Effectively Wild Episode 2443: Season Preview Series: Blue Jays and Rays

Summary

Effectively Wild 2443: Season Preview Series — Blue Jays and Rays

Date: February 21, 2026
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Guests: Mitch Bannon (The Athletic, Bluebird Territory podcast), Adam Berry (MLB.com)

Episode Overview

This episode of Effectively Wild delivers two deep-dives in the Season Preview Series: first, a close look at the defending AL champion Toronto Blue Jays with Mitch Bannon, and then a review of the ever-churning Tampa Bay Rays with Adam Berry. Prior to the interviews, Ben and Meg cover a series of baseball banter topics—quirky Phillies trends, a Red Sox jersey fiasco, creative approaches to competitive balance, and more—infused with their trademark wit.

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1. Opening Banter and Quirky News (00:30–55:33)

Brandon Marsh's Mysterious Wetness & Phillies Eccentricities (01:10–20:18)

• Brandon Marsh's "Wet Boy" Reputation:

  • Ben and Meg discuss a now-viral behind-the-scenes video showing Marsh pouring an entire bottle of water on his head pregame, ending speculation about a natural "glandular" condition or excessive hair product.
  • Quote:
    • “It’s as if there was some magician with an amazing trick and then the sleight of hand was just laid bare…As if you watch some wildlife video and they catch a creature never before seen, and there’s Marsh overturning the bottle.” – Ben (06:33)
  • Meg describes the comfort of water-in-humidity and playfully refers to Marsh as a "very wet boy," pondering the haircare logistics and relief of a cooling douse during July and August in Philly.
  • Extensive riff on men’s hair products, sensory gross-outs from leftover conditioner, and the horror of applying enough product to match Marsh’s saturated look. (08:11–09:48)

• Phillies and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy:

  • The Phillies become MLB’s first team to announce a multi-year partnership for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Ben explains it as a “medical-grade, team-sanctioned” practice, distinct from questionable player-run regimens.
  • Quote:
    • “This isn’t just bootleg hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It’s medical-grade…This is extremely Phillies, obviously. It is pretty on-brand for them.” – Ben (11:28, 11:41)
  • Meg notes the therapy's actual medical applications and raises skeptical questions about performance benefits, competitive advantage regulations, and whether this (like previous Phillies fads) will become league norm or eventually banned if it’s too effective. (15:32–17:03)
  • Playful concern about Brandon Marsh entering the oxygen chamber "while still wet." (17:17)
  • Memorable Meg moment:
    • "Be normal challenge! Be normal! ...I feel comfortable saying Marsh should probably not get in Bryce Harper's zappy red light sleeve." (17:47)

• Other Team Quirks:

  • Mike Trout’s “Sci-Fi table," teams’ fascination with marginal recovery tools, and the philosophy of, “If it gets you one run, maybe it pays for itself.” (19:49)
  • Meg: “Maybe just sign a better right fielder.” (20:18)

Red Sox Jersey Fiasco & Fanatics Fallout (20:35–29:59)

• The Red Sox had a home white jersey manufacturing mishap—the S in "Sox" and D in "Red" overlapped the piping—leading to a PR scramble.
• Ben reads multiple walkbacks from the Sox, culminating in an almost comical exoneration of Fanatics, the supplier, after apparent league pressure.
  • Quote:
    • “They were prostrating themselves. Yeah, as if they’re being held at knifepoint by Fanatics just being forced to tweet: ‘Fanatics is blameless, we’re grateful to them.’” – Ben (26:30)
  • Meg’s take: “There are few companies more reviled than Fanatics… You could make political hay by how much everyone hates their guts.” (27:14)
• Photos of the jersey evoke laughter—Meg says, “That looks like a knockoff you’d buy outside the ballpark.” (28:37–29:15)
• Running joke about “home whites” and Mark Wahlberg as the ideal Boston jersey sleuth (29:59).

Competitive Balance: Creative (or Ridiculous) Solutions (30:32–48:12)

• Ben walks through ex-MLB exec Andrew Ball’s Substack post exploring ways (other than a salary cap) MLB could address competitive balance:
  1. Shorten the season: More randomness, perhaps slightly lessen payroll’s predictive power, but tough sell financially.
  2. Introduce relegation: Popular in soccer but wildly impractical for MLB.
  3. Allow advances on revenue sharing: Let small market clubs take more now, less later, to support a window. Meg expresses skepticism that revenue is the true constraint for low-spenders: “Isn’t the way to fix perpetual seller-dwellers to just make their owners sell?” (39:07)
  4. Increase roster limits for small-market teams: Meg’s reaction: “Isn’t this embarrassing?... It’s already unfair to the players!” (41:46)
  5. Draft for GMs/POBOs: Ben and Meg note that front-office skill is one area where small-market teams do compete.
• Ben: “Ultimately, people are mad about payroll imbalances, not extra 40-man roster spots.” (45:53)

"Who Ya Got?"—Looking Back at Prospect Showdowns (48:26–55:33)

• Ben reminisces about old “Who Ya Got?” articles pitting young stars against each other, admiring how close the actual career values have ended up in pairs like Machado/Arenado and Correa/Seager.
• Quote:
  • “I have to pat myself on the back … Since that date Arenado has had 44.6 WAR, Machado 45.4. So…less than one win separates them after a decade.” – Ben (51:48)
• Michael Bauman’s retroactively lopsided “Conforto vs. Judge” column playfully roasted.

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2. Toronto Blue Jays Season Preview with Mitch Bannon (55:37–101:56)

A. 2025 Recap & 2026 Outlook (56:09–58:16)

• The 2025 AL pennant run reframed Toronto’s future, shifting the narrative from “should we rebuild?” to “now expectations have changed.” Many contracts and extensions fell into place.
  • Quote:
    • “At this time last year they didn’t know the direction…What a difference a year makes—now expectations, maybe it’s not a success if they don’t win the World Series.” – Mitch (57:24)

B. Offseason Moves and Roster Thematics (58:16–63:16)

• Dylan Cease Acquisition:
  • Cease fits Jays’ taste for durable starters and offers upside, hoping to unlock “projectable” ace potential with innings consistency.
• Toronto as a Free Agent Destination:
  • Still a “hard sell” for some due to logistically unique features (taxes, currency, geography), but winning and a retooled stadium/clubhouse ramp up their reputation.
  • Ben: “They should be one of the true titans…and not perpetually looking up at division rivals.” (61:37)
• Development pipeline: Toronto’s next step toward Dodgers’ status is to build sustainable internal development, not just spending.

C. Key Young Players & Rotation Depth (63:16–75:44)

• Traya Savage:
  • Big 2025 postseason breakout; Jays’ priority is keeping him healthy (avoiding “Jackson Jobe syndrome”), adding his curveball back, and managing workload with Dylan Cease and veterans around.
  • Ben: “No concern about the makeup…cool as a cucumber, cool as a bag of milk on the biggest stage.” (65:00)
• Cody Ponce:
  • Emerged in KBO; higher velo/changeup; Jays confident he’s not just a foreign-league mirage.
• Rotation shuffle:
  • Jose Berríos remains important, especially with Shane Bieber’s arm health issues and Bowden Francis having Tommy John.
• Gausman:
  • Steady, successful with minor velocity dips/weight changes; spring usage will be cautious.
• Bullpen:
  • Addition of Tyler Rogers (funky submarine arm), high-leverage bridge to Jeff Hoffman. Louis Varland's heavy usage anticipated but med staff wary.

D. Offense: 2025 Power Spike, Lineup Questions, and Departures (77:16–94:33)

• Bonanza of power & bat speed:
  • New hitting coaches David Popkins and Lou Iannotti/analytics group credited for unlocking hitters' power without added swing-and-miss, especially George Springer.
• Bo Bichette Departure:
  • Jays pivoted early in offseason to Andres Jimenez at shortstop, valuing defense and projecting long-term better than aging Bo.
• Big Free Agent Near-Misses:
  • Kyle Tucker (10/$350M reported offer); ultimately, LA’s short-term mega-AAV deal was unbeatable. Jays maxed out at a longer-term bid.
• Kazuma Okamoto:
  • 4/$60M import; club believes in his 3B defense—plus bat, but uncertain if he’ll be “a 108 WRC+ guy or a 128.”
• Defensive outlook:
  • Could be league-leading with Jimenez at SS; loss of Bo’s bat offset by outfield/bench depth and strong D.
• Bench & Breakout Watch:
  • Jesus Sanchez, Addison Barger, Nathan Lucas, Davis Schneider all in the mix; prospect RJ Schrek shouts out, but everyday roles hard to come by.
• Ernie Clement’s playoff stardom: Likely regression to average bat, valuable glove.

E. Vlad Guerrero Jr. & Defining Success (92:26–96:10)

• Vlad is expected to take on an even greater role, perhaps “doubling” last year’s home run total; the team hopes for playoff performance consistency.
  • Quote:
    • “[Schneider said] this has always been Vlad’s team…and is putting a lot on his shoulders.” – Mitch (93:25)
• Success metrics: “If they win a playoff series, that’s a successful season. It’s showing this era is different than the one that couldn’t win a single playoff game in 2022 and 2023.” – Mitch (95:15)

F. Clubhouse Culture & Rogers Centre Upgrades (96:10–101:06)

• Rogers has completed nearly all stadium renovations except exclusive luxury suites—fan experience “now respectable, up to snuff.”
• Blue Jays’ tight-knit, high-vibes clubhouse last year contrasted with the “gritty professionals” of 2015/16.
• Playful closing: Ben’s struggle with “Toronto” pronunciation and Canadian credentials.

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3. Tampa Bay Rays Season Preview with Adam Berry (MLB.com) (102:17–146:20)

A. Franchise Overhaul: Offseason Trade Frenzy (103:08–109:39)

• Rays didn’t add many stars, but churned roster more than nearly anyone—third-most additions and subtractions league-wide, netting out at “barely moved the projected WAR needle.”
  • Quote:
    • “A lot of movement, not necessarily changing the way you feel about their competitive chances.” – Adam (105:02)
• Rays completed THREE separate three-team trades, acting as a sort of universal facilitator—a role Adam attributes to their relentless transactional mindset and desire “always in the conversation.”
• They have stocked up on young talent for future windows, but made short-term fits too.

B. New Additions: Free Agents and Outfield Reset (109:39–113:23)

• Cedric Mullins: Signed to play center versus righties; outfield lacked power and reliability last year, so he brings both, plus defense.
• Chandler Simpson: Lighting speed on bases but questions about hitting productivity and adjusting to corner OF defense. Coaching from Kevin Kiermaier; team optimistic but needs more on-base and growth.

C. Returnees and Breakouts (113:23–118:58)

• Jonathan Aranda: Emerged as full-time 1B; success seen as product of regular playing time.
• Junior Caminero: 45-homer, 110-RBI season as a 21-year-old; elite bat speed, but extreme profile (double plays, low BABIP). Adam highlights defensive strides and Caminero’s “young leader” status.
• Taylor Walls vs. Carson Williams: Walls still gets first shot at SS for defense, despite bat; Williams got MLB taste, “could use more AAA time.”

D. Ballpark Return & Long-Term Stadium Rumblings (118:58–125:21)

• Rays return to a repaired and modestly upgraded Tropicana Field after an odd year (bad weather, weird splits) sharing Steinbrenner Field.
• New ownership’s top priority: securing a Tampa ballpark as soon as possible. Plans in works for a live-work-play-learn district near the Yankees’ spring facility, but funding details remain open.

E. Ownership Change: Payroll and Continuity (127:08–129:09)

• New group is leaving Eric Neander, Kevin Cash, and Jeff Sullivan in charge. “Nobody is allowed to meddle in baseball decisions.”
• Payroll status quo until/unless a future stadium changes economics.

F. Pitching Staff Outlook (129:09–137:09)

• Shane McClanahan: Healthy after freak nerve injury, cautiously building innings early.
• Shane Baz: Traded to the Orioles; Rays didn’t “need” to move him, but the offer was too strong to refuse.
• Drew Rasmussen: “So good, it feels like I’m keeping a secret.” Ultra-elusive ace, opening day starter.
• Ryan Pepiot: Should perform well in the return to Tropicana after a tough year at Steinbrenner.
• Nick Martinez & Steven Matz: Both open in rotation, but Matz might shift to pen if health lags.
• Pen: Edwin Uceda, Griffin Jax, and Garrett Clevinger are strong late, but Uceda’s “cranky shoulder” is a big spring storyline.

G. Depth & Prospects (137:09–139:59)

• Carson Williams (SS), Jacob Melton (OF), Trey Morgan (1B), and Dominic Keegan (C) lead group at AAA expected to step in due to injuries or performance.

H. Pitch Calling & Philosophy (139:59–141:41)

• Rays retain their "trust your stuff and attack the plate" legacy, but adjust approach based on pitcher. They’re not moving toward full Marlins-style dugout pitch-calling.

I. Defining Success & Rays’ Perpetual Cycle (141:41–144:41)

• Adam’s honest bar: “Success is getting a stadium deal done. Everything in the organization orbits that.”
  • On-Field: Rays refuse to tank and always aim to be in contention, even if their division rivals outspend and outgun them.
  • Quote: “If they tried to go about it the same way everyone else does in the East, they’d finish right where their revenues rank.” – Adam (143:04)
• If the season starts badly, trade rumors (Yandy, Pepiot, etc.) could reignite.

J. Wander Franco Status (144:41–146:08)

• Ongoing retrial delays clarity—if verdict reversed and Franco gets a visa, Rays might have to revisit contract/payroll; for now, his situation is in limbo, contract essentially off the payroll.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Be normal challenge! Be normal, Phillies!” – Meg on the ever-escalating Phillies therapies (17:47)
• “They're prostrating themselves, as if they're being held at knifepoint by Fanatics just being forced to tweet: ‘Fanatics is blameless, we're grateful to them.’” – Ben on Sox/Fanatics PR missives (26:30)
• “Isn’t the way to fix perpetual seller-dwellers to just make their owners sell?” – Meg on competitive balance (39:07)
• “I have to pat myself on the back… less than one win separates them after a decade.” – Ben on nailing prospect showdowns (51:48)
• “This has always been Vlad's team.” – Mitch quoting John Schneider, on Guerrero’s centrality (93:25)
• “If they tried to go about it the same way everyone else does in the East, they'd finish right where their revenues rank.” – Adam on Rays’ anti-orthodox strategy (143:04)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Brandon Marsh Water Video & Phillies Eccentricities: 01:10–20:18
• Red Sox Jersey / Fanatics Drama: 20:35–29:59
• Andrew Ball's Competitive Balance Proposals: 30:32–48:12
• "Who Ya Got" Career Retrospective: 48:26–55:33
• Mitch Bannon/Blue Jays Deep-Dive: 55:37–101:56
• Adam Berry/Rays Deep-Dive: 102:17–146:20

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Conclusion

This episode spotlights the contrasting approaches and 2026 outlooks of the Blue Jays (star-laden, high-expectations, still chasing a summit) and the Rays (perpetually in motion, ever-resourceful, and staring down both roster churn and franchise-defining stadium questions). Throughout, Ben, Meg, and their guests blend deep analysis, inside info, and humorous banter to give listeners both the “vibe” and substance of the coming AL East campaign.

For stats, links, articles, and bonus content, check the episode show page at FanGraphs.

Transcript

[A]

How are you? I'm okay.

[B]

We got so much to do today. Breaking balls and Flakin Snells, and those stats won't blast themselves.

[A]

Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild.

[C]

Effectively.

[B]

Hello, and welcome to episode 2443 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fan Graphs. Hello, Meg.

[D]

Oh, hello.

[B]

Well, we are about to have a conversation, at least as long as the conversation that Cub starter Justin Steele tweeted that he had had with Grok on Thursday. But humans only. On this podcast, despite what some might think, we are, in fact, all human. 100% human. But I wish Justin well with his new AI friend.

[D]

No, I. Look okay. I don't want to do too much of it, but someone needs to intervene on that right away. Someone needs to be like, no, Justin. Nope, nope, nope. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Gonna learn. Nope, nope.

[B]

Well, he's putting it out there, so perhaps there will be an intervention. But we have much to talk about. Some baseball banter and then a. And it's an AL east affair today. All AL east, all the time. We'll be talking about the Toronto Blue Jays with Mitch Bannon of the Athletic, followed by the Tampa Bay Rays with Adam Berry of MLB.com but first, the Phillies. So I teased that I had a couple of Phillies topics to banter about yesterday, and then we ran out of time, which is, in fact, possible, even on Effectively Wild. And so I tabled those topics for today. One of them I know you know about because you independently sent it to me, but I have to send you this other one, which. Don't be afraid. It's not bad by Philly standards. It's actually quite charming. But it's something that I never expected to see and sort of regret seeing. But it is a video that was posted on Blue sky the other day.

[D]

This is Marsh.

[B]

Yes. By Tim Kelly, managing editor of OnPadison.com and it's Brandon Marsh getting wet. Wetting himself, one might say. There's probably a better way to say that. I wish I hadn't seen this, actually, because I wanted the mystery of why he's so wet to be preserved. Because I've never known. It's just. It's always been sort of mysterious to me why he's so wet. He's famously, infamously wet. He always appears to be drenched.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And it seems like I was able to believe that it was something just inherent to him that he was just exuding moisture.

[D]

Did you think he had like a. Like a glandular disorder or something? Like, I am sopping constantly. I'm out to dinner at a nice restaurant and I am soaked to the bone.

[B]

Yes. His hair was just somehow sopping at all times or that possibly it was some product that he applied to the hair. But what this is, it's a candid kind of behind the scenes video of him pouring an entire bottle of water seemingly onto his head and then shaking like a dog that has just been in a puddle or something.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

Okay. So I. Well, I have two things to say about this. The first of which is, and I hate to be, you know, like a hair care product pedant, but I would, I would offer that if Marsha's whole deal, if this very wet boy were actually applying product, I don't know that wet would be the word one would use to, to describe him anymore, because that's a different. That's a different thing. Look, we've all had the experience of, you know, getting. Getting a little too much of the product in your hair. And then you have that, you have that feeling. It's bad enough when you're running your fingers through your hair, but the, the worst part of that experience is, is. Is when it settles on your scalp and then you're like, I'm. I'm itchy. You know, I got that. I got too much. There's. I'm going to do a swear. There's too much in here. You know, And I have had times in my life where I have struggled with the appropriate amount of product because, you know, there's a lot. Our listeners, they're only listeners. They're. They're not viewing me. And I try pretty hard not to have my human face on the Internet as much as I can, but there's a lot of hair up here. You know, it's just like a mad Madam Mim situation, you know? But it wouldn't be wet. I don't think would be the appropriate way to describe it if it were. If it were product. But also, our good friends Jake and Jordan have reported on Marsha's wetness process.

[B]

Yeah, but I haven't witnessed it myself. It was still sort of.

[D]

You couldn't imagine it in your, in your head. I could, but I, in your mind's

[B]

eye, preferred imagining it to actually seeing it because it's more mundane just seeing him drench himself.

[D]

Well, how many ways can you get your head wet, Ben? You know, like, probably many ways.

[B]

I wouldn't put, we're talking about the Phillies here, right?

[D]

Fair enough.

[B]

What liquid that could be.

[D]

But pleased. It's actually water.

[B]

Yeah, it's just sort of. It's as if there was some magician with an amazing trick and then the sleight of hand was just laid bare and. And then it suddenly wasn't so cool. It'. Oh, well, that's how the rabbit's coming out of the hat. Oh, he just had some scarfs stuffed up his sleeves. Scarves, scarves, scarves, scarves, scarves. Just seeing him perform the process like this, captured in the act, just robbed it of some of its mystery for me. Though I did enjoy just the, the shaggy dog head shape at the end. And I still wonder, and I should go back and read that piece, just how often he's reapplying and how many bottles of water is he going through here? Because I have concerns about that. But just like, how long does he stay as moist as he seems to be?

[D]

Probably depends on the time of year.

[B]

Yeah. And just why, I guess is a good question too. But yeah, just captured. It's, it's as if, you know, it's like when you watch some nature wildlife video and they, they have the candid Camera, they catch some, some creature that's never been caught on camera before and then it just does a, a swim by of the camera and you see it in the wild in its element, in its habitat for the first time ever. And that's how I feel seeing Brendan Marsh just overturned the bottle of water on his head.

[D]

I just think it probably feels nice to like get cooled down, you know, this time of year. Although there's humidity in, in Florida this time of year, don't get me wrong, but the time of year, it might be less pressing. But Philly in July, in August, Ben, that's swamp ass season, that is. You have a, you know, you got a sweaty butt, you feel sticky to have the relief of the water kind of rolling down. Because it isn't just about your, your hair, it's not just about your scalp. It's like, oh, then your neck feels better. You know, you got that kind of cool, nice feeling on your neck. But yeah, you thought it couldn't be product. That would be horrible, the notion of putting enough product in your hair to look like this wet boy. And I know that he's a grown man, but there's something about wet boy that is funny to say. So you're gonna let me keep doing it? You know, that's, that's where we're at wet boy.

[B]

Oh, wow. That. Yeah.

[D]

If this gentleman had enough product in his hair for it to look the way that it does that feeling in swamp ass season. Absolutely not. You would rather shave your head. You would ra. Light your head on fire.

[B]

You would.

[D]

You'd rather do almost anything. Do you ever have the experience, Ben? And look, this is a. In some respects, an intimate question, because if you tell me you're like a two in one guy, you know, shampoo and conditioner, I'm gonna have a lot of judgment about it. You guys can just have nice stuff. It's okay. It doesn't make you anything except a person with nice stuff in your shower.

[B]

Okay, one. F. The two in one. We're going three in one. Four. And one. We've got the combined body wash in with the conditioner and the shampoo. I've seen. Oh, I've seen it. It exists.

[D]

Men are holding us back. This is like when it's like, dude, wipes. And I'm like, oh, my God, you guys are the. The assertion of this much masculinity suggests a fragility that you should just sit with. But anyway, have you ever had the experience of, you do your shower, You've. You've washed your hair, it's time for conditioner. You do the conditioner, you rinse the conditioner, and then you get out of the shower and you touch your head and you realize, I missed this spot in.

[B]

That.

[D]

I missed the spot in that rinse. And you have to get back in because you can't let it sit on your scalp like that. It's horrible. It feels disgusting. It feels. And so I just. I'm so happy, you know, about this. I'm sorry that the illusion has been shattered. But to. To. To grapple with the idea of that much product. No, that was a horrifying state of

[B]

affairs and quantities he'd be burning through bottles of whatever the substance was. Right.

[D]

And. And again, just, you know, at certain times of year, a feeling that would make you just want to light your own head on fire, you know?

[B]

So, yeah, anyway, whatever it takes, whatever he has to do to stay sodden and stay cool. Keep cool. Maybe he's feeling the heat. Justin Crawford's coming for him hot on his heels. And so he is dousing himself. And now that's been documented, and I will link to it on the show page. But the other, perhaps more salient story about the Phillies is that they have become the first MLB team, because which other team could it possibly be to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy. They have signed a multi year agreement with a company called Next Gen Hyperbaric and they will be treating their athletes with hyperbaric oxygen test therapy. And this unlike some of the other Phillies quote unquote therapies that we have discussed. This one is team sanctioned. This is absolutely a top down, I mean, maybe also bottom up players perhaps have cotton to it. But this is coming from the head athletic trainer of the Phillies who says this is unique because it's a medical grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So it is an official treatment and it's much different than anything else we have. Which made me think like, yeah, you mean the unofficial treatment. Yes, Bryce Harper has been posting.

[D]

I feel like Bryce Harper is being subtweeted by the head athletic trainer of the Phillies. He's like, yeah, he's like, this is real.

[B]

This is, this is, this is medical grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

This isn't just that bootleg hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

[D]

So all your blood staying in your body, buddy.

[B]

This is extremely Phillies, obviously it is pretty on brand for them given everything else that we have discussed. Gives us even more material with which to pepper Matt Gelb if he does in fact accept our invitation. After all the buildup. It's good because they're mostly the same team on paper, but there's so much to discuss. But this one has a little more legitimacy than some of the things we've discussed. I wouldn't call it settled science, exactly. The hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I've done some cursory research on this. It's definitely made inroads in other sports. And so the Phillies are blazing a trail in baseball perhaps, but not in sports writ large. They're not even the first Philadelphia sports team to have undergone this treatment. The Eagles and the Flyers have been doing this too. So is Mikayla Shifrin. She just won gold. So I don't think there's a serious downside to this. And the point of it is, and the mechanism is that you essentially stick people inside a pressurized chamber. Hopefully they're not claustrophobic. And they breathe 100% oxygen, just pure oxygen. And they sit in that chamber and they breathe that in and they do a certain number of treatments for a certain length of time. And the idea is that it aids recovery and stress and performance and readiness. And it's just generally a boon to the system. Now this has been used and has been officially approved for use for some serious ailments, like if you've got the bends, then they stick you inside one of these things so that your blood doesn't boil and it is efficacious for that or other serious ailments. If you've got gangrene, if you've got.

[D]

It's like if you're a gaping wound, not you personally, that would be a really rude way to describe something. Right.

[B]

Yeah, there are absolutely applications for this.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

And it's, it's kind of an off label use to enhance performance for athletes. And I was reading some of the literature and I came across a study that I'll link to that tried to look at all the other studies out there and I guess there weren't even enough of them.

[D]

Yeah. For them to really do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To do a meta analysis. But basically they were like maybe it was sort of mixed returns and maybe there's some placebo effect here which can be real. But also this is an elaborate way to obtain that. I guess maybe that aids the placebo. The more elaborate, the more placeboic it is. I don't know. But there's at least some evidence out there that this can help and it can lead to just better sleep. I mean it's, it's not so far removed from just the remove the toxins from your body. Which toxins are we talking about exactly here? That sort of woo woo stuff. But this has been embraced in the professional sports world and there's at least some preliminary research and evidence that suggests that it may be beneficial. It's not some sort of magic bullet, but it's probably not entirely pseudoscience and it probably is not going to do any damage. So by the standards of Philly's therapies and the fact that this is being administered by the team and presumably people who were qualified to treat people this way, I guess that's better than some quack kind of treating you on the side. So. Yeah. But it's still extremely Phillies.

[D]

I'm glad for it not being pretend, you know, it's not only not being pretend because one of the things about the whole Phillies of it all, and we should be specific, specifically the Bryce Harper of it all, is that like it attendant with a lot of this stuff is like a kind of a scammy feeling. Right. It can feel kind of scammy. There's real science here. Right. There are, I think clinically demonstrated applications for this that are genuine and efficacious. I don't know that they are necessarily like ones that have a tremendous amount of baseball application. I remain a little unsure if this is really gonna do much of anything to improve the lot of the Phillies. I also do find it weird, and I'm. I am not leveling any accusations. I want to be clear about that. But I do find it a little interesting to be like, so, so, so, hey, we're doing all this performance enhancing stuff and recovery aiding stuff, and I don't think they're violating like the league's rules around performance enhancing drugs or anything. But it's like, if you, if you grow about this, is it going to be a thing you can do forever, right? Or is league going to be like, that works too well, Maybe, maybe their problem is that it'll be too. It'll be too good. And then the league will be like, can't do that anymore, you know, or

[B]

every other team will start doing it. And whatever benefit they're deriving, it won't be a competitive advantage anym. They are getting up there in years. That roster is getting a little gray around the beard in some cases. So for recovery for aches and pains, perhaps as a proactive therapy, it makes some sense, I suppose. But if Brandon Marsh chooses to use this, I wonder whether he'll have to towel off before he enters the tube.

[D]

Oh, yeah. Does it. Does it. I was gonna say, does it zap you if you're wet? I don't know how it works. I just.

[C]

Here's.

[D]

Here' other thing. I will. I will say it's a lot of weird to stack, you know?

[B]

Yes.

[D]

It's just be normal. Be normal challenge. You know, I think that there is, there's a. There's a lot about modern exercise science that is just like a legitimate improvement over what we used to do. Right. We've come a long way since like, you know, naturally we called our stuff Gatorade. But there's a lot of nonsense in that space too. I just wonder if every. Maybe invoke Brandon Marsh again. Every drop has been wrung from the normal stuff, you know, have all the gains been made? You know, and so I just, I do wonder about that and would maybe invite them to, to be more normal. But then, you know, if you're the Phillies head athletic trainer, you might say, hey, Meg, leave me out of this. I'm not telling Bryce to drink raw milk. I don't, I don't want, you know, I'm not telling him to take his blood out of his body. I'd. I'd advocate his blood to stay in there. You know, I'm not telling him to be in the, the zap. Sleep. I do feel comfortable Saying that that marsh should probably not get in Bryce Harper's zappy red light sleeve. I don't know that it's zappy, but doesn't it look like it malfunction? It could malfunction and zap you. That. That would be one of the. Like if you were gonna. I'm not wishing this on him. I want to be very clear. But if you were contemplating dumb injuries that Bryce Harper could experience as a result of the red light sleeping bag, that one of them would be that it shorts and, like, zaps him a little bit, you know, like. And. And if. If that is on the itinerary, the. The menu of potential dumb red light injuries that, that you wouldn't want Brandon Mersch to get in there with being all wet.

[B]

I don't know what the ROI is here, but yeah, good luck to the Phillies. More for us to ask Matt about. I don't know how the expense of this treatment compares to the exorbitant expenses of the product. Mike Trout is endorsing the Sci Fi table that he is lying on with the weird lighting. Look, teams have plenty of money to burn and it's one of those, well, if it helps you by one run or whatever, maybe it pays for itself.

[D]

Sure, maybe it does pay for itself. But then just like, sign a better right fielder, you know, like from offering notes, the Phillies are going to be like, we don't need to hear from you again. Actually, we've taken the raw milk now. Poor Galb. We're going to have such weird questions for him.

[B]

My God, he's going to give us the run around after all this. No, he won't. I don't think he will. But we'll have more on the Phillies. Sorry. For Phillies fans, maybe. Sorry, they've kind of become the punching bag of the podcast lately, but purely for off the field reasons. Or almost exclusively until that crack about right field. Anyway. I also teased that I wanted to say something about the Red Sox and their jerseys, and there was a bit of a mishap, a bit of a screw up here, perhaps in the manufacturing, but perhaps in the design. It's a problem that plagued their home whites. And I am not referring to the demographic makeup of the fans at Fenway. I'm speaking of their jerseys. Cheap shot just coming for everyone. All the fan bases was so funny.

[D]

Oh my God, Ben.

[B]

Their home white jerseys were a little oddly aligned, as people pointed out once the photo day photos surfaced. And you know, I'm not a uni watcher, Paul Lucas. I am not Rip. She's going to be giggling about home whites for the rest of this imagin.

[D]

Calling in to support stock radio to talk about the jerseys. It's just like the craziest boss. Like crazy is the wrong word that implies judgment. I don't have the thickest Boston accents you've ever heard in your entire life. Oh, my God. Okay. Can you send me a picture of the home one?

[B]

Yeah, I'd be happy to. And I think I'm fine with some judgment where Boston sports talk radio is concerned, to be clear.

[D]

Right, sure, sure. I just meant the accent, the accents, but the. I'm not casting judgment on the accents. I enjoy hearing people talk about Dunkey as much as the next count.

[B]

Yeah. The Red Sox jerseys, there was a lettering alignment issue here where the name of the team. The. It's. It's like next to the piping. I'm trying to find a good story for you here. But the piping was kind of wide, seemingly, and the S in socks and the D in red were not just bordering on, but I think perhaps intersecting with touching, overlapping with the piping that goes down the middle of the uniform. Yeah. So it's.

[D]

That seems bad.

[B]

It's weird. It's not the worst fanatics related screw up that we have discussed in a spring training in recent years, but it looks off. Something clearly looked weird and different and wrong about this and fine, they're going to get it straightened out. But what I thought was most amusing about this is that there was a series of statements by the team about this and it was great moments in press releases because you could see with each revision that the Red Sox kind of walked back what they had initially said about who is to blame for this. So you know that they got a call right after the first statement went out from someone who said, hey, you better not blame us for this. And then they had a different version of the statement. So I'm going to read the first version of the statement here. So this was tweeted by at Red Sox a statement regarding our 2026 uniforms. As part of Major League Baseball's return to the 2023 jersey template, we approved a design for our home white jerseys that once produced and seen in person, we felt could be cleaner in the spacing between the lettering and piping.

[D]

That's so diplomatic.

[B]

Yes. In collaborative. Well, it's going to get more diplomatic after this. In collaboration with MLB and fanatics, we're adjusting the home whites to restore clearer separation. The updated jerseys will be ready for opening day. So that was the first version, which was tweeted and then, I believe, deleted and replaced by this version. So if you thought that first version was pulling punches, was tiptoeing around things, then wait for this one. As part of Major League Baseball's return to the 2023 jersey template, we approved a design for our home white jerseys, which fanatics produced exactly to our specs. Once they were produced and seen in person, we felt there should be more spacing between the lettering and piping. In collaboration with MLB and Fanatics, we're adjusting the home whites to achieve the separation. The updated jerseys will be ready for opening day. We are grateful to our partners for their ongoing support. So, you know, someone from fanatics or the league or wherever got in their ear and said, hey, you're bordering on criticizing fanatics the way that the D and the S are bordering on the piping here. And the second version of the statement specified that fanatics produced exactly to our specs, which suggests the specs were at fault and therefore the team. And then, as if that was not enough, there was a subsequent tweet that was sent in reply to the second version of the statement. To be clear, the original design was selected by the Red Sox. Fanatics executed to our specifications and has been an outstanding partner throughout. They deserve no blame, and we are grateful to them for making the new jerseys in time for opening day.

[C]

Why are.

[D]

Why are we being so deferential?

[B]

Prostrating themselves. Yeah, as if they're being held at knife point by fanatics just being forced to tweet. To be clear, Fanatics completely blameless. This was all our fault. They're the best partners. They're blameless. We're in fact grateful to them for scrambling to correct our screw up. That's essentially the evolution that these three iterations of the statement went through. I just was very amused by the timeline here, where you could just imagine the sort of feedback that they were getting.

[D]

I just. I guess what I would say is that there are few companies more reviled than.

[B]

Than fanatics. Right.

[D]

You know, like, I think that there is, like, political hate to be made by how much everyone just agrees that they hate fanatics guts. You know, their stuff is bad. Customer service is bad. They've ruined Mitchell and Ness. I have my. I have my super bowl gear. One of the sweatshirts, it's just like, misprinted. It's just like, misaligned.

[B]

Yeah, well, you should put out a statement to say, yeah, that fanatics is blameless and you're grateful to them for Correcting that by opening day. And it was designed precisely to your specs.

[D]

It's just like, what is fanatics going to do? Not make jerseys like it's. This isn't a hostage situation.

[B]

Just say what it sounds like.

[D]

It's so weird. I find it so strange.

[B]

It is. It's strange. It's amusing. Yeah. I feel like we should set up some sort of signal tip line for the Red Sox social media person. Hey, let us know. Are you okay?

[D]

Are you okay?

[B]

What does Michael Rubin have on you here? Are you all right?

[D]

What is the deal?

[B]

Yeah. Anyway, that was an amusing saga.

[D]

Yeah, I don't care for it, you know, I really. I just. I. I very much don't. Did you send me a photo of these jerseys, by the way? I need to see these.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Can you see these home whites? You don't have to send me a picture. I just wanted to say that again because they're so funny. The white. Anyway, I think that the person running PR for the Red Sox should drink some donkey, grow their loins, and throw Fanatics under the bus. Because even if you did approve it, just do that. You know? Just do it. No one's gonna. Everyone will believe you. Okay, here we go. Let's see. Oh, that's ridiculous looking. Yeah, that looks like something that. Like a knockoff that you would buy outside of the ballpark.

[B]

Yes, but now we know that Fanatics was blameless and produced these jerseys precisely to the Red Sox specs and has been a fantastic partner throughout.

[D]

What is this hand tattoo business? What are we doing?

[B]

That's not Fanatics, but, yeah, I hope there is a fourth version of the statement that actually reveals what really happened here and what leverage was exerted. And just don't hold back. Here's the true, unvarnished statement they should. We had the perfect design, and fanatics totally stepped in it and then threatened us to make a more sanitized statement. That's what I want to hear.

[D]

They should get Mark Wahlberg on the case. He should go try to solve the mystery. And he'd be like, look, I figured out who screwed up the jerseys, okay? Because he's one of the home whites, you know?

[B]

Yes, yes. Well, I will link to that on the show page as well, just in case anyone wants to witness the home whites themselves.

[D]

Wahlberg is gonna just be. Now Mark Wahlberg's voice is in my brain talking about these jerseys. I'm in hell. You know, it's like taking quite a. We've taken quite a turn.

[B]

We have. But don't we always. One other thing I wanted to bring to your attention. Former MLB exec Andrew Ball, who began as a blogger. He used to blog for beyond the Box Score and then he went on to work for a few teams. He was the assistant GM with the Astros for a while. He also was with the Rays. He was with the Angels. Now he's on substack and he has a substack that is just entitled Andrew Ball, which I think shows incredible restraint on his part not to go with some sort of ball related punishment. I mean it's, it's not exclusively a baseball substack, but even so, it's right there. And it would have been such low hanging fruit for him to just call it bat and ball or baseball or whatever. But no, it's just Andrew ball. Andrew Ball notes.substack.com I subscribed. I've enjoyed reading it. But his most recent post is entitled Competitive Balance Is More than a Payroll Problem A Few Creative Ways Major League Baseball Can Think About Competitive Balance Now I am sort of sick of thinking about competitive balance myself, and maybe our listeners are too. As I noted last time, I find it just to be such a nebulous concept and so tough to pin down a definition of what constitutes competitive balance. And different people define it differently. And are you looking at regular season success? Are you looking at making the playoffs? Are you looking at different champions? Are you looking at year to year changes, the constitution of the playoff field? How much of this is just the nature of baseball and the inherent randomness of the playoffs, making it appear to be more equitable and there's more parody than there would be otherwise? And how much of it is just the nature of the sport as opposed to other sports and the roster sizes and how much difference one star can make, etc. But I think it is important to tangle with. And I thought this was kind of clever because he came up with ways that one could try to tinker with competitive balance without affecting a salary cap, without just sort of restricting spending or whatever else that we're typically talking about when we talk about competitive balance. So let me just briefly run through his four or five suggestions here and you can give me kind of a a thumbs up, thumbs down reaction. So one is just shorten the season, which is just based on the idea that the shorter the season is, the more random it is, and thus the less predictive and determinative payroll would be. And you know, we saw an extreme version of this in the pandemic season. Of course, no one wants to go back to that or 60 games, but if you took it back to 150 or something, then there'd just be a little more randomness built into the schedule. How do you feel about that?

[D]

Sure.

[B]

Yeah. I think it would have the intended effect. Yeah, I. I kind of like that the regular season isn't super random, I think.

[D]

Right.

[B]

It's. This is nice that it helps us figure out which teams are good. And then there is that disconnect because then we go to October, which doesn't really help us figure out which teams are the best then. But it's still fun. It's just a whiplash sort of feeling.

[D]

I have this question. So you make this season shorter? You pay in the same contracts?

[B]

Well, yes, he does bring that up. And that's the obvious objection. And people have talked about shortening the season just because the season's really long. And not only Anthony Rendone, but also other people. And I think the idea is, and Ball mentions this, too, that if you slashed a dozen games or whatever it is, that you would probably have them be games that wouldn't be high attendance games. They'd be off peak days, they'd be weekdays, they'd be whatever. And so you'd increase the attendance per game and maybe that would more or less make up for it, but it would still be less inventory, which is a very unromantic way to say it when you're selling games to potential TV partners.

[D]

Right.

[B]

And, yeah, it's a tough sell, I think, because unless you can demonstrate beyond all doubt that revenue will not be reduced, then pretty much everyone's going to balk at that. Even the people who might say, hey, more off days. That part sounds good, I guess.

[D]

Yeah. And I think particularly, I know that, like you said, they would probably trim games out of times of year that are, like, less desirable. But I also think that gate revenue is very important these days with an uncertain TV situation, you have to, like, account for the gate maybe more than you otherwise would, which I guess everybody gets the same number of home games under this scenario, so maybe it doesn't matter. But what, you push everything? You just push opening day back, Presumably.

[B]

Yeah. Or you could just have it be around the same time, but just a little more slack in the schedule, maybe. And opening day keeps getting earlier and earlier, so pushing it back wouldn't be the worst thing. It used to be back. But one other little note he had here that I hadn't considered is that in addition to injecting the extra randomness, he said the second benefit is that a shorter season could also reduce payroll disparities over time because with fewer games the league wouldn't necessarily have to shorten the length of the season. It could simply insert additional off days. And what I just said about increasing attendance per game, you would thereby shrink the gap in local revenue totals per club, which could in turn narrow spending differences basically because if each game was a bigger draw because you're reducing the supply, then teams would be closer to capacity attendance wise in the games that they did have and that that might help the teams that are not selling out regularly disproportionately. So that's a pretty good point. The next one was introduce relegation which we've considered at some so we don't have to reconsider that Now I get what he's going for, but as he noted it would be extremely difficult to implement that. But we do get lots of emails about that and we answered at least one of them. Another one that I thought was kind of interesting is allow advances on revenue sharing. So you could sort of go all in in a certain season by taking some of your future revenue sharing revenue upfront because all the clubs are contributing a portion of their local revenue to that central fund and then the proceeds from that are distributed equally which results in the bigger market clubs paying the smaller market clubs and then those payments happen on an annual basis. But what if Andrew says the league introduced flexibility that allowed small market clubs to use those payments more strategically to push chips in during a particular competitive window via an advance on revenue sharing. And then he cites the Pirates. So rather than taking their expected annual revenue sharing check this past year, and I know this might be difficult to imagine because we are talking about bub nutting here, they might have decided to borrow from future payments to give themselves a better chance to land a top tier free agent like Kyle Schwaber or Farmer Valdez, so a little more flexibility in how you could dispense those payments, I guess.

[D]

Like here's, I think maybe here's a problem with, with some of these solutions and I, I need it to be demonstrated to me and they're never going to do this but I would need it to be demonstrated to me that like the lack of cash flow from revenue sharing is why the Pirates aren't spending big.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[D]

And I have assumes facts not in evidence I'm sorry to say.

[B]

Right.

[D]

So until that has been proven as an actual product problem and not the problem that I think we know, which is, you know, a willingness to put a Less competitive product on the field, then I don't know that we're actually solving for the problem. Right. Like, isn't the problem, isn't the way, isn't the way to solve the competitive balance problem, quote, unquote. And I, you know, I'm, I don't want to concede that point because I don't think we really have a competitive balance problem writ large. But isn't the way to solve the problem of certain teams being perpetual seller dwellers to like make their owners sell the team?

[B]

Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah.

[D]

Like if we can shorten the season, if we can, if we can like basically extend loans on future revenue sharing, then you just may make, just make Bob sell the team, you know.

[B]

Yeah, just make it nice too. Yeah, that might be tough, but you could at least implement a floor. You're not going to get a floor without a cap, of course. Yeah, that reminded me of the Moneyball scene. You were Brad Pitt as Billy Bean saying, what's the problem? And then a bunch of scouts sitting around throwing out things that aren't the problem. But yeah, I thought that was kind of creative, but I had the same reaction as you, which is just that I don't know that old Bob is exactly spending all of the revenue sharing revenue that he is already receiving.

[D]

And like, maybe I'm wrong, You know, maybe I'm wrong, but you got to prove it. You got to prove to me I'm wrong, because I don't think I am.

[B]

Another one was, and this is something that one of the teams we're about to preview, the Rays, would appreciate, increase player limits for small market clubs. And it would basically be that you could, say, have a 42 man roster for a small market club. You wouldn't change the active roster spots, the 26 man, but that less visible roster for people on the 40 man. Instead you'd get a couple extra spots. And so it would be sort of a subtle influence. They'd be able to keep more players around, players who might provide cheap production for them. They could just make more waiver claims or whatever. They wouldn't have to worry so much about the roster crunch.

[D]

Say it again.

[B]

Basically up the roster limits from like 40 to 42 or something, but only for bad teams. Only for, I guess, not necessarily bad, but teams that had fewer resources or smaller markets or whatever.

[D]

I just. Okay, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm. Maybe I'm in a mood or maybe I haven't fully recovered from the introduction of home whites into the conversation earlier. But like At a certain point in. Isn't this embarrassing for the clubs you're talking about? And like, the guys who play for these teams don't deserve this. Like, oh, I'm sorry, you get, you get an extra. You get to bring your full 40 man when you go play the Dodgers. Embarrassing. Embarrassing.

[B]

No, you don't have, you don't have a bigger active roster. It's just that you, you can keep more guys on your 40 man because you'd have a 42 or something. But it's not like you, you get to use more guys in games. You just, just get to retain control of players.

[D]

I have a different objection. Then why are we doing this to, to these guys? Why are we doing this to these players? They don't have to. Why do they have to stick around? Because Bob Nutting won't spend money. Let them, Let them go seek their fortunes elsewhere. You know, like, part of the rules around this stuff are for competitive balance reasons, but some of it is, like fairness to the players reasons. And I know that, you know, you can be on the 40 man and be in Triple A and that could be just as frustrating to you as, you know, being league, Byron. Probably not, because you're making a lot more money. But, you know, you don't want to give them like, infinite control of guys. You don't want to give them more space to like be able to sneak a guy down through. No, you have to run a business, Bob. You're running a business, you know, and doing that takes money, have self respect.

[B]

Yeah, a lot of this is kind

[D]

of taking off Bob Nutting because he's the fanatics of Major League Baseball. No one's gonna write in and be like, you're being too mean to Bob. They're not gonna say that.

[B]

Perfect partner to the Pirates. I don't know.

[D]

He's a perfect partner to the Pirates. It's funny because the Pirates. Look, part of this is that I'm exhausted and part of it is that I think the guys are right and they are not on an island by any means. Did you know that only our prospect creators think that Connor Griffin is good? No. Everyone agrees that he's good. They are. They are in danger of being a reasonable baseball team.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[D]

Wild. And then what are we all going to do? We're going to have to pick a new guy to make fun of. No, we can still make fun of Bob.

[B]

Not to pick on the Pirates just for the sake of Pirates fans. Yeah. And I think the last suggestion, which I would probably not be on board with is implementing some sort of draft for pobos, essentially just the idea that you could have, say GMs Pobos, maybe managers like the senior baseball decision makers, you'd have some sort of draft so that no team could kind of corner the market on baseball brains. But this is, I mean, apart from just whatever philosophical objections to the draft that we might have and not wanting to extend that, I think this is an area where the lower revenue clubs have actually managed to even the playing field a little bit, level the playing field by, by getting good executives and leaders. And so maybe it's getting to the point now where, yeah, the Dodgers have an enormous front office and Andrew Friedman and they hire Friedman away from the Rays and everything. But this, historically speaking at least I don't think that this would have helped. It might have hindered if anything. So some of these are extreme and sort of unrealistic. I appreciated the willingness to come up with some sort of proposal that was not just implement a salary cap. But I do, I think, share your feelings that this is kind of catering to owners who should just spend more and let's not make it easier for them to not spend by bending the rules, basically. And I don't love having inconsistent rules applied like roster rules, for instance. I mean, I guess you could say that the institutional advantages or disadvantages that some teams have, those aren't consistent either. But when you start kind of tweaking the rule book and the regulations and saying that this team does this and, and obviously some teams are payees in revenue sharing and some teams are payers. But, but it's kind of a consistent system and you could flip from one to the other. So yeah, I don't love sort of almost gerrymandering the roster rules, I guess, to, to cater to the low spending owners. And the other thing is that some of these things like giving two more spots on the 40 man or whatever, that would be sort of subtle and it might have some effect. But I think the subtlety actually wouldn't satisfy anyone because what pisses people off, rightly or wrongly, are the spending imbalances.

[C]

Right.

[B]

And, and those would continue to piss people off. I think even if you said, yeah, but you get a 42 man roster instead of a 40 man roster, people aren't going to pay attention to that. They're going to still look at the payrolls and see the disparities there and get upset about that. And somewhat understandably, I understand why people look at that and they see the disparities and they see this team spending many multiples of what this team is spending and they think, oh, the game is rigged and it's unfair and, and of course it's not completely fair and it's never been fair and it can't be completely fair. Perhaps it could be a bit more fair. But I think that ultimately that's what gets people's goat about this. And therefore this wouldn't really correct the right problem. To the extent that there is a problem, I think it's almost more of a perception problem than it is an actual problem. And I don't think this would address the perception problem. It might help address the actual problem, which is perhaps a problem, but just a lot less of a problem than I think many people make it out to be. It's just, yeah, it's absolutely true that if you look at the, the top spending teams over a period of time, it's not a complete coincidence that the Dodgers and the Yankees never have a losing season. You know, like, like there's some correlation there. You look over a long enough time frame, you are going to get more shots at being in the playoffs if you are a high payroll team, and you're going to have more leeway and a bigger buffer and everything. And so, yeah, I get it. And yes, you can point to other sports and say, well, they don't necessarily have better parity or competitive balance, but I think in those sports it maps a little less onto market size maybe than it does in baseball. Like, it's not a complete coincidence that it's the Dodgers and the Yankees, it's LA and New York. Whereas in other leagues you might still have dynasties, you might have more dynasties than you do in baseball, but they might be a bit more randomly distributed across the country or in terms of markets than in baseball. And I think that's just what can be galling to some fans because they say, hey, my team's not in that city and therefore it's not going to derive that sort of advantage. But, but yeah, giving them a couple extra roster spots probably not going to mollify them much.

[D]

Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't think so. They want, they want people to spend, you know, and their frustration is it's not entirely that, but it's, it's a lot of that. So, yep, that's a, that's a tricky thing.

[B]

And the last thing I'll note quickly is that when Brendan Golowski was on the other day to talk to us about prospects, he reminded me that Several years ago, 2017, actually, I had Included him in a survey I sent out of scouty types about Carlos Correa versus Corey Seeger. Because at Grantland and now the ringer, we have this rubric. Every now and then we do a who you got. It's not as if we invented the concept of would you prefer this or that? But every now and then we do an article that just kind of pits a couple people or players against each other or whatever and says just who you got and lays out the case for why you might prefer one player over the other. And I think I've done this twice. I did this once at Grantland and once at the Ringer. And I have to pat myself on the back and say I chose good subjects for my who you got? Because the risk here, the danger is that this can look sort of silly in retrospect, because one answer is so convincingly the right call that you look back and you think, how is that even a question? Who you got? It should have been obvious at the time. And I'm about to pick on Bauman, which I can do, because I. I've picked on him about this elsewhere, not purely on the podcast, but a good example he did on May 26, 2017, for the Ringer, he did a who you got, Michael Conforto or Aaron Judge?

[D]

Oh, boy.

[B]

At the time, that was an open question.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

And now you look back and you think, who you got, Michael Conforto or Aaron Judge? Well, who do you think you got? Obviously, and it's not close since then, but it was close at the time. And I understand why Bauman blogged that, because, you know, two New York outfielders who were young and promising and so natural candidates for who you got. Except that, yeah, the answer is quite clear. I guess the mistake Michael made, if any, was that Aaron judge was only 69 games into his major league career at that point. Yes, and it did turn out to be quite a nice career. But that's maybe a little early to pull the trigger on a who you got, because you don't know what you got with your who you got candidate at that point. And so when he published that in the 2017 season in late May, they were neck and neck, war wise. Aaron Judge had 2.6 war, Michael Conforto had 2.4 war. And that was Judge's first full season. So he was just partially through his first full season, and he hadn't set the world on fire in his initial look at the level in 2016. And Conforto had been up for a while and was Promising. So you can see how you got to this point. But since that piece was published, from that day on, it's been a little lopsided. Michael Conforto has amassed 18.6 more war, Aaron Judge 59. 59 on the dot. So, yeah, I think he has settled who you got there. But the two times that I did this, and this is largely luck that I probably didn't wade into a conforto versus judge scenario, but I did this at Grantland in 2015 and I did. Who you got? Manny Machado versus Nolan Arnado.

[D]

Oh, that is a good one.

[B]

Worked out really well. Right? Because still sort of an open question which one would have been better to have. I think today you'd probably rather have Machado now and going forward, but to this point in their careers, it's quite close. So I published that piece on June 30, 2015, and since that date, Arenado has amassed 44.6, WAR, Machado 45.4. So they're separated by less than one win above replacement over more than a decade now.

[D]

Wow.

[B]

So, I mean, it could barely be much closer. And then the next time I did this, when I asked Brendan about his thoughts, was after the 2017 season, I think, or at the end of the 2017 season, I did Carl's Correa versus Corey Seeger.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

And yeah, this was late October of 2017. Who you got? Generational Shortstop Edition Cars Kreia or Corey Seeger? Because this was an Astros Dodgers World Series, which made for a perfect peg. And since that time, so the 2018 season on cars Correa 28.1, more Corey Seager 29.4. So again, about one win separated them. So that that worked out perfectly, which was largely dumb luck, I think. It wasn't as if I evaluated them so accurately and I was so prescient that I knew that they would keep pace with each other for the next several years. But that is the way it worked out. And now that Brendan reminded me about that, I'm quite pleased by the symmetry of the value of those respective player pairings. Couldn't have worked out better.

[D]

Yeah, that's pretty. That is a pretty cozy fit, as it were.

[B]

Yeah. And it seems like at the time I didn't reread the pieces. I don't know if I even pronounced very convincingly and clearly which one I had or wanted at the time, but I think the. The scouty types I talked to in late 2017 about Kreia and Seeger, looks like I surveyed seven people and only one picked Seeger.

[D]

Oh, interesting.

[B]

I'm surprised at the baseball folks. Yeah we're we're pro Korea and Seeger has actually outward Korea since then injury track record sort of similar but maybe you would rather have Seeker now than Korea for the rest of their careers. But yeah, that's good. So write in suggest if you have a a perfect duo like that that you think would work today, that you think will prove to be as good and close a comparison as Arnado Machado and Correa Seeger. Give US the early 2026 version of that and I will read some responses on an upcoming episode. And now we can take a break and we'll talk about the Blue Jays who may or may not have signed Max Scherzer. By the time you're hearing this. There are rumors flying and we will discuss some of the rumors but nothing official when we recorded this episode. However, we will be back in just a moment with Mitch Bannon to talk about the Blue Jays followed by Adam Berry on the race. I just a fan who wants nothing less than effectively wild a while.

[D]

Oh wow.

[B]

Nothing less than effectively wild. All right, let's talk about those defending American League champions, the Toronto Blue Jays. And joining us now is Mitch Bannon who comes covers the Toronto Blue Jays for the Athletic and is speaking to us on a brand new podcast, Mike, because he has a brand new podcast, it is also about the Blue Jays. It's called Bluebird Territory. Hello Mitch.

[C]

Hi. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm. I'm as busy as anyone can be during spring training it sounds like by that.

[B]

Yeah. Well thanks for being here. And I guess we can start by talking about how things ended last year. The Jays came so close to dethroning the Dodgers. But I think in a season like that it should be defined by the successes more so than that last loss. And it means a lot to any organization in any city to win a pennant and get to game seven of a World Series. But tell us what it meant to Toronto and to the Blue Jays organization just after the history of no postseason success with this group of missing out on many free agents all the trials and tribulations on the way to have it come together the way that it did last year.

[C]

Yeah, I think like around all sports baseball being included, there's always this, this discussion of whether or not like should people ahead of the season like say success will be defined by winning the championship and like that is the only every other season the 29 or 31 other teams like it's not successful, but yes.

[B]

And spoiler. We will end this interview by asking you what will define success for the Blue Jays in 2026. So you can mull that over in the back of your mind.

[C]

Yeah, well, I think like next year, not to get ahead of myself, expectations certainly change. But last year, looking back there, there's no way to categorize the the 2025 season as anything but a success for the Blue Jays. Like, at this time last year, they didn't know what the direction of the franchise would be like. Vlad Gro Jr. Had not extended yet. John Schneider was entering a potential last year of his deal. Ross Atkins, the general manager, was entering a potential final couple years of his deal. It was very much a potential pivot season for the Jays, and I think a lot of fans were almost upset that they didn't commit more to the retool or resell direction before 2025. And yeah, what a difference a year makes when they've gone from who knows what this is going to be to, hey, maybe expectations, maybe it is not going to be a success if they don't win the World Series this year.

[D]

Well, they're certainly adding to their roster like it's World Series or bust. I think there's something admirable in a franchise, you know, suffering a loss like that and looking ahead and saying, well, what if we go get a couple more guys, you know, what if we add a few more guys and they made a splash early? Tell us about what brought Dylan Cease to Toronto.

[C]

Yeah, I think he, on a surface level, is everything they love in a starting pitcher. And that is he throws innings. Like you look at the money that they've given to starting pitchers in the last four or five years under this regime. It's Jose Barrios, it's Kevin Gossman, it's Chris Bassett. What do those guys have in common? They will pitch 185innings and make every single start. Even if their forearms hurting a little bit or even if their shoulders barking. Those guys are going to have to be dragged off of a mound. But in a way, Cease is also a little different. He is, for his entire career been billed as projectable. And everyone has tried to get kind of that next level out of him in a couple years. We've seen it. But I think the Jays think they can be the team in the next seven years. Maybe, maybe not in every one of those years. But get the really, really good Dylan Cease. And if you get the really good Dylan Cease paired with the fact that he makes every Single start, maybe that guy's one of the best pitchers in baseball.

[B]

Now, is there anything to the idea that the organizational success last year made Toronto a more compelling destination for free agents? Because there are a lot of reasons why it could have been and should have been before, but it's always been described as an impediment that it's the only MLB team in Canada and there's a different currency and there can be tax implications and currency conversion and all of those things, and you need to cross a border and that maybe that dissuades some folks from signing there.

[D]

The milk is in bags.

[B]

The milk is in bags. Yeah. So do you think that coming that close to winning a World Series and then not just that, but locking up vlad long term, etc. Do you think that that helped with the pitch to potential signees this offseason?

[C]

It's interesting. You talk to people on the agent side, they say yes. You talk to the team, they say no. I think they have very different opinions on that. The team believes that they've been like a destination for the last four or five years, ever since they. They kind of renovated the stadium and renovated their player development complex. They viewed themselves as kind of like an upper echelon destination. But like, you look at the realities of the off seasons and I think it's hard to argue no. I think they have swung and missed on the biggest free agents in the market. You could argue they did kind of do that again this winter, going after Kyle Tucker and not getting him done. But I think from talking to people kind of all around the league in many different roles, when a team kind of unexpectedly goes to the World Series in a way that Jays did, people start asking like, why they're not just seeing like that team play in the World Series. They're like, oh, what are they doing? And maybe the facets like the renovated stadium, the good kind of clubhouse environment, and all their shiny new toys that the Jays thought were selling points, it's getting on people's radars because people are kind of wondering what led to the success. And so if that's getting on agents and players radars, maybe they are more willing to go to Toronto. And we saw them also give a bunch of people money. And they're one of the highest spending teams in baseball, so that certainly helps as well.

[B]

Yeah, and they should be right, because they do have the resources. They do have a whole country behind them, essentially monopolizing the Canadian TV market. Even if it's a smaller population, it's a higher Percentage of that population commanded by the Blue Jays. And they're owned by Rogers, and Rogers is sitting on a mountain of cash. Right. So they should have resources to be one of the biggest spenders. And it's funny because they were pitted against the Dodgers. I think there were people who sort of saw them as David versus Goliath or something. And I guess compared to the Dodgers, everyone is. But compared to almost anyone else, that wouldn't really apply to the Blue Jays. So in terms of resources and payroll and now success, it seems like they should be one of the true titans of the league, not sort of perpetually looking up at their division rivals in Boston and New York.

[C]

Yeah, I think so. I think the one thing that clearly holds the Jays back from the Dodgers is like an endless pipeline of development. And I know in the last couple years they've been. Since they've gotten these new toys, one of the struggles is, yeah, you can get all of like, the nice development tools and hire all the best coaches in the world, but you also have to, like, make those turn into results in terms of player development. And they've lost coaches to other teams and they still haven't really figured out how to use the tools. And so. So you can spend your way to success. And the Jays have kind of tried to do that. They've, like, most of this roster is built through free agency, but to get the pipeline, to get like they did last year, the Addison Bargers really burst onto the scene. The Traya Savages burst onto the scene. I think that is what would make them kind of a Dodgers tier winner.

[D]

Well, I want to ask about more of the guys that they spent that money on, but you brought up Savage and it seems silly to not just talk about him from the jump. I always like it when we can have a guy on our top 100 prospect list who we know that most of the people reading it have actually seen and seen in. In some of the most high pressure situations possible. I imagine that people internally with Jays are realistic about there being, you know, a little bit of regression from what we saw in the Postseason and those 14 innings he threw at the end of the year, just because he's still a young guy and doesn't have much in the way of pro experience. But what are your Savage's sort of developmental goals for this season and what are your expectations of him?

[C]

I think like, the number one goal is to kind of avoid the Jackson Jobe experience from last year. It's like a guy kind of comes up and bursts onto the Scene pitches in the playoffs, highly regarded prospect, and then like all of those innings and all those high pressure innings that he's kind of put on his arm the year before catch up to him in the middle of the next season. I think above all that is the Jays goal this year. They know that like some starts are going to be good, some starts are going to be bad, but if they get 28 starts at a tray of Savage, I pretty sure they'd call that a win, regardless of what the results are.

[D]

Sure.

[C]

But in terms of like his individual goals, he's talking about adding a curveball that he had in college. I know when the Jays drafted him, they viewed that as like a plus pitch. But talking to you Savage, he's like, it's magically disappeared and he can't really get it back. So that's, that's something he's trying to do. But, but I think above all else, and one of the reasons they signed Dylan Cease, they signed Cody Ponce, and they have Eric Lauer slated as a 6 starter right now is because they don't want to put too much pressure on this guy and need him for too many innings this year.

[B]

And I have no concern about the makeup, seeing how he went through everything he went through last year, just jumping up as many levels and advancing as quickly and then just being cool as a cucumber, cool as a bag of milk on the biggest baseball stage. But there was some question about, well, will hitters adjust with that over the top angle? Is that giving him some advantage, that lack of familiarity? Maybe it's so extreme that even a traject arc pitching machine can't quite replicate the arm angle. So hitters are not seeing this and practicing against this and that. Maybe the next time around the league there will be some catching up that happens. So how valid a concern do you think that is?

[C]

I think there's definitely a concern of like familiarity in the way that like any rookie starter would have that concern. But I do think if you're gonna, you're gonna bet on a guy to, to have that not be as big of a problem. It's probably a Savage. And I think mentioning traject, I think the Jays, they probably wouldn't say this publicly out loud, but like, that is a big part of baseball preparation for hitters these days. And they're in signing Tyler Rodgers and having Traya Savage in the rotation, kind of looking for those outlier guys that are going to be harder to prepare against on any given day. We'll see if in like Two years traject comes out with like a super traject that reaches the floor and also like 20ft above the air. But for now, I think like, there is going to be an adjustment. But like, look at Treyus Evans from last postseason was like striking out 11 Dodgers, one of the best lineups in the game. So if the fallback is he only puts up like a 3, 8 era, I think the Jays will be pretty fine with that.

[B]

I love that new Moneyball idea. Just compose a staff of Chris Sale and Treus Savage and just submariners and just anyone that the machine cannot replicate right now just so that no one can practice against you. Good idea. But might be tough to collect those guys and might not last all that long. But clever.

[D]

Well, maybe we can stick in the rotation and, you know, go through a couple of other arm angles. I want to ask about Cody Ponce and sort of what they saw from him after his run through NPB and the KBO that made them excited to bring him in for three years.

[C]

Yeah, I think that he kind of has everything that you. You look at those guys coming back over from overseas that get money and that teams are excited for, like, they don't really care if you go over and have like success. They care if you go over and your velocity jumps, you add a new pitch. And Cody Ponce did both of those. His velocity is way up from the last time he was in the big leagues. He has the, the kick change that everyone's loving these days. And also I think in terms of guys that they're not too terribly concerned about, like struggling when they come back over because of the new ball. And the difference between the KBO and an MLB ball is Cody Ponce has like practiced these pitches in the off seasons before on a major league ball. And you talk to him and it sounds like he's pretty comfortable. He says he's more comfortable with the major league ball, which you were just the best pitcher in Korea. I'm sure you were pretty comfortable with that ball too. But I think it is still that market. And you talk to Jay's people, they'll tell you that market is still kind of like a nebulous unknown. And teams valuations on those guys like range way more than they do in kind of other markets. But I think they're pretty confident. As confident as you can be in a guy coming back over from KBO, which is why they gave him $30 million.

[B]

So one of the big questions after those additions is where does Jose Brios fit in? Because he was moved to the bullpen last season and then ended the season on the il and then there were maybe are trade rumors surrounding him. So what's his projected role slash future with this team?

[C]

Yeah, I think when when we arrived to spring training and we were told that Shane Bieber was probably not going to pitch much in the first month of the season. He hasn't even gotten off a mound yet. That made the Barrios decision a little easier at least punted it down a couple months into the season or a couple of weeks into the season at least. But right now like if the Jays had a team knocking on the door offering really good prospects and the Jays didn't have to eat any of Barrios money in the off season, not even really good prospects like if they were offering stuff he probably wouldn't be on this roster right now. We can be honest about that. But. But that didn't happen like he had a subpar season, he had injuries at the end of the year and he's owed a lot of money. He has a player option after 2026 but it's very unlikely he's going to opt out of his deal. And so the Jays got to figure out what to do with him this year in the next couple years. And the thing that Jose Brios does is he posts and so you're not going to try to mess around at least at the beginning of the year in the bullpen with him. You're going to put him in the rotation and then maybe when Shane Bieber comes back you have Bieber, Lauer and Yasavage who you're probably not comfortable pitching 190 innings each and you kind of patchwork ways give guys rest. Maybe a guy goes on on the on the injured list for three weeks even though it's only like a little bit of shoulder soreness to make sure Treya Savage doesn't like get to a crazy index. Max. I think Brios is probably going to be a constant in this rotation unless he really struggles just because his ability to be a constant is kind of like his number one capability right now.

[D]

Well, one guy who can throw 190 innings and did just that last year is the guy who we project at the top of their rotation, which is Kevin Gausman. He leads one of my personal leaderboards which is guys most likely to star in a remake of the Three Musketeers because of that hair. It's hard to know what to ask about him at this point in his career, but I am curious if there's anything that he's working on or has worked on over the off season that he's hoping to bring into 2026 because he didn't have a bad 2024, but 2025 seemed like everything sort of stabilized. All of his ERA and ERA estimators were sort of in line and better than they had been the season before. He had a four win season. As I noted, he pitched a bunch. So tell us what's going on with Kevin Gaussman.

[C]

Yeah, ever since he arrived in Toronto, you look at his end of season numbers and they're always kind of the same. You, you look at his even game logs and they're like, you see such a consistent starter, but within the issue for him is like the fastball velocity has just fluctuated so much throughout a season. And when he's, when he's throwing 93, it's like not great. And when he's throwing 96, 97, it really is great. And so coming into last season, his goal was he put on a decent amount of weight and it was like, okay, I'm going to kind of survive this season because he says he shed so much weight during the season. I'm very curious what Kevin Gosman looks like this year because he pitched on the last day of the season or I guess the second last day of the season. And he has as short of an offseason as anyone has had. And so how do the Jays combat that? I doubt we see Gosman much in spring games this year. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not hauling significant innings at the beginning of the year, especially if you have a guy like Eric Lauer who can soak up three or four innings in like a piggyback role. I think it's considering how well last year went for Gosman because of like the weight he put on and how prepared he was to go like 200 innings over the course of the season. It will be interesting to see if he can repeat that because kind of everything in the off season was working against him to do so.

[B]

The good news is that there haven't been many pitchers more durable than Dylan Cease and Kevin Costman. But you can't say the same about Shane Bieber. I liked that pickup for Toronto last year. Worked out pretty well for them. But there was that rude greeting this spring when they arrived. And suddenly there's bad news about Bowden Francis and there's bad news about Anthony Santander and there's bad news about Bieber and people were sort of surprised that Bieber picked up his option that he stayed on those terms with Toronto and people even speculated that maybe he was not completely confident in the health of his arm or was worried that teams wouldn't be. And then that seemed to be backed up a bit by this problem he's dealing with now and the late start to the season. So what do we know about his status and outlook?

[C]

I think we know about his status, but kind of every, as you mentioned, everything else is still like kind of a bit of a mystery. Like I was told very early in the off season that he had kind of like an issue with his forearm fatigue and like that was like no one told me that's why he, he opted in. But like you can connect the dots pretty easily. And the way the Jays have said it is that was revealed in kind of like an offseason mri. And so yes, there is still a bit of a mystery box there. But in terms of his 2026 outlook it sounds talking to Shane, he seems pretty comfortable and confident with with his season. Now it's a guy who's in another walk year and so you would want to project both of those. But I expect we don't see him for the first month of the season. He is not yet off of a mound. A couple of weeks into spring training and he is still throwing. It's not like he's completely shut down and so he's kind of just going to be three or four weeks behind the other guys. I think once he gets off of a mound and really starts throwing then you can start projecting in Shane Bieber. But I think the Jays are going to have to at least look at the first month or two of the season and figure out they're starting pitching without him.

[B]

So it did seem like there was really depth here, but that depth is already being tested just a bit by Bowden, Francis being done for the year, Tommy John surgery and now the uncertainty surrounding Bieber. And as you said, suddenly Brios seems possibly indispensable. Behind those other guys though, who else is in line? There's Eric Lauer, one of many postseason heroes. There's the concept of Ricky Tiedeman. At least there are some other guys on the depth chart so who might potentially take the ball in a non opener capacity for the Blue Jays this season if called upon?

[C]

Yeah, Ben, that's kind of like my, my number one question coming into spring training and I have it like a little bit answered so far but I think that is underratedly like the biggest question around the Toronto Blue Jays this season is like if they have another starting pitching injury or if like Eric Lauer isn't Eric Lauer from last year, the Jays could be in trouble really quickly. I think they have like a this group of starters, guys named Fernando Perez, CJ Van Eyck, Chad Dallas, Gage Staniffer, who are all kind of like Double A, Triple A arms to start the year. But they're just not guys that the Org would want to pitch in the big leagues in the first six weeks of the season at the very least. And so that is like there's a guy named Max Scherzer who still exists in free agency. And I think if, if the Jays have an injury during spring training or at the beginning of the season, I would say he is more likely to to join the Blue Jays than any of those kind of prospect types and pitch in the big leagues in the first little bit of the season.

[D]

The bullpen was a bit of a weakness on a relative basis for the Blue Jays last year. We mentioned that they brought in Rogers and his incredible funky arm angle and he had a fantastic season last year. Projects relatively well, but talk to us about how they're thinking through these guys. Who is going to be the bridge to Hoffman, assuming he is sitting in the closer role? How many days in a row will Louis Varlo pitch? Inquiring minds want to know.

[C]

Yeah, I think I would put maybe 120 games for Varland on the slate this year. I think he thinks he could pitch that, but I don't know if any medical person inside the Blue Jays organization would consent to that. But this bullpen on paper looks a lot stronger than the one they started last year with at least. But people probably thought Chad Green was going to be pretty good last year and he didn't last two months into the season for the Jays. So I think you're looking at Rodgers, Varland, Brendan Little. I know the organization is very confident in bouncing back after a really rough like last month in October last year. He's got two new pitches, both of which he can reportedly throw in the zone a lot more often than the pitches he was throwing last year, which is kind of the problem for him. I would say those are the big guys to get to Hoffman, but even Hoffman in the ninth inning role. The Jayson at the beginning of the off season said like they weren't penciling him into the closer job and I don't think they brought in Tyler Rodgers to be the closer, but I think it's going to be kind of just like a group of four or Five guys at the back there that they let sort things out and they think they need a true 9th inning guy at the deadline. They will go get one.

[B]

Well, let's talk about some bats. The big story in October and for part of the regular season two was that the Blue Jays had managed to upgrade their guys. It wasn't as if they had changed their lineup so much. It's just that a lot of guys got better and seemingly managed to tap into their power without sacrificing any contact and that they seem to have done that by just focusing on bat speed training and trajectories of swings and so forth. We were talking about that with the traject machines before. Potentially that's related to. So tell us what we know about how the Blue Jays pulled that off and whether you think it will be repeatable.

[C]

Yeah, I think most of the credit inside the organization goes to the hitting group. Their, their hitting coach group and they had David Popkins come in as a first year hitting coach. They brought in Lou Iannotti as his assistant and Hunter Mentz, who had been with the Jays for a couple of years and is now the head hitting coach with the Giants, kind of took on a slightly different role and became kind of like the game planning mastermind for the Jays. Like you talk to any player and any hitter especially and they were just glowing about those guys and kind of how they worked in conjunction and the ability to go to Popkins and like get swing adjustments and the trust they had in men's game plan and the one on one work with Ionati. I think George Springer undoubtedly those guys helped a lot. He made changes all throughout spring training last year that that turned him from like a potential cast off to an MVP vote getter. And you just look up and down even Dalton Varsho last year he didn't play much but when he played he was on pace for far and away the best offensive season of his career. And so we'll see if with men's gone does, does the game plan take a step back? Are they able to keep that up? Is, is the second year with the hitting coach as effective in making those changes? Are people just as willing to buy in in year two? I'm sure if you're a good team it's easy to buy in. But, but those questions will remain and also like teams are not going to be caught off guard by George Springer in the first month of the season like they were last season. He, he carried their offense for the first month last year and I'm pretty Sure. They're probably the second name they're penciling in the lineup this year.

[D]

I'm curious about a guy who isn't in this lineup anymore. How much effort was there to try to bring Bichette back? I know you talked about how they were, they were in on Kyle Tucker. They did make a real effort to bring, to bring him into the organization. But was there ever really an idea of them bringing Beau back or were they just like, you know, Andres Jimenez, you're our guy.

[C]

I think very early in the off season they decided Jimenez was their guy at shortstop. Like, I don't think that if Bo came back, he was ever going to be playing shortstop for this team. The question, and it's still kind of a question for me, is how real they were with Bichette. I know they were in contact with him throughout the offseason. There's just, there's a spectrum between kind of courtesy contact and like real interest contact that I've, it falls somewhere in between those. And if I were to guess is probably closer to the courtesy contact than the real interest, I'm sure there was a number they would have brought Bichette back on. I don't think it was anywhere close to $45 billion a year. You look at Bo as one of the best hitters in baseball, one of the best pure hitters in baseball, and I'm sure that the Jays would agree with that. But he's not going to be a shortstop for them anymore. He's gotten slower the last couple of years. The Jays this offseason in particular, I think were more interested in kind of like long term deals. If they were to offer something big to Bichette, I bet it would have been closer to the offer he got from the Phillies. And is a guy who's kind of declined in speed and is his profile is maybe not one with a great eye that you project to play well deep into his 30s. Is that the guy you want to be given a seven year deal? I'm not sure. I think that is why attention turned around the time of the new year much more to Kyle Tucker.

[B]

Well, yeah, speaking of Tucker, we talked about the one that got away to the Dodgers in Game 7. So we can talk about the free agent who got away to the Dodgers too. Not that it's a new experience for the Blue Jays to miss out on a free agent who ends up siding with the Dodgers. They've been through that before. It was reported, I believe that they were offering more typical long term type deals to Tucker. That we might have seen in an earlier era of free agency. Whereas the Dodgers and the Mets were maybe going for the framework of the short term high aav. Were the Blue Jays fairly flexible when it came to that? Do you think they were close? Was it just a, well, tie goes to the Dodgers sort of situation these days with free agents.

[C]

I believe they were around 10 years, 350 million, which yeah, that's like 100 and 100 million more dollars than he ended up getting. And so you could argue that like it's close. But I think you look at the deal he got from the Dodgers and like even the reported offers from the Mets don't sound particularly close. I believe the Jays thought like they had a shot at Kyle Tucker and I think their, their perception of that chance grew as the offseason went on. Like I think they became more and more aggressive in kind of recruiting him and trying him to get him to sign the dotted line as the winter went on and they wouldn't spend that time if they didn't think it was a real shot. I'm not as sure on the Dodgers end how that timeline worked, but I think the second the Dodgers offer reached what that was, the Jays weren't going to be like, okay, we can go short and beat that. Like they just as, as rich as Rogers is, I don't think they have the financial capital to beat a short term deal like that. I think they were kind of at their top on the long term deal. They weren't going to add to go to 12, 13, 14 years. They weren't going to probably go pass 400, $450 million to him. So I think they made kind of their best and final at 10, 350. And I don't think at least on the dollar figure anyone can blame Tucker for taking the deal from the Dodgers.

[D]

Well, one guy who did take their best and final offer was Kazuma Okamoto who signed for four years and $60 million. I want to hear about the bat and how the Blue Jays see that playing in the transition to mlb. But I really want to ask about the long term defensive fit for him

[C]

first on like Okamoto's defense. I think the long term position is actually one of the more interesting questions around him. Like I think if, if he's hitting this year, he's playing like 120 to 150 games at third base. Like I think he will be given an opportunity to be an everyday third baseman. I think one of the reasons the Jays signed him and were willing to give him the most money is they were a lot higher on the third base defense than a lot of other scouts and a lot of other teams. So to start, I think that'll be the answer. I think moving forward as George Springer hits free agency, who knows what happens with Anthony Santon there in future years. But then you kind of have the DH spot open up and maybe Okamoto's playing more third base and Vladdy is DHing more. I think they view that as kind of like a long term potential. But on the hitting side, that that is kind of maybe the biggest offensive question surrounding the Jays this year. Like he was their big hitting addition this offseason and they lost Boba and those are big shoes to fill. And especially for a guy who's never played in major League Baseball. I think a lot of the issues that have plagued some of the guys who have come over from Japan and haven't worked is like a struggle with high velocity big league fastballs. I think you look at like the little bit of WWBC data from 2023 and he didn't whiff much on those high v low fastballs. You look at kind of like the data that I don't have access to. But you talk to people who have seen the NPB data and they think, think that he can hit a fastball in the big leagues a little bit better. And so I think the Jays are confident in the offensive profile, but they're still, it is still such an unknown. Is he like a 108 WRC plus guy or is he a 128? Like that's a big band for him.

[B]

And you mentioned the defense, obviously team wide. That was a strength for the Jays last year. They led all teams in statcast based fielding run value. You could make a case that they could be even better. Perhaps there's some regression there. But on the other hand, you have Jimenez at short. You have hopefully more varsho in center. So given this slightly rejiggered alignment, do you think that will be as big a strength as it was for them last season?

[C]

Yeah, I think I was a little concerned about some, some defensive sliding if, if Anthony Santander was going to play in the outfield every single day. But at least for the first five to six months of the season, that does not sound like it's going to be an issue for the chase. Like if you're putting Nathan Lucas and Addison Barger in the corner of fields, I think the Jays are pretty happy with that. And yeah, you mentioned the, the jump like who knows what Andres Jimenez will be a full season at shortstop. Defensively, like the little taste of him last year he looked great and the metrics really liked him. It we'll see what 162 games looks like, but there's no way. It's not a very significant jump from Boba Shet. Like you're. You're maybe going from one of the worst offensive shortstops to one of the best. And that alone is going to turn you into a really good defensive ball club.

[D]

What is Sondhounder's prognosis for this year? I feel bad for this guy because it just hasn't. He hasn't been able to get going for Toronto in the way that they were anticipating. I guess his injury in some ways made makes things more straightforward in terms of how they can align their team. But obviously they'd love a healthy version of him in the lineup. So what's the latest and when do you expect to see him back on the field?

[C]

Yeah, so he had shoulder surgery. I. I'm gonna say labrum, but Google that if, if it might not be right. But he had a shoulder surgery we

[D]

have on roster resource, so I think you got it.

[C]

Okay. I nailed it. Sweet. So he is going to be out for five to six months from the time of surgery. And so you. I think like earliest. Earliest. He's coming back kind of late July around the trade deadline maybe. But for a guy whose kind of big tool is power and the way other players have come back from shoulder surgeries, I think the Jays are going into this season kind of not banking on any of Tony. Maybe something like last year where he comes back just before the playoffs and sees if he can like get the. Gets it. Get it going if the Jays need some offense. But yeah, it is really tough for him because you signed with a new team. You want to come in and prove yourself. And the team's like really, really good. And he's basically watching from the sideline for two full seasons.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess there was some question about where he would fit in and how good he would actually be for them, given their other options in the outfield at dh. Of course, they picked up Jesus Sanchez in a trade with the Astros, so that's another bat for them. But how do you think this whole collection of potential bench bats, platoon guys, starters will shake out with Lucas with Straw with Schneider in the mix, and then also Sanchez and Barger, etc.

[C]

Yeah, I think Sanchez is going to get the first crack at kind of like every day versus righties left field. I'd expect Davis Schneider is probably in a position pretty straight platoon with him in left field. Dalton Varsho, if healthy, that guy's going to play every single day in center field. Maybe comes off in the seventh inning when a, when a hard lefty comes in and Miles Straw can get his, his defensive innings in. And then if Okamoto is what the Jays think he will be, if he is a solid defender at third base and he can hit big league pitching, that's going to push Barger into maybe a potentially everyday right field role. And then there's, there's one name left left that doesn't really have a clear role and that's Nathan Lucas. I think there, there is a chance for him. Like this guy was the team's number two hitter against righties throughout the postseason in the World Series and now he's like maybe an odd man out. I think there's a chance they could get him pretty regular reps against righties. If you're sliding Barger back into the infield, you're giving rest to Okamoto. Or maybe Okamoto's moving over to first and Vladdy is, is playing at DH that day. But it's just not clean. You're going to have to either someone will be hurt or you're going to have to bench a regular player to get Nathan Lucas in the lineup these days.

[D]

Well, given that glut, maybe the answer to my, my question is going to be no.

[B]

1.

[D]

But I'm curious, you know, of the guys on the position player side, who they have in the High Miners, who would you say has an opportunity to maybe see some big league time this year?

[C]

No one might, might be the right answer. It's, it's a very full roster. Yeah, but I think the guys to watch for is like Ross Atkins almost never shouts out specific prospects when he's asked like, oh, who are you excited for? But before spring he gave a little shout out to outfielder R.J. shrek, which I found interesting because it's like this team has a million outfielders. How is this guy going to crack the roster? So maybe he's just hyping him up as a potential trade candidate. Or maybe he is really excited about what he could do in a couple injuries. We would see him in the big leagues. The other interesting question is kind of like the depth infielders around this team. Like Leo Jimenez is out of options and this team like might not even break camp with the bench infielder. But if he wins a job, he can be on the roster. Behind him they have a guy named Josh Kassavic who's like a glove first prospect who if Jimenez goes down for an extended period of time, you could bring Casavic up as kind of a consistent option there. But it's like there's a lot of paths for young pitchers to break onto this team through injury and attrition. And just like, like them needing innings, the path for the hitters is just not as clear.

[B]

No recounting of the playoff heroes would be complete without mention of Ernie Clement. That was quite an incredible performance from him. Now he's been a slightly below league average bat the past couple seasons and still a pretty valuable player overall, but perhaps his performance in the postseason raised expectations for his offensive output. Where did that come from? If you have any idea other than just playoff randomness. And do the Jays think that he can hit, if not like that all season, then maybe more than he did in the past couple seasons in more of an everyday role.

[C]

If anyone has an explanation for playoff Ernie commended, I'm all ears. I think you ask Ernie, he says like I'm just kind of built for the moment. And he points to his college World Series run and he points to his World Series run last year and I'm like, who am I to argue with that? I don't have data points that can, that can go against that. But it is an interesting season for Ernie because this is like as much as this guy's kind of been a regular the last two years and really burst onto the scene in kind of like the national audience last year, this is going to be his first season having the keys to one single position. Like he still has his versatility but like Ernie Clement is the Blue Jays opening day second baseman and they hope, hope he is their second baseman again on game 162 and into the playoffs. And I do wonder if that allows him to focus a little more on offense and kind of put a little bit more into that this coming season. And yeah, I think the Jays, if he is like a league average hitter, would be stoked if he is any better than that. Like he's got five WAR potential like he is. I am afraid a bit about a bunch of Blue Jays fans who kind of locked in for the playoffs and started really watching games then expecting Ernie Clement to be like a world beater. And then they get to this season and he's like 98 WRC plus and they're like what the heck happened to that Ernie Clement? But Ernie Clement is Still like a really valuable player if he, if he's putting up a 98 WRC plus with that defense.

[B]

Well, somehow we haven't really talked about Vladdy or Kirk and seems like we should, at least the former. Those guys are great. Vlad. We talked a lot about the extension last season and then there were various conversations throughout the season about, well, is this the guy that they thought they were getting? Is this enough? If this is the offensive output from Guerrero, does that justify the contract? And then October happened and he just reached some other sort of stratosphere and that was maybe a little bit more repeatable, sustainable than Ernie Clement's performance because it is Vlad. So are they hoping that he can be and expecting that he can be more than the very good hitter he was last year, be the great hitter he was in October or to some extent in 2024 or certainly in 2021? Can they get that guy to show up for a full season every season?

[C]

Yeah, I think they are hoping that. I think they're not going to say it in that many words, but you listen to the way like John Schneider talks about Vlad this year and he's like putting a lot on his shoulders. He's saying when asked about like, what will Vlad be like without Bo around, Schneider didn't like give some canned answer about like, oh, it'll be sad. He's like, this has always been Vlad's team and this will continue to be Vlad's team. Like, it's the confidence they're exuding around him tells me that they're expecting today could jump. And you look at the offense they lost from Bowe and you think about the potential of George springer Not being MVP7 this year. You think about the Barger maybe taking a step back in his second quarter full season. Like there are ways for regression around this roster. The easiest way on offense for the Jays to combat that is Vlad being closer to playoff Vlad than regular season flat. Like I think he was on like a 75 home run pace in the playoffs. They probably don't need him to do that. But if he like he could legitimately double his home runs from last year. And I don't think it would surprise anyone. He had 23 home runs in the regular season. If you told me at the end of the year Vlad hit 46 home run, that would be a great season. But it's definitely in the realm of possibility.

[D]

To be clear, I would enjoy watching Vlad hit 75 home runs in the season. I, I think I'd be game for that. And I'm not a Blue Jays fan.

[B]

Well, I guess the answer to the final question then of what would constitute a successful season for the Blue Jays in 2026 is one in which Vlad sets the single season home run record. That would probably qualify. But putting that aside for a second, now that you've had a little time to mull this over, do you want to go with, well, there's only one way to go up from losing in game seven of the World Series, and that's winning the World Series. Or do you want to adopt a more measured tone and set a easier to achieve target for the team?

[C]

I, I think I'm going to take the measured tone. I know that's not fun. I think there's a section of Blue Jays fans who like, as long as they make it further than the Yankees, it's probably a successful season. I did consider saying that, but like, I think that's. Maybe the Yankees fans will latch a hold of that and really run with it and my mentions will be a nightmare. But I think I'm going to say if they win a playoff series, I think that's a successful season because that is building off of last year and it is showing that this kind of version and this era of Blue Jays baseball is different than the one that could not even win a single playoff game in 2022 and 2023. Like, they, they can't afford. Like, it is very easy to take a step back from almost winning the World Series. Basically every other outcome is taking a step back. But as long as they don't regress to the team that people kind of pointed to and said this team cannot win in the playoffs, I think they can at least continue to build with this version, with this core of Vlad and maybe the new Dylan Cease era.

[B]

One more thing, one other way in which Roger center has been splurging is on its eponymous ballpark, Rogers center. And that's been an ongoing renovation for a few years. And Blue Jays fans have seen some of those upgrades. How has that been received? How has that transformed the experience of seeing a Blue Jays game in person in Toronto? And there's more in store, right. That's not quite finished. They've been tinkering and doing stuff this offseason as well.

[C]

Yeah, I think, I think for the, the average citizen, the renovations are done. I think all they kind of have left left is like the bougie boxes and the executive kind of like lounges. So if you're listening to this podcast and you will be buying tickets in There, shoot me a dm. Maybe I need a new car. So. But yeah, I think it has really enhanced, like, the. I've lived in Toronto my entire life. I've been to Rogers center at times when it was like, one of the worst viewing experiences in baseball. And I think they've gotten themselves up into, like, solid respectability and just like, like, meeting the modern, like, needs of, like, baseball fans who, hey, if you have 40, 000 people at a baseball game, maybe 18, 000 of those people are just wanting to, like, have a couple drinks and, like, lock in for the big moments. And. And the bars and the stuff around the stadium are, like, allowing people to do that. And so it is certainly on top of like, not even to mention kind of like the player facilities below, which are a lot of money went into. It's. It's a better ballpark now than it was five years ago, for sure.

[B]

Also, it seemed like such a love fest in that Blue Jays clubhouse late last season. And I know that a lot of teams talk about how great their clubhouse is, especially if they go deep into the postseason, because winning does tend to lead to good feeling if it's not already present. But how much did you sense that that was actually a distinct quality of the Blue Jays, that they had some sort of clubhouse culture, morale above replacement value? That was significant. And do you think that that has persisted into spring training so far?

[C]

It's interesting. So I, I first covered this team in 2021. And so I don't. I was not around on a daily basis. The 201516 Blue Jays, which was kind of like the previous iteration of playoff success for. For the Toronto Blue Jays. But you talk to people who covered that team and the way they talk about how those personalities of Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, Russell Martin and Troy Tulitzki kind of all mesh together versus how these personalities mesh together. I think that is how. That is what told me that this team is kind of distinct. It's. The 15, 16 teams were kind of like gritty professionals who, like, maybe they didn't really like each other, but they were really good at baseball. And this team was kind of the opposite. They were like, they embraced the underdog status. They embraced the 74 wins they won the season before. And I do think on this team, a bunch of the players were like, legitimate friends, which, who knows, maybe in 20 years we'll be able to quantify the value of friendship, but probably not. But maybe in 20 years. But I think it will be interesting this year when the clubhouse lost Chris Bassett and lost Max Scherzer, at least for now. We'll see if he comes back. Because on top of being kind of like part of those friend groups, they were kind of north stars in the clubhouse. They were able to get the team back on track and able to. To kind of lock in on the day to day grind. And so I think it was a combination of just kind of good vibes, but also having teammates that kept the team uber focused on winning.

[B]

Well, I snuck in a couple bonus questions after the closing question. Thanks for indulging us. And I hope the natives have noticed that I've. I've taken pains to say Toronto for most of this interview because I was very conscious that I said Toronto when I started, like an American. And it's okay for Meg to say Toronto because she's. She's an American, but I'm a half Canadian. I can't be out here saying Toronto. And so I have adjusted. I sounded like, you know, in Return of the Jedi when C3PO is regaling the Ewoks with the story of Star wars so far, and he's simulating the atat sounds and everything, and he goes, toronto, Bosch. Toronto, Bosch. I was just coming to that. Toronto.

[D]

Gosh,

[B]

that's how I said Toronto. Actually, I guess it was Toronto. Gosh, not Toronto, Bosch. Toronto Bosch was when Chris Bosch played for the Raptors. Anyway, I've adapted, I've adjusted. I'm a dual citizen. I can say Toronto. Sloan's my favorite band. I'm one of you. I see you. And thanks for bearing with me and also thanks for coming on Mitch. This was great. You should read Mitch's coverage. Now that I've grandstanded about my saying Toronto. And you, you can judge whether I'm saying it right now because, you know, you went to McGill and everything. So read Mitch's coverage at the Athletic and listen to him support him on his brand new podcast, Bluebird Territory. They have, what, four episodes under their belt, so check it out.

[C]

I would give that a solid 8.5 out of 10. Toronto, I think. Oh, you can get a little, like, smoother with it. Maybe even like, let it roll a little more. But hey, that's. I. I didn't notice it when you were saying it during the episode, so I think that's a positive.

[B]

Okay. That's all I'm going for. I'm pressing is the thing is, I'm so conscious of it because I'm trying to say it naturally, that the artificiality of it comes through.

[D]

Well, at least half Your brain space is being occupied by the Star wars reference at any given time. So you're like, what do I do with that? Would you.

[B]

And I'm half American, so I'm trying to over overcome that.

[D]

Would it be better if I, if I tried to say it like someone from Toronto?

[B]

It's like I, I say Oregon. Even though it's unnatural to me as a New Yorker, I'm not going to say Colorado, but Colorado. No.

[D]

Thank you, Mitch.

[C]

No problem. Thanks.

[B]

We'll let you leave now. And we'll be back after one more quick break with Adam Barry of MLB.com to talk about one of the teams that Toronto see. I, I tried too hard. Yep, Toronto will be trying to take down in the AL east this season the Tampa Bay race.

[D]

Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation. You're all about these stats we've compiled

[B]

because you're listening to Effectively wild with

[D]

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley come for

[B]

the ball Banter's free.

[D]

Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big conversation.

[B]

Effectively Wild. Well, we are rejoined now by our perennial raise previewer Adam Barry of MLB.com who's coming back for more. Hello, Adam. Good to have you back.

[A]

Good to be back. It's good to listen to you guys do the season preview series. I listen every year and it's always great to be on as well.

[B]

Oh, thank you. Well, the Rays, I think it's safe to say, have been a bit overshadowed in the AL east this off season because some of their rivals have been quite busy and have made major moves. But the Rays, in the absence of maybe major moves, they have made many minor moves, as is their way. And I made a remark, Mark, on a recent episode about how busy they had been and the brilliant Sean Dolnar of fangraphs heard that and took it upon himself to hack together a kind of homebrew summary of this off season's activity by team, which I think we haven't verified these numbers, but I think it basically backs up my sense that the Rays have just been tap dancing and they've been trading and they've been adding and subtracting and what that all amounts to, I don't know exactly. That's, that's what you're here for. But they have made an enormous quantity of moves, if not quality of moves. So this is all players in the organization, not even players on a 40 man, but they have added the third most players after the Mets and the Red Sox, who have been notably Busy. And they have also subtracted the second most behind the Red Sox. So I think they've made the third most moves if you just add up the additions and subtractions. And yet the net war that they have derived from that. If you just look at the difference between the war that they lost, the war produced last season, and the war projected for this season is just a little more than negative one.

[A]

Pretty. Pretty net neutral, then.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, they've been kind of very busily standing in place, or so it seems, at least based on those stats. Do you think that's a fair characterization of the race off season?

[A]

I think that's a great characterization and some great research that backs up my feeling of not really recognizing anybody when I showed up for the first couple of days of spring training. It's a very new roster. It's a very different roster in a lot of areas. You know, you saw them part with, you know, not the household names outside of Tampa Bay, but recognizable faces for the Rays like Brandon Lau and Josh Low and Shane Boss. But then you also saw just the usual, and maybe even a little bit more than usual, bottom of the roster churn. And it wasn't really churn so much as it was just overhaul. I mean, they cleaned house in some areas. The outfield is completely different, aside from Chandler, Simpson and maybe some reserves than it was last year. There's a lot of new faces. The rotation's pretty well remade. But yeah, I think you could look at the group and say, oh, they could be about a.500 team like they were the last two years. So. So, you know, what is it all for? I'm sure we'll get into that, but it is a lot of movement and not necessarily maybe changing the way that you feel about the team's competitive chances for this season.

[D]

I'd say, I don't mean to linger over long on the trade piece of it, but not only a lot of trades, but how do they keep being in these three team trades? You know, because they did three of them this off season. Right. They made three separate three team trades. And. And sometimes, okay, you. You see meaningful pieces, but sometimes you're like, what are you bringing to this party? You know, why are you guys. Exactly.

[B]

I just want to be included.

[D]

I'm invited to this barbecue. So what's that about?

[C]

That's a great question.

[A]

I asked pretty much that exact thing with that tone of voice to Eric Neander after they made the third one, which was the Ben Williamson trade, where Brendan Donovan obviously went to St. Louis to Seattle because they obviously the first one was Brandon Lau, Jake Mangum and Mason Montgomery going to Pittsburgh. They got Jacob Melton and Anderson Breedon returned from Houston. And that Angels, Reds one where they traded Josh Low and wound up with Gavin Lux. I asked that and his answer was jokingly, obviously. I think maybe that they just haven't found a way to make a four team trade yet. So they're working on that, I guess. But I actually do think it kind of speaks to just the way that they are always transacting. They're always in conversation with other teams, like they are always looking for ways that they can align with other teams and trade assets and make moves that might be mutually beneficial for both teams. So whether it's a situation where they're in a conversation with the team and they're not quite lining up on what they need and what they want to make happen, they have a pretty extensive database of conversations that they can look back to and say, all right, well, you need this and this other team needs this and we can kind of of, you know, triangulate that and make it work. And I think they're very good about being active in conversation and obviously it moves as well. But the two kind of go hand in hand sometimes. So they are always in the middle of it, it seems like.

[B]

Yeah, I guess you can't call them a third wheel because they are wanted, they are invited to be part of these trades, but they're just sort of like a universal blood donor or just like an element that just chemically reacts with a lot of other elements. They're just the great facilitator, the lubricator of trades in Major League Baseball.

[A]

Yeah, I don't know about.

[B]

Yeah, that's.

[A]

That's a phrase. Definitely.

[B]

I regret that last term maybe, but. And they might too, but I guess they do have a lot of players. They're always just with a full 40 man and, and like needing to get rid of all the players they have stockpiled. So maybe it's just like a clearance sale. It's just everything must go, hey, can we get in on this? And. And I guess they're probably involved in a lot of text threads about transactions and maybe people know they can go to the raise if they need to get a deal done.

[A]

I think that is definitely the case. They also make their needs pretty well known. So teams that are having conversations like the Mariners and the Cardinals, my understanding of that trade, were obviously trying to come together on Brendan Donovan and then, well, Ben Williamson doesn't really Fit. Do we know anybody who wants Ben Williamson? Hey, the Rays want Ben Williamson. Let's go make this work. But it's interesting, interesting that they were kind of all three, three team trades. That's fun to say very fast is that they were like playing a different purpose in each one. You know, Melton and Brito were more toward the future. Melton could help this year. Gavin Lux is very much a short term thing. He's a pending free agent. They got rid of Josh Lowe who was, who had the potential to be around for some time. That was more addressing a hole on the roster. So they're doing different things with each one of them. Ben Williamson and you know, a little bit in between a longer term fit where he could, you know, bounce around the infield. But also they needed a right handed hitting utility man and that's what Ben Williamson is. So it's kind of funny that they've shopped in every different department via the three team trade store which is a very interesting, very raised way to go about it.

[B]

Yeah, and they didn't spend a ton of time in the non minor league free agent aisle, but they did make a few pickups there. They signed a couple of swingmen, Nick Martinez and Steven Matz and you know the, the Rays love their swing men. But they also added Cedric Mullins, a familiar face in the AL east, one of many mid season Mets pickups who did not pan out in Queens. So maybe we can start with Mullins and how he fits into the picture and what they think he has left.

[A]

Yeah, they plan to have him be their regular center fielder at least against right handed pitching. I think the outfield was kind of a catastrophe for the Rays overall last season. Season you look at the power production and it was I believe the worst in baseball. They had 20 something home runs as a group of outfielders last season, which is not ideal. Obviously they had some Chandler, Simpsons and Jake Mangums out there who, that's not their game. But you need more power production from the outfield. They see Mullins as a guy who can provide some of that from the left side of the plate and play reliable center field defense which they didn't really have last season in part because Johnny DeLuca was hurt for so much of it. But, but you know, I think they can also plug in DeLuca or you know, one of these other right handed hitting options that they have to play alongside Mullen. So they're not exposing him against left handed pitchers as much. And I think you're going to see a Lot of those platoon type situations in this kind of remade outfield that they put together with Mullens at the middle of it.

[D]

I imagine one of the other guys that they're, they're looking to in that group is Chandler Simpson. And I'm, I don't know what to make of Chandler Simpson. I want, I want Chandler Simpson to work because, you know, when you have a guy who manages 44, four stolen bases in 109 games, well, that's great fun. When you have an 88 WRC plus, that's less good. And then the defense doesn't grade out as well as you would imagine for a guy with his speed. So sort of, how did they approach the offseason with him and what adjustments do you imagine him making to try to be sort of a more complete player, a guy who can be rostered for a full season at the big league level?

[A]

Yeah, I think you're completely right in that they really want it to work. And basically everyone who watches him wants it to work because it is so fun when it does work. He's just doing things that other players don't do, scoring from second on ground balls to the infield or whatever. It's just a really unique, dynamic skill set. But like you said, it doesn't necessarily look great when you look at the stats at the end of the season. So some of this work took place last season when they sent him down for a brief stretch. They know the defense needs to get better, needs to get better. He knows the defense needs to get better. They've had him working actually with Kevin Kier, obviously one of the best defensive outfielders of his generation. When KK was in camp for the first week or so. So that's been a constant focal point. He's still, you know, a relatively new outfielder. He was a college infielder, so he's still getting used to the, the reads, the, the jumps, the routes and the plays at the wall and everything. They think with time that'll come. Chandler Simpson's a very hard worker. He's a really bright kid. He, you know that the effort's going to be there. It's just a matter of kind of reps and experience and maybe not trying to overexpose them in center field because you would think, all right, 80 runner should be an 80 defender in center field. Clearly doesn't work that way. They're going to give him a little bit of an easier assignment in left field. And then as far as the offense goes, it is more just about kind of Boosting the on base percentage. And that's just being more selective, you know, not necessarily chasing just because you can put the bat on the ball because you're right. Like you look at the 88 WRC plus and that doesn't really play. You know, you're not going to get anything basically from the slug, so you need it to come from the on base. And I think that's just going to be more walks, you know, selecting his pitches a little bit more carefully to see what he can not drive because him driving the ball is almost a bad thing, but like find a hole through the infield and I think they're going to give him a fair amount of run at least to start the season in left field. So we'll see how it goes.

[B]

Let's talk about a couple success stories from last season. Jonathan Aranda and Junior Caminero. Arunda was a popular breakout pick heading into last season. And you know what, even I would say success on that score, it was certainly looking like a breakout season. Of course, he then did break and that was a big loss for the Rays lineup because he was really a linchpin in that lineup with that high on base. But what went differently and well for him in 2025, I think it was largely just opportunity.

[A]

I mean, he'd been up for stints before in the big leagues and nothing really to write home about until I would say probably September 2024. He got a little bit more regular time coming back for an injury and you started to see kind of all the work that he'd been doing in the minors and some of the adjustments that he'd made as far as getting the fastball start to pan out in the big leagues with regular playing time. And then he came in last spring, he was on the team. There was no question about that. He was going to get regular work at first base. He didn't have to worry about bouncing around a second or third or whatever it might be. His focus was just on being the version of Jonathan Aranda they saw in the minors because they had preached for so long that anybody who put up the results that he did in AAA for as long as he did it was going to work out at some point in the majors. And I think their belief in him was, was validated and I think his, the work that he put in was validated as well. He's going to be the first baseman moving forward for, for the foreseeable future.

[B]

And some people probably had Caminero as a breakout candidate and that I would Veto. Just because, oh, if they were out there, believe you me, they were out there.

[A]

I believe it was me.

[B]

How dare you. But maybe, maybe special dispensation. When a guy hits 45 dingers, even if he is a top prospect who should be expected to be pretty good, that was pretty, pretty spectacular power for a guy in his age 21 season and sort of a strange shape to the offensive profile. He had a 260Babip and I guess part of that is that he hit a lot of balls out of play and over the wall, which is good. But you could imagine maybe he could be better because he was so dependent on the dingers. So tell us a little bit about what went right for him. Clearly a lot. And also what further growth we could project.

[A]

You're right to the strange shape also in that he grounded into 31 double plays. It just felt like especially at the beginning of the season, that pace was like even longer ridiculous for the first three, four months of the season. I believe that it just felt like every ball he hit on the ground was with a runner on first base. Hit directly at an infielder and he hits the ball so dang hard that like it's an automatic double play because he's not a great runner down the line. But I think you saw a lot of, you know, the reason that he was a top prospect and perhaps in some corners not qualified as a breakout candidate is that like he has elite bat speed. He has a pretty good feel for the zone as well. When he chases, he is able to make contact. And again he has hits the ball so hard with such tremendous speed that he can mishit balls. And this was especially the case at Steinbrenner Field last year. He mishit a lot of balls to right field that went out for home runs and that's how you get to 45 with 110RBI. So I do think there is another step for him offensively. You look at it was a.311 on base percentage that is probably got to come up at some point, especially if you're going to lose a few of those home runs moving back to Tropicana Field this season. But I think he's got that in him. You started to see it a little bit more down the stretch where he was being a little bit more patient and just really kind of turning into an all around hitter. The other thing that I think really stands out about Junior is the way that he improved on defense. He was taken out of games the first month or so of the season. Usually replaced by Jose Caballero at third base because Kevin Cash didn't necessarily trust him at third. You know, with a game on the line when, when it was close in the final innings and he turned himself into a much better defender. The numbers won't look great overall. They're probably about average, but that was really negative at the start and really positive at the end. And he came into camp this season saying he wants to win a Gold Glove or at least get close to it, which I think is a pretty mature mindset for a 22 year old, you know, who just hit 45 home runs to come in focused on that. I think it just speaks a lot to Junior Caminero's kind of perspective on his career and sort of the way that he carries himself is already kind of a young leader in the clubhouse.

[D]

I'm curious how much leash Taylor Walls has this year because the organization has really stuck with him and he doesn't play a bad stop, but a 66 WRC plus is just really not going to get it done. And I know that as they think through their future at that position, it wasn't like Carson Williams time in the majors went swimmingly last year, but he's such a special defender. So talk to us about both the present and the future of that position.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, they think Taylor Wallace is the best defensive shortstop in baseball. I know a lot of people say that about their shortstops, but I would say the Rays actions and their continued insistence on playing Taylor Walls at shortstop as often as they have really, it shows that they actually mean it. They're going to give him the run there to start the season. It seems like Carson Williams has a chance to come in and compete for the job in camp. But like you said, I think what you saw in the big leagues from him was a pretty good indication that he could use a little bit more time in AAA to cut down the swing and miss, to, you know, reduce the strikeout rate. I think it was roughly 40% during his brief time in the big leagues. So they're going to give Taylor Walls a chance. I think offensively they're just going to take whatever he can give them. He's done a lot of work on the backfields and in the cages this spring. Some of it's more focused on just kind of small ball and being productive and, you know, not giving away outs basically. But I think they view his glove as so special in whatever, you know, whatever analysis they're doing of it that it is worth carrying the bat for. As long as he's able to play that kind of defense.

[B]

Let's talk about that single season sojourn to Steinbrenner Field, which did not play as an offensive park the way that the other minor league park in the majors last year did in Sacramento. It still did. Grayed out as a hitters park according to the baseball savant park factors, but not nearly so extreme. And I know that there were plenty of complaints about the lights, the wind, other factors. So tell us how it played, how the facilities held up, what the sort of lopsided home road schedule did, if anything, to the team.

[A]

Yeah, it played weird. I think that's probably the best sort of summary of it. Like you go in in April and you expect, all right, you know, it's coming out of spring training. You see the way the balls fly out, you know, on windy days or whatever. And it just felt like the wind was consistently blowing in. So like every fly ball that got up for a stretch of games early on just did not get out. You really had to cut through the wind almost to get out. And we thought, all right, did we just not know anything about this park coming into it, like what, what are we doing here? But then it started to play a little bit more, kind of as you would expect. I would say once you got into the summer, it started to heat up a little bit more and it was quite hot, I can say that. And I think the Rays would agree and they're very grateful to be back in the air conditioned dome of Tropicana Field this season. As far as the facilities, I thought they held up pretty well. The visitors clubhouse was quite small, as you would expect from a spring training minor league road clubhouse. But I mean, they had no reason to complain, the Rays did, about the facilities that they had. Just based on, you know, what the Yankees have done to that side of the ballpark. It was tremendous. They probably had more amenities, I would say, even than they, they do at Tropicana Field. They're even making some updates to their home clubhouse as they move back into the trot based off of their experience at Steinbrenner. So that just kind of speaks to how much they enjoyed that part of it. And then, yeah, I do think there was something to the scheduling aspect of it. You did see kind of that fall through July and August, where they were actually in a pretty good position through June when they had been largely loaded with home games to that point and they started to go on the road a lot. The home schedule was tough when they were back and it obviously fell apart from there. So they never complained about it. I will give this team a lot of credit. They had every right probably to complain about certain things, but in the way that it was all affected, it was totally out of their control. But. But they were pretty good soldiers about it. They wouldn't use it as an excuse. Even though I think you probably could point to certain aspects of it, like the schedule is a reason that their season kind of unfolded in the way that it did.

[D]

Well, I want to go back to one of the guys who was part of one of those three team trades. What did they see in Gavin Lux that made them excited even if it's only for one year?

[A]

Yeah, they needed a second baseman after trading Brandon Lau. They knew that they were not going to be able to match Laos power at second base, which is pretty rare. But they did think they could kind of make up for some of that production with on base ability, which Gavin Lux has, you know, a little bit more contact and better defense. Lux is not a. Doesn't gray out as a tremendous defensive second baseman, or at least he hasn't recently. And the Reds were kind of moving him at left field in DH where he was kind of miscast. He wasn't able to focus on one specific position. So I think you're going to see him play regularly against right handers, you know, try to be that kind of a hundred base guy, hit doubles, work the gaps and everything and get on for the Yani Diaz's, the Jonathan Ronda and Junior Camineros. Basically just kind of raising the floor a little bit there because Brandon La was I believe the lowest graded defensive second baseman in baseball last season. So just having Lux focus at one position at second base, they think that's the way that they're going to get the best out of him and ideally kind of solidify the rest of the infield defense with him.

[C]

There's.

[B]

I should probably ask about where they will be playing this year as well. What's the state of the trap? What kind of work has gone into it? Is it ready? How's it looking?

[A]

Yeah, I actually have not yet been inside. Just they've given a couple of media tours. The city of St. Petersburg has and for whatever reason just hasn't worked out. But we've seen pictures, we've heard from people who have been in there. It looks like a baseball stadium again, which obviously was not, not the case recently. The roof is totally repaired, all the panels are back on in place. They put the turf down, they're doing work in the seats. They're expanding the video board and getting the sound system back up and running. So it is expected to be ready for April 6, which is their home opener against the Cubs after a nice long cold road trip to start the season to St. Louis, Milwaukee and Minnesota. So it is expected to be good to go. Some upgrades from before. Clubhouses should be in good shape and everything by then. So really just kind of an incredible amount of work that went into it and by the city of St. Pete and everybody that they contracted to do that job and also some really good fortune that it was not nearly as busy of a hurricane season this past year as it was before because that had the potential to just kind of wreak havoc on the entire process. They were very fortunate in the way that it worked out. It looks like they will be back in the trough for the next three seasons that are remaining on the use

[C]

agreement agreement with the city and then.

[A]

Yeah, good. Great question. Always the question with the Rays. They the the new ownership group that's come in made no secret whatsoever like their top priority. Their main focus is getting a long term ballpark built in Tampa Bay. They move pretty quickly, I would say, to get an agreement to work toward an agreement with Hillsboro College, which is located actually adjacent to to Steinbrenner Field. It all comes full circle right across from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. You know, obviously that would be an appealing destination just given the proximity to everything. You know, you could build kind of a little sports district there in that part of town working with the college to make it. They just keep adding verbs to these things. I believe it's now live, work, play, learn. I think is the last one district. You know, I think that project is gotten the approval of the state governor. Ron DeSantis was in town for a press conference at one point and you know, through his weight behind it, Rob Manford, the commissioner came and threw his weight behind it and offered his support and say the baseball still belongs in Tampa Bay and they want to see the Rays stick in Tampa. There is of course the significant issue of who's going to pay for it. They're still working on the negotiations and things along those lines. I believe the Rays said that they will pay half of the ballpark, which I think has had an estimate rated costs of 2.3 billion. So that is still a sizable tab that they are going to ask the county and the city to pick up. And that as ever remains the question of how that will work.

[D]

I liked the part of the Concept drawings they released where it looked like all the various mascots were preparing to get in a cage fight. You know, it's like the mascots with. With a bunch of fans. I'm like, are they. This is like a WWE thing that seems like it would be popular in Florida.

[A]

Yeah. Live, work, play, learn, fight. I believe that's the next one.

[B]

We were kind of confounded, as I think many people were, by how the previous ballpark arrangement fell apart under the previous ownership group. What is your understanding of what happened there? Because we've seen this play before. It seemed like a done deal and then it seemed like that regime just got cold feet and suddenly wasn't so into it. And then there was the question of, well, they're being pressured by MLB to sell potentially and so do they just not commit? And then that sale happens. So what can we conclude about how that fell through?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I do think that was the intent was to build that ballpark on the, the Tropicana Field site as part of that historic gas plant district project. And then for whatever reason, you know, the delays with the county and the increased cost, they just felt they couldn't handle it. And then they kind of backed their way. The team, I should say the ownership team group, couldn't handle it, couldn't afford it, and, you know, found a way essentially to back out of it. That is kind of the conclusion that I think you have to draw at this point. They didn't feel like it was a responsible thing to do. And then Stu Sternberg was pretty open about it. Like that was the part of the, the gig that he couldn't do. He couldn't cross the finish line with a ballpark in the Tampa Bay area. So he thought it was time to sell to somebody who could and obviously profit quite handsomely from doing so. So that was again, like it was his 20 old year quest or whatever to build a ballpark in the area. It didn't work out and that proved to be the end and a change in ownership.

[B]

We have not forgotten that the Rays employ pitchers and some pretty good ones. So we will get back to that in just a second. But while we're on the subject of ownership, obviously the Rays under Sternberg's tenure, they were pretty successful, especially given how much they spent. But there was how much they spent. So how much, if at all, will those two things change the success and the spending under this new ownership group? What do we know about what they might be willing to invest in the payroll? And then what do we Think about, well, will they leave executives in place? Will they empower smart baseball people to do smart baseball things, which was certainly a hallmark of the Sternberg era, where there was lots of continuity with people like Neander, but then also just an enormous network of X Rays executives running every other team, seemingly.

[A]

Yeah. I'll start with the second part. They were really open from the start that they are going to basically just leave Eric Neander and Kevin Cash alone. I think that was their phrase was in Eric and Kevin we trust.

[B]

And Jeff Sullivan. Don't mess with Jeff. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I don't think he came up at the press conference, but that sounds about right. It was implied. They were very upfront about that. They don't want to mess with a good thing. They know what they have. You know, they saw the way that it can work and they, they don't want to get involved, they don't want to meddle. I think they even said they had an agreement that like nobody is allowed to meddle in baseball decisions, which has to be reassuring when you're a front office that is used to not being meddled with to hear that you will not be meddled with any further. So that, that seems to be the case on that front. And then as far as payroll goes, I asked that question at the introductory press conference and Patrick Solewski, who is the managing partner, kind of the head of the, the new group, basically said, you know, I believe his quote was, the economics of the club haven't changed. Changed and payroll won't either. You know, it's always kind of the far off hope that if they do move into a new ballpark to be able to invest more of that money into payroll. So I think that is the timeline. I would say when, if things are going to change on that front, it'll be when and if. I guess that happens.

[D]

All right. I guess we should get to some of these pitchers now because, you know,

[A]

there's a lot of them.

[D]

There are a lot of them. They are quite good.

[B]

They do project to be a top 10 pitching team by WAR. You might not have heard of many of the pitchers, but nonetheless.

[D]

Well, one guy who I think race fans have heard of but haven't gotten to see in a long time is Shane Mcclanahan. So I want to start with him. What is the state of Shane Mcclanahan? How many innings can we expect from him this year? Talk to us about Shane.

[A]

It's a great question. Just a bizarre couple of years for, for Shane obviously had the second Tommy John surgery that ended his 2023 season, which is a second straight All Star year, then looked good coming into camp last spring, went through a very normal, healthy spring and then had just that freak nerve issue in his triceps that left him unable to even feel his hand and move his fingers for about, I think he said, a month and a half or so. So really scary injury. They did not know how long it was going to take to recover from it. It wound up taking the entire season. Had another procedure near the end of the year to address that. By all accounts, he had a normal offseason season. He came into camp having thrown bullpens. He's throwing bullpens now. I believe he's going to face hitters tomorrow as we're recording this, so he'll be a little bit slower into games. I don't think they're going to push him past five innings. Certainly in spring training, probably for the first month of the season, you saw kind of how carefully they managed Drew Rasmussen coming back from his third major elbow surgery last year as he got back to being a starter. I would think that is probably the blueprint, if maybe not even a little bit bit more conservative, just given the time that he's missed, you know, on the mound, period, and some of the uncertainty with that. But, you know, from everything everyone said, pitching coach Kyle Snider, manager Kevin Cash and everybody who's seen him like, he looks like Shane McClanahan before this injury. So. And he looked like that last spring as well. So as long as he is past the Nerf thing, I think you have a really effective starter. It's probably just going to be in shorter bursts than you would expect from kind of your typical Lace.

[B]

Wanted to ask about the other Shane, the Shane who's no longer there, Shane Baz, who was traded to Baltimore in the division. And so he's the Shane who is like the Shane, the titular character of Shane the movie, who at the end, the little boy named Joey is yelling, come back, Shane. But he rides off into the sunset. I guess that's what's happening with Shane Baz. We tend to think of the Rays as a team that can make the most of pitchers and unlock whatever latent talent is there. But Shane Baz was always a bit of a riddle, and now they're trading him to a division rival. So what prompted that move?

[A]

I don't necessarily think they went into the off season saying, okay, we have to train. We have to train Shane Boss. Like they thought that he was, was due to improve this season just Based on the fact that he finally put together a full, healthy season. Wasn't a great season. It was an ERA near 5, but 31 starts. Believe it was 166 innings. More strikeouts than innings. You know, you started to see some progress with the. The rest of the arsenal to compliment a very good fastball. So they didn't necessarily head in saying, all right, we got to get rid of this guy. But the offers for controllable starting pitching started to kind of creep up into a territory, especially in terms of just the haul of young talent. They wound up getting in that Orioles trade that they felt like they couldn't say no, and then they could move to kind of backfill from there. Because I do think they really liked Shane Boz. They really thought that he was due for a step forward. You're right. Like, that is the kind of guy, typically that the Rays go out and acquire, but I think the offers just got so significant that they felt they couldn't. They couldn't refuse at that point.

[D]

Well, maybe we can talk about some of the guys who have pitched more recently for them and by Ray's standard, pitched a lot. You know, tell us about Drew Rasmussen and Ryan Pepiot and sort of what you're expecting from those guys this year.

[A]

Drew Rasmussen is so good, and I feel like I'm keeping a secret when I cover him because I just feel like nobody actually recognizes that. Drew Rasmussen is incredible. And one of the more ridiculous stories in baseball last year, two Tommy John surgeries and an internal brace procedure, comes back as a reliever the year before and then throws 150 innings over 31 start starts as an All Star. Just a remarkable comeback. And to be the basically the exact same pitcher that he was before, if not a little bit better. I mean, the consistency of his performance since he got into the big leagues is remarkable. I think it's, you know, an era always between like 2.6and 2.8 five in a whip always between 1 and 1.1. It is just metronomic consistency from Jurasmussen. Even with all of the questions, all of the injury concerns concerns and all of the challenges that he faced given his workload. And he got pulled back into kind of an opener role for a stretch in the middle of the season, came back from that, was basically the same guy. I think, again, just like a really elite type pitcher who's probably not done any favors by the fact that he's not qualified for any RA title and doesn't show up on leaderboards and things like that so a tremendously valuable starter. He's going to be their opening day starter this year. Maybe that brings a little bit more namewracking to condition for him as well. And then Ryan Pepio, I think is probably stands to benefit as much as anyone from the move back to Tropicana Field for two reasons. One, he's obviously a fly ball guy. Tends to. He tended to get hurt a little bit by some of the dimensions at Steinbrenner. Two, it just felt like he drew every single noon start at Steinbrenner Field when it was 98 degrees outside. So, I mean, just getting away from that's got to help the guy. But they like his stuff as well. They've seen kind of a little bit of an expansion of his arsenal and the way that he's gone from, you know, maybe just purely fastball change up into adding a little bit more breaking stuff in there. They see him as kind of also like a pretty consistent source of innings along with Nick Martinez, who they brought in via free agency.

[B]

Yeah. And then those aforementioned swingmen, Martinez and Mats. Which way will they swing in 2026? Will they stick in the rotation? Will they go back and forth? You never can tell with this team.

[A]

Yeah, it seems like they, like Martinez coming in to both of them, are going to be in the opening day rotation as planned right now. Seems like Martinez is probably more likely to function as kind of a traditional starter over the course of the season, you know, depending on what else happens behind him. Whereas Mats, just given the fact that he hasn't pitched over 100 innings in a number of years, might have to be shortened up in kind of that way that Rasmussen was last year. He obviously showed that he could be really successful as a reliever last year. So if it's not looking great as a starter, they have that as a pretty good fallback option on a two year, $15 million contract. You know, obviously that would have some appeal either for them in the bullpen or potentially as a trade candidate. And then I, I think where they go with those two guys over the course of the full season depends on how McClanahan holds up, how the other two hold up, and then whether or not they feel like they need to kind of make room in the rotation for Joe Boyle, who is most likely going to start in AAA, but still has just such overwhelming stuff that it doesn't feel like the Rays are ready to give up on them after one kind of, you know, up and down season after they got him from the A's So and then Ian Seymour as well, a lefty would be another candidate to potentially slide into one of those rotation spots. So they have depth and I think they like having that flexibility, of course, where they can make up for, you know, some of the innings uncertainty with just sort of a volume of pitchers that they can throw at the problem who can do different things.

[B]

And that bullpen does project to be a strong unit, sixth in the game. And that three headed trio at the end there of Edwin Uceda and Griffin Jax and Garrett Clevenger, not the biggest names maybe, but those guys are pretty nasty. And I guess three headed trio was perhaps a little redundant. Nonetheless, those guys are good. But I have heard Uceda's shoulder described as cranky, which I guess is a somewhat worrisome adjective. So there's a lot of crankiness going on with elbows and shoulders at this stage of the spring. But how worrisome is that?

[A]

I was going to say. And beat writers. Yeah, that is a concern. Obviously early on in spring training he came on, came back from his arbitration hearing in Arizona, which he attended in person.

[B]

No wonder he was cranky.

[A]

After that he won. He went back to the Dominican and resumed throwing and he started to feel a little bit of crankiness in his shoulder. Apparently tried to get back to playing catch yesterday as we're recording this and started to feel it barking at him as he started to throw from longer distances. So he actually went today for further imaging and a visit with Dr. Coco Eaton. So as we're recording this, we don't know the state of Edwin, you say to shoulder and what might be next for him. But that's potentially a huge issue for the race because he would be a very big part of that kind of leverage by committee group with, with Jackson Clevenger. And you know, he's a guy who's proven that he can do it and you know, four outbursts or multiple inning bursts, he can come out and get the biggest out, you know, of a game with runners on base. So that is definitely a big injury to watch because you could look at maybe throw Brian Baker into that group as the, you know, the for sure things in the bullpen heading into the season and then they have some questions to answer beyond that. So any injury does kind of just chip away at that depth pretty quickly.

[D]

I feel like this is a more relevant question for the Rays and it maybe is for any other team in baseball, just given the way that they move guys on their roster and you have these dudes shuffling up and down, you know, we have this group you've talked about a couple of the younger guys, but who are some of the guys at the high Miners you expect might end up, you know, making their way to Tampa in the event of injury?

[A]

Yeah, I think a couple we touched on Carson Williams earlier. You know, I think he should have the opportunity to play his way into a role in the big leagues, you know, based on what he shows offensively in aaa. Jacob Melton touched on him. He was one of the guys that got one of the three team trades from the Astros. They are really high on him. Just a great athlete. They would love what they've seen in the batting cages so far in spring training. Kevin Cash said that he kind of hits the ball like Yandy Diaz and Junior Camino just in terms of exit velocity, which that certainly catches your attention around here, I think. Eric Neander said they view him as a potential 20 homer, 40 steel quality defender instead center field. So they got him in that trade is ideally kind of part of their their younger core moving forward. I don't know if it happens right away. He got a little time in Houston last year, it wasn't great. So maybe they'll give it a little bit more time to develop in aaa. And then the next group from there would probably be Trey Morgan, a first baseman, great defender, more kind of bat to ball than on base than power, and catcher Dominic Keegan, who could maybe potentially possibly answer some of their long, long, long run running questions at catcher. He's a very good hitter. He's earned very high reviews from the staff as far as just the way that he's kind of worked to improve defensively. Not a great thrower, but has a really good presence behind the plate. Good game caller, works well with pitchers, has come through their system after being a little bit of more of a first baseman at Vanderbilt. So they want to give him time and potentially have him kind of factor into their their mix of catcher at some point this season.

[B]

Speaking of pitchers and catchers, has the pitching philosophy changed at all for the Rays, which for a while there at least was just trust your stuff and don't aim and try to be finessing anything. And catchers would just put their targets down the middle and just trust in the natural movement to bail you out. Is that still the predominant approach? And we've talked about the Marlins fully embracing calling pitches from the dugout. Might the Rays go in that direction too? Hey, don't worry about where you're aiming your pitches. Don't even worry about which pitches to throw. We'll take that all off your plate. Just throw hard.

[A]

No, I would, I would not expect that to come into the, to the raised dugout anytime soon. I think they're going to leave it with the pitchers and the catchers and philosophically I think it's pretty much the same. It is obviously very pitcher dependent. You know, somebody like Drew Rasmussen doesn't necessarily have to aim to a big spot. He's got a commit, you know, the type of command where you can focus a little bit more on location and sequencing and things like that. Whereas as for a Joe Boyle, you know, we referenced earlier, that is more just like the Tyler Glasnow model. Just, you know, throw to plate and hope for the best because your stuff's so good and overwhelming that it should work for you. So I think it is very much kind of pitcher dependent. They've gotten really aggressive as usual as every team has about kind of expanding arsenals and looking for ways that they can fill out pitch mixes. You've seen even probably untraditional guys like Kevin Kelly, a reliever, you know, big sinker, sweeper, you know, sidearming, right hander, work to make some of the change up. Just trying to give him weapons to handle both, both handed hitters. I think it is very much an individual kind of approach to pitching, the same as it really ever has been with the Rays.

[B]

Okay, let's go to our closing question then and ask you what would constitute success for this team in 2026?

[A]

Have you ever had one that's just purely off the field related? For one of these answers, to me it's get a stadium deal across the finish line. That is what they came in and said was the number one goal that is a top priority for the ownership group. It's basically the sun around which the entire organization is going to have to orbit. Where are they going to be? What is it going to mean for their revenues? How does that impact the future of the franchise? I think moving forward, to me that's the most important thing. I don't know if, don't know if that counts.

[B]

You can define it however you want, but I do wonder where the Rays see themselves. I don't know whether the Rays think in terms of competitive cycles or whether it's just kind of constant, perpetual churn and trying to stay within striking distance. But it's really hard to stay within striking distance in this division in this year. So do they see themselves as building up to something soon? Do they see themselves as sort of a dark horse contender if things don't go great at the start of the season. Are we going to be talking about Yandy Diaz, Ground Beef or Pepio or others as potential mid season trade candidates? Because we have established that this team likes to trade.

[A]

Yeah, I think that would be, that's always possible with the raise that if they do fall out and they have the opportunity to build, you know, to improve a future team that they will take advantage of, of that, especially with a pending free agent or just to get creative with the roster and, you know, address areas that they feel need improvement for the long term. And they did some of that this offseason. I probably should have touched on it earlier is just the idea that they, like you said, they were kind of treading water. They didn't necessarily make substantial improvements for this season. They didn't get substantially worse by the time it was all said and done. But they did get better, you know, for the 2000, maybe 28, 29 window where they've added some of these younger, controllable tanks types like Melton, they've added prospects like Brito and everyone in that Orioles trade for Shane Boz. And then, you know, I think one thing Eric Neander made pretty clear this offseason, I don't know if I've ever heard him articulate it the way that he did on multiple occasions this winter, was just the idea that they don't want to give up on a year ever. They don't want to head into a season thinking that they won't be competitive. So in that sense, I don't think they believe in competitive cycles. They do believe in giving every year's team a chance to win. You know, I asked about it and he said basically it's for the players. Like it's not fair to ask players to come into camp and feel like you don't have a chance to win this year and you only get so long to play this game that every year you should feel like you have that opportunity. So I think they view themselves as having the ability to be competitive if things break their way. But obviously, yeah, like, they know where they stand in the division. They've seen what everybody has done this off season and as Niander said at his opening press conference this spring, if they tried to go about it the same way that everybody else in the division does, they'll probably finish from roughly where their revenues rank among their division competition as well. So I think they get it and I think that kind of influences a lot of the way that they, they go about it.

[B]

I hesitate to invoke him. Maybe out of sight, out of mind would be better. And especially to end on this note. But does Wander Franco's status, does that have any bearing on the Reyes situation? He was convicted last year in the Dominican Republic, but then a new trial was ordered in December. Obviously they aren't paying him, but I suppose as long as his legal fate is sort of up in the air, the contract can't be voided. Does it even matter whether it can be voided to them?

[A]

I mean, obviously they don't speak about this publicly, just given the ongoing investigation and everything. But I think the fact that there was a retrial ordered, which was supposed to be today actually, as we're talking, and then was postponed to more March 30, yeah, that does leave some things in limbo because theoretically, if, you know, the, the verdict is reversed and he is, you know, let off, then it would come down to, obviously MLB would have to investigate and that could impact things. But if at any point he's able to obtain a visa and cleared to work, then yeah, I mean, they would have to ask themselves some questions about that and what that means for their, their payroll because there is still a substantial amount of that contract available. But as long as he, he remains unable to enter the country, you know, with a visa and everything like that, then he's not being paid. It doesn't have an impact. But yeah, I think some clarity, which they thought they received with the initial verdict would go a long way toward answering that question kind of once and for all.

[B]

Well, you have answered all of our questions, so we will let you go. As always, we recommend that people read Adam's coverage of the [e-mail] always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks, Adam.

[A]

Adam, thank you.

[B]

That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening and glad tidings to all. We made it to Grapefruit and Cactus League opening day, so American and National League opening day can't be so far away. And today you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners. Mr. Maps, Ryan Kunkel, Nabiel, Matthew, Feary and Shane. Yet another Shane. Not the last Shane I'll be thanking in this episode. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad, free FanQuest memberships, and so much more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastfangraphs.com you 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 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. Ah there's that Shane for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week.

[A]

Stackless Past Class and Better for free. Three new episodes for us each week Effectively.