight salary dump. So it's a trade technically, but it's mostly a trade for salary relief. It is minor league right hander Jack Martinez, who was the Diamondback's eighth round pick last year. He has not even made his pro debut yet. But this is mostly about opening up playing time and reducing the payroll. So the Diamondbacks have to pay about 11 million of the 42 million owed to Arnado over the next two seasons. So the Cardinals will owe him about 26. And the Rockies are still paying, some of them are no salary, they're paid about 5 billion. So I guess these days we mostly talk about the fit from a performance standpoint more so than the salary. I mean, yeah, when we were just talking about Bregman, we were like, oh, that seems like a lot of money. But we kind of focus more on just does he upgrade their roster and who else will play there and how does the playing time all shake out? Because it's like the opportunity cost these days is it's more about playing time than it is about payroll. As much as some teams insist that they can't spend, we kind of tend to fixate on that less because there's just an understanding that a lot of teams probably are not spending as much as they conceivably could. And so we tend to evaluate well, is this player a good fit for the park, for the team, for the roster. And I guess if you play that game with Arado here, well, maybe a couple different ways to analyze this because in terms of the salary, the Diamondbacks are just paying him a pittance. So it's really not about the salary for them. They're paying him 11 million over two years. If he gives them anything, then that's a bargain. Yeah, but there is some question about how much he'll give them. He's 34, he's turning 35 in April and he is much more clearly on the decline than Alex Bregman. So it then becomes not so much about a risk of salary and payroll expenditure, but the playing time that you're devoting to Nolan are on what he's going to give you.
- [29:31]
A
So I know you haven't had a chance to read Michael Bauman's analysis yet and so I could pretend that this is just my own, but I have to acknowledge his because you'll have read it by the time this goes live.
- [29:48]
B
And then you know you're a fraud.
- [29:50]
A
That I was a pilferer. But I thought the Bauman put it well, which is I Like this fine for both sides. You know, the downside playing time risk in Arizona I think is like really quite low. They are not paying him so much that if he is like God, God awful, they can't just coat him. Yeah, but they really need needed third base help. When we were doing our find a fit for everybody, I noted that the Diamondbacks were a really good fit for Bregman and they were rumored to be sort of heavy in his market because they did not have an alternative on the roster. Now, you could argue that perhaps that they would be better served sort of using third base the way that I think the Cardinals will use third base now, which is to get to see really with extended playing time, hopefully when healthy, what they have in Jordan Lawler, who has been hurt. He is finally no longer prospect eligible. Thank God. You know, you get these guys where you're like, I don't even have anything against you. I hope you have a long and productive career, but I simply cannot edit another blurb about you seeing you on.
- [31:05]
B
Yet another prospect, Rick out of here.
- [31:08]
A
You know, and Lawler, who came up as a shortstop and very good there and then didn't have a place to play at short anyway because Perdomo emerged and has been so spectacular for them. You know, he's been hurt just constantly and hurt in a way that I think has really limited the industry's ability to properly evaluate him and has probably limited the Diamondback's ability to to evaluate him to some degree. He is certainly trying. You know, he goes and plays warner ball every year and he might play some center field for them this coming season because they do have need out in center. He's clearly a good athlete, but he's never healthy and he hasn't hit at the major league level yet. But he also hasn't really had much chance to do so. So you could argue, well, shouldn't they just give Lawler run? But I think that this roster is good enough even with the shakiness that is present in their rotation as it's currently constituted. Certainly before Burns comes back and even after he does that, they kind of just need to try to be a contending team, you know, the rest of the players they have in house. You don't want to waste another year of Catal Marte, especially now that you're keeping him. You don't want to waste a year of Corbin Carroll like they. They should should try to do something. They're an interesting enough club to do so. So I like trying Aonado and just seeing what you have in him, it's so low cost. I think you're right that we tend to evaluate these things in a, you know, purely in terms of the, the roster fit and the playing time. And I think that's often the right move. But like, part of why giving him playing time is so appealing is that like from a cost perspective, it's just, it's so low stakes. So I have what I think are reasonable expectations for Nolan Arenado in 2026, which is like the best case you're probably looking at is him being a league average average bat and a reasonable defender at third. But hey, a league average bat and a reasonable defender at third is very useful to the Diamondbacks. That's what they need.
- [33:09]
B
Yeah.
- [33:09]
A
So I like it from that perspective. They're not having to spend very much from a money perspective. And in terms of the prospect they gave up, who I swear, for different people, I was like, wait, do you mean Justin Martinez? Because like before the return got reported, I was texting people to try to find out what it was so that I could get Bauman and the prospect guys going on sooner. And I was like, I was told Jack Martinez. And I was like, but don't you mean Justin? So anyway, to your point, an eighth round senior sign, folks should go read the sort of extended scouting report on him. He's an ASU guy, so Eric wrote it. He didn't make our Diamondbacks list, which was like 56 guys long because he was an 8th round senior sign. But he could be interesting and it'll be interesting to see what St. Louis does with him. But really from their perspective, they're getting $11 million in salary relief. As Bauman put it, I think a living man with a head, four limbs and a head and the opportunity to see what they have in some of their young guys. Certainly Nolan Gorman, potentially Weatherhole, which might be true at some point this year regardless, but particularly if they trade Donovan as well. So, you know, seems fine.
- [34:18]
B
Yeah, Arnaudo's not, not good or expensive enough to block anybody at this stage of his career, really. So if he stinks, then no harm done. They won't have lost much. And he was still. At least Statcast graded him as an above average third baseman last year. Actually somewhat similar to Bregman. I think both of their, their skills have slipped defensively. Arenado obviously was an elite all time great type third baseman in his prime, so he has probably slipped more relative to that prime, but had had further to fall and still be pretty productive. So he's definitely still playable over there. They both are. And if Arnado could even just be league average ish, that then that would be worth playing. And that's kind of what he was 2023, 2024. And that was not a great player. And that was maybe not what the Rockies banked on when they signed him or even what the Cardinals banked on when they traded for him, but you know, he was still like a 3 year ish win player. If you pair kind of a league average ish bat with an above average glove at third base, then that's valuable. But last year he just kind of cratered and you know, missed some time too, but just was not offering really anything offensively and off across the board decline and, and you know, nothing really about the quality of contact or BABIP or luck or anything that would make you think that, that there's a bounce back coming. You know, I would just hope that there's some regression for a player who is as great as he was for as long as he was. It's not always just a straight path linear decline. Sometimes you might have a down year and then a partial bounce back. And so if the Diamondbacks get the partial bounce back, then they'll be happy and if they don't, then they won't have lost a lot. So it was kind of inevitable, I guess, that he would be moved somewhere. Maybe the only surprise is that it took as long as it did and.
- [36:15]
A
They got something which wasn't always a given given how much he's owed.
- [36:19]
B
So yeah, and I guess in the opposite of the Bregman signing, the ballpark change probably benefits Arenado somewhat going from St. Louis for him. So. So that's nice as well. Yeah. Another thing about Bregman that I meant to mention and I think it's appropriate that we talked about the team and the player before we considered the implications for the agent. But. But this is another little vindication of Scott Boris. Right. That if you take the longer view, Bregman did quite well and he's the latest in a string of Boris clients who seemingly suffered setbacks. And then they re entered the market and they did better because Boris left them with the option to test the market again and the players performed well enough to get themselves a better deal. So yeah, you mentioned that the Cubs had been interested in his services last winter and had offered him, I think 4 years and 120 with opt outs. It was reported the Tigers had offered him the biggest deal which was 171.5 over six years with an opt out after 20, 26. And ultimately he took the deal with the Red Sox that was much shorter and a smaller amount. He was 3 years 120, but with an opt out after each season and some deferrals in there. And he took that so that he could have a pretty good year, hopefully, and, and reenter the market and make more. And that's exactly what happens. So if you look at it as one big contract instead of a couple that he strung together, then it's sort of the equivalent of a $215 million deal over six years, which is better than what the Tigers offered him last time. So it did kind of work out. And you could work out, yeah, you could lump Pete Alonso and Blake Snell and maybe Matt Chapman in that group and I guess we'll see about Cody Bellinger soon enough. But yeah, the whole. Boris is washed. And maybe he doesn't understand how the market works anymore or the, the market has passed him by, probably premature, which I think was our thought at the time, but.
- [38:31]
A
Thought at the time, yeah, yeah.
- [38:33]
B
And, and he continued to do well with some signings during that period. It was just certain guys who had some sort of strike against them, whether it was injuries or some perceived flaw of some sort. And sometimes it's, it's just about the vagaries of that particular market and who's interested and who has money to spend and who has a vacancy and what the platform year for that player was. And then you jumble things up a year later and the player did something different and there's a, a new mix of teams that might be in the hunt for him and suddenly you, you do fine. So not the case for every player. Some players, they actually do get sort of screwed in free agency and things just don't work out well for them. But yeah, I, you know, I'm not saying that like Boris planned this all along and he knew that this was going to happen and this was his strategy that they would just take the short term deal. If he could have gotten the bigger deal last winter, then I guess that might have been even better and probably they would have done that. So. But maybe those offers just weren't out there and it wasn't necessarily Boris misreading the market and overestimating the player's appeal. Like it could be, I guess it could be all of the above. It could be that he misplayed things and got bailed out anyway. But given his track records, I'm kind of inclined to think that he More or less knows what he's doing.
- [39:53]
A
I'm hesitant to use one off season's worth of performance in either direction to be clear, to sort of have our say about how good an agent good of a job an agent is doing. Right. Because sometimes we'll look at guys who sign really big contracts and you're like, oh my God, boy, Boris, he's so amazing. I'm like, well, it's Juan Soto, you know, he was gonna sign a big deal. It's Aaron Judge. It's, it's, you know, and not everybody's not, you know, it's Ohtani and he's not a Boris guy. But you know what I mean? Like sometimes the player is just on their market is unscrew, uppable because they're so impressive of a player and they're the best guy. And so I think that, that you really need a lot of time to assess these things. And sometimes the way that agents do with mid tier guys I think is more of an indication of their skill, at least in a positive direction than it is with the really big names. Because those are the guys where you could imagine the agent both properly gauging the market and also assessing fit and being able to make a compelling case to a potential front office about the way that their guy is sort of the missing piece. Even if they're a slightly less high profile player, you could see sort of the value add there being more obvious or at least easily attributable. So I always think that we ought to exercise a bit of caution. Which isn't to say that there's not some signals to draw from the way that particular profiles of players do or the how a particular agent's approach to the market and making a case for their guy. You know, what that says about their acumen or what have you. But I think we tend to overreact to these things or at least prematurely react to them maybe.
- [41:50]
B
Yeah. And a lot of people don't like Scott Boris.
- [41:53]
A
Sure. And some of his former clients don't like him either. Right. Like it's not like he, he has had defections and, and that's been true for a variety of reasons. It's not just because, you know, he hasn't been able to get a deal done. Sometimes it's like you're just not getting attention from this guy the way that like his highest profile dudes are. That's, that's not, not a reason to go with a different agency, you know.
- [42:17]
B
Yeah. But most, not all of the clients who didn't do as well. Like Jordan Montgomery dropped Boris. Right. And, and, and criticized how he handled his free agency. But most of his clients, even the ones who didn't do well initially did stick by him and benefited in the long term, I guess. But yeah, I'm just saying, you know, in general, fans, maybe some media members, I don't know, but there are people who, who just don't like Scott Boris because they see him, and not purely because of the punning, but just because they sort of see him as the, I don't know, the personification of, of avarice in sports or something, as if he invented free agency or whatever, or that he's like, you know, some puppet master behind the scenes, like orchestrating everything at the union. And I don't know, like, obviously he's one of the most powerful figures in the sports, but he does generally, I think, have the players interests at heart because his interests in a lot of cases are aligned with the players. He was a player himself, but also he stands to profit from a lot of players profiting and yes, maybe disproportionately from the elite guys who make the mega deals. But even so, I, I tend to think that he has mostly good ideas about baseball and also some bad ones like neutral site, World Series. But, you know, that is a weird.
- [43:41]
A
Thing that he thinks is a good idea. What's up with that?
- [43:43]
B
I don't know. But, but mostly, I guess for him, maybe it'd be nice he could plan a big Boris Corp. Shindig or something around knowing where the.
- [43:52]
A
World Series is going to be in other cities and often on short notice, especially when you're Scott Boris. I think they're pretty excited to have your, your event contract, you know.
- [44:03]
B
Yeah. But usually when there is some sort of dispute between the league and the PA or something, and Scott Boris is quoted or weighed in, I tend to agree with him most of the time on the big picture things about baseball and also think that he didn't create the system. So if for some reason you, you don't like the system, he has been among the best and the most successful at exploiting or leveraging the system. But the system predates him really. So there would probably just be worse agents doing the job if he weren't doing it. Okay, so those are the major transactions that have happened. Another announcement this week is that we are getting an outfield dimension change. It's always some good fodder for discussion. So the Royals are changing the dimensions at Kaufman Stadium. And this has been one of the biggest park's biggest outfields and they are trying to make it. Well, it's interesting they're trying to make it play more neutral as a home run park, but they want it to be a neutral park really, overall, the way that the Royals put it on Twitter, they said a new feel to the K. We're bringing in the walls at Kaufman Stadium, creating more potential for home runs, extra base hits, home run robberies and bringing fans closer to the action than ever before. I don't know whether it creates more potential for extra base hits. I mean, home runs are extra base hits and it does create more potential for those. But, but I think maybe it's, it decreases the potential for other kinds of extra base hits. But what they are doing here, they're, they're moving most of the outfield fence in by 10ft. Okay, so they're keeping the center field fence at, at 410 just straight away. But then they're going to taper the fences in the power alleys. They're shortening those from 389 to 379 so that they can actually lead to more power. And then the fences will just continue to be 9 to 10ft shallower, almost all the way to the corners where they, they keep the 330 foot foul poles. So it's sort of like, I guess the same at certain discrete points, but they're moving it in elsewhere. And then they're also lowering the fence from 10ft to 8 and a half and they seem to want to make it more neutral just across the board. So I'm, I'm quoting here from Jeff Passon's piece at ESPN and he talked to the Royal front office folks who had a hand in planning this. Kaufman has played as a slightly above average offensive park because the size of the outfield, which was second only to Coors Field, promoted more doubles and triples. The distinct suppression of home runs, however, left the Royals concerned that hitters were changing their approaches on the road consciously or subconsciously, and that altering the dimensions for the 81 games played at Kaufman without turning it into a bandbox would aid in Kansas City's efforts to build a perennial playoff contender. And their Top baseball exec, J.J. piccolo, says, it's not that we're trying to jumpstart our offense. The more neutral it is at home, the better success we'll have overall. So yeah, I this is not the first time that they have done something like this. As Pass and notes, they also at Kansas City moved the fences in about 10ft between 1995 and 2003 and it became a better home run park. But then they returned to the original dimensions in 2004. And after that they've just, you know, seen a lot of warning track power, not a, not a lot of home run hitting, and that prompted them to make this move. And, and we talked about how this past season was the first time in Royals history that they had had two hitters hit at least 30 homers and a hundred RBI in the same season. Salvi and Vinnie. And you know, they have a history of just not hitting for much power or at least more home run power. And they're trying to make the park a little less distinctive in that sense. And Piccolo said, we want a neutral ballpark where if you hit a ball well, it should be a home run. The second they start feeling like they can't get the ball out of the ballpark, they start changing their swing. I watched it for years and years and years and I just felt like this is the time to try to push it and see if everything we felt for however many years is accurate.
- [48:26]
A
I mean, I think that it makes a good bit of sense. I think that upgrading their existing group directly is also a good thing to do. Maybe.
- [48:39]
B
Yeah.
- [48:40]
A
But I do think that when you have a group where the, the bats are kind of weak, any extremity in the park is probably going to make it play worse. So maybe it's fine.
- [48:52]
B
Yeah, I don't know that they're doing it primarily to be better in the short term. Like they're trying to tailor the dimensions to their rosters characteristics. Right now, though it, it does say that they project that they will win a game and a half more at home in 2026, because, like, a lot. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Obviously you can't actually win half a game, but that's the projection and you know, they have their quants quanting it up and, and there are all sorts of data sources you can use for this now that are more precise than ever before because you have all the statcast stuff and you also have weather and wind and all these things that you could probably get a pretty precise sense of new wind. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I lament this only because it's just the latest manifestation of a long term trend towards ballparks being less distinct. And I don't, I don't like that because we've, we've talked. It's, it's a nice thing about baseball. It's an unusual thing about baseball, and it's a Charming thing about baseball, sure, that the ballparks have different dimensions and often very different dimensions and that in theory you can tailor your roster and your play to that. And in practice it seems like everyone just wants neutrality. They just kind of want to be boring and, and that's bad. I think I, I bemoan that. I also understand it, but it is a long term trend. There's an article that I've cited and linked to a lot from the Hardball Times back in 2017 by John LaRue that was called the Homogenization of Ballparks. I will link to it yet again on the show page. And John tracked this over the course of more than a century and just showed how things have become less idiosyncratic and just more similar across the board, just in terms of fence dimensions and depth and also height. And that's not great. I think from an entertainment value standpoint. I think ultimately what matters more than anything is whether your team is good and whether your team wins, whether you players play well. But I think it's entertaining from a analytical standpoint at least to have to really consider ballpark effects. And this is kind of a weird one because it's like Kaufman is a decent hitters park. Yeah, it's you know, a little bit better than neutral, but that's entirely because it's a good park for doubles and particularly triples. And that's another sort of of sad thing because the, the good triples parks are going to be the ones with the big outfields. So it's like Coors and Chase and, and Kaufman and those are kind of outliers when it comes to their triples factors at Baseball Savant on the park factors leaderboard. That's another long term trend. The suppression of triples. And triples are fun. Everyone agrees that we like triples, but to get triples you have to have big outfields and weird ricochets and caroms. And so if you just have sort of symmetrical everything, then you're not going to get that in just less real estate. So this is kind of a weird one in that they want to juice the home runs according to the park factors at Baseball Savant. Only PNC and Oracle are worse parks for home run hitting. But those are pitchers parks overall. Whereas Kaufman is if anything kind of a hitters park at this point just without the homers. So there was a tweet by Vinnie Pasquantino, who obviously will be directly affected by this, that he kind of had mixed feelings. It sounded like because he wasn't sure. Exactly how that would affect things. And I saw multi time effectively wild guest Brent Rooker, who is pals with Pasquintino, then kind of trolled him by being like, yeah, you're not going to be able to hit triples before, like, you totally could before this change. But. So maybe that doesn't really affect Vinnie all that much. But. But yeah, like it's, it's not a clear case of, oh, no one could hit here. It's just sort of a different shape of production. And I guess the theory of the case is that like, guys are trying to swing for the fences because it was hard to hit balls over the fence and so maybe they were screwing themselves up. So. So they're aiming for neutrality and sometimes teams overshoot. And we sort of saw that with Baltimore in, at Camden. And you, you know, you move things one way and then it's too extreme and then you move things back a bit. And I guess it's ultimately sort of low stakes aside from the construction costs, you know, like, I don't know how much this will affect just like where the bleachers are and everything. I guess part of the tweet that the team put out is you'll be closer to the action. So maybe it's, it's not, you know, snap your fingers and you can move everything 10ft. But Piccolo at the end of passing piece says, you know, in the end we might go, you know what, we shouldn't have done that. But, but I think it's a five year window to give it a shot and see if we like how it plays. So I guess you can model it as much as you want, but there's still some uncertainty, but it's probably not going to have a huge effect because ultimately your opponent has to play in the same environment.
- [53:59]
A
I, I know that they're not going to. I know that they can't do it because they can't be willy nilly about it because, like, it costs money. You know, it costs money to like change your ballpark and you configure your roster to it to a certain degree, although not dramatically, because you got guys, you know, you already got your guys. But I, I think that the way for us to have our cake and eat it too is for teams to just be changing their perks all the time. You know, like, I want more experimentation with outfield configurations. I want to see the rise and fall of more Walter Mores. I think Walter More should be born again and again and again, but then die, but then be born again because it would be fun. It would be stupid. It would be a good way to approach these things. But sometimes people should do stuff for our amusement. You know, they're so often doing it to, like, improve their ball club, to win baseball games. I understand not digging a pit. That's dangerous, you know, because a guy could fall in the pit and he could really hurt himself, especially if you, like, put something at the bottom of the pit, like a sharp object or an alligator or, you know, whatever. But the wall, they'll learn it. They'll learn it quick enough. They're not going to hurt themselves, probably, you know.
- [55:23]
B
Yeah, yeah. And right now, they have some power guys. They have. And they have Vinnie and they have Jack, and they have Carter, Jensen and other guy. I guess some of these guys are people who could hit home runs, even at Kaufman, but they could maybe put up bigger numbers.
- [55:39]
A
Now, I think the thing holding Kags back from hitting for power is the hitting part less than the configuration. Like, he needs to. His issue is much closer to home. Literally. It's about making contact, you know, it's not about being able to clear the wall.
- [56:00]
B
Yeah. What I have reluctantly learned, though, over the years is that teams do not want to stand out in this respect.
- [56:07]
A
They don't. They don't.
- [56:08]
B
Yeah. Much to my dismay.
- [56:09]
A
They want to be very normal. They want to be very boring, and.
- [56:13]
B
They don't want you to notice anything amiss or unusual. That's kind of a bummer. It's. It's almost like, you know, in pitching, people talk about the dead zone, and just like the way that your stuff moves, you don't want to be in the thick part of the bell curve, basically, you want to be an outlier because you want to show hitters something that they haven't seen. And so it's death, basically, to be like everyone else, to be average. But when it comes to ballparks, that's what everyone wants. They just kind of want to be average. They want to be neutral. They want to be fair. Is another way that the Royals are presenting it here. And the most common email maybe we've gotten over the course of this podcast existence and have sometimes answered is like, how would you construct your roster to take advantage of an unusual ballpark configuration? Or how would you configure your ballpark to be able to take advantage of that unusual configuration? And people are thinking of some of the outlier, weird, lopsided parks of history, and you'd think that there might be an advantage there. Yeah. Okay, we'll have the Weird park. And then we'll be able to construct our roster to make the most of the weird park. And no one else will be able to do that because they'll be planning for their neutral park. And meanwhile, we will be the only ones who are trying to target players who will thrive in this environment, and therefore, we will have a competitive advantage. But it seems like in practice, that is just the opposite of the way that teams operate.
- [57:38]
A
Yeah. And granted, there are parks that. That play less neutrally than others. I mean, we've spent a good amount of time over the last year talking about the way that t mobile plays and the sort of benefit that it seems to lend to the pitching staff of the Mariners. But also we talked about how they can't hit a lot of the times. Some, you know, sometimes, Ben, they can't overcome. They can't overcome their own peculiarities. And so I think. Think that the way that teams tend to think about it is we want the peculiarity of the player to dictate how they perform rather than something specific to the ballpark. And again, that's not true of every team. But that does, I think you're right. Seem to Be the prevailing perspective on it.
- [58:30]
B
Yeah. And it's hard to compare across eras because it's always kind of a moving target with park factors. You're always comparing parks to contemporary parks. But if you could adjust it over time so that you could put past eras, parkes, and their park factors on the current scale, then things would just be way out of whack. Like, you know, because popping off. Yeah, because relative to that era where there was just a wider distribution of possible park factors. And I guess you could look at it in terms of just what's the maximum or the minimum in any given year. But, yeah, it's like, you know, Coors Field now is. Is not what it was back. Back in the day because you had no humidor, and now you have the humidor, and it's like, let's make conditions consistent as much as we can. And I think one reason why it. It always comes down to teams not wanting to tailor their roster to a certain park or not have their park be so exploitable like that is just because they feel like players don't like it when it's skewed one way or another. And so if it's hard to hit a home run in a particular place. Well, yeah, you could just construct a whole lineup of guys who will just hit the ball off the wall or hit the ball down the line and bounce around and you'll just be a doubles and triples team or something. But everything is so home run centric in this era that those players will probably feel some anxiety about not being able to keep up in the home run department or they won't get paid or whatever it is. And you know, teams can adjust for these things, but there's still a real significance to the surface stats. So I wish that teams saw it the way that effectively wild listeners and emailers did and we get weird parks, but I think they feel that from a recruiting standpoint and just from a team morale standpoint that it's better for everyone to feel like they are on a fairly level and symmetrical and not weird looking playing field. That it's, you know, hitters or pitchers aren't particularly disadvantaged, that hitters don't have to change anything in order to get the ball over the fence. That gets them all out of whack mechanically, that pitchers don't feel like they're just giving up a bunch of cheapies and then they get frustrated and then they start pitching a different way. So I don't know whether they're right or wrong, but that seems to be the prevailing perspective on it, that it is actually advantageous to not be noticeably different in any way. That that bothers me a bit. I wish it weren't so. And I'm not saying, you know, I don't want to bring back parks that are like making a mockery of things like sort of a, you know, Baker bowl or, or LA Memorial Coliseum or something where you have to erect some, some wall and you get a bunch of like rinky dink homers and it's extreme home road splits or whatever, or even a Polo Grounds. You know, I, maybe it's worse when it's lopsided and asymmetrical. At least the polling ground grounds was just like super deep to center, but it was sort of symmetrical. But it doesn't have to be that weird because that kind of weirdness was often done by necessity because you were trying to fit a ballpark into the geography of a city and a city block. And if you just concocted some strange structure like that now it would almost seem too try hard because like you don't have to do that, right? So it would be sort of self consciously retro in a way. Kind of like a Tal's Hill situation in, in, in Houston maybe, but I don't know. I wish there were more room for that because I fear greater and greater conformity to the point where it's just not even really remarkable. Like, you know, we hardly even have to adjust for anything or factor this in. When someone signs in one place instead of another, it'll just be sort of a negligible difference, and I think something will be lost there.
- [62:17]
A
I agree. You know, it is one of the distinguishing characteristics of our sport relative to other pro sports. So that part of it is odd. But I also, I do think that there's something to the notion of, you know, a team's fortune sort of rising and falling with the dudes on the field more than the particular construction of their ballpark. So I'm enamored with that. Plus, like, the ones, the. The bits of ballpark oddity that I liked the best, we got rid of for good reason. Like Tull's Hill. What was that about? That was a terrible idea.
- [62:49]
B
Who.
- [62:50]
A
Who even. I mean, tall.
- [62:52]
B
But why?
- [62:53]
A
You know, like, why?
- [62:56]
B
Yeah, it was, you know, in idiosyncrasy, it was, hey, we'll have something that's kind of a throwback. And. And I'm not saying like, yeah, let's have flag poles and monuments in the outfield in playable territory like they used to have.
- [63:08]
A
Well, you do want to pit.
- [63:10]
B
Maybe, but I don't actually want, like, great injury risks and health hazards. I just want a little character. But. Right.
- [63:17]
A
But it has to be like Marathon Man. Wait, Omega Man. Marathon Man Marathon.
- [63:23]
B
But it has to be kind of.
- [63:24]
A
You don't want it to be like Omega man, either to be clear or.
- [63:27]
B
Mega man, but it has to be like organic and natural, I guess. And if it's just too self conscious, then it's. Maybe it just seems artificial and. Yeah. You don't want. You don't want things to seem cheap, I guess. Right. You don't.
- [63:44]
A
You want to.
- [63:44]
B
You want to feel like the performance is earned.
- [63:46]
A
It's earned. Yes.
- [63:48]
B
Yeah. But I still want it to be weird, though.
- [63:50]
A
Which was the one.
- [63:51]
B
Omega man is the 70s with Charlton Heston. Yes.
- [63:56]
A
And Marathon man is by Running Man. You don't want it to be like Running Man.
- [64:01]
B
I don't want it to be.
- [64:02]
A
You don't want it to be like Marathon man either?
- [64:04]
B
No.
- [64:05]
A
You know.
- [64:05]
B
No. All the men. All the man's the. Yeah. Probably. Probably bad, regardless. Yeah.
- [64:11]
A
Why are you. They're so hard to keep separate from each other.
- [64:15]
B
Well, there is one commonality in the name.
- [64:17]
A
Watch out there, brother. That's how they talked in Omega Man. The one guy, Anthony Zerby.
- [64:24]
B
One other thing I don't know how to segue from that.
- [64:28]
A
Let's move on.
- [64:30]
B
Yeah, but my attention was drawn recently to some tweets that Ruben Amara Jr. Was making, and that's probably where I. I messed up just to know what he was tweeting.
- [64:43]
A
What a cursed sentence.
- [64:45]
B
Yeah, I know, but. But Ruben Amara Jr. Who was a major league GM as recently as. As about a decade ago, like until late 2015, he was in charge of a baseball operations department, the Phillies. And he was going on kind of a Twitter rant about how he doesn't care about WRC plus. And you know, it's nonsense and it's a bunch of hooey. And I. I guess this came about because he was talking about, you know, it was kind of like a. An old school sort of rant about various things. I don't know, there was like a Facebook post that John Vanderwaal was completely like, I enjoyed John Vanderwaal as a pinch hitting specialist, a. A breed of player that. That's kind of gone. But, you know, talking about how the technology is run amok or whatever. Right. And you know, you had Ruben Amaro Jr. Quote, tweeting to say not all the ex Major League baseball players are wrong. So sort of seconding what he was saying and you know, like talking about velocity and pitchers and denying that pitchers are throwing harder. And that always leads to a kind of a useless, fruitless debate. And then there were some more recent players like, like Trevor May jumping in to support some of what was said, but Amara was differing from that. Anyway, people were kind of dunking on Amaro a little bit, and then he was going back and forth with them, and he was casting doubt on the value of some of the stats that we tend to use these days. Right. So someone was tweeting about how he gave Ryan Howard a big extension, you know, and I'm sure Ruben Amara Jr. Said, sort of sick of hearing about that. And then he said, yep, I did. Best offensive player in the game at the time, that is Ryan Howard. Sadly, he blew out his Achilles. Unfortunate. Makes me dumb. So he's essentially saying, you know, like, it wasn't my fault, he was the best, and he just happened to get hurt. So, you know, not. Not accepting any responsibility for the way that Howard's performance in that contract return went south. And then, then someone started citing some. Some stats at him and denied that he was the best offensive player in the game at the time and said from 2005 to 2008, he ranked 12th in WRC plus minimum 2000 plate appearances and 16th in overall offensive value by fan graphs. The only stat he led in this period was in home runs. And then Ruben Amaru. And this had quite a ratio on it. If you give a crap about wrc, whatever. To me, it was about driving in runs, scoring runs, producing runs, and winning games. And then someone said, reuben, you do know WRC is a stat that measures everything you just listed. And Ruben Amara Jr. Channeling Bryce Harper said, clown show numbers. So. So, you know, it was sort of the standards, just old school kind of trolling, you know, just intellectual lack of curiosity.
- [67:48]
A
Yeah.
- [67:48]
B
Someone pointed out WRC is literally about producing runs. And Ruminaro said, right end all bl, seeming to misinterpret that.
- [67:57]
A
Right.
- [67:58]
B
Someone is saying that there's value in, in weighted runs created or weighted runs created plus that all you need to know is just the runs. And then, you know, someone else said, well, a lot of GMs today seem to care about stats like WRC plus. And then said, okay, like, you know, we'll, we'll go with your definition. Howard was still 31st in run scored from 2005 to 2008 and 67th in average and 24th in OBP. He was second in RBI, but that's also indicative of the lineup around him, not just himself. And then Ruben Amara Jr. Just tweeted, wins. That's all just wins. And obviously not wins above replacement. Anyway, this is the sort of standard refrain that, that, that we used to hear all the time. And in a way it, it brought me back a bit to hear someone taking this tack and, and striking this stance in, in the year 2026.
- [68:47]
A
Yeah.
- [68:47]
B
But also the fact that Ruben Oyer Jr. Who is a fellow member of the media now, I suppose, you know, he's been like a pregame, post game, color commentary guy for NBC Sports Philadelphia, and he's been a MLB Network analyst and he's been a, a sports radio talker in Philly and you know, does a podcast and stuff. So I guess he's in the same line of work we are now, but. But he's kind of done it all. Like, we could kind of call him a baseball lifer. You know, He's. Yeah, he's 60 now. He meets the minimum age that I sort of set, but he's done it all. He was a player in the big leagues. He was a GM for years. And then he went from GM to first base coach, coach, which was, you know, you'd think of that as a demotion. Totally different roles, one uniformed, one not. But like to go from GM to first base coach was. You don't see that every day. And then like went back to a front office advisory role. So clearly likes being in baseball in all sorts of capacities. But it does drive home like if you're a fairly a baseball fan of recent vintage and you might think that the whole idea of like old school versus new school and stats versus scouts and all that stuff was overblown or you kind of weren't there for the, the peak of the, the baseball stats culture war. The fact that, that this guy was a GM at the time and you know, to be clear was, was not thought to be a successful or forward thinking GM at the time. But, but still, you know, maybe he was like the last of his kind in a way, but he's not that far rem removed. It's just about 10 years ago that he was actually a decision maker and he was in charge of things and he's just outright dismissing any kind of advanced number and just being like runs. That's all that matters. Wins. That's all that matters. It's like that, that mentality was pretty prevalent and did exist and you could be the top ranking member of a major league organization and a, a recently successful major league organization that he maybe helped run into the ground for a while there, there with this sort of thinking. But, but you could get that job, you know, and you could hold that job for a while with, with that sort of attitude toward the game and things have changed pretty dramatically in a fairly short time frame.
- [71:02]
A
When I hear stuff like that, I always wonder was there like a weird game of telephone that went on where what they heard coming out of like Moneyball was the only thing that stat nerds thinks matter are walks. You know what I mean? Like I, because it's just so far afield from what actually goes into those statistics. Like yeah, if you get on base and you hit a bunch of home runs, you're probably gonna do pretty well from a W or C plus perspective. Right? I, I just wonder sometimes like what. What do they really think is in there? And it's such a strange. It's a, it's an odd spot for me to occupy. Not to make this about myself but you know, I wasn't in the, in the content minds back in the day, Ben. You know, I wasn't part of the posting wars and in the trenches.
- [71:57]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [71:58]
A
I didn't, I didn't fight an offensive in the, the FIP DRA war. I just didn't. I wasn't in that war that wasn't my war. I am a. I'm a post war baby. And so sometimes when people are, like, getting really exercised about it, I. I'm a little taken aback because I am like, everybody chill. It's okay. You know, we're okay. We're all okay. You know, everything's okay. I also, not to psychoanalyze someone I don't know, I'm always like, hey, I think your reaction about this is about something else, friend. Like, I think you're maybe carrying the weight of a failed GM term with you.
- [72:37]
B
Yeah.
- [72:37]
A
Yeah, talk to somebody about that. So, yeah, it's always kind of an odd. It's always an odd bit of business. But I, I do wonder sometimes if it is the result of just like a complete misunderstanding of what goes into those stats. Because. And it's also such a. What an outburst, right? Like, why, why are we, why are we getting mad about this right now? You know, like, do you.
- [73:02]
B
There were people, I think, expressing their frustration about that signing and, and just generally Amaro's work. And I'm sure that there were people tweeting some things at him that perhaps weren't kind, but sure. But nonetheless. Yeah. I mean, when it's a stat like that that's fairly straightforward and it's not even some sort of hypothetical adjusting for this or that, it's just kind of measuring your offensive production. And, you know, I guess that's not flattering to Ryan Howard relative to just using home runs in rbi. So if that's the mindset that you're stuck in and that's what you were looking at, just, hey, this team has won a lot with Ryan Howard and he has a lot of dingers and he's driven in a lot of runs, then you're probably not going to want someone to come along later and say, actually, this isn't just a second guess, or this isn't just, oh, yeah, smart signing, but it didn't work out. But also, you should have known better at the time, which, of course, plenty of people did and, and said at the time. So I, I guess I can see how that might raise your hackles, but it, it shouldn't. Like, you should have been receptive to that information in the first place, and then you wouldn't have to defend the signing because maybe you wouldn't have made it. Not that I have anything against Ryan Howard, you know, good for him getting paid, right?
- [74:17]
A
I know. This is, this is the other thing where I'm like, like, can we just leave Ryan Howard out of this? I like Ryan Howard. I don't need to make this an indictment of Ryan Howard. Like, you know.
- [74:27]
B
Right. And that's the, the whole conversation about, like, is sabermetric secretly about sort of saving teams money. And it's not exactly, but maybe in some individual instances it is. You know, you might have had sabermetrician say.
- [74:40]
A
I wouldn't say secretly. I think that there are definitely arguments to be made that part of the project as that. But I don't think that was the initial intent. I think it was about, you know, the, the initial promise was, hey, if you know that this guy is good and other people don't and he is maybe able to be signed under market, that you can then reallocate those resources to other players and have a really good roster. That's not how it has been practiced.
- [75:11]
B
You know, Moneyball was. Money was in the title, and it was very much about trying to operate on a tight budget for the ace, but.
- [75:19]
A
Right.
- [75:20]
B
Yeah. So I don't know. I, I don't wish that that contract hadn't been signed or anything. Maybe some Phillies fans do because they would have liked to see that money go toward someone else or just a different philosophy. But I think the dismissiveness with which he is treating those responses, and this is years and years later, he, he could have said, hey, I've learned a lot since then. You know, everyone has. The sport as a whole has, and I've reevaluated certain things. But instead he's doubling down and digging in his heels. And maybe that's indicative of the mindset that led him not to embrace that way of thinking or just be receptive to more information in the first place. But the point is, you could have that attitude and still be a baseball decision maker until the fairly recent past. And also the dismissiveness with which he is greeting those comments, you know, if anything, he sort of escalated it.
- [76:17]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [76:18]
B
And that's what led to a lot of the animosity, the, the fieriness of the war of words that would happen there, because it could have just been a free exchange of ideas and each side could have learned from the other. But. Right. It wasn't that because it was seen as a threat. And in some ways, I guess it was, you know, new thinking and new types of people coming into the game. And maybe it forces out people who aren't adaptable. And so there's, there's part of that. It's just like, wow, who are you to come in and tell me? I, I don't know how this thing that I've done my whole life works. And we know that in a lot of cases that was true, that people came in not with the same playing background and were able to discern things that players, coaches, baseball lifers had not known or applied for all of baseball history. There are also cases where the reverse was true. And maybe the stat heads got a bit too. Too big for their britches and failed to consider some things that they could have listened and. And learned. But I think that's what led to the escalation and how nasty and bitter that sometimes got and how kind of reverse trollish sometimes the stat heads would be because, you know, they were the outsiders and no one was listening to them. And people were being very dismissive and demeaning also, you know, and that's kind of. It's a time capsule. It's like Ruben Amaro preserved in Amber Spring somehow. It's still. Still thinking and talking, still fighting that war from a while ago. But it was that type of attitude that then caused writers at baseball Prospectus or wherever to ramp up their rhetoric because it's like, oh, you don't just politely disagree. You are. Are demeaning and dismissing me and, and calling into question the quality of my work. Okay, well, then I'm going to raise the temperature, too, and I'm going to fire back. And, you know, then it leads to sort of this cycle, this escalation. So that's how it happened. That took me back, you know, and I wasn't there at the start either for. For the worst of that or participating in the most animosity. But, you know, I was around or reading, I guess not too long while that was still kind of a going concern. And so to see it now when it's. It's quaint, it's a relic, it's a vestige of a bygone era that I guess Ruben Amaro Jr. Is still sort of living in. But it does. It goes to show just like, how much things have changed in such a short time that he really was running the show very recently and thinking that way. And it was maybe not the norm at that point, but it was. It was kind of common, so it happened.
- [78:51]
A
Yeah, it's so tiresome, really. It's just. Just.
- [78:57]
B
Yeah, I'm glad we don't have to fight that battle anymore.
- [79:01]
A
Yeah, it's just like a sea of very confident men. I find it. The whole thing is so tiresome, to be honest with you. I think in the case of them, like, I have. I do have sympathy for the Unpleasant experience of, like, the online pylon. But also I think that, like, in the case of Amara, you're a media member man like you, you get on the tv. Part of your job is to help, you know, fans interpret the Phillies and, like, the ways they're good and the ways that they're wanting and how they could be better. And I think that it is an obligation that media members should take seriously to try to engage with this stuff. And it doesn't mean that you have to be like some soulless machine and. And, you know, phrase everything and put everything in terms of dollars per war and what have you. Like, no, you're telling a story about the team. That's your. Your job is to tell a story and inform, and you can't do that without understanding how front offices construct their rosters. And so if you want to have sort of a head in the sand approach to this stuff, well, you should be in a different line of work. I'm sorry. Like, you have to be able to tell fans, why is that guy on the field? You know, and sometimes it's going to be really easy and obvious. And guess what? The things that make a guy good at baseball in a way that's easy and obvious tend to be things that are valued by advanced metrics. Right? Like, this is the. The game of telephone point I was trying to make earlier. Like, guess what? WAR likes it when you hit a home run. Doesn't dislike that. That's not a bet. It's not like we're like, actually, that doesn't. Doesn't have any value. Like, no home runs good. You know, like, yeah, pro home run over here. And so was war. So, you know, if you have a pitcher who strikes out, a bunch of dudes, like, that's good in a way that's going to be obvious. What you're trying to do is help fans account for who they're seeing on the field, why they're there, what they're doing well and where they're struggling. And there are times where you don't need advanced stats for that. But. But there are times when you do. And certainly to answer the question of, like, why is this roster put together the way that it is? You know, advanced dance are going to help you tell that story. So it's just. You're just not doing your viewership any favors. You're not living up to your responsibilities as an analyst. And that doesn't mean that you can't have an appreciation for the beauty of the game and the lyrical parts of It. And the stuff that, like is more akin to literature than math. But you, you have to have the other part too, you know, and if you don't want to, and you want to appreciate the game in a very old school, you know, kind of way, purely back of the baseball card, which is a funny expression now because guess what's often on the back of a guy's baseball card now. But, you know, traditional back of the baseball card stuff. Okay, fine, but then don't. Then you should be watching TV instead of making it. I'm sorry.
- [82:06]
B
Yeah. Or I guess you could be a first base coach. That's probably all right.
- [82:09]
A
Or you could be a first base coach. But I, I think the first base coaches are probably, you know, up on their advanced stats, even though you think all of them should be out of a job for reasons that have nothing to do with what they think of WRC plus as a statistic.
- [82:23]
B
Yeah. The other thought I've expressed is there was something kind of intoxicating, addictive about those flame wars, just because if you felt like you were in the right and you kind of felt like you had a cause, you were advancing, and now it's like, you know, sabermetrician without a cause. It's like the, the battle's over. That way of thinking mostly came out on top. And there was that time where you still felt like you were in on sort of a secret or a minority view and you were maybe being an advocate and you were helping explain it to people who, who didn't know, and they might have their, their eyes opened or their mind blown, and you might too. And now it just, it doesn't quite feel that way. It feels like there's a little less possibility in terms of just our understanding being completely overhauled or being able to amaze someone with something about baseball they didn't know, because we all just. We know too much. Not that we know everything or that we ever will, but we have learned some things. And so, yeah, I do. I don't know if it was healthy to feel that way, like you were, you know, going to some sort of battle when you were blogging or whatever, but there was something about it that felt kind of empowering, I guess.
- [83:37]
A
Sure.
- [83:38]
B
And.
- [83:39]
A
And look, there was a lot of skepticism of advanced stats in the beginning, and there were a lot of, you know, rhetorical shovings of nerds into lockers. And so I don't want to say that it was just a bunch of snobby intellectuals disrespecting former players. There was a lot of animus on both sides, in part because I think people were cognizant of the fact that if this was the direction front offices were going, well, they might not have a job soon. And that tends to put people on the defensive. So there was a lot of nasty nastiness sort of on all sides. But as I have said on this pod many, many times, the Statnards won. So you should be gracious in your victory because nobody likes a sore winner. And as we have seen from some of our sort of advances in understanding in the last little bit, some of what advanced analytics is doing is putting statistical rigor to the insights that baseball lifers have had for a long time. Right. And so having humility about what we're able to quantify now versus what we might be able to quantify in the future and how that is really just giving expression to ideas that baseball folks have had for a long time. Like there's value in that. You know, this isn't. This doesn't need to be stats and scouts. This doesn't have a liberal arts perspective on these things because there's value in all of it. And if, you know, I think the real project for a lot of front offices is being able to figure out how to utilize those insights as actual data. And that doesn't mean that every old school scout knows what they're talking about or every former gm clearly. But I think it's foolish to say that there's no value to that perspective. Just like it's very silly to say the top WRC plus doesn't like quantify the offensive production of a guy. You know, like let's all just not be silly. Let's all be humble and silly in like a put a pit on the field kind of way. Not enough.
- [85:50]
B
Yeah, you know, needless, reckless and dangerous.
- [85:53]
A
I don't want there to be a pit on the field. To be clear, I think that's a really bad idea. I think that that would get a lot of guys hurt, you know, like it would article.
- [86:02]
B
But it was great. I mean really an all time long sensible in practice.
- [86:07]
A
Yeah, definitely not sensible.
- [86:08]
B
One more thought I meant to mention in the piece Passon wrote about the Royals move, he's quoting Daniel Mack who's the Royals VP of R&D and an assistant GM and I think wrote a piece for Baseball Prospectus back in the day when I was there. But he was talking about the neutrality of the park. What we wanted to focus on was how we could find dimensions that would create a more consistent approach for Us and as a team, it's one thing when you say, okay, well, Kaufman's so large, it's great for pitchers. You can't really bring in power hitters. Can we find dimensions that make it so that regardless of when we're at home or on the road, we don't have to worry about the spectrum as much? And one thing that he says a little further down here, you know, talking about how as they were working on the analysis throughout the season and they were watching deep fly balls that were caught, and then someone would say that that'll be a homer next year, that needs be to, to be a homer. And then Passon talks about how they have these power hitters now, but quote, the instinct to target players whose skill sets fit better in the old dimensions will no longer be necessary. And Max says, I feel like that's just chasing lightning. I don't think that's smart in general. It's certainly not smart for a smaller market team that needs to be adaptable to the personnel that you can acquire. And I thought that was interesting because I think, yes, on the one hand, you probably don't want to construct your ballpark just given the characteristics of your roster right now, because how long will those guys still be there and still be good? Although, as you said, you could just change your, your outfield fences every year if you want to.
- [87:40]
A
You can change it up all the time. But. But this is why I think that there is a move towards sort of an average, right, because you don't want to have to be goofing with your roster year to year. You want there to be some durability to a team building approach that it isn't so dependent on finding like productive extremes. Right?
- [87:58]
B
Yeah, I guess. And you know, you're not allowed to make these sorts of changes in season, I don't think. Obviously not in game. That's. That's banned. That was tried by Bill Veeck and others. But, but I this idea that, like, it's not smart for a small market team that needs to be adaptable to the personnel you can acquire. I see what he's saying, that you want to just take the opportunities as they come and you don't want to be bound by a certain profile of player who will play up in your park. And maybe that's particularly true with power, because power, you tend to have to pay for power on the market. But what if it were some other quality? Then might it not benefit a smaller market team? Because if you're acquiring something that is currently undervalued or not highly valued like, like triples hitting or speed or whatever, right? Like if you're a great, great triples park and you're just going and getting guys who could be great triples hitters and no one else really cares because there aren't a lot of great triples parks out there. Like it could be depending on the configuration of the park and the type of players who would play well there. In theory, it could be something that would benefit a small market team because you could get some kind of player other teams aren't interested in getting. Maybe. So I don't know if it's a hard and fast rule, but maybe if the idea is yeah, we, we would have to really pay for power to get anyone who could hit the ball out of Kaufman, then maybe that's not. Not ideal. Okay, just a final few follow ups. We talked about Boba Shet and the Phillies interest in him speaking of the Phillies. And we talked about how it had been reported that he did a video call with them instead of visiting. And we were talking about whether this is more prevalent now. The new normal is not to visit and take a tour, but just remotely talk to the team. Evidently some people pointed out that he seems to have just gotten married earlier this month and so that that may have played a part in why he did not visit because he's busy or he's honeymooning or he had other events on his schedule. So in his case at least the video call may have been just for convenience because he was booked up. So that might explain that. Also we got, well, another email about coaches unretiring. This will probably be the last time that we talk about this, but listener Dennis submitted just a couple more famous examples of coaches unretiring as players. In 1965, the Mets talked Yogi Berra into being added to the active roster. Aside from some exhibition games he had last played in 1963 with the Yankees, he spent all of 64 as the Mets first base coach. Also in 1934, Charlie O' Leary of the Browns was in his 22nd year as a coach when he asked into the final game of the season. Manager Hannes Wagner granted the request. And as a 58 year old pinch hitter, O' Leary became the oldest player in MLB history to record a hit and score a run in an MLB game. And a couple more examples involving hall of Famers which are a little more borderline. Charles Bender didn't play baseball in 1918, but returned as a player coach in the minors from 1919-24. The White Sox hired him as a coach in 1925 and he pitched in a game of July that year. I couldn't find a great source saying that he had quit as a player prior to 1919 though. And big Dan Brothers also quit as a player at one point after the 1896 season, but seems to have come back as a player coach, simultaneously toiling in the Miners for a few years, but before making it back to the majors with the Giants for the final game of the 1904 season. I guess things were a bit more amorphous in those days when you had not only more two way players but also many more player coaches and player managers and everything. So those distinctions were a little less clear cut than they are these days. And you could kind of have it both ways, be a coach and a player at the same time. And also maybe the latest example of this Brit Giroli of the Athletic just tweeted this week free agent lefty Tim Collins is pursuing a comeback. Collins, 36, last pitched in spring training 2020 and was a minor league baseball pitching coach for the Phillies in 2024. He'll throw for scouts this Wednesday at the Cressy Sports Performance Pro Day in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. So we just went back to the 19th century and now also in the 21st Tim Collins trying to become the latest best to become a coach and then become a player yet again. And an email from Rebecca about Stove League. Remember Stove League?
- [92:27]
A
I do remember Stovely.
- [92:29]
B
Yeah, I I told people earlier this off season it's now on Netflix. So yeah, you don't have to sign up for some streaming service that you might not have heard of before. You can go watch the single excellent season of the K drama Stove League. Great baseball show that we covered in some depth depth a few years ago. And Rebecca says I just finished watching Stove League on Netflix and then went back and listened to your episodes from 2021 about them. The first episode that discusses Stove League also discusses Shohei's MVP year as well as fraught hall of Fame voting. More evergreen than you may have thought. My reason for emailing though was about the discussion regarding the match fixing in Stove League. You discuss it in episode 1792 around the 58:30 mark mark the pitcher in question was asked to walk the first batter for what you estimated to be US$4,000 in the wake of the Class A Ortiz scandal. It was very interesting. Listen. Almost felt like foreshadowing. You say things like that amount of money should be trivial even for a KBO player and in the event of micro bets, I guess this is possible in mlb. Obvious difference of a walk versus just a first pitch. But the amount of money is so spot on for what Class A and Ortiz were receiving per bet that it is noteworthy. Thanks for the recommendation. I've been listening to Effectively Wild for only about a year. So I was not around during the 2021 watch along. My partner and I were obsessed with Stove League. I got my partner hooked on baseball this past season. He is now letting me know about free agent news regarding players he had never heard of a year ago. I haven't quite got him hooked on Effectively Wild yet, however. Hopefully you will soon.
- [94:02]
A
June.
- [94:02]
B
But yeah, I had forgotten about that. I had forgotten.
- [94:04]
A
Yeah.
- [94:05]
B
And you know there's been game throwing and fixing in other leagues like that. So it is quite a realistic show by the standards of baseball shows. But I had forgotten that for a relative pittance that someone did a walk on purpose.
- [94:19]
A
I mean, I think you'll be forgiven because that show had so much plot.
- [94:23]
B
Yeah.
- [94:24]
A
How good.
- [94:24]
B
Everything that could possibly happen in baseball happened in the course of the that single season.
- [94:29]
A
I kind of want to rewatch it when I don't have the, you know, sort of time pressure of getting through a couple episodes a week so that we could talk about it on the pod. Because I'm sure I would watch it again and be like, wait, what was this in here the first time we watched this? So much happens. It's like the O.C. but for baseball. And also in Korea.
- [94:47]
B
Exactly. Yeah. And they never made a second season, which is sad. Yeah. Not uncommon for K dramas. But I don't know how much they they left themselves.
- [94:56]
A
What could you possibly do?
- [94:58]
B
Yeah, is 16 episodes as I recall. And they were like substantial meaty episodes and they just covered every aspect of the baseball organization. Yeah. Tons to talk about it. I think we did four pods on that. Just four episodes of Stove Leak per pod. Lastly, we got several emails standing up for Sea Unicorns.
- [95:19]
A
I'm so happy about this. Correction. I'm so delighted to learn this as a nickname.
- [95:25]
B
I'm so excited because we were talking about the coaches unretiring and I was talking about Eric Campbell who had been named the manager of the team, the Sea Unicorns, and then had unretired and come back as a player. And so what we had some aside about how yes, it was Sea Unicorns, not regular unicorns and we were kind of mocking the idea that there was a meaningful distinction there because they were both fictional creatures. Right. But as many people Pointed out sea unicorns. That's a nickname for a real being, a narwhal. Right. So it's, you know, it does look like a sea unicorn. It's. It's got the thing sticking out of its nose. So, you know, I guess we sold the sea unicorns shorts. They. They're real and spectacular.
- [96:16]
A
That is so delightful. Sea unicorns.
- [96:19]
B
I, I looked up the, the origin of sea unicorns as a name, and when Norwich unveiled its new identity. This was a 2019 a story on milb.com and it's interesting because the story says on Thursday afternoon in Norwich, Connecticut, there was a confirmed sighting of a heretofore apocryphal aquatic creature. Sea unicorns have arisen from the briny deep. And at first I was thinking, oh, so they're saying it's a apocryphal creature. It's not real, in fact. And then it later in the second paragraph calls it a quasi mythical maritime moniker, which beat out four other finalists in a name the team contest. So it could have been, could have been the Golden Roses, the Mill Mules, the Salty Dogs.
- [97:06]
A
Salty Dogs is pretty good.
- [97:07]
B
Salty Dogs is great. Yeah. I'm sort of disappointed that it's not. Not the Salty Dogs, but. But they did consider just naming them narwhals, but ultimately they, they went with the, the nickname. I've heard it pronounced narwhale by, by the way, but I, I usually. Narwhal. Right.
- [97:24]
A
Every time I think of a narwhal, I think of, bye, buddy. I hope you find your dad.
- [97:29]
B
Yeah, well, so I'm gonna go with narwhal. My daughter's a fan of the narwhal and also other unicorns. But, you know, they, they have the Tuscany tusks, and so the name fits. But yeah, this story was saying, you know, quasi mythical and apocryphal. And so I was sort of at first thinking that this supported the stance that sea unicorns are not a real thing. But then later in the story, the team is quoted saying that, you know, there's a long maritime history in Norwich and that it is. One quote says sea unicorns, and another finalist, narwhals, are essentially the same thing. Narwhals, colloquially known as sea unicorns, are a living species of whale residing in Arctic waters. Yes, they're not in Connecticut, but no, Norwich was once heavily dependent on whaling. And also they felt like there was just a paucity of, of whale related team names since the Hartford Whalers, and they wanted to bring that back to Connecticut and they thought it resonated and that there were, you know, there was a history of sea captains in Norwich coming back and telling tales of, you know, tall tales of creatures real or imagined, that they had seen. But yeah, it's kind of like a trash panda. What's a trash panda? Well, it's a. It's a nickname for a raccoon.
- [98:47]
A
So it's a raccoon.
- [98:48]
B
Sea unicorns also nickname for narwhals. So our apologies to narwhals for. Yeah, selling them short. We were aware that narwhals were real, to be clear.
- [98:59]
A
Oh yeah, I knew. I didn't think that a narwhal was a fake thing.
- [99:03]
B
Yes. But I guess we just had not made the connection or looked at the logo for the Santa coins.
- [99:09]
A
Yeah, I didn't see the logo. I didn't. I thought it was some sort of goofy bit of business. But I'm so happy to be wrong because then I got to think about Bye, buddy.
- [99:18]
B
I hope you find we appreciate the aquatic corrections that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners Tim White, Bradley Guys Gordon, Michael, Maddie C. Dinsdale, and Caleb Northrup. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, potential podcast appearances, shout outs to at the end of episodes, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad free fan graphs, 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 find the Effectively wild subreddit at r effectivelywild. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com group effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then.
- [100:45]
A
Baseball is a simulation and it's all just one big math equation. Hear all about these stats we've compiled. Cause you listen to Effectively Wild With Ben Lindbergh and Mac Rowley Come for the ball.
- [101:05]
B
Banter's free.
- [101:08]
A
Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one conversation Effectively Wild.