Effectively Wild Episode 2510: The Desire to Acquire

Summary

Effectively Wild Episode 2510: The Desire to Acquire

Podcast: Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Date: July 28, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Effectively Wild dives into the joy and peril of creating new baseball fans (through a child’s first big league game), delivers a boots-on-the-ground perspective on taking little kids to MLB games, breaks down a notable Red Sox/Nationals “challenge” trade before the deadline, analyzes the current MVP landscape, and previews needs and trends for the 2026 MLB trade deadline with data-informed insight and the hosts’ characteristic wit. Memorable parent-child moments, deep roster analysis, and a detour into baseball-adjacent fashion commentary round out another wide-ranging, entertaining show.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sloan’s First Baseball Game (00:58–19:19)

• Ben recounts bringing his daughter Sloan (age 4) to her first MLB game: Dodgers at Mets.

  • She was excited to see Shohei Ohtani, even though he didn’t pitch, and enjoyed the ballpark sights, snacks, and the postgame light/firework show.

  • Interview segment with Sloan provides adorable insight into what a big league game is like for a kid.

    Ben: “How did we get there?”
    Sloan: “We took a subway.” (03:50)

    Ben: "Did you have anything good to eat?"
    Sloan: "Ice cream and popcorn." (04:37)

  • Sloan lasted the entire game despite being up past bedtime, got a bit tired but wanted to stay through the end.

• Parenting and Fandom:
  • Ben reflects on how to encourage a child’s fandom without being too heavy-handed, suggesting “just lead by example and hopefully your enthusiasm will be contagious.” (09:37)
  • Meg relates her own history attending games with her nieces and the unpredictability of kids at ballgames.

2. Representation & the New Women’s League (19:25–23:53)

• On representation: Sloan noticed all the players were men; Ben shares timely news about a new women’s professional baseball league beginning, giving hope for future inclusion.
• Meg’s perspective:
  • Representation wasn’t an impediment for her fandom as a child, but acknowledges its importance for some and notes the broadening opportunities and visibility of women’s pro sports.

3. Shohei Ohtani & NL MVP Race (27:32–39:55)

• Ohtani’s health: Not pitching recently due to a knee issue; Dave Roberts says he should still be MVP, but stats show otherwise.
• StatCast Data:
  • “PCA [Pete Crow-Armstrong] sitting pretty at 7.0 and Shohei languishing at 5.7 [FanGraphs WAR].” (30:11)
• MVP voting trends:

  • Meg discusses how fielding value is now better recognized by award voters but hitters still have an edge if things are close.

  • PCA’s all-around game (offense, defense, baserunning) makes his case compelling, and there’s a sense that the electorate is eager for a “new story.”

    Ben: “At this point PCA has out hit Ohtani...he has a better WRC+, he’s out-homered Otani, he has the glove, he has the wheels…” (37:24)

4. AL MVP (39:55–41:56)

• Shakeup in contenders: Possible for a catcher (Dylan Dingler) or Bobby Witt Jr. to win; uncertain with Witt’s recent injury. Cam Schlittler and Jordan Walker also in the running.

  Meg: “Part of me does want Cam Schlitler to win at least something because...I just gotta see what Rob [Manfred]'s got, you know?” (41:56)

5. The Red Sox/Nationals Curtis Mead-for-Connolly Early Trade (42:18–58:53)

• Trade Details:
  • Red Sox get 25-year-old infielder Curtis Mead (recent breakout), Nationals get 24-year-old LHP Connolly Early (promising but IL’d starter).
  • Seen as a “challenge trade”—strength for strength, need for need.
• Analysis:

  • Meg and Ben emphasize that evaluating these types of trades requires patience; outcome will depend on both team development/support and player health.

  • Meg points out Nationals’ recent offensive improvements may reflect organizational gains in player development; Red Sox’s urgency due to suddenly improved postseason odds.

  • Cautions for both teams: trading from depth and the necessity of accurate self-assessment.

    Meg: “Stars for prospect deals are won and lost by scouts. Challenge trades like this one are won and lost by the entire organization.” (48:08)

  • Ben notes the Nationals’ asset flipping acumen, having acquired Mead from the White Sox only four months earlier and quickly turning him into a valuable pitcher.

6. Kerry Wood & the Savannah Bananas (61:55–70:02)

• Viral moment:
  • 49-year-old Kerry Wood throws a “camouflaged behind-the-back eephus” in a Savannah Bananas exhibition—eliciting both delight and grumpy amusement.
  • Meg feigns Crook-esque curmudgeonry but grants that the “pinpoint command” is “the coolest version of the thing that’s not for me that I’ve seen.”
• Speculation: Could gimmick pitches like Wood’s ever work in MLB, even as a “bag of tricks offering”? Discussion concludes they’d have a big element of surprise, but usage would have to be rare and precise.

7. John Kruk’s Sunday Night Baseball Attire & TV Wardrobe Norms (71:38–85:03)

• Extended tangent about the sartorial expectations placed on John Kruk during MLB broadcasts—with Meg venting about clip-on ties, sockless fashion, and the incongruity of attire expectations versus those for other sports.
  • Ben pleas for Kruk to be allowed to “let it all hang out, both verbally and physically. Or at least some of it.”
  • Both appreciate Kruk’s “grump but not mean-spirited” energy.
  • Short sidebar about gray hair, aging, and baseball’s on-air personalities.

8. Trade Deadline Trend Discussion & Roster Needs Rundown (85:03–103:46)

• Ben introduces a color-coded grid (to be posted online) of which teams are truly out of contention (“sellers”) and their positional strengths/weaknesses, and which “in it” teams need what.
  • Only eight teams are “pretty darn done” (Reds, Rockies, A’s, Royals, Giants, Mets, Angels, Blue Jays).
  • Most of those have little to trade of great value, except relievers. Reliever churn expected but not much movement among high-quality starters.
  • Notable needs by contending teams broken down by position—e.g., Phillies desperately need a right fielder (“wouldn’t Mike Trout look great in a Phillies uniform?”), Padres and Astros need starting pitching, Rays/Red Sox/Mariners/Etc have various IF/OF holes.
• On the Tigers and Tarik Skubal:

  • Discussion about whether the Tigers will (or even can) extract true top-prospect value for elite rental starter Skubal.

    Ben: “If you really wanted to get a haul for Skubal, well, that ship sailed some time ago. But I think it would have been tough for them to make that decision to pull the plug possibly prematurely…Even if in retrospect it turns out that maybe they might have been better off.” (94:24)

  • They note the market has shifted—teams resist parting with blue-chip prospects for rentals, making franchise-altering returns rare. The Tigers front office can credibly sell either path to their fanbase.

9. Lighthearted Outro & Listener Support Notes (103:46–end)

• Announcement of Discord, Patreon support, and bonus content.
• Humorous postscript: after recording, new Red Sox acquisition Curtis Mead was hit by a pitch and left his first game—an example of deadline trade risk in real time.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Sloan’s 4-year-old reporting, in response to Ben’s repeated prodding:

  “Good.”...“Great.”...“I like hitting the balls really far in my t ball sets. Like fuddy.” (03:38–08:22)

• Ben, observing a kid’s logic:

  “This podcasting thing is easy. This is what I do for work: I just talk into this microphone about baseball and people listen for some reason. You think you could do this job?”
  Sloan: “Maybe.” (08:32–08:43)

• On Shohei Ohtani’s MVP case:

  “PCA [Pete Crow-Armstrong] sitting pretty at an even 7.0 and Shohei languishing at 5.7. [...] At this point PCA has out hit Ohtani...he has a better WRC+, he’s out-homered Otani, he has the glove, he has the wheels…” (30:11, 37:24)

• Meg, on the Red Sox/Nats trade:

  “Stars for prospect deals are won and lost by scouts. Challenge trades like this one are won and lost by the entire organization.” (48:08)

• On John Kruk’s on-air attire:

  “If you’re hot, they’re hot, bring them inside, [...] This is not his natural habitat. [...] We want Kruk to thrive when he is performing for all of us.” (79:22–80:51)

• Ben, on trade deadline hype:

  “We give it outsize importance [...] and very rarely does it actually change the course of a season or prove determinative or alter the course of a franchise in any sort of predictable, measurable way. However, I get why we care—it’s a flurry of transactions and that’s always fun...” (84:20)

---

Section Timestamps

• Opening & Sloan’s First Game: 00:00–19:19
• Women’s League/Representation: 19:25–23:53
• Ohtani, MVP Races: 27:32–41:56
• Red Sox/Nats Trade Analysis: 42:18–58:53
• Kerry Wood/Bananas: 61:55–70:02
• Kruk & On-Air Wardrobe: 71:38–85:03
• Trade Deadline Trends/Needs: 85:03–103:46
• Outro & Listener Support: 103:46–end

---

Final Thoughts

This episode is a vibrant blend of family baseball initiation, deadline analytics, emerging storylines for MLB awards, and offbeat musings. It’s as much about baseball culture—its fandom, broadcasting quirks, and the future of the sport—as about tactics and transactions. Classic Effectively Wild.

---

For links, references, and more, see the full show notes on Fangraphs or Patreon.

Transcript

[Ben Lindbergh]

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

[Meg Rowley]

Hello and welcome to episode 2510 of Effectively Wild, a Fan Graphs Baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rally of Fangrass, and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer. Ben, how are you?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I guess I'm the urban juror, which is quite as confusing.

[Meg Rowley]

That's not funny.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's true. I am very clear. Still on jury duty. Also on podcast duty. And we have begun our deliberations and paused for the day, and so I am podcasting and then we will resume our deliberation, so we'll find out how deliberate our deliberations are.

[Meg Rowley]

I wish you well, and I hope that you and your friends, fellow jurors, whatever particular climb and locale they may hail from, you know, to be carried by the winds of justice to a fair and just verdict.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We will do our darndest. So, yeah, I report for jury duty. I report for podcast duty. Then I rinse and repeat, and we do it all over again. So it's hard for me to remember a time before I was on jury duty, but it was. It did happen, and I'm sure it will happen again someday, perhaps soon. So we went to a baseball game this weekend. And by we, I mean I and my wife Jesse and my daughter Sloan. And I teased this last time I mentioned that we were going to be going to a game. And it was noteworthy for us because it was Sloan's first ever baseball game of any kind. And we just jumped straight to the majors and went to a Dodgers at Mets game at Citi Field. And I just so happen to have an exclusive with Sloan on this interview. And I have a few minutes of her regaling me with her recollection of the game. This was on Sunday that we debriefed. We went to the game on Saturday. And I tried not to do too much kid talk on this podcast because no one's kids are as interesting to anyone else as they are to them. Right, sure. And so it's. People have limited tolerance, perhaps, for hearing about other people's kids. But look, I think maybe we can make an exception briefly this time. To hear Sloan tell it and just to set the scene, this was a great pitcher's duel, or at least the matchup was. Not that. That was really. I mean, that was sort of lost on Sloan, I guess the fact that, hey, it's. It's Yoshinobu Yamamoto versus Nolan McLean. This is. This is big time. But it was. And so that Was exciting for me. And of course, Shohei Ohtan, who seems to be her favorite player. I have no idea how she came by that belief or. Or that attachment. It's a mystery to me. But she has formed a bit of a bond with Shohei. And of course, I had hoped that he would be pitching in this series so that she could see that. But he didn't. But he hit. So we did get to see Shohei play, and it went well. And I guess I'll just tee up Sloan here, and then I'll follow up with a few more details. So you went to your first ever baseball game. How was it?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Who was playing?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Shoey o'dino.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Were you excited to see Shohei?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How did we get there?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

We took a subway.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And where were we sitting at the game?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

I was sitting in the four seat. You were sitting in the five seat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's true.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

And mommy was sitting in the three seat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And were we high up or where were we?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

We were high up.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Behind home plate. Right where we could see the whole field.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And what did you think of the game and the big ballpark and all the people?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Good.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Good. Give me a little more than that.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Great.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Great. Okay. Well, great's better than good. What did you do or see at the game?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Lots of players.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And did you have anything good to eat?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

What?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Ice cream and popcorn.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And what did the popcorn come in?

[Meg Rowley]

Hat.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Big baseball helmet. And did you stay for the whole game?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And did you get tired or want to leave?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

I got tired.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. But you still wanted to stay?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And did you have to stay up way past your bedtime?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That was a good thing about baseball, I guess. You get to stay up late to watch it. And were there any other surprises that we saw in the game? Anything with lights maybe?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah, There were fireworks in a light show.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. That was pretty cool, too. And were the lights really bright?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah. Yeah, because it got dark, so we need light brights.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean, light bright lights.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah, bright lights.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, you figured out why it gets colder at night?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah. Because there's no sun at night. So it gets colder. It's not getting closer to winter. It's just getting colder.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Did you just turn back into a baby? What happened? And had you ever seen that many people in one place before?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That was a lot of people. Now, were you rooting for the Mets to win or the Dodgers, or did you not care?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

I didn't care. Which one won?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. I think you were chanting, let's go, Mets. And let's go Dodgers at different times.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

And Nick's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Nicks. For some reason, even though they weren't

[Sloan Lindbergh]

playing, Even though they weren't playing, I just. They were just making me chant as Nicks.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Was it too loud or was it the right amount of loud?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

The right amount of loud.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's good. Some people think ballparks are too loud these days. They do play a lot of music. Oh, what was your favorite song that they played?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Golden.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. You said that was going to be your walk up song and then they played it. And was there anything you wanted to see that we didn't get to see?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

The apple.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. None of the Mets hit a home run, so the apple didn't go up. That was disappointing. Maybe next time. Did it remind you of any books that we read before bedtime?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah. The one with decoy and Shohei and

[Ben Lindbergh]

the Goodnight Baseball book.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Did it look just like it looks on TV or did it look different in person?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

A little different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Well, not as different, but. Well, not. It's the same. A little like it's the same a lot, but it's just a little different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's what we talk about on the show. Sometimes people ask us, if baseball were different, how different would it be? And usually the answer is not that different. Do you like going to the baseball game more than you like going to the movies?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How about going to the diner?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

No.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, the diner's pretty great. So you think you like baseball?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You want to go back to a game sometime?

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, we will. Is baseball your favorite sport?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Doesn't have to be. It's okay if you like it is. It is.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

It is. It is.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It won't make me sad if you like another sport better. What do you like about baseball? Why do you like it?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Because I like hitting the balls really far in my t ball sets. Like fuddy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This podcasting thing is easy. This is what I do for work. I just talk into this microphone about baseball and people listen for some reason. You think you could do this job?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Maybe.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Let's see. What else can I ask you?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

I don't know.

[Meg Rowley]

What do you mean?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

What else can you ask me? You just know what you ask me every day. You ask me something every day.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not for podcast with a microphone, though. Usually. Usually we just talk.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Are we making two of these podcasts?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I make three of these podcasts every week. That's a lot of talking, huh?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah. Does your voice get tired?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sometimes? Yeah. Well, that was a good conversation.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yep. Can I listen to it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You like listening to yourself. You're a born podcaster.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Tell me when I can put them in my ear.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay, so we answered a listener email not too long ago about putting your thumb on the scale to try to turn your kid into a baseball fan or your daughter specifically. I think the questioner was asking about and, and we were saying not to be too heavy handed about it and just lead by example and hopefully your enthusiasm will be contagious and they will pick up on it from you. And that's kind of the way that I've gone about it. But I, I think it's worked. I think it' I think that we may have made her into an incipient baseball fan. So that's exciting. And she made it through the whole game, as she said, and that was the big. Well, I don't know if it was a surprise or an upset, but it was a pleasant outcome that we actually made it through the entire thing because the first pitch was 7:15 Eastern and normally she's in bed at 8 or at least theoretically that's kind of the target. It varies around that. But, but she made it all the way to the end and only got sleepy in the later innings. And even then we offered her the option to leave and she declined. She wanted to stick it out and see the whole thing. So that was exciting.

[Meg Rowley]

That's pretty remarkable. I think in my experience, taking little kids to games, I mean you took, you engaged in a, in a high risk, although ultimately high reward proposition here because I think that when we took the girls to a game in Seattle, the girls being my nieces, we like went to a Mariners, Rockies game like nobody. It was very affordable venture for us. Not a lot of demand for those tickets because, you know, we just, you just don't know. You don't know if kids are going to be game for stuff for nine innings. This was, I will have to check my memory of this with my sister, but I think this was pre pitch clock. So who, you know, who knows how long you're looking at and you just have to accept, I think that you gotta leave when you gotta leave, you know, and that that might be like the fourth inning, you know, you just don't know because kids get hot, kids get sick from too much candy, they get bored, they get, yeah. Scared by the mascot. Like you just don't know how it's gonna wash over them. And we, we really lucked out that day because the girls had a great time and I think we, I think we ended up staying for all of the game. If not, you know, and if not, all of it, like eight innings, you know, so job well done by everyone. But, yeah, paying. Paying up to see the guy. You were joking, right, about why she likes Ohtani, though you. That was a little. That was a little dry humor from you, perhaps.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I may have extolled his virtues to her from time to time, but, yeah, it was 2 hours and 48 minutes, so it wasn't the speediest game, but it didn't drag too much, and it was a pretty good game. It was. I guess it would qualify as a pitcher's duel. It was 43 in the end, and Yamamoto was better than McLean. But the Mets scored a couple runs late, and it ended up being a one run game. And so people were into it, and it was a fairly full house because the Dodgers were visiting. There were a lot of Dodgers fans around, and it was a perfect night. It was 77 degrees at first pitch and not too humid or anything. And then it got cooler from there, and she was pretty into it, to my relief. And we were fully prepared to pull the rip cord and just get out of there whenever. And that never happened because we took her to her first movie recently, which was Moana, the live action Moana, which.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm so sorry.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know.

[Meg Rowley]

Well, you indulge me for a brief moment. I understand that what we're doing is trying to make money, and maybe, you know, this will be like a dog getting its nose whacked with the newspaper, and they'll finally understand. Moana, the animated film is beautiful. Like it. It's a great. You know, I think it's one of the modern classics from Disney. We don't. Did we. Also, wasn't there just an animated sequel?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Okay.

[Meg Rowley]

So anyway, this is like when you go on Instagram and you see pants you like, and you look at the pants, and then you decide, I don't know that I need these pants right away. And you've put the pants in the cart, but you've. You've thought better of the pants, or maybe you've thought better of your budget for frivolous stuff that month. And you're like, I don't need these pants. Pants so much. And then you immediately get an email. An email, mind you. An email that's like, hey, didn't you leave those pants in your car? And you're like, can you lie to me? Can you let me forget that I had a whole, like, budgetary calculus around the pants and have made a decision?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

You.

[Meg Rowley]

This is like, moments later in practically instantaneous. Like that. Anyway, it's like that, but with the

[Ben Lindbergh]

Rock, the market has spoken that. Yeah, it's roundly rejected. This particular live action. Some of them have done well, which is why they keep making them, although they all seem somewhat extraneous. But this one we went because basically we got free tickets and my sister in law, through her work got some tickets to the premiere. And so we went to this big fancy premiere and Lin Manuel was there and the Rock was there and they did a duet. Again, not the that that meant much to Sloan, but we went and we made it about half an hour into that movie before we had to leave because she was just burst out in tears. It was like the theater was loud and there was a storm and then the Rock had no nipples. And that wasn't actually what scared her. I don't think that scared me a little bit. Yeah, the Rock has no nipples in the movie. But because, you know, it's a Disney movie.

[Meg Rowley]

It's like a reverse Batman suit. They're not. I'm sorry, I'm gonna say a sentence that I already know I'm gonna regret. They're not sexual nipples.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

No.

[Meg Rowley]

Why is this a concern? You've made it. You've made it weirder by making it weird Disney. Like it could just be. They. They were just present nipples and now you've made them ambiguous nipples. Why are you making them any sort of. Why are you offering any modification to the nipples at all? That also sounds deranged as a sentence, but here we are.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He had a whole body suit, a big prosthetic thing, and they would not allow him to free the nipple or even a fake nipple with the bodysuit. Anyway, she was apprehensive about that. We've watched some movies at home, but she's never done it in a theater. We didn't know would she be okay with that. And it was pretty loud and ultimately she wanted to leave. And we weren't too broken up about not seeing.

[Meg Rowley]

You were like, oh, thank God.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. So. So I was entirely open to the possibility that the baseball game would go the same way and I would pay a fortune for these tickets and then we would quickly leave and I would just suck it up and say, better luck next time. And we waited till she was four, figuring maybe she might actually remember it or at least she might have the attention span to sit still and enjoy it. And it worked. It didn't blow up in our faces. She had a great time. We plied her with snacks, as she said, and so that helped. And, you know, we complain about the decibel level at ballparks, and I think a lot of that is for the youths, and that's the stated purpose. It's either for the use or for Aaron Judge. I mean, you know, it's for the players in some cases, but they're youths, relatively speaking. But I think there's a perception that kids just need to be blasted with stimuli constantly. There need to be noises, there need to be songs, there need to be flashing lights. And maybe those of us of the adult persuasion don't enjoy that so much. But, you know, I have to hand it to them. I think that helped with a four year old because they had some fancy flashing light shows where they turned out all the lights and then there were patterns of lights that ran around the various display boards and there were a couple fireworks in the middle and then, you know, constant songs. And she was kind of into that. We were worried it might be too loud. We brought her over the ear, earmuff style headphones, just in case we needed to mute it somewhat. But it wasn't too loud. And that was part of why we went to Citi Field instead of Yankee Stadium, because Ohtani was at Yankee Stadium a week earlier, and I thought, I won't subject her to that, to the long lines, to the inability to get in or out, to the constant bombardments of noise. So it all went well and we're very relieved. And there was nothing nearly as scary as the storm or the Rock's absence of nipples in live action. Moana. There was Jorge Polanco's ops. That was pretty frightening. But I think that that didn't really get Sloan too terrified. So I'm pleased to report that maybe we are in the process of making another baseball fan that we leave it up to her.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's her choice, ultimately, whether she wants to be, but if she is, I would not be upset about that. So I'm glad it all went well.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, I'm so glad that you guys had a nice time. That's very special.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So that's Sloane Lindbergh, four years old. I think this is technically not her podcast debut because I think she was briefly heard on an earlier episode maybe, or a live stream or something. But I think she has the distinction of being the first effectively wild guest to be seated on my lap during their podcast appearance.

[Meg Rowley]

Probably. So, yeah, I can't. I can't think of an exception. Although you would know better than I would, I suppose.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And, you know, she did mention at the end. I mean, while we were watching this, she asked why it was all boys playing baseball. She did wonder about that, and I was pleased to be able to tell her that there just so happens to be a women's professional baseball league launching this very week, which we will be discussing on the podcast. Later this week. We'll do a little season preview. So that was convenient for me to be able to assure her that women can play baseball. And in fact, many of them will be. And I'm sure we will watch some of that with her. Now, when you were becoming a fan, I'm sure that you've talked about this on the podcast or elsewhere, but I could not, or anyone you may have asked at the time could not provide the same answer to you necessarily, although there have been previous professional women's baseball leagues. But yes. Was this an impediment to you getting into the game in any way?

[Meg Rowley]

No, not really. I mean, I will admit that there

[Sloan Lindbergh]

were

[Meg Rowley]

other experiences of sport that were. I won't say that they were more emotionally resonant, but they were differently emotionally resonant than baseball. To explain to the youth of today the optimism of the early 90s, it just felt like the baseball was for the boys, at least at the professional level. And I, I'm. I'm just old enough that, like the, the little league softball, you know, distinction was a bit firmer when I was a kid. I didn't play. I didn't play little league. I didn't play youth softball in a way that I have regret about, unlike youth soccer, where I'll continue to dodge that outstanding warrant for the rest of my life. But I did enjoy the World Cup. Everyone moved, but I played. I played youth basketball. I played rec league basketball and played basketball up through middle school. Not. Well, to be clear, I was a. I was a fine little defender and a pretty good ball distributor, but just like, not able to generate anything like the kind of force you need to be able to. Well, certainly to drive against girls who are bigger than I was. My rec league coach called me Shrimpo. Like, that was my nickname on the team, because I was just. I was a little. A little wisp of the thing, not very tall. And then, you know, I didn't have a great outside shot. And so I was just kind of useless. And that's fine. You know, I did other things, like model Congress. But I say all of that because it was like, well, you know, we have like, this emerging professional women's basketball leagues, really. I mean, I'm sitting here in My office looking up at a Seattle Rain pennant from the abl. And then, you know, the W comes along and sadly, the ABL100 as a result of that. But it felt like the opportunities in women's pro sports were expanding. And I think part of why it didn't matter as much for me is that I was, like, not under any illusions that that was the lack of the league, wasn't what was holding me back from professional ambitions. You know, it was the fact that I tend to be bad at those things, or at least bad enough that I had to go pro in something else. But I. I like very much being able that you're able to offer Sloan a different answer. And like, I know, you know, my nieces are playing softball. They. The specifics of an RVC are a little bit different, but my sister took them to a UW softball game. The players did an autograph line after and signed. And, you know, some of those young women, like, look like my nieces. And that meant something to them. And so I do think that, that, you know, being able to see yourself reflected, part of representation is important. It's not, you know, a sufficient condition, certainly. And there's obviously a lot else that goes into who can access sport and what have you. But I do think it's an important one and having it not only present, but, you know, having women's professional sports increasingly taken seriously more generally. I think that that means something to people and it. It does deepen your appreciation for it. So.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, fact checking myself here. The Rock has claimed that Maui has nipples, but it's divided fandom because it's

[Meg Rowley]

tough to see it's divided the fandom.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It has. Because it could be that they are obscured by markings that make them. Because he has tattoos on the prosthetic chest. So it could be that they're just difficult to see. Maybe I could weigh in on this more authoritatively if I had seen the whole movie, as opposed to escorting a crying child out of the theater after half an hour or so. But.

[Meg Rowley]

But doesn't the. The animated character. I mean, the animated character, first of all, you're dealing with an abstraction of a person. He has.

[Ben Lindbergh]

He has a demigod, no less. So.

[Meg Rowley]

Right, there you go. He has what we are meant to understand, our pecs, though. So it's like, yeah, does he. Here I am. I'm like, zooming in on. I don't think that the animated version of him has nipples, but also on the. The animated version of Maui. His tattoos, like, move and stuff.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

There's a lot.

[Meg Rowley]

You know, they, like, do little dances when he's singing. You're welcome, and. And what have you. I have not seen the second one. I don't know if the. The nipple debate is. Is settled. Come. Moana. Is it just Moana, too? Yeah, they really don't. You guys. The first one of these. I mean, it's not a perfect movie, but it's just Moana, too.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's right. There is a whole history of male animated Disney characters. Well, obviously female ones too, but male ones not having nipples or not consistently having nipples.

[Meg Rowley]

They don't put nips on the ladies either, to be clear. They're not. Which is good, because Moana's, like, clearly a minor, and I don't know how old she's meant to be in the second one, but that would be very upsetting if she were.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sometimes with these characters, it's like, does Mario have nipples? That's, like, the longest thread in the history of forums.

[Meg Rowley]

You know, Italian men famously have nipples. And guess what? There's probably hair on there. Okay? Just get used to the reality of that chest. All right? That's not. There's. There's no mistaken that for a seal or a dolphin. It's not smooth. There's. That man has.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

A sweater on under his sweater, you

[Ben Lindbergh]

know, depending on the depiction.

[Meg Rowley]

Anyway, while I'm doing corrections, he's Italian, Ben. Okay.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

I don't.

[Meg Rowley]

I don't know what. Which of the Chris's. Is it Pratt? Is it Pratt? I don't know what that guy has going on. I don't remember if he is ever shirtless in any of the, like, Guardians movies or whatever. But I'm just. I'm just saying. I'm just saying that Mario, an Italian man, has hair on his chest. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes. Pratt is pretty. Pretty shorn in the original Guardians, at least, because he had to show off his gym work. You know, he had to display his gains.

[Meg Rowley]

But as if you can't tell that a man has pecs if he has hair. And it's just like, what are doing?

[Ben Lindbergh]

We got the definition.

[Meg Rowley]

I was a young. I talked about the optimism of the early 90s. I was a teenager in the early 2000s. Okay. Which was a. A body image war zone. A l. A minefield. That's what I want. Also a war zone. Okay? So I'm not saying that, like, it's all the same thing, but, like, why you. You don't all have to be shorn. You can. You can be unshorn. It's fine. Beyond, you know, that's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

While I'm doing corrections, let me relay one from Patreon supporter Austin, who says incredibly minor and perhaps pedantic. That's okay. Correction on your transition. This is on the preceding episode. From Dodgers White House discourse to talking about James Wood. I was surprised when I saw the Dodgers at the White House because they were not in town to play the Nats or the Orioles, for that matter. Looks like they were in Philly and decided to use their off day to visit before the Met Series. I thought I had checked that, but evidently not. So, no, they went out of their way to visit the White House, so perhaps that doesn't make it better. But to be accurate, so the only disappointments at this game, really, no Mets hit home runs, so the apple was not raised. And Also, Shohei went 0 for 5. It was probably a bit of performance anxiety, I would think, just with me in attendance, with Sloan out there, depending on, you know, the first game she's ever seen, obviously he would want to show up and hit a homer for her or something. And he was probably pressing, but it's okay. We forgive him. He has not played particularly well with me in attendance, which is. I have rarely witnessed his excellence in person. Unfortunately for me, that's. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, he was not moving very well because he's still dealing with this knee issue. And in fact, I think it was earlier that day they reported that there had been. I don't know if you'd call it a setback, exactly. I think Dave Roberts referred to it as a bummer, maybe that he had been expected to throw another bullpen session. And then they pushed that back indefinitely because the knee was still bothering him a bit. And Roberts still said that they expect him to pitch this season, which is sort of scary that that's even in question. But it does seem like a little bit of load management, as we discussed previously. But also, even when he was hitting, even when he was returning to the dugout after flying out, he was not moving very fluidly. He was moving a little gingerly. And I bring this up because Dave Roberts said that regardless of whether he pitches, he should or will be the National League mvp. But I think Peter Armstrong might have something to say about that. And. And we might have something to say about that because if the season ended today, which would be weird and tragic and surprising. Well, PCA has cleared Shohei by a fair margin here. I mean, this is getting to the point where you might say it's outside the margin of error. Even with something that's not perfectly precise like war. I mean, he has a, a full win on him at this point. At fan graphs as we speak going into Monday's games, Pete Grimstrong sitting pretty at an even 7.0 and Shohei languishing at 5.7. And baseball reference has the gap a little less than that, but still PCA number one and Shohei number two. Well, number three technically behind Christopher Sanchez, but Baseball Reference pitching more. What are you going to do? Anyway, Sanchez has been good. I mean, not as good lately, but good. So. But that's about a win difference there too. And if Ohtani is hobbled at all at the plate by this knee ailment, then you might expect that he won't be his usual excellent self as a hitter. And as we've covered, PCA seems to really have leveled up offensively and seems to have developed a new dimension to his game with the patience and the walks and everything. And so unless he suffers a late season swoon the way that he did last year, which is not out of the question, but if he keeps this up or maintains this margin, he's going to have an excellent case, is he not?

[Meg Rowley]

I think he has a couple things going for him. Well, he has a lot going for him, to be clear, but, but to bear with me for a second. So I think that in general, would you agree? And here I'm, I'm putting things to like you're back in court, bringing me back to court. But you know, guys who derive a lot of their value from their fielding, I think tend to do a little less well in end of year awards votes than guys who are, you know, probably good fielders but also dominant at the plate. Would you agree with that as a general?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I think, I think that's probably less true than it once was. Probably because people are looking at WAR and WAR would be accounting for that. Well, I mean, there was an era in MVP voting where it's like, ah, he's a great glove guy and he has a.280 on base percentage MVP. Right. I mean, you know, and that was based on reputation, everything. But yeah, more recently, yes, I would say, certainly offense has been prioritized and more fairly or, or even inflatedly valued so that even now, all else being equal or wars being equal, probably the big hitter is going to get the edge.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Rowley]

And I think that, you know, some of that, some amount of skepticism there probably still makes sense and it certainly made a lot more sense in earlier eras of WAR where, you know, we just should acknowledge the, the amount of error that might be present in single season defensive metrics. Right. So I think that there was a, often an appropriate amount of skepticism that those numbers were quite as well calibrated and quite as descriptive as what we saw on the offensive side. I think that as those metrics have improved over time and certainly as they've become aided by statcast, that some of that imprecision has fallen away, although it's still there. And we always give the appropriate caveats, what have you. But I think that there are a couple of things working in PCA's favor. First, you can't dispute what he's doing at the plate. Like as we are recording on Monday, you know, afternoon, he has a 155 WRC plus he has 23 home runs. You know, he's slugging over 540, his strikeout rate is manageable. He is famously walking now, right. And so he's putting forth a much more well rounded resume and he's literally the best guy at being a center fielder. And so I think that there is, you know, there, there was this window where we had made a shift at least for a significant amount of the, the voting body. And here we will remind people that like those end of year votes, it's only 30 members of the BBWA and it's on a rotating base basis and it's not the same electorate every time. So like, you know, we should be careful in drawing too broader conclusions about sort of the trend in voting.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But if you're in the New York chapter, you'll get selected to serve on multiple juries before you get an end of season award.

[Meg Rowley]

That's right. That's bananas. But I think there was this window where we had seen a significant amount of the electorate at least taking war WAR into consideration in its vote. And now, you know, end of season war leaderboards and ultimate and sort of the ultimate distribution of votes for year end stuff is like very closely correlated to each other. It's like real tight, there's very little daylight there. But there was this period where it's like, okay, we don't want to over index on the defensive piece of it. And now we're more comfortable with the defensive piece of it. And also you don't need like OAA to, to say PCA is the best guy. You just have to watch him do it. And you're like, oh, oh, this is a different sort of thing working here than even other guys who, you know, might be plus at their position or might be plus center fielders. It's like there's PCA and then there is, you know, a smallish gap, but a gap, a meaningful gap between him and Satan. And you know, I'm sure that that's going to fluctuate back and forth. I don't think there's like such a profound true talent difference between those two guys that we might not see those, our understandings of it flip around a couple of times, provided that they keep him in the outfield. More likely to do that now as the Red Sox are based on a trade that we'll talk about in a second. But, but you know, it's like those two guys and they're. I think that this year is a gap between them and then there's like the rest of the, the good glove, center fielder. So I think that he has a strong case and you know, we'll see how it, it all sort of shakes out in the end. How long Shohei's out. You know, what are, what are the propensities of even the war inclined voters, right? Are they fib based folk? Are they RA9 folks? Like we're just going to find out. But I also think at play in the NL field will be the same phenomenon we discussed on the AL side, which is, you know, particularly if you have a guy with a good case at this point, you know, if, if the season ended today, as you said, we'd all be very confused. And once we had gotten over that and decided to vote on end of year awards, like, I don't think anyone voting for PCA would be wrong and I don't know that they'd have to be particularly defensive about it, but I think people are kind of keen to have an opportunity to vote for somebody else. You know, I don't think that it's an irresponsible electorate in general. And I think that if at end of the year everyone looks around and it's obvious that like despite being limited on the mound and injury and what have you, that Ohtani is the best guy. Well, I'm sure people will vote for him, but I think that given an opportunity to cast a, a reasonable, responsible vote for somebody else, people are going to jump on that.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure Tai goes to Otani at this point because he has won so many times and if he had done something new and different as he seemed to be doing earlier in the year when he was pitching so spectacularly, then I think that would have been enough to overcome any Ohtani fatigue among voters. I know it Seems silly to suggest that one could get tired of Shohei Ohtani and perhaps one should not get tired of watching him play or appreciating his stats. But casting the same vote for the same guy year after year, even if it's generally different voters in each electorate. Nonetheless, I think people would be eager to give a statistically deserved award to someone else. It's not like they're going to reach to find someone else. But if PCA is right there and he is, or he ends up ahead as he is, then yeah, people might be interested in doing that. And at this point PCA has out hit Ohtani and yes, Ohtani has the better underlying numbers and quality of contact and and expected weighted on base and all of that. But the actual results, he has a better WRC plus PCA that is. And, and yes, he has a high babbit, but he's also out homered Otani impressively so. And look, even if Ohtani doesn't throw another inning in the regular season, having 85 plus innings of a sub 2er 3 war performance, well that's not nothing. Obviously that's not something that PCA can claim, but PCA does have the glove. That's just a different form of defense. Plus he has his wheels. He's second in the National League in stolen bases. He's top 10 in base running runs. That has not been an element of Ohtani's game this year because he was probably trying to pace himself doing the two way thing and now has the bum knee. So yeah, you put it all together and it's a pretty darn compelling case for pca. So it's really about can he keep it up all year because he certainly seemed to be neck and neck with Ohtani if not ahead through the first few months of last season. But then he kind of collapsed and Ohtani just kept on trucking. So if this is the new and improved PCA as he does appear to be, and he can more or less sustain this performance to the end and Ohtani is not able to return to the mound soon and keep pitching at that level then and yeah, I almost feel like it's PCA is a word

[Meg Rowley]

to lose well and I think that people also enjoy a compelling narrative in the vote and the story of he's finally able to put it all together and be a consistent offensive force and marry that with this already existing superlative defense. That's a compelling story. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I think we're, we're in Shape where we might have for the first time in a while. Like, not that it hasn't been compelling. Like, I think last year's AL MBP race was compelling until like the final month when it became, you know, the distance started to become starker and more clear between Judge and, and Cal. But, you know, we might have some real, some real shakeups there. And it would be very funny if this year we end up with a catcher mvp, which I'm not saying will happen, but like Dylan Dingler.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it could.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, we could. He's having one heck of a season. He and, and Jordan are basically the same and Bobby Wood Jr's not far behind. And then there's Cam Schlitler who's, you know, maybe. Maybe Cam Schlitter will do, do something wild. Maybe he'll. Maybe he'll win both. He won't win both. He almost certainly will not win both, but maybe you will win both. And then we get to hear all kinds of people try to say Cam Schlitler correctly.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Although would it, would it even be Schlitler or Cease? I guess Schlitler has more innings, but yeah, they're kind of neck and neck war wise. Right. I thought that this was Wit's year, but I know now he's on the injured list for the first time in his career and it's very much up in the air. It's. It's a three way race right now, at least among position players in the AL with Dingler and Wit and Jordan. So we'll have new blood there too because of the absence of Aaron Judge. So a bit of a shakeup potentially, and maybe that makes it more interesting to talk about, as I'm sure we will.

[Meg Rowley]

Again, part of me does want Cam Schlitler to win at least something, because I know that it's not always the commissioner that says it, but the minute, the minute that he mispronounced Rock Chalowski's name, I was like, cam Schliller definitely needs to win a freaking award this year, man. I just gotta. I just gotta see what Rob's got, you know? What do you got, Rob? What do you got?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes, I'd like to see him sweat at least while he just is careful not to say it that way. Okay, well, as you alluded to, we did have a trade consummated this weekend. So if the trade deadline was not already officially in swing, maybe not in full swing, but it is now in some sort of swing because two teams have swung a trade. The Red Sox have traded Connolly early to The Nationals for Curtis Mead. This is a pretty exciting trade. I like this.

[Meg Rowley]

This is a fun one challenge trade Curtis made. I like getting to do my voice.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know. One for one pitcher for position player.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Strength for strength, weakness for weakness. This is how trades are supposed to work, I suppose. And two players at somewhat similar stages at least age wise early, who is of course a left handed starter. He is 24 years old still. Curtis Mead is 25 and he's been around a bit longer. He's had, well, dare we call it a breakout? I think we could, I think it would qualify. It's a breakout in progress. We'll see how he finishes the season. The Red Sox hope that when the dust settles it will have been a breakout. But you know, he's been roughly a replacement level guy to this point and he's on track to be quite a valuable player and mostly due to the bat and that's what the Red Sox are acquiring him for. And the Nationals, well, well, they needed an arm. As we discussed last time. Actually I, I brought up, I entertained the hypothetical if the Nationals brain trust could go back and rewind their off season and undo some of the pitching trades they made then when they shipped out some pitchers, including one who went to Boston and has been doing fairly well. Right. So this is sort of, you know, Jake Bennett goes from the Nats to the Red Sox and he's been sort of a stalwart for the Red Sox rotation. So I wondered even if they were totally justified in making those trades and the Nationals have exceeded expectations and how could they have known that they would be in contention like this, whether if they could just flip a switch and say, actually, you know what, give us back Bennett, give us back Gore, give us back Ferrer or Soriano or whomever. And I wasn't sure that they would and they obviously got some good prospects for those guys and they are looking long term and everything. And also you don't want to buy too much into what could be a fluky flash in the pan or at least ahead of schedule. Maybe we're not ready yet and we don't want to go all in before we're really ready. But obviously they did want some pitching one way or another and they went and got some. They went and got Colin early, who is on the il. Of course he's been dealing with some elbow inflammation which doesn't seem to be anything more serious. But he is a pitcher, it is an elbow, so I suppose you never know. But he made quite an impression with his few starts down the stretch last year and started strong this year and then he ran into this inflammation issue. But on the whole he has been been a very effective pitcher in his young major league career and the Nets staff sure could use that. So, so you can understand why each team would want the guy that they got. Certainly the consensus, the reviews have leaned toward the Nationals getting the better of this deal. Do you agree with that interpretation?

[Meg Rowley]

I am going to offer very un annoying answer, which is that I don't think we can say that with any certainty yet. I don't think we can offer it. I understand the concern around me. I find it so interesting and I. I'm wondering. We'll never get, I think, a direct answer about this out of Breslow, but like, if Caleb Durbin doesn't turn around the last couple of weeks, do you think that they make this deal? Right. Because. Because there's an argument to be made that they've made a version of this deal very recently, which is buying what looked like kind of high on Caleb Durbin after He had the 2025 he did with Milwaukee and they sent off Kyle Harrison. And obviously Kyle Harrison's injury is sort of clouding some of that, but as is Durbin's recent turnaround because he's been much better since the start of June. But one could argue that perhaps they are selling kind of low on a guy who is quite good and entered the year as a global top 40 prospect for a guy who had prior prospect pedigree but really hadn't been able to actualize on it. And maybe you're catching the best couple months of his career. So that's interesting. But also, I don't think we have a good answer yet, or at least not a definitive answer on how much of a. Of this turnaround that we've seen from not just Mead, but a number of the other Nats young hitters is like the result of them having really figured something out organizationally. Right. And obviously there's familiarity between these front offices and you certainly would. And, and it's not like everyone who's working in D.C. now is a former Red suck. I think that, you know, there's obviously a lot of overlap between those groups, but they've hired well outside of that circle. Right. And brought a lot of new people. And there's so many new people. They almost definitionally can't all be former Boston folks.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Paul Taboni Paponi, as we have called him at times. I mean, he was overseeing drafts. Right. For the Red Sox. I Mean, early as one of his guys. Kind of.

[Meg Rowley]

Kind of. So like he has a lot of familiarity there. You might say that Breslow's group has familiarity with the acumen of some members of the NAS new staff and maybe that gives them greater confidence, I don't know. So I think that as we probably always should be with these sorts of trades, we should grade it as an incomplete because we don't know. The way that Bauman put it at the end of his write up of it, I thought was really astute, which is that these kinds of challenge trades are as much about the work of the organization as a whole as they are, you know, anything else. Like stars for prospect deals are won and lost by scouts and challenge trades like this one, I'm quoting Bauman here, are won and lost by the entire organization. So some of this is going to come down to Early's health. Long term. It's going to come down to how well the Gnats are able to help him, him continue to actualize and refine his repertoire. He is this massive, expansive repertoire. Maybe it makes sense for him to pare some of that down. Maybe it makes sense to make alterations to some of his pitches. Like, you know, we don't know yet. And Mead's ability to sustain his gains, to make the next adjustment is going to dictate a lot of how we think about this for Boston. Now Boston's situation has been made urgent in a way that like two months ago really didn't feel like it was because they were in such bad shape. And now it's like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. You have a, you have a huge need on the infield. You have guys who might come back at some point, but they're injured. You don't know what they're going to look like when they're back. And even if they do come back, like, you still, you still need guys. You know, you need some guys. So see what you have in Mead, I'll say this, and Bauman wrote about this. Other people have written about some of the adjustments that Mead has made to his setup. The way that he is standing in the box, his mechanics, what have you. I saw me live in person when the Gnats came through a couple weeks ago, and the guy just looks like a, like he's pulled it together, right? Like his body looks great. The way he was moving in the field was, was definitely better. He's not like a shortstop, like he's a third baseman. And, and, you know, we'll see how they end up sort of figuring out the Durban and, and, and meat of it all. I think that Breslow said they're going to play meat at second and keep Durbin at third because Durban's quite good at the hot corner. We'll just see how that all shakes out. But, you know, I think there's an urgency to the Red Sox situation that he has to be better than some of their alternatives right now, but we just have to wait. Queen C. That's not satisfying, but we should do it anyway. And in the meantime, you can, you can satisfy yourself by saying carat is made in an Australian accent. I was going through the. The photo database to find a picture of him, and there was a photo. When the Nationals play, I think it was the. It had to have been the Nationals playing Cleveland, and it was Curtis Mead and Travis Bazana. Get all those together. It's not a good accent, but I can do like this. I can do. I can do the names. I can't, like. I couldn't, like, converse convincingly. As a person born and raised in Australia, I wouldn't try. It would be insulting to them. You know, they have their own voice.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And it's pretty impressive that they have, at the very least, that the Nationals turned Curtis Mead into someone they could trade for Connolly early and, and credit to Mead, too. Obviously, he's the one who's doing it and putting the work in, but nonetheless, the Nationals acquire a guy and. And he was with the Rays, right. So it wasn't like, oh, he was with some backward organization and they plucked him off the scrap heap or something like he had chances elsewhere and they picked him up. And I think Blake Butera, Nationals manager, was somewhat familiar with Mead because he had maybe coached him in the raise organization, but they get him from the White Sox directly and actually they traded with the White Sox. They traded Boston Smith to the White. It went to the wrong socks, though. He should have gone to Boston. It just would have been, yeah, but Boston Smith, who's a catcher and outfielder in Double A, and he's raking there. He's 23. Maybe he'll turn into something. He's hit quite well this year, so maybe it'll turn out that they didn't get me for nothing. But nonetheless, to pick him up and, and get him that late, I mean, it was March 28th. It was. That's after opening day, right now, opening day is so early. So to pick him up and then flip him a few months later for Connelly early, you. You never would have expected in late March that Curtis me would be traded for Connolly early, straight up, just four months later. Right, that's, that's quite a nifty bit of business for the Nationals and obviously it'll be even niftier if it turns out that Mead isn't actually this good and they just traded him at his peak and, and picked up a guy who's under team control for five more years, even longer than Mead is. It's not like either a rental or anything, but you get even more early. Although with a pitcher. Yeah, I mean with a pitcher you never know how much you're actually going to get.

[Meg Rowley]

But was, I was, I was laughing at the, I was laughing at the name, you know. Yes, because it's funny because his last name is early, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is.

[Meg Rowley]

That's why it's funny.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Mildly.

[Meg Rowley]

Maybe getting, getting late. Early. Getting, getting an early start to the deadline.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Hey, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess we could say that, you know, it's only a week early, but it was still the earliest move of significance to be made really.

[Meg Rowley]

That's right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

David Peterson or Whoever else.

[Meg Rowley]

Lance McCullers Jr. Yes, Lance McCullough Juniors has already been DFA'd by the Brewers.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Oh, man. Yeah. So Mead, maybe not the most gifted glove guy, but if he doesn't have the best range and doesn't have the best arm, I guess at second, only one of those things will be a problem, really. And he supplies some pop, or at least if he keeps hitting like this. Only Wilson Contreras has hit more home runs on the Red Sox than Curtis Mead has this year. I mean, it's Willier Bray who was second on the Sox with 15 diggers and Mead has 17. So he does seem to have made some real changes and improved the plate discipline and the swing rate and the chases and he's walking, he's not striking out very much. So it's encouraging, I think. And even if he's not a extremely gifted all around player, he should help and he does help with infield weaknesses and power deficiencies and everything else. And obviously early will shore up the top of that rotation. It's still, it's not a great rotation even with a healthy and effective Conley early, but it's a lot better with him than without him.

[Meg Rowley]

It's just, I, I, I don't see much in the way of downside here for, for the Nationals because let's, let's entertain the worst, the worst case scenario, the worst case scenario for them this year is that Early Suffers a setback, is not able to return to the rotation, and they miss the playoffs. Well, okay, they were going to, they were probably going to miss the postseason anyway, and they have early for such a long stretch of team control, to your point, that they just, they get a lot of bites at the apple, both to help him improve, not that he isn't good already, but to, you know, kind of help him refine his game and also to be, you know, insulated somewhat from the potential of him missing time with injury. The upside scenario is that he comes back and is effective. They maybe add another arm at the deadline and they make a surprise wild card run. And sure, maybe you missed Curtis Me there, but they have a, they have a surplus of infielders, as you noted, and they are getting good production out of other guys. So I really, I really like it for Washington. I don't dislike it for the Red Sox. I think that, you know, we've given Breslow a hard time at points this year, and I think he's deserved it. But I think being nimble in the face of a club that is finally playing the way we expected and is in position to take advantage of a weak American League and to do so in a way that, you know, is dealing from a position of depth. And sure, you can never have too much pitching, what have you. But like, I think this was a nice bit of work from both sides. I think the opportunity cost is higher for the Red Sox, but, you know, when you're in a spot where you can, you can make the postseason this year if you continue to play well and you can sort of write the ship on the infield, I think that that's worth it. So I liked it for, for both sides. I don't know if it will ultimately work out the way that either is expecting, but I think that the logic behind it is sound now. I think it pretzel a little bit of the business here. I, I do think that you do want to be confident in your eval. Connelly really is good and you've done two of these now you know where you've, where you potentially bought high on a guy who hasn't been good for all that long. Now, the guy who you had more information about performing well over the course of a season, Caleb Durbin, well, he was, he was very bad. So, you know, like, who knows? Maybe it's, it's a bad comp in some ways because Kurt Smith's track record is even shorter. But, you know, I think just like, be careful about this and there I think it speaks to sort of a bigger evaluation equation that they have to balance riddle that they have to solve puzzle that they have to piece together. Pick your, you know, your, your metaphor here, which is part of what fueled their, their rise, was sort of surprising performance from young guys, and now you have to figure out which of them is actually good. So. And that, that extends to Caleb Durbin and it probably still extends to Curtis Mead. So the self evaluation piece of it is not complete from their perspective. But, you know, isn't that our ongoing project in life? Right. To understand ourselves and our capacities and the capacities of others?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And the socks still have a lot of pitching and partly credit to Breslow because Sonny Gray has been great guy he acquired this past off season. Suarez has been as advertised. He's back from the injured list now. And you still have some youth too, in Peyton Tolle and Jake Bennett and, well, even Garrett Crochet, if they could get him back. He's 27 and signed Long term. And then Bayo's back up. Patrick Sandoval has been pretty effective in his return and his first few starts back. So you can never have enough pitching, as some people may have heard me say. But the Red Sox might have enough for now at least. And I thought that it was actually a sign of some growth for Breslo. He was talking about how this was a tough move to make, but he said a lot of front offices are looking at very similar information. So trying to find an opportunity to win a trade is not nearly as easy as it maybe would have been at another point. Instead, in this position, I've tried to shift our goal not being to win the trade. Our goal is to make our major league team better. Sometimes the most straightforward way to do that is a need for need type trade.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So I think he's on to something there. And he did describe it as, I think, incredibly uncomfortable to make or, you know, it was agonizing for him to do this. Obviously, it's always hard to trade someone like Conley early, but that is the right mindset to have, I think, is don't look at it as you want to win the individual move on a dollar per war basis or add up the wars or whatever. That's important, that's a factor. But you have to take into account where you are and where you are in the wind curve and what the expectations were and what your holes are and your strengths and your weaknesses and everything. And so it's, it's like the old Andrew Friedman quote, About how. Well, the winner's curse, basically. Right. If. If you're always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sort of the same thing applies to trades, too.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. And I. I think that we can get a little. We can get a little in overly enchanted with. With the guys being clever, you know, with the dudes being. Being savant. Like, like, oh, look at that. Look at that. I mean, sometimes, like you said, you just need. That's what we need. We need that guy. And we have a bunch of these. He's this type of guy. So we're gonna pick the one that will get us that guy who we can bear to part with. You know, it doesn't always have to be more complicated than that. It's like that meme where he's like, look what I can do. And then he does a bunch of stuff that doesn't.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Meg Rowley]

You know the meme. You know that meme. You know how I'm describing that meme really?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I'm pretty sure I know which meme you're referring to. That's the tweets. Right. So that it wasn't clear what you're trying to do about.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Okay.

[Meg Rowley]

I think. I don't know, there's. There's probably a meme about it. I bet there's a meme, you know,

[Ben Lindbergh]

not clear what move I was trying to do.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, that one. Yeah. Yeah, that one. Not clear what move I'm.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I reach.

[Meg Rowley]

Okay, thank you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I don't know if anyone else does, but I'll link to it. Thank you once for some additional research. Yeah. So anyway, the Gnats have had such a powerhouse offense that maybe they won't miss me because. Because they have C.J. abrams, who's just a one man wrecking crew. He was supposedly being involved in trade talks or coveted at least, but he's just. He's never making it out these days. He's player of the week. He's not going anywhere. Presumably if he keeps sitting like this. And the Nets are making a real run in it. Of course, they could always end up with one of those deadlines where they add here and subtract there and they get blown away by some offer. And they're looking short term and long term and trying to balance those things. But as it stands, they have a whole lot of offense, the way Abrams has been hitting. And of course, James Wood is a one man lineup himself and is the size of multiple men. And we talked about him and his unorthodox excellence. Last time I did want to ask you about another Wood. A good wood. Wood gets good wood. But this Wood is a pitcher. Carrie Wood we probably haven't talked about for some time, but he went semi viral this weekend because he suited up for the Savannah Bananas. So he was wearing yellow. Kerry Wood is 49 years old, but this was pretty impressive. I don't know if you saw this trick pitch. I just sent it to you. I will link to it on the show page for anyone who missed this. Kerry Wood delivered a disguised, camouflaged behind the back ethos. That's what it was called in the tweet from Codify. I think it kind of qualifies. People differ on what qualifies as an EFIs. But he did this move where. I mean, it's not clear what move he was trying to do. Right. I guess it wasn't clear to the hitter. Not that this is all on the level. It's a Savannah Bananas game, but just saying, if this were for real, like, what he does is he goes into his motion and meanwhile he hides that he has thrown the ball behind his back. Spot on. Like, he hit the glove, he hit the target. It appears to be a strike and was called as such. And meanwhile, he's going through his full delivery. I mean, not max effort. The man's 49 years old, but it was a pretty nifty little delivery, you know, where he's just doing this, like, little behind the back, underhand kind of lob with excellent accuracy while just having you, you know, pay no attention to. To that pitch because it's some sort of prestige situation. This is. This is pretty impressive. No, You're constitutionally opposed to praising Savannah Bananas. I'm just.

[Meg Rowley]

I'm trying to. I'm trying to channel the spirit of John Croc. I'm trying to channel Croc because I landed on one of the things that I love the most about John Crook in the booth, which is that he is a grump without being either a dick or a crank. Yep. And that's beautiful.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

And challenging. And so I'm so glad that so many people were delighted by this. It is nifty.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

The. The batter knows this is coming, though, Right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Presumably. Yeah, But.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But I could imagine if they didn't, that this would still fool you once at least.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right. So just fool you twice. Shame on you. Maybe. But.

[Meg Rowley]

But so then just. Okay.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also, you do it like he should, and you should try out for. For the Cubs again or something. They need pitching.

[Meg Rowley]

He should do it in this game without the hitter knowing it's coming. I imagine the hitter knew that this was coming.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Probably.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. But I. But I don't know for sure. And maybe it would have been the same result either way.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Maybe.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's pretty impressive to me that he landed this.

[Meg Rowley]

I think that part is cool.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The accuracy of it. That's. That's pinpoint command on a behind the back looking strike. I couldn't do that. That's pretty impressive.

[Meg Rowley]

I. I couldn't do that either. I couldn't do that either. It is funny. There are. There are a number of people sitting in the seats behind home who like know what they just saw and are

[Ben Lindbergh]

suitably impressed and a lot of others who just completely tuned out and weren't watching at all. Or there does appear to be a little kid who's standing up with his jaw dropped or maybe he's just yelling or something in a yellow shirt I guess unsurprisingly. But. But he's just like open mouthed wonder maybe.

[Meg Rowley]

But yeah, there are a couple of open mouths. There are a couple of. Of gape mouths. A gape.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep.

[Meg Rowley]

Is this other team sponsored by Hot Ones? What's going on with these jerseys? They should do that and then they could do one of their planned stunts. Could be debom beyond insanity. Except that would require hitters on the circuit to be able to hit home run. Wait, I didn't. I didn't live up to the spirit of Croc with that bit of snark. I failed at my own challenge.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Supposed to be a. A friendly curmudgeon.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. This is just not super for me. This is the coolest version of the thing that's not for me that I've seen though.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If a real pitcher did this in a real game, this would have be effective. Right. I think even if the.

[Meg Rowley]

The first time.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, the first time. I wonder how many times because there, there is a. An unfamiliarity effect. That's a big part of why lefties are more effective than righties. All else being equal. And. And you see a lot of lefties, just a lot fewer than you see righties. And so I wonder how quickly this would wear off because I. I don't think you could because with a change up, for instance, the idea is that you're supposed to make it look indistinguishable from a fastball or a faster pitch and your armor speed is supposed to be the same and they're not supposed to be able to pick up on it. This obviously isn't a Max effort, full speed delivery. Exactly. It might be for 49 year old Carrie Woods, I don't know exactly. But if you telegraphed it like you're doing max effort and then you kind of do it a little lackadaisical as, as Wood did here, relative to an actual pitch thrown in anger in the big leagues, then you could maybe pick up on it. And because it's a slow pitch, you'd have time to adjust on the way to the plate, potentially. So I don't know. I think if a real pitcher just had this in his arsenal and he'd really have to be able to land it consistently because if not, if you did this in a real high stakes situation and you couldn't land it, then you would be pilloried by fans, by coaches, by managers, etc. So you'd have to be sure you could do it. But if you could do it reliably, which, look, there are a lot of guys who have that knuckleball in their back pocket and oh, one day maybe I'll break it out in games and I throw it in when I'm doing my throwing session or on the sidelines or something and I'm toying around with it one of these days and rarely do they actually do it because there are just so many incentives not to. And if it goes wrong, it backfires horribly because it looks like you weren't really trying. You don't want to get beaten on. Not your best pitch, not even a real legitimate pitch, but.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If someone practiced and trained and could just work one of these into a regular major league arsenal, that would be highly effective. Right. You'd never see it coming. The element of surprise I think would be pretty potent.

[Meg Rowley]

I think that that's right. I mean, it would come to be understood as part of your mix. You'd have to think of, you'd have to approach it and deploy it like 2025. Josh Naylor, stealing a base. Right. You can't do it every time, but it would be a fun and interesting offering to have in your bag. I can't believe you set me up to be a jerk.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sorry.

[Meg Rowley]

It's fine. It's good for me to remind our listeners that I'm not always nice because sometimes we don't tell them that. And then they send overly familiar emails and then I have to decide how much of an asshole to be over email. And then they're like, oh, you're so mean.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I'm like, well, you know what's interesting? Josh Naylor has pretty Much kept up his stolen base pace. So if you thought it was just

[Meg Rowley]

on base a lot less often.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Which I guess makes it even more impressive because he had 30 swipes last year in 147 games. And this year he has 21 in 99 games. And as you noted, his on bases like 30, 30 points lower. Yeah, so. So that's kind of nice because I was wondering, would this just be a one season only thing? And then word would get around and he would be content and say, hey, I swiped 30 bags. Now I can say I did that forever. And everyone will be vigilant from now on. Juan Soto, for instance, has gone down from 38 last year to seven now. He has had various calf strains for much of the season, so that's probably a big part of it. But yeah, for Naylor at least that aspect of his performance has been perhaps somewhat surprisingly sustainable. So that's fun.

[Meg Rowley]

I think that it's really nice that you found a nice thing to say about Josh Naylor's 2026 season. I think that's so generous of you. I haven't had as many kind things to say. I'm not at 2024 Jorge Polanco levels. I mean, it's not an emergency. Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also remember, what did you think of Croc's outfit in the booth on Sunday night? Baseball. Because when we had Benetti on, we did bring up Crux upcoming appearance. Right. And. And why are people subjecting Croc to a suit? And why are you constraining him?

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Let, Let Cruck be free. But they won't. They refuse.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. Look at how they massacred our boy. I'm so glad that you asked, Ben, because candidly, there just wasn't a lot of baseball news for us to talk about. So we're going to talk about Harry Chess and John Crook's ties. I don't understand what we're doing to this man. I guess in some ways what we're doing is setting him up for the inevitable funny screenshot of him looking perturbed at the opening of the broadcast. But if you turn on like a NFL Sunday pregame show, doesn't matter what network you're on. And this is true for a lot of the NBA shows too. So, you know, just to pick two other sports that take themselves seriously, you will see men in sneakers. And they're like fancy sneakers or designer sneakers. I'm sure they're very expensive, but they're sneakers and they have like rubber soles. Some of them aren't wearing socks. A Lot of them aren't wearing socks. Many of them are not wearing socks to the point that they are like bare ass in their ankles on tv.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I never understand that. Yeah. There's sometimes a stealthy ankle sock.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

Sure.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Lurking in there, but I. I never understand. Yeah. The. The dress shoes and no socks or even the appearance of no socks. Just, like, showing a lot of ankle.

[Meg Rowley]

Ankles. Your ankles just like. Like. Like you are a Victorian lady of the evening trying to titillate the mask. Okay. It is weird for something so modest to be so unbecoming, but it is unbecoming. I. It just. It. You're a grown man. You pay taxes, you know, like.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And socks serve a purpose, not a purely aesthetic purpose. Right.

[Meg Rowley]

They keep your shoes from getting stinky, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Yeah. There could be friction. There could be smells.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah. You might get a blissy. You don't want a little. You don't want a little. You know, and then it's going to rub and it's going to. It's going to bleed on some of your other shoes, and then you're going to be like, g. So we. We allow that, right? We allow all manner of interesting suits. And some of the suits the me. The. The men can pull off, and some of them make them look like dark wing duck. I mean, I just, like. I don't know how else to describe some of these suits. Some of these suits are. Are bananas and not the savannahs kind. Right. Because some of them look good. I did it again. It's just not for me. It's just not for me. And I'm constantly asked to have an opinion about it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And I know people enjoy things. Meg.

[Meg Rowley]

I. I am so. Everyone, stop asking me what I think. Because if you ask me, I assume you want an honest answer. And what I think.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Rowley]

Is that it's not for me. That's the polite way of. Of saying it. But so anyway, I just. I get that you want, you know, Sunday night baseball, and we recorded our latest Patreon episode over the weekend, and you were talking about how you have been, like, you know, you've been putting on a button down, like, a collared shirt when you're going into court because you're. You're deciding something weighty. And so you should have respect for the proceedings and for the defendant whose fate you're deciding. And, like, you want to treat the whole thing with the appropriate gravity. And so I. I get that. You know, and. And I don't think we have to be so fussy about Sunday night baseball. It's not as important as a person's freedom. I can't say for what crime because you are being so good and not telling me. But, but you know, like you want to treat it with some gravity and, and, and, and yet, and yet we got all these bare ankles. Is it just because it's Sunday morning that we're comfortable with it? These bare ankles on the Lord day? Ridiculous. And then later in the broadcast, this was what really, really put me over the edge. Although by insisting upon him wearing a suit, we were, we were treated to the saga of John Crux ties. And so maybe that makes the whole thing worth it because John Kruk was gifted by a friend a number of clip on ties. He was not wearing a full tie. He was wearing a clip on tie. I don't know if he had a clip on tie on. In the, in the first, in like the, you know, the opening spiel that they give where it's Benetti and Joe Girardi and, and crack. GiorGiorati called him Mr. Seinbrenner. And I'm like, what do I expect? But also, come on. So, you know, they do the, they do the opening. Hello, welcome to Sunday Night baseball. That's not what Beneddy sounds like at all. But. And then that you cut to them in the booth for the first time and Benetti and Joe Girardi have both taken their jackets off but still have their ties on. Crook has taken his jacket off and has no tie. And I was like, that's fine. He's wearing a button down. He hasn't changed into like, you know, a T shirt with the fanatic as some mythical beast. Or like Brandon Marsh potentially also has a mythical beast, you know, some sort of cryptid. He's still wearing a button down. You, you, you know him to be like he has transitioned to the church basement part of Sunday. Right. You don't have to be quite so fancy as you are in chapel, but you still want to look presentable. Right? He has this array of ties and it was, it changed. He finally figured out he was having a real hard time with the first clip on tie. Or maybe it was the second clip on tie and the first one was the one he was wearing on the, the or on the pregame standup. Unclear to me. I don't know if he had like a first. His first tie was a real tie because maybe like the wardrobe person assisted him with tying that tie, but then he took it off and then he couldn't figure out this clip on. It was giving him real trouble. They got to make a funny Randy Johnson joke. And then he finally figured it out, and he had the red clip on, tie on. And then, you know, the game. First the. The Phillies scored some runs, and then Sanchez got in a bit of trouble. Anyway, they come back to the booth at a certain, certain point, and I can't tell you if this was truly the second tie or if it was merely the second tie. I noticed. But they cut to him in the booth. He is wearing a different tie. He has a different tie. And I was just like, how many of these are we gonna see, by the way? They were not the best ties, but they were like clip ons from Amazon. So what am I expecting? And then. And then Ben and I'm like, oh, the yuck, yuck. The. The fun of the ties. Maybe this was all worth it. And then they cut to Costas doing a stand up on the concourse somewhere in the outfield. He looked like. He was like, you know, in left field somewhere. And Bob Costas, who looks great, by the way, I don't know if he's a little, like, nip and tuck. Done. Bob, you're looking. You're looking great, Bob, you know, and if that's. If that was your path to it, God bless you. Bob Costas is standing in the outfield. He is wearing a suit with a. With a nice sweater, like a. Like a light sweater, a summer weight sweater, probably a very. A very light knit sweater. And I was like, so hold on. Why don't they let. Why don't they let crook. They should let Crocker do that. You know, like, suit jacket, fine, but don't make the man wear a tie.

[Sloan Lindbergh]

If.

[Meg Rowley]

If this is one of our options, is this only reserved for. For Costas? Is this only reserved for those in the field? What. What are. What is that all about? Let, let, let crook cook a little bit, you know?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, we should interview whomever does crux wardrobe. Just who are you wearing, John, if it's some sort of designer and is there a negotiation that goes on there?

[Meg Rowley]

I think there is a negotiation, and I appreciate, you know, they make them wear the full suit with the jacket and the tie in. The first thing, they should let them really dress down a little bit further. Like they should be able to take the tie off because I know that they're in the booth, but it's open air, and even with the air pumping, I'm sure it was very warm in there, you know, and you got the lights on you. And I just. I. I feel like we are, you know, we're putting an animal under, in distress, you know, Like, I don't mean that in. That sounds like I'm, I'm, I'm being dismissive of cruk, but it feels like if you're hot, they're hot, bring them inside, you know, like it's got that happy place.

[Ben Lindbergh]

This is not his natural habitat. Yeah. It's like you want, you know, you have an aquarium at home. You want to spruce it up. You want to have some, some nice fronds. You want to have some. It's got to be good, good quality water and filtration and food and maybe some hidey holes and, and rocks to swim around behind.

[Meg Rowley]

Hidey holes, you know, we want croc

[Ben Lindbergh]

to thrive when he is performing for all of us. He is on display and national broadcast and we just want him to shine and we want him to let it all hang out both verbally and physically. Or at least some of it could hang out a little bit more of it could hang out than was hanging out. So I felt for him.

[Meg Rowley]

He is so dear and as I said, manages to thread this needle with. Between being a grump. But not, not mean spirited.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Not.

[Meg Rowley]

He's not raining on your parade. He's not trying to bring you down. He, you know, it's a, it's a very particular note to be able to hit. And he does it so reliably and, and I think that, like, he and Benetti have a really nice remote rapport in, in that booth. It was very funny to watch Joey Votto just trying so hard to say insightful stuff. And he did because he's a smart guy and he has a lot of good stuff to say about the game, but he's like, he was in like serious analyst mode and he was really trying to be so serious. And they're like, hey, you see this Bryce Harper toothpaste thing? They gotta ask crack about the blood next time, you know, because. Yeah, I'm still wondering if he has all of it, you know, or as, or maybe as much as he should. Is all of it the right way to even think about that?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Anyway, Croc keeps it loose, so you, you don't want him to be too buttoned up in terms of his dressing because that's not the way that he is when he speaks. And, and he speaks off the cuff. So you don't want his cuffs to be too tight.

[Meg Rowley]

Exactly.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Just let him be himself.

[Meg Rowley]

Let everything flow a little bit, little bit better. You think Costas is dying the hair?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. There's some suspicious gradient going on there with the temples and the. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to presume. I just. I have looked askance at it from time to time.

[Meg Rowley]

I think that everyone aging, it does a number on all of us and our understandings of ourselves change. And, you know, when you look in the mirror, if it looks real different than what you're used to, I. That can be unsettling and disorienting. So if you want to. If anyone wants to dye their hair, whether they're old or not, you do what feels good to you as a person. Allow me to offer, though, gentlemen, I think the gray hair looks really distinguished. I think when men let their hair go gray, it looks. You all look like. Yeah, you look. You look your age, and that's good. You look like you've had experiences in your life. I think it's a very handsome look for many men.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And not everyone's hair grays at the same rate or at all. But it does reach a point where it becomes kind of implausible. And then that just draws attention to it because you look like you're trying to preserve your youth, perhaps. And it's a little uncanny right now.

[Meg Rowley]

I'll say this. My great grandmother had dark hair until the day she died. And she never dyed it. She had like five hairs total. But they were all very. They were all a natural brunette. Whereas I feel like every day I find a new gray. And they're. They're even curlier than my already curly hair. And I just am very excited to be mad. Madam Mim. You know, it's coming for me, and it feels right. You know, it's like I'm. I'm into puzzles now. I've got this hair. Here we go. You know, the change, it changes the gray hair in the puzzles. That's what that means, you know, all of you men married to millennial women who are like, what. When they're talking about the change, what do they mean? That's what we mean. We mean puzzles. I got a crick in my. I got a crick in my neck from doing a puzzle. I have puzzle neck. I have a puzzle related injury.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So you don't get a crack in your neck.

[Meg Rowley]

That would be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, that would be bad. You can't keep a good croc down. However he's dressed, he's still. He can only be himself. Right? So that's the good news. Last thing I want to say, we do have a trade deadline coming up in a week as we record this less than a week even, and we've talked plenty about that. We will continue to talk about it. Frankly, we all talk about it too much. I mean, we give it outsize importance when it comes to how much it actually dictates the outcome of the season. And very rarely does it actually change the course of a season or prove determinative or even alter the course of a franchise in any sort of predictable, measurable way. However, I get why we care because it is a source of some intrigue. And I just think, was it it was that Dan Sborski piece where he wrote early in the season about how if you just get off to a slow start, like you just have a bad week or something, it's like you've already sunk your playoff odds more than you can raise them with a deadline move. And so we kind of underrate just how much teams fortunes can change just day to day, week to week, and we hyper fixate on the trade deadline. But I understand why, because it's a flurry of transactions and that's always fun to speculate about and track. And sometimes it actually can be exciting. And obviously it would be exciting if Tarik Skubal does get dealt. This is compelling to me, not just because he's the best player who is theoretically available at the deadline, but also because it would really buck some recent trends. I think if the Tigers do deal him because he is on an expiring contract, he is an impending free agent, he is a rental. And you just don't get much for those guys anymore. And we've talked about that. Joshean just wrote about it. Again, just looking back at the history of players who have a couple months on their contracts, they just, they don't get traded for much anymore. They used to, but you just don't get top prospects for those guys anymore. And J.J. cooper just did a thing at Baseball America where he was looking at the hit rate or failure rate for prospects traded at the deadline and the failure rate is high, the hit rate rate is low. I don't know if it's necessarily different from the overall hit or failure rate for prospects, but the point is most of them don't pan out, even the ones who are the headliners, the centerpieces of the trade. So JJ was trying to argue that, yeah, just don't be a prospect hugger. Deal your your young guys to go get the established guy. And then Joe was kind of pointing out that, well, teams don't really deal top prospects for rentals anymore. And others like Neil Payne have pointed out that you can make the big move and it probably will not actually lead to that big a move for your team. So considering all that, I just wonder we talked about the odds that Scuba would actually get dealt last week. Well, we talked last week about the odds that he would get dealt. We didn't talk about the odds that he would get dealt last week. That didn't happen. We know that already. But the Tigers just split a four game series with the Royals and they lost on Saturday and Sunday. One run games each one. And that's rough. They are still in it and they do still have pretty impressive underlying numbers. And so it's a question of can they pry loose a real blue chipper for Tarekskopal? Is that deal even out there on the market? Even for a guy as good as he is, Will a team pay up for maybe, I don't know, nine starts? Eight or nine starts or something plus a playoff run? You hope it's just and will he have any misgivings about how he's used or hesitation about how he's used in October with the big payday waiting for him in free agency over the off season? How do you use him responsibly? So I just wonder will they ultimately decide, look, we just can't make a franchise altering trade for a rental. Even a guy who's coming off back to back Cy Youngs teams just know that that is typically not going to push you over the top and it's just not going to be enough. And so if they can't get that guy who's really going to be a big part of their foundation and maybe is going to be close to big league ready and you can just slot him in and you won't miss much this season and he'll help you for several years going forward. I just if they can't get that guy, if they can't get the like toward the top of the top 100 type prospect, will they just hang on to him and say eh, we have a one in three shots, maybe a one in three shots of our making the playoffs and having Tarik Skuba ourselves. A couple years after we saw how we turned things around after we dealt at the deadline, it's basically like like the immovable force. You know, it's like it's kind of that thing where it's like the unstoppable object, the immovable force. It's like teams unwillingness to to trade top prospects for rentals and then but look at how guy, look at how good this guy is. He's the unstoppable object. He's Derek Skubel. What do you think? What's your reads on. On whether they can get that kind of guy even for

[Meg Rowley]

laughing at unstoppable object. Now I'm imagining Tarek School dressed as the juggernaut running through like the wall of the clubhouse being like, I'm the juggernaut, bitch. I am such a particular age, you know, like I'm just right in a super specific sweet spot. I think that look, from the perspective of having to manage your communications to your fan base, I think that the, the Tigers front office is sort of set up in a pretty ideal spot because I think keeping him is pretty defensible given where both that division and the American League are. And I think you're right that the odds that they get like a really blockbuster return are low. Now we have seen there, there are some times when a guy who's a true rental still yields an impressive return, but they just get smarter and smarter every year. Front offices. And I don't think Preller's trading for Scubal. So that takes one high better off the books. He has been the high man like many of the last couple of times. But you know, in his defense at least like there were a million years of team control left on me. Mason Miller's deal. So it's a little different.

[Ben Lindbergh]

But not a rental.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah, not a rental. So. But I think that you can say to your fan base, hey, we think that this is a, a winnable division or we think a wild card birth is an achievable objective. And we think that TK School is the best pitcher in baseball and you don't move that guy for nothing and, or at least you don't move him if you're not blown away. And we found the offers wanting and we think we are going to make a run at this thing and we know that, you know, one really lousy month kind of put us on our heels, but we think we're a better club than that. We think that the guys in this, in this room can play better baseball and have been playing better baseball. We're going to go try to make a run at it with this group that we think is, is playoff worthy and capable. Now I think if you're, if you're them, for that message to really land, you probably need to do a little bit to, to bolster your group. Their rotation has been better since their swoon, but it's pretty banged up now. I think if you keep school you may. You keep mice too, right? And then maybe you try to add another starter and then maybe you try to add a bullpen arm because maybe

[Ben Lindbergh]

they get Jackson Joe back at some point, but.

[Meg Rowley]

Right. But I don't think that you can go into October. If you go into October with this group, which in fairness to them, has been getting better results from a relief perspective. But, you know, Kenley Jansen would be the weakest closer in the playoff field now, right? Well, I guess that depends on whether or not the White Sox are in it and Sir Anthony Dominguez is pitching. I promise to talk about the Tigers, but every time I turn on a White Sox game, Sir Anthony Dominguez is blowing a lead. It feels like every time. I don't think I've seen a good Sir Anthony Dominguez pitching performance this year. There have been ones where he hasn't given up runs, but it's still been tense, so they got to do something about that. But I think that, you know, if, if you decide our posture is we're keeping school, okay, but then you need to do some work to reinforce the group you have and like make a run for it. And I don't think that it's an indefensible move for sort of the long term trajectory of the franchise because you have all these young, good position players or you have Kevin McGonagall and a bunch of guys and Riley Green and a bunch of guys you're still kind of not sure about but are good enough and Dylan Dingler, you have maybe, you have maybe the ALVP on your, your team.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Come on.

[Meg Rowley]

Go, go. So I all of that to say I think that their front office is in a position to craft a narrative that is both true to the realities of like trying to move Skubal with so little team control left and compelling for your fan base. Whether that will satisfy your ownership group, I don't know. But you know, if they wanted you to move Skubal, he would have already been dealt. You know, if it was a, if that was a make or break for them, I think that he would have been out the door. He would have been out the door probably before an arbitration decision came down. So the fact that they were willing to hold on to him and then bring in Fromer, who has been God awful, by the way. But that's not. Yeah, yes, it's a tough but no

[Ben Lindbergh]

for Scott Harris because it's hard to pick a lane. But also you could say, well, it's sort of win, win, because either we get to keep Tarex Goble and you get to continue to enjoy watching Tarikscuble. And who knows, maybe we make a run and we say that we tried at least to make a run or if we dealt them, it's probably because we did get a difference making prospect or when we thought had the potential to be. And yeah, if you really wanted to get a haul for Skubal, well, that ship sailed some time ago. But I think it would have been tough for them to make that decision to pull the plug possibly prematurely on contending with Tarek Skubal. So I don't blame them for that. Even if in retrospect it turns out that maybe they might have been better off. I did. Just for my own reference mostly though, I'll link to it on the show page in case it's helpful for anyone. I made a little color coded guide to the positional strengths and weaknesses and teams that are out of it, that should be sellers in theory, that that might have something to sell and teams that are in it and should be buyers in theory and might have something to buy. And it's based on the handy dandy fangraphs Projected Team WAR page, which I enjoy, which just shows the projected WAR total for each team at each position over the remainder of this season. And you can click on the header to sort each column. And really there are eight teams only that are out of it now, I think that are more than say three or so games out of the closest playoff spot. And there are teams that are close but maybe aren't legitimate contenders and they have low playoff odds, but they're still quite close and everyone's so mediocre that you can't not classify them as contenders. So really it's only in no particular order. The Rockies, A's, Royals, Angels, Giants, Mets, Reds probably, and Blue Jays probably, whom you would have to I think classify as pretty darn done, barring a miraculous resurgence. So that's less than a third of the league that really should be in that bucket of definitely selling. As the deadline is a week away, that's not a lot. And then you have teams that the playoff odds might not really believe in, like the Nationals. And well, they're, they're in it. They're close enough to have a prayer and also maybe to be making moves that might help them both in the short term, in the long term. So I was just looking to see, okay, who has something to trade, for example, because most of the teams here that are out of it, that I have classified as done well they also don't have a whole lot of positional strengths and hence why they're out of it because they're not, not very good teams. And I think it's, it's, it's useful to look at this in a perspective sense as opposed to a retrospective sense. Of course, you can do the backwards looking who has had the replacement level killers as Jay Jaffe does, and you could look at who has had the least productive positions. But I wanted to look at the projected totals because sometimes you have someone coming back from injury or someone has improved their projections or something. So maybe you've been bad to date, but you don't project to be so bad. You wouldn't really be in the market for an upgrade at the deadline. So in terms of say, teams that have good starting pitching and are in the done category and, and I'm kind of looking at like, you know, top 10, bottom 10 in terms of projected positional strength, it's really only the Reds of those eight that project to have strong starting pitching and most of that strong starting pitching probably not going anywhere.

[Meg Rowley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Because they want to keep that around. So that stuff, of course, it only takes one eligible player to, to make a deal get done. So this isn't the, this is sort of a blunt tool to appreciate this and then say relievers, the only team that's kind of done, or I guess there are two teams that are in my done category that are in the top 10 in projected rest of season relief pitcher WAR, the Mets and the Blue Jays. And they have some guys to dangle and no one's going to get super excited about that. But we know that there are going to be a lot of reliever deals done. I mean, inevitably that's, that's always the case. Right. But the teams that need starting pitching that really project to that aren't among the done teams. The Padres, number one. Really, they have the second weakest projected starting pitching after the Rockies. Of course, you could debate whether the Padres are really, really in it or whether they will be buying or selling. And then you have the White Sox. They could use some starting pitching.

[Meg Rowley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Davis Martin has, you know, come back to earth a bit. The Astros, if they have declared themselves as, as in the buying category, which it seems like they have, Dana Brown has said something to that effect. They could certainly use some starting pitching. The Diamondbacks are there. Corbin Burns they hope will help at some point, but who knows? The guardians who have had better results and good health, but. Well, it's not surprising, I suppose, to see The Guardians not project well in something. And then the Nationals, even after acquiring Connolly early, they still have the 10th weakest starting pitcher projections. So that's how much they needed him. And I guess a smattering of others maybe, where a team has a strength, strength that's kind of out of it. Like, okay, the, the Blue Jays and the Mets project to be pretty strong at catcher, but they're not going to be doing their catchers, so they're going to be keeping their catchers around. Alejandro Kirk, Francisco Alvarez, right. Or at first base, you know, you have the A's and J's, but don't think Vladdy is going to be going anywhere at this deadline. Seems, seems somewhat unlikely, right? And don't think Nick Kurtz is going to be on the move. You know, so sometimes these are, are players that you have committed to or, or that you build around. They're not really guys who are going to be dangled at the deadline. Second base for the Giants, maybe that's a possibility. Shortstop, we have the Royals. Don't think they're going to be dealing Bobby Witt Jr. Even though he's hurt. Don't think the Reds are going to be moving Ellie, the Mets and Lindor. Well, that's come up. Obviously, it's, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility, but a lot would have to happen for that to happen. Third base, you have the Royals and Mets close to the top of that leaderboard. Also left field, you have the Mets. I mean, the Mets are in a lot of places because they project to be decent at a lot of positions still, because the players were supposed to be better than this and, boy, they haven't been. But some of them, the projections still think might be good, even if it's too little, too late for the Mets now. Now, in terms of who needs something, the teams that are still in it, that have particular positional weaknesses, according to this little calculation here at catcher, we have the White Sox, who seem to have a surplus of catchers, but it hasn't necessarily worked out that way. Rangers, Red Sox, Nationals, Astros, Phillies, Pirates, they all show up in the bottom 10 projected catching strength. Something to keep in mind at first base, the Diamondbacks have the weakest projected first base projection for the rest of the season. The Marlins, if you can even count them as contenders at this point, they have not been able to buy a win in their last 12 games or so as we speak, so that's rough. The Guardians at first base, the Gnats, the Twins, the brewers, the Tigers, second base, we have the Nationals. Again, a lot of Nationals weaknesses here. Projections not fully buying in. The Rangers, the Padres, the Rays and the Astros. At shortstop we have the Rays, Braves, Pirates, Twins, Red Sox, Brewers, Mariners and Yankees all in the bottom 10. Projected performance from their shortstops. So seems like some teams might have a need, might be in the market for a shortstop, but who's actually out there? We will see. Will the Angels say trade Zach Nitto? Will the Astros decides, yeah, we'll actually move Jeremy Pena after all. Probably not, but who knows. Third base, we have the Nationals also project to be the worst at that position. The Marlins, the Phillies, the Cardinals, the Pirates, the Twins and the brewers all in the bottom 10 at that position. And just rounding things out in the outfield, left field. Padres, Diamondbacks, two worst projected left field squads the rest of the way, the Braves, the Phillies, the Guardians and the Nets are all in the bottom 10. Center field. The Cardinals are dead last. That's rough. Poor, poor Victor Scott. The Diamondbacks, the Phillies, Astros, Tigers, Gnats, Marlins. Some repeated team names here, right? These are teams that are kind of on the fringes of contention, if they count. Now here's one that's just like glaring right. Right field for the Phillies, you know, which is why a lot of people have thought, boy, wouldn't Mike Trout look great in a Phillies uniform. You know, it would be so fun. Come on, make it happen, Mike. Please, Artie. Like, please. We all want this to happen.

[Meg Rowley]

Let's go.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You guys probably don't, but the Phillies have the worst projected production the rest of the way from their right fielders. So they really could use some help out there. And then you have the Tigers, Rays, White Sox, Astros and Marlins in the bottom 10 as well. So I'll put that online if anyone wants to look at it and just kind of keep it as a reference and a primer heading into the deadline. Who has what, who needs what. Where might there be a match as there was for the Red Sox and the Nationals? We will find out soon. Well, wouldn't you know it after we recorded Curtis Mead was hit on the hand by a pitch in the fourth inning of his Red Sox debut and was removed from the game. Maybe we were worried about the injury risk for the wrong guy in that trade. Also, we spent all that time talking about Tarek Squibble. We should have been discussing Tarek Squirrel. Awful sorry. Maybe we'll talk about the Tiger Squirrel that was on the loose next time. And maybe by then I'll be finished with jury duty. Or maybe I will be stuck in a 12 angry men situation, in which case I will be one angry Ben, but at least I'm not sequestered. That would make it tough to pod. Another thing that would make it tough to pod if we didn't get such excellent support from our listeners, especially those who have supported us on Patreon. Which you can do by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Ryan Cuff, Kyle Quinney, Jeff Johnson and Kevin Moriarty. Thanks to all of you, Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord Group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes. As Meg mentioned, we just published one of those our 57 7th and all 57 are accessible to you as soon as you sign up. You also get access to a third unrestricted episode each week, our Discord Group for patrons only and exclusive live streams as well as personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shout outs at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships and more. Check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us at the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcasts and fangraphs.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectivelywild and you can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Number one Fan Grass Baseball podcast the stat cast is stat blast tops plus when the stats need contrast zips and steamer for the forecast coming in hot big boss on the hook cover craft no notes minorly free agent draft burn the ships flames jumping forward N Cal FEMA boning on the bat shaft makers on the butt beat Never say your hot seat games are always better with the pivot table spreadsheet. No ads subscribers will support us. Vroom vroom fast on your slog the rig of mortise.