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

How are you? I'm okay. We got so much to do today. Break it and fall and break it now. And those dots won't flash themselves. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively Wild, Effectively Wild. rock on Thursday. But humans only on this podcast, despite what some might think. We are, in fact, all human, 100% human. But I wish Justin well with his new AI friend. No, I look. Okay. I don't want to see too much of it, but someone needs to intervene on that right away. Someone needs to be like, no, Justin, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You got to learn something. No, no. Well, he's putting it out there. So perhaps there will be an intervention. But we have much to talk about, some baseball banter, and then a pair of previews. And it's an AL East affair today, all AL East, all the time. We'll be talking about the Toronto Blue Jays with Mitch Bannon of The Athletic, followed by the Tampa Bay Rays with Adam Berry of MLB.com. But first, the Phillies. So I teased that I had a couple of Phillies topics to banter about yesterday, and then we ran out of time, which is in fact possible even on Effectively Wild. And so I tabled those topics for today. One of them I know you know about because you independently sent it to me, but I have to send you this other one, which don't be afraid. It's not bad by Philly standards. It's actually quite charming, but it's something that I never expected to see and sort of regret seeing, But it is a video that was posted on Blue Sky the other day. This is Marsh. Yes, by Tim Kelly, managing editor of on Pattison.com. And it's Brendan Marsh getting wet, wetting himself, one might say. There's probably a better way to say that. I wish I hadn't seen this, actually, because I wanted the mystery of why he's so wet to be preserved. because I've never known. It's just, it's always been sort of mysterious to me why he's so wet. He's famously, infamously wet. He always appears to be drenched. Yeah. And it seems like I was able to believe that it was something just inherent to him, that he was just exuding the moisture. Did you think he had like a glandular disorder or something? I mean, maybe. I am sopping constantly. I'm out to dinner at a nice restaurant and I am soaked to the bone. Yes, his hair was just somehow sopping at all times. Or that possibly it was some product that he applied to the hair. But what this is, it's a candid kind of behind-the-scenes video of him pouring an entire bottle of water, seemingly, onto his head. And then shaking like a dog that has just been in a puddle or something. Yeah. Okay. Well, I have two things to say about this. The first of which is, and I hate to be, you know, like a hair care product pedant, but I would offer that if Marsha's whole deal, if this very wet boy were actually applying product, I don't know that wet would be the word one would use to describe him anymore. Because that's a different thing. Look, we've all had the experience of, you know, getting a little too much of the product in your hair. And then you have that feeling. It's bad enough when you're running your fingers through your hair. But the worst part of that experience is when it settles on your scalp. And then you're like, I'm itchy. You know, I got too much. I'm going to do this right. There's too much in here, you know. And I have had times in my life where I have struggled with the appropriate amount of product because, you know, there's a lot. Our listeners, they're only listeners. They're not viewing me. And I try pretty hard not to have my human face on the Internet as much as I can. But there's a lot of hair up here. You know, it's just like a mad mad a mim situation, you know. But it wouldn't be wet, I don't think, would be the appropriate way to describe it if it were product. But also, our good friends, Jake and Jordan, have reported on Marsh's wetness process. Yeah, but I haven't witnessed it myself. It was still sort of abstract. You wouldn't imagine it in your head? I could, but I preferred imagining it to actually seeing it because it's more mundane just seeing him drink himself. Well, how many ways can you get your head wet, Ben, you know? Probably many ways. I wouldn't put, we're talking about the fillies here, Meg. Right, yeah, fair enough. What liquid that could be. You're just pleased it's actually water. Yeah, it's just sort of, it's as if there was some magician with an amazing trick and then the sleight of hand was just laid bare and then it suddenly wasn't so cool. It's, oh, well, that's how the rabbit's coming out of the hat. Oh, he just had some scarves stuffed up his sleeves. Scarves? Scarves? Scarves. Scarves. So just seeing him perform the process like this, captured in the act, just robbed it of some of its mystery for me, though I did enjoy just the shaggy dog head shake at the end. And I still wonder, and I should go back and read that piece, just how often he's reapplying and how many bottles of water is he going through here because I have concerns about that. But just like how long does he stay as moist as he seems to be? Probably depends on the time of year. Yeah, and just why, I guess, is a good question, too. But, yeah, just captured. It's as if, you know, it's like when you watch some nature wildlife video and they have the candid camera, they catch some creature that's never been caught on camera before, and then it just does a drive-by, a swim-by of the camera, and you see it in the wild, in its element, in its habitat for the first time ever. And that's how I feel seeing Brendan Marsh just overturn the bottle of water on his head. I just think it probably feels nice to, like, get cooled down. You know, this time of year, although there's humidity in Florida this time of year, don't get me wrong, but this time of year it might be less pressing. But Philly in July, in August, Ben, that's my best season. That is, you have a, you know, you got a sweaty butt. You feel sticky to have the relief of the water kind of rolling down. Because it isn't just about your hair. It's not just about your scalp. It's like, oh, then your neck feels better. You know, you got that kind of cool, nice feeling on your neck. But, yeah, you thought it couldn't be product. That would be horrible. The notion of putting enough product in your hair to look like this wet boy. And I know that he's a grown man, but there's something about wet boy that is funny to say. So you're going to let me keep doing it. That's where we're at. Wet boy. I'll allow that, yeah. If this gentleman had enough product in his hair for it to look the way that it does, that feeling in swamp ass season, absolutely not. You would rather shave your head. You would rather light your head on fire. You would rather do almost anything. Do you ever have the experience, Ben, and look, this is in some respects an intimate question because if you tell me you're like a two-in-one guy, you know, shampoo and conditioner, I'm going to have a lot of judgment about it. You guys can just have nice stuff. It's okay. It doesn't make you anything except a person with nice stuff in your shower, okay? Two-in-one. F the two-in-one. We're going three-in-one. Four-in-one. We've got the combined body wash in with the conditioner and the shampoo. I've seen that. I don't use that, but I've seen it. It exists. Men are holding us back. When it's like dude wipes, and I'm like, oh, my God, you guys are – the assertion of this much masculinity suggests a fragility that you should just sit with. But anyway, have you ever had the experience of you do your shower, you've washed your hair, it's time for conditioner, you do the conditioner, you rinse the conditioner, and then you get out of the shower and you touch your head and you realize, I missed the spot in that. I missed the spot in that rinse. And you have to get back in because you can't let it sit on your scalp like that. It's horrible. It feels disgusting. It feels. And so I just I'm so happy you know about this. I'm sorry that the illusion has been shattered. But to grapple with the idea of that much product, no, that was a horrifying state of interest. It would take copious quantities. He'd be burning through bottles of whatever the substance was. Right. And again, just, you know, at certain times of year, a feeling that would make you just want to light your own head on fire, you know? So, anyway. Whatever it takes, whatever he has to do to stay sodden and stay cool, keep cool. Maybe he's feeling the heat. Justin Crawford's coming for him, hot on his heels. And so he is dousing himself. And now that's been documented, and I will link to it on the show page. But the other, perhaps more salient story about the Phillies is that they have become the first MLB team, because which other team could it possibly be, to use hyperbaric oxygen therapy. They have signed a multi-year agreement with a company called NextGen Hyperbaric, and they will be treating their athletes with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And this, unlike some of the other Phillies quote-unquote therapies that we have discussed, this one is team-sanctioned. This is absolutely a top-down, I mean, maybe also bottom-up players perhaps have gotten to it, but this is coming from the head athletic trainer of the Phillies who says, this is unique because it's a medical-grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy, So it is an official treatment, and it's much different than anything else we have, which made me think, like, yeah, you mean the unofficial treatments? Yeah. Bryce Harper has been posting on this. I do feel like Bryce Harper is being subtweeted by the athletic trainer of the Phillies. He's like, this one's real. This is medical-grade hyperbaric oxygen therapy. This isn't just that bootleg hyperbaric oxygen therapy. All your blood's staying in your body, buddy. This is extremely Phillies. Obviously, it is pretty on brand for them, given everything else that we have discussed. It gives us even more material with which to pepper Matt Gelb if he does, in fact, accept our invitation after all the buildup. It's good because they're mostly the same team on paper, but there's so much to discuss. But this one has a little more legitimacy than some of the things we've discussed. I wouldn't call it settled science exactly, the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I've done some cursory research on this. It's definitely made inroads in other sports, and so the Phillies are blazing a trail in baseball perhaps, but not in sports writ large. They're not even the first Philadelphia sports team to have undergone this treatment. The Eagles and the Flyers have been doing this too. So has Michaela Schifrin. She just won gold. So I don't think there's a serious downside to this. And the point of it is, and the mechanism is, that you essentially stick people inside a pressurized chamber. Hopefully they're not claustrophobic. And they breathe 100% oxygen, just pure oxygen. And they sit in that chamber and they breathe that in. And they do a certain number of treatments for a certain length of time. And the idea is that it aids recovery and stress and performance and readiness, and it's just generally a boon to the system. Now, this has been used and has been officially approved for use for some serious ailments. Like if you've got the bends, then they stick you inside one of these things so that your blood doesn't boil. And it is efficacious for that. or other serious ailments. If you've got gangrene, if you've got... Right. It's like if you're a gaping wound, not you personally, that would be a really rude way to describe it. Yeah, serious burns. Right. Yeah, there are absolutely applications for this. Yes. And it's kind of an off-label use to enhance performance for athletes. And I was reading some of the literature, and I came across a study that I'll link to that tried to look at all the other studies out there, and I guess there weren't even enough of them. Yeah, for them to really do. Yeah, to do a meta-analysis. But basically they were like, maybe. It was sort of mixed returns, and maybe there's some placebo effect here, which can be real, but also this is an elaborate way to obtain that, I guess. Maybe that aids the placebo. The more elaborate, the more placeboic it is. I don't know. But there's at least some evidence out there that this can help and it can lead to just a better sleep. I mean, it's not so far removed from just the remove the toxins from your body. Which toxins are we talking about exactly here? That sort of woo-woo stuff. But this has been embraced in the professional sports world. And there's at least some preliminary research and evidence that suggests that it may be beneficial. It's not some sort of magic bullet, but it's probably not entirely pseudoscience, and it probably is not going to do any damage. So by the standards of Philly's therapies and the fact that this is being administered by the team and presumably people who are qualified to treat people this way, I guess that's better than some quack kind of treating you on the side. So, yeah, but it's still extremely Phillies. I'm glad for it not being pretend. You know, it's not only not being pretend, because one of the things about the whole Phillies of it all, and we should be specific, specifically the Bryce Harper of it all, is that like a attendant with a lot of this stuff is like a kind of a scammy feeling, right? It can feel kind of scammy. There's real science here, right? There are, I think, clinically demonstrated applications for this that are genuine and efficacious. I don't know that they are necessarily like ones that have a tremendous amount of baseball application. I remain a little unsure if this is really going to do much of anything to improve the loss of the Phillies. I also do find it weird, and I am not leveling any accusations. I want to be clear about that. But I do find it a little interesting to be like, so, hey, we're doing all this performance enhancing stuff and recovery aiding stuff. And I don't think they're violating, like, the League's rules around performance enhancing drugs or anything. But it's like, if you grow about this, is it going to be a thing you can do forever, right? Or is the league going to be like, that works too well? Maybe their problem is that it'll be too good, and then the league will be like, can't do that anymore. Or every other team will start doing it, and whatever benefit they're deriving, it won't be a competitive advantage anymore. But they are getting up there in years. That roster is getting a little gray around the beard in some cases. So for recovery, for aches and pains, perhaps as a proactive therapy, It makes some sense, I suppose. But if Brandon Marsh chooses to use this, I wonder whether he'll have to towel off before he enters the tube. Oh, yeah. Does it zap you if you're wet? I don't know how it works. I just, here's the other thing I will say. It's a lot of weird to stack, you know. Yes, yes. Be normal. Be normal challenge, you know. I think that there is a lot about modern exercise science that is just like a legitimate improvement over what we used to do, right? We've come a long way since like, you know, naturally we called our stuff Gatorade. But there's a lot of nonsense in that space too. I just wonder if every, maybe invoke Brandon Marsh again, every drop has been wrung from the normal stuff, you know? Have all the gains been made, you know? And so I just, I do wonder about that and would maybe invite them to be more normal. But then, you know, if you're the Phillies head athletic trainer, you might say, hey, Meg, leave me out of this. I'm not telling Bryce to drink raw milk. I don't want, you know, I'm not telling him to take his blood out of his body. I'd advocate his blood should stay in there, you know. I'm not telling him to be in the zap sleep. I do feel comfortable saying that Marsh should probably not get in Bryce Harper's zappy red light sleeve. I don't know that it's zappy, but doesn't it look like it could malfunction and zap you? I'm not wishing this on him. I want to be very clear. But if you were contemplating dumb injuries that Bryce Harper could experience as a result of the red light sleeping bag, that one of them would be that it shorts and, like, zaps him a little bit, you know? And if that is on the itinerary, the menu of potential dumb red light injuries, that you wouldn't want Brandon Marsh to get in there with being all wet. I don't know what the ROI is here, but good luck to the Phillies for us to ask Matt about. But I don't know how the expense of this treatment compares to the exorbitant expense of the product Mike Trout is endorsing. The sci-fi table that he is lying on with the weird lighting. Look, teams have plenty of money to burn, and it's one of those, well, if it helps you by one run or whatever, maybe it pays for itself. Sure, maybe it does pay for itself. But then just, like, sign a better right fielder, you know? Like from offering notes, the Phillies are going to be like, we don't need to hear from you again, actually. We've taken the raw milk. Now, poor Gelb. We're going to have such weird questions for him. My God. He's going to give us the runaround after all this. No, he won't. I don't think he will, but we'll have more on the Phillies. Sorry for Phillies fans, maybe. They've kind of become the punching bag of the podcast lately, but purely for off the field reasons, or almost exclusively until that crack about right field. Anyway, I also teased that I wanted to say something about the Red Sox and their jerseys. And there was a bit of a mishap, a bit of a screw up here, perhaps in the manufacturing, but perhaps in the design. It's a problem that plagued their home whites. And I am not referring to the demographic makeup of the fans at Fenway. I'm speaking of their jerseys. Cheap shot. Just coming for everyone. All the fan bases will be bad at us. That was so funny. Oh, my God. Ben. Their whole white jerseys were a little oddly aligned, as people pointed out, once the photo day photos surfaced. And, you know, I'm not a uni watcher. Paul Lucas. I am not. R.I.P. I'm just going to be giggling about home whites for the rest of the summer. I'm just imagining them calling in the support stock radio to talk about the jerseys. It's just like the craziest boss. Like, crazy is the wrong word. That implies, judgment, I don't have the thickest boss in every two world. You're a tired life. Oh, my God. Okay, can you send me a picture of the whole mic? I'd be happy to. And I think I'm fine with some judgment where Boston sports talk radio is concerned, to be clear. Right, sure, sure. I just meant the accent. Not the accents, but the contents. I'm not passing judgment on the accents. I enjoy hearing people talk about donkey as much as I know. Yeah. So, Red Sox jerseys, there was a lettering alignment issue here where the name of the team, it's like next to the piping. I'm trying to find a good story for you here. But the piping was kind of wide, seemingly. and the S in socks and the D in red were not just bordering on, but I think perhaps intersecting with, touching, overlapping with the piping that goes down the middle of the uniform. Oh, no. Yeah. That seems bad. It's weird. It's not the worst fanatics-related screw-up that we have discussed in a spring training in recent years, but it looks off. something clearly looked weird and different and wrong about this. And fine, they're going to get it straightened out. But what I thought was most amusing about this is that there was a series of statements by the team about this. And it was great moments in press releases because you could see with each revision that the Red Sox kind of walked back what they had initially said about who was to blame for this. So you know that they got a call right after the first statement went out from someone who said, hey, you better not blame us for this. And then they had a different version of the statement. So I'm going to read the first version of the statement here. So this was tweeted by Red Sox, a statement regarding our 2026 uniforms. As part of Major League Baseball's return to the 2023 jersey template, we approved a design for our home white jerseys that once produced and seen in person, we felt could be cleaner in the spacing between the lettering and piping. That's so diplomatic. Yes. Well, it's going to get more diplomatic after this. In collaboration with MLB and Fanatics, we're adjusting the home whites to restore clearer separation. The updated jerseys will be ready for opening day. So that was the first version, which was tweeted, and then I believe deleted and replaced by this version. So if you thought that first version was pulling punches, was tiptoeing around things, then wait for this one. As part of Major League Baseball's return to the 2023 jersey template, we approved a design for our home white jerseys, which Fanatics produced exactly to our specs. Once they were produced and seen in person, we felt there should be more spacing between the lettering and piping. In collaboration with MLB and Fanatics, we're adjusting the home whites to achieve the separation. The updated jerseys will be ready for opening day. We are grateful to our partners for their ongoing support. So you know someone from Fanatics or the League or wherever got in their ear and said, hey, you're bordering on criticizing Fanatics the way that the D and the S are bordering on the piping here. And the second version of the statement specified that Fanatics produced exactly to our specs, which suggests that the specs were at fault and therefore the team. And then, as if that was not enough, there was a subsequent tweet that was sent in reply to the second version of the statement. To be clear, the original design was selected by the Red Sox. So that is executed to our specifications and has been an outstanding partner throughout. They deserve no blame, and we are grateful to them for making the new jerseys in time for opening day. Why are we being so deferential? Frustrating themselves. Yeah. As if they're being held at knife point by fanatics, just being forced to tweet, to be clear, fanatics completely blameless. This was all our fault. They're the best partners. They're blameless. We're in fact grateful to them for scrambling to correct our screw up. That's essentially the evolution that these three iterations of the statement went through. I just was very amused by the timeline here where you could just imagine the sort of feedback that they were getting. I guess what I would say is that there are few companies more reviled than Fanatics. Right. I think that there is political hate to be made by how much everyone agrees that they hate Fanatics' guts. Their stuff is bad. The customer service is bad. They've ruined Mitchell and Ness. I have my Super Bowl year sweatshirts. It's just, like, misprinted. It's just, like, misaligned, you know? Well, you should put out a statement to say that Fanatics is blameless, and you're grateful to them for correcting that by opening day, and it was designed precisely to your specs. It's just like, what is Fanatics going to do? Not make jerseys? Like, this isn't a hostage situation. That's what it sounds like. It's so weird. I find it so strange. It is. It's strange. It's amusing. Yeah. I feel like we should set up some sort of a signal tip line for the Red Sox social media person. Hey, let us know. Are you okay? Are you okay? What does Michael Rubin have on you here? Are you all right? What is the deal? Yeah. Anyway, that was an amusing little saga. Yeah. I don't care for it. You know, I really, I just, I. I very much don't. Did you send me a photo of these jerseys, by the way? I need to see these. No. Yes. You need to see these home whites. You don't have to send me a picture. I just wanted to say that again. You're so funny. The home whites. Anyway, I think that the person running PR for the Red Sox should drink some junkie, grow their loins, and throw fanatics under the bus. because even if you did approve it, just do that. You know, just do it. No one's going to, everyone will believe you. Okay, here we go. Let's see. Oh, that's ridiculous looking. Yeah. That looks like something, like a knockoff that you would buy outside of the ballpark. Yes, but now we know that Fanatics was blameless and produced these jerseys precisely to the Red Sox specs and has been a fantastic partner throughout. What is this hand tattoo business? What are we doing here? That's not Fanatics. But, yeah, I hope there is a fourth version of the statement that actually reveals what really happened here and what leverage was exerted and just don't hold back. Here's the true unvarnished statement. We had the perfect design and Fanatics totally stepped in it and then threatened us to make a more sanitized statement. that's what I want to hear. You get Mark Wahlberg on the case. He should go try to solve the mystery and he'd be like, look, I figured out who screwed up the jerseys, okay, because he's one of the home whites, you know? Yes. I will link to that on the show page as well, just in case anyone wants to witness the home whites themselves. Mark Wahlberg is going to just be, now Mark Wahlberg's voice is in my brain, talking about these jerseys. I'm in hell, you know. We've taken quite a turn. We have, but don't we always. One other thing I wanted to bring to your attention, former MLB exec Andrew Ball, who began as a blogger. He used to blog for Beyond the Box Score, and then he went on to work for a few teams. He was the assistant GM with the Astros for a while. He also was with the Rays. He was with the Angels. Now he's on Substack, and he has a sub stack that is just entitled Andrew Ball, which I think shows incredible restraint on his part not to go with some sort of Ball-related pun. I mean, it's not exclusively a baseball sub stack, but even so, it's right there and it would have been such low-hanging fruit for him to just call it bat and ball or baseball or whatever. But no, it's just Andrew Ball, Andrew Ball notes dot substack dot com. I subscribe. I've enjoyed reading it. But his most recent post is entitled competitive balance is more than a payroll problem. A few creative ways Major League Baseball can think about competitive balance. Now, I am sort of sick of thinking about competitive balance myself, and maybe our listeners are too. As I noted last time, I find it just to be such a nebulous concept and so tough to pin down a definition of what constitutes competitive balance, and different people define it differently. And are you looking at regular season success? Are you looking at making the playoffs? Are you looking at different champions? Are you looking at year-to-year changes, the constitution of the playoff field? How much of this is just the nature of baseball and the inherent randomness of the playoffs, making it appear to be more equitable and there's more parity than there would be otherwise, and how much of it is just the nature of the sport as opposed to other sports and the roster sizes and how much difference one star can make, etc. But I think it is important to tangle with. And I thought this was kind of clever because he came up with ways that one could try to tinker with competitive balance without affecting a salary cap, without just sort of restricting spending or whatever else that we're typically talking about when we talk about competitive balance. So let me just briefly run through his four or five suggestions here, and you can give me kind of a thumbs up, thumbs down reaction. So one is just shorten the season, which is based on the idea that the shorter the season is, the more random it is. And thus, the less predictive and determinative payroll would be. And, you know, we saw an extreme version of this in the pandemic season. Of course, no one wants to go back to that or 60 games. But if you took it back to 150 or something, then there'd just be a little more randomness built into the schedule. How do you feel about that? Uh, sure. Yeah. I think it would have the intended effect. Yeah. I kind of like that the regular season isn't super random, I think. Wait. It's nice that it helps us figure out which teams are good, and then there is that disconnect because then we go to October, which doesn't really help us figure out which teams are the best then, but it's still fun. It's just a whiplash sort of feeling. I have this question. So you make the season shorter. You pay in the same contracts? Well, yes, he does bring that up. And that's the obvious objection. And people have talked about shortening the season just because the season's really long. And not only Anthony Rendon, but also other people. And I think the idea is, and Ball mentions this too, that if you slashed a dozen games or whatever it is, that you would probably have them be games that wouldn't be high attendance games. They'd be off-peak days. They'd be weekdays. They'd be whatever. And so you'd increase the attendance per game, and maybe that would more or less make up for it, but it would still be less inventory, which is a very unromantic way to say it when you're selling games to potential TV partners. Right. And, yeah, it's a tough sell, I think, because unless you can demonstrate beyond all doubt that revenue will not be reduced, then pretty much everyone's going to balk at that, even the people who might say, hey, more off days. That part sounds good, I guess. Yeah, and I think particularly, I know that, like you said, they would probably trim gains out of times of year that are less desirable, but I also think that gate revenue is very important these days. With an uncertain TV situation, you have to like account for the gate maybe more than you otherwise would, which I guess everybody gets the same number of home games under this scenario. So maybe it doesn't matter. But what you push everything, you just push opening day back, presumably. Yeah, or you could just have it be around the same time, but just a little more slack in the schedule. Yeah. And opening day keeps getting earlier and earlier. So pushing it back wouldn't be the worst thing. It used to be back. But one other little note he had here that I hadn't considered is that in addition to injecting the extra randomness, he said the second benefit is that a shorter season could also reduce payroll disparities over time because with fewer games, the league wouldn't necessarily have to shorten the length of the season. it could simply insert additional off days. And what I just said about increasing attendance per game, you would thereby shrink the gap in local revenue totals per club, which could in turn narrow spending differences, basically because if each game was a bigger draw because you're reducing the supply, then teams would be closer to capacity attendance-wise in the games that they did have, and that that might help the teams that are not selling out regularly disproportionately. So that's a pretty good point. The next one was introduce relegation, which we've considered at some point, so we don't have to reconsider that now. I get what he's going for, but as he noted, it would be extremely difficult to implement that, but we do get lots of emails about that, and we answered at least one of them. Another one that I thought was kind of interesting is allow advances on revenue sharing, so you could sort of go all in in a certain season by taking some of your future revenue sharing revenue up front because all the clubs are contributing a portion of their local revenue to that central fund and then the proceeds from that are distributed equally which results in the bigger market clubs paying the smaller market clubs. And then those payments happen on an annual basis. But what if, Andrew says, the league introduced flexibility that allowed small market clubs to use those payments more strategically to push chips in during a particular competitive window via an advance on revenue sharing. And then he cites the pirates. So rather than taking their expected annual revenue sharing check this past year, and I know this might be difficult to imagine because we are talking about Bub Nutting here, they might have decided to borrow from future payments to give themselves a better chance to land a top-tier free agent like Kyle Schwarber or Frambois Valdez. So a little more flexibility in how you could dispense those payments. I guess, like, here's, I think maybe here's a problem with some of these solutions. And I need it to be demonstrated to me, and they're never going to do this, but I would need it to be demonstrated to me that, like, the lack of cash flow from revenue sharing is why the pirates aren't spending big. Yes, yes. And I have, it assumes fact's not in evidence, I'm sorry to say. Right. So until that has been proven as an actual problem and not the problem that I think we know, which is, you know, a willingness to put a less competitive product on the field, then I don't know that we're actually solving for the problem. Right. Like, isn't the problem isn't the way isn't the way to solve the competitive balance problem, quote unquote. And I, you know, I don't want to concede that point because I don't think we really have a competitive balance problem writ large. But isn't the way to solve the problem of certain teams being perpetual seller dwellers to, like, make their owners sell the team? Yeah, that'd be nice. Yeah. Like if we can shorten the season, if we can if we can like basically extend loans on future revenue sharing, then you just make just make Bob sell the team. You know, just make him. Yeah, that might be tough, but you could at least implement a floor. You're not going to get a floor without a cap, of course. Yeah. That reminded me of the money ball scene. You were Brad Pitt as Billy Beans thing. what's the problem? And then a bunch of scouts sitting around throwing out things that aren't the problem. But yeah, I thought that was kind of creative, but I had the same reaction as you, which is just that I don't know that old Bob is exactly spending all the revenue sharing revenue that he is already receiving. Maybe I'm wrong, you know, maybe I'm wrong, but you got to prove it. You got to prove to me I'm wrong because I don't think I am. Another one was, and this is something that one of the teams we're about to preview, the Rays would appreciate, increase player limits for small market clubs, and it would basically be that you could, say, have a 42-man roster for a small market club. You wouldn't change the active roster spots, the 26-man, but that less visible roster for people on the 40-man, instead you'd get a couple extra spots, and so it would be sort of a subtle influence. They'd be able to keep more players around, players who might provide cheap production for them. They could just make more waiver claims or whatever. They wouldn't have to worry so much about the roster crunch. Say that again. Basically up the roster limits from like 40 to 42 or something. But only for bad teams? Only for, I guess not necessarily bad, but teams that had fewer resources or smaller markets or whatever. I just, okay, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm in a mood, or maybe I haven't fully recovered from the introduction of home whites into the conversation earlier. But, like, at a certain point, isn't this embarrassing for the clubs you're talking about? And, like, the guys who play for these teams don't deserve this. Like, oh, I'm sorry, you get an extra, you get to bring your full 40 man when you go play the Dodgers? Embarrassing. Embarrassing. No, you don't have a bigger active roster. It's just that you can keep more guys on your 40-man because you'd have a 42 or something. But it's not like you get to use more guys in games. You just get to retain control of more players. I have a different objection then. Why are we doing this to these guys? Why are we doing this to these players? Why do they have to stick around because Bob Nutting won't spend money? Let them go seek their fortunes elsewhere, you know? Like, part of the rules around this stuff are for competitive balance reasons, but some of it is, like, fairness to the players' reasons. And I know that, you know, you can be on the 40-man and be in AAA, and that could be just as frustrating to you as, you know, being big league five. Probably not because you're making a lot more money. but you don't want to give them infinite control of guys you don't want to give them more space to be able to sneak a guy down through no, you have to run a business Bob, you're running a business and doing that takes money, have self respect I'm speaking about Bob Nutting because he's the fanatics of Major League Baseball, no one's going to write in and be like, you're being too mean to Bob he's the perfect partner to the Pirates He's the perfect partner to the Pirates. It's funny because the Pirates, look, part of this is that I'm exhausted, and part of it is that I think the guys are right, and they are not on an island by any means. Did you know that only our prospect creators think that Connor Griffin is good? No, everyone agrees that he's good. They are in danger of being a reasonable baseball team. Oh, yeah. Wild. And then what are we all going to do? We're going to have to pick a new guy to make fun of. I'd be happy not to pick on the Pirates just for the sake of Pirates fans. Yeah, and I think the last suggestion, which I would probably not be on board with, is implementing some sort of draft for Pobos, essentially. Just the idea that you could have, say, GMs, Pobos, maybe managers, like the senior baseball decision makers. You'd have some sort of draft so that no team could kind of corner the market on baseball brains. But this is, I mean, apart from just whatever philosophical objections to the draft that we might have and not wanting to extend that, I think this is an area where the lower revenue clubs have actually managed to even the playing field a little bit, level the playing field by getting good executives and leaders. And so maybe it's getting to the point now where, yeah, the Dodgers have an enormous front office and Andrew Friedman and they hire Friedman away from the Rays and everything. But this, historically speaking, at least, I don't think that this would have helped. It might have hindered, if anything. So some of these are extreme and sort of unrealistic. I appreciated the willingness to come up with some sort of proposal that was not just implement the salary cap, but I do, I think, share your feelings that this is kind of catering to owners who should just spend more. And let's not make it easier for them to not spend by bending the rules, basically. And I don't love having inconsistent rules applied, like roster rules, for instance. I mean, I guess you could say that the institutional advantages or disadvantages that some teams have, those aren't consistent either. But when you start kind of tweaking the rule book and the regulations and saying that this team does this. And obviously, some teams are payees in revenue sharing and some teams are payers. But it's kind of a consistent system and you could flip from one to the other. So, yeah, I don't love sort of almost gerrymandering the roster rules to cater to the low spending owners. And the other thing is that some of these things like giving two more spots on the 40-man or whatever, that would be sort of subtle. And it might have some effect, but I think the subtlety actually wouldn't satisfy anyone because what pisses people off, rightly or wrongly, are the spending imbalances. Right. And those would continue to piss people off, I think, even if you said, yeah, but you get a 42-man roster instead of a 40-man roster. People aren't going to pay attention to that. they're going to still look at the payrolls and see the disparities there and get upset about that. And somewhat understandably, I understand why people look at that and they see the disparities and they see this team spending many multiples of what this team is spending. And they think, oh, the game is rigged and it's unfair. And of course, it's not completely fair and it's never been fair. And it can't be completely fair. Perhaps it could be a bit more fair. But I think that ultimately that's what gets people's goat about this. And therefore, this wouldn't really correct the problem to the extent that there is a problem. I think it's almost more of a perception problem than it is an actual problem. And I don't think this would address the perception problem. It might help address the actual problem, which is perhaps a problem, but just a lot less of a problem than I think many people make it out to be. It's just, yeah, it's absolutely true that if you look at the top spending teams over a period of time, it's not a complete coincidence that the Dodgers and the Yankees never have a losing season. You know, like there's some correlation there. You look over a long enough time frame, you are going to get more shots at being in the playoffs if you are a high payroll team and you're going to have more leeway and a bigger buffer and everything. And so, yeah, I get it. And yes, you can point to other sports and say, well, they don't necessarily have better parity or competitive balance. But I think in those sports, it maps a little less on to market size maybe than it does in baseball. Like it's not a complete coincidence that it's the Dodgers and the Yankees. It's L.A. and New York. Whereas in other leagues, you might still have dynasties. You might have more dynasties than you do in baseball. but they might be a bit more randomly distributed across the country or in terms of markets than in baseball. And I think that's just what can be galling to some fans because they say, hey, my team's not in that city. And therefore, it's not going to derive that sort of advantage. But yeah, given them a couple extra roster spots, probably not going to nullify them much. Yeah, I wouldn't think so. They want people to spend, you know, and their frustration is it's not entirely that, but it's a lot of that. So that's a tricky thing. And the last thing I'll note quickly is that when Brendan Golowski was on the other day to talk to us about prospects, he reminded me that several years ago, 2017 actually, I had included him in a survey I sent out of scouty types about Carlos Correa versus Corey Seager, because at Grantland and now The Ringer, we have this rubric every now and then we do a who you got. It's not as if we invented the concept of would you prefer this or that. But every now and then we do an article that just kind of pits a couple people or players against each other or whatever and says just who you got and lays out the case for why you might prefer one player over the other. And I think I've done this twice. I did this once at Grantland and once at the Ringer, and I have to pat myself on the back and say I chose good subjects for my who you got because the risk here, the danger, is that this can look sort of silly in retrospect because one answer is so convincingly the right call that you look back and you think, how is that even a question, who you got? It should have been obvious at the time. And I'm about to pick on Bauman, which I can do because I picked on him about this elsewhere, not purely on the podcast, but a good example. He did on May 26, 2017 for The Ringer, he did a, who you got, Michael Conforto or Aaron Judge? Oh, boy. At the time, that was an open question. Yeah. And now you look back and you think, who you got, Michael Conforto or Aaron Judge? Well, who do you think you got, obviously? And it's not close since then. But it was close at the time. And I understand why Bauman blogged that because, you know, two New York outfielders who were young and promising. And so natural candidates for who you got, except that, yeah, the answer is quite clear. I guess the mistake Michael made, if any, was that Aaron Judge was only 69 games into his major league career at that point. Yes, and it did turn out to be quite a nice career. But that's maybe a little early to pull the trigger on a who you got because you don't know what you got with your who you got candidate at that point. And so when he published that in the 2017 season in late May, they were neck and neck war wise. Aaron Judge had 2.6 war. Michael Conforto had 2.4 war. And that was Judge's first full season. So he was just partially through his first full season. And he hadn't set the world on fire in his initial look at the level in 2016. And Conforto had been up for a while and was promising. So you can see how you got to this point. But since that piece was published from that day on, it's been a little lopsided. Michael Conforto has amassed 18.6 more war. Aaron Judge, 59. 59 on the dock. So, yeah, I think he has settled who you got there. But the two times that I did this, and this was largely luck that I probably didn't wade into a Conforto versus Judge scenario, But I did this at Grantland in 2015, and I did Who You Got, Manny Machado versus Nolan Arnotto. Oh, that is a good one. Worked out really well, right? Yeah. Still sort of an open question which one would have been better to have. I think today you'd probably rather have Machado now and going forward. But to this point in their careers, it's quite close. So I published that piece on June 30th, 2015. And since that date, Arenado has amassed 44.6 war, Machado 45.4. So they're separated by less than one win above replacement over more than a decade now. Wow. So, I mean, it could barely be much closer. And then the next time I did this, when I asked Brendan about his thoughts, was after the 2017 season, I think, or at the end of the 2017 season, I did Carl's Correa versus Corey Seager. Okay. Yeah, this was late October of 2017, who you got generational shortstop edition, Carl's Correa or Corey Seager, because this was an Astros-Dodgers World Series, which made for a perfect peg. And since that time, so the 2018 season on Carl's Correa, 28.1 more, Corey Seager, 29.4. So again, about one win separated them. So that worked out perfectly, which was largely dumb luck, I think. It wasn't as if I evaluated them so accurately, and I was so prescient that I knew that they would keep pace with each other for the next several years. But that is the way it worked out. And now that Brendan reminded me about that, I'm quite pleased by the symmetry of the value of those respective player pairings. Couldn't have worked out better. Yeah, that's pretty, that is a pretty cozy fit, as it were. Yeah, and it seems like at the time I didn't reread the pieces. I don't know if I even pronounced very convincingly and clearly which one I had or wanted at the time. But I think the scouty types I talked to in late 2017 about Correa and Seager, looks like I surveyed seven people and only one picked Seager. Oh, interesting. I'm surprised it's that dark. Yeah, most of the BASOL folks were pro-Correa, and Seager has actually outwared Correa since then. Injury track record, sort of similar, But maybe you would rather have Seager now than Correa for the rest of their careers. But yeah, that's good. So write in, suggest if you have a perfect duo like that, that you think would work today, that you think will prove to be as good and close a comparison as Arnauto Machado and Correa Seager. Give us the early 2026 version of that. And I will read some responses on an upcoming episode. And now we can take a break and we'll talk about the Blue Jays, who may or may not have signed Max Scherzer by the time you're hearing this. There are rumors flying and we will discuss some of the rumors, but nothing official when we recorded this episode. However, we will be back in just a moment with Mitch Bannon to talk about the Blue Jays, followed by Adam Barry on the Rays. New arms From two hosts To other girls I'm just a fan Who wants Nothing less than Effectively wild Oh wild Oh wild Oh wild Nothing less than All right, let's talk about those defending American League champions, the Toronto Blue Jays. And joining us now is Mitch Bannon, who covers the Toronto Blue Jays for the Athletic and is speaking to us on a brand new podcast. Mike, because he has a brand new podcast. It is also about the Blue Jays. It's called Bluebird Territory. Hello, Mitch. Hi. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm as busy as anyone can be during spring training. Well, thanks for being here. And I guess we can start by talking about how things ended last year. The Jays came so close to dethroning the Dodgers. But I think in a season like that, it should be defined by the successes more so than that last loss. And it means a lot to any organization in any city to win a pennant and get to Game 7 of a World Series. but tell us what it meant to Toronto and to the Blue Jays organization just after the history of no postseason success with this group of missing out on many free agents all the trials and tribulations on the way to have it come together the way that it did last year yeah I think like around all sports baseball being included there's always this this discussion of whether or not like should people ahead of the season like say success will be defined by winning the championship and like that is the only every other season the 29 or 31 other teams like it's not successful but yes and spoiler we will end this interview by asking you what will define success for the blue jays in 2026 so you can mull that over in the back of your mind yeah i well i think like next year not to get ahead of myself expectations certainly changed but last year looking back there there's no way to categorize the 2025 season as anything but a success for the Blue Jays. At this time last year, they didn't know what the direction of the franchise would be. Vlad Guerrero Jr. had not extended yet. John Schneider was entering a potential last year of his deal. Ross Atkins, the general manager, was entering a potential final couple years of his deal. It was very much a potential pivot season for the Jays. And I think a lot of fans were almost upset that they didn't commit more to the retool or resale direction before 2025. And, you know, what a difference a year makes when they've gone from who knows what this is going to be to, hey, maybe expectations. Maybe it is not going to be a success if they don't win the World Series this year. They're certainly adding to their roster like it's World Series or bust. I think there's something admirable in a franchise, you know, suffering a loss like that and looking ahead and saying, well, what if we go get a couple more guys? What if we add a few more guys? And they made a splash early. Tell us about what brought Dylan Cease to Toronto. Yeah, I think he, on a surface level, is everything they love in a starting pitcher, and that is he throws innings. Like, you look at the money that they've given to starting pitchers in the last four or five years under this regime. It's Jose Barrios, it's Kevin Gossman, it's Chris Bassett. What do those guys have in common? They will pitch 185 innings and make every single start, even if their forearm's hurting a little bit or even if their shoulder's barking. Those guys are going to have to be dragged off of the mound. But in a way, he's also a little different. Like, he has, for his entire career, been billed as projectable, and everyone has tried to get kind of that next level out of him. and a couple of years we've seen it, but I think the Jays think they can be the team in the next seven years. Maybe not every one of those years, but get the really, really good Dylan Cease. And if you get the really good Dylan Cease paired with the fact that he makes every single start, maybe that guy's one of the best pitchers in baseball. Now, is there anything to the idea that the organizational success last year made Toronto a more compelling destination for free agents? Because there are a lot of reasons why it could have been and should have been before, but it's always been described as an impediment, that it's the only MLB team in Canada, and there's a different currency, and there can be tax implications and currency conversion and all of those things, and you need to cross a border, and maybe that dissuades some folks from signing there. The milk is in bags. The milk is in bags, yeah. So do you think that coming that close to winning a World Series and then not just that, but locking up Vlad long-term, etc. Do you think that that helped with the pitch to potential signees this offseason? It's interesting. You talk to the people on the agent's side, they say yes. You talk to the team, they say no. I think they have very different opinions on that. The team believes that they've been like a destination for the last four or five years, ever since they kind of renovated the stadium and renovated their player development complex. They viewed themselves as kind of like an upper echelon destination. But you look at the realities of the off-seasons, and I think it's hard to argue no. I think they have swung and missed on the biggest free agents in the market. You could argue they did kind of do that again this winter, going after Kyle Tucker and not getting him done. But I think from talking to people kind of all around the league and in many different roles, when a team kind of unexpectedly goes to the World Series in a way that Jays did, people start asking, like, why? They're not just seeing, like, that team play in the World Series. They're like, oh, what are they doing? And maybe the facets like the renovated stadium, the good kind of clubhouse environment and all their shiny new toys that the Jays thought were selling points. It's getting on people's radars because people are kind of wondering what led to the success. And so if that's getting on agents and players radars, maybe they are more willing to go to Toronto. And we saw them also give a bunch of people money and they're one of the highest spending teams in baseball. So that certainly helps as well. And they should be right because they do have the resources. They do have a whole country behind them, essentially monopolizing the Canadian TV market. Even if it's a smaller population, it's a higher percentage of that population commanded by the Blue Jays. And they're owned by Rogers. And Rogers is sitting on a mountain of cash, right? So they should have resources to be one of the biggest spenders. And it's funny because they were pitted against the Dodgers. I think there were people who sort of saw them as David versus Goliath or something. And I guess compared to the Dodgers, everyone is, but compared to almost anyone else, that wouldn't really apply to the Blue Jays. So in terms of resources and payroll and now success, it seems like they should be one of the true titans of the league, not sort of perpetually looking up at their division rivals in Boston and New York. Yeah, I think so. I think the one thing that clearly holds the Jays back from the Dodgers is like an endless pipeline of development. And I know in the last couple of years, since they've gotten these new toys, one of the struggles is, yeah, you can get all of the nice development tools and hire all the best coaches in the world. But you also have to make those turn into results in terms of player development. And they've lost coaches to other teams, and they still haven't really figured out how to use the tools. And so you can spend your way to success, and the Jays have kind of tried to do that. Most of this roster is built through free agency. But to get the pipeline, to get like what they did last year, the Addison Bargers really burst onto the scene, the Treyas Savage's burst onto the scene, I think that is what would make them kind of a Dodgers-tier winner. Well, I want to ask about more of the guys that they spent that money on, but you brought up Ysavage, and it seems silly to not just talk about him from the jump. I always like it when we can have a guy on our top 100 prospect list who we know that most of the people reading it have actually seen and seen in some of the most high-pressure situations possible. I imagine that people internally with the Jays are realistic about there being, you know, a little bit of regression from what we saw in the postseason and those 14 innings he threw at the end of the year just because he's still a young guy and doesn't have much in the way of pro experience. But what are Yosavage's sort of developmental goals for this season and what are your expectations of him? I think the number one goal is to avoid the Jackson-Job experience from last year. A guy comes up and bursts onto the scene, pitches in the playoffs, highly regarded prospect, and then all of those innings and all those high-pressure innings that he's put on his arm the year before catch up to him in the middle of the next season. I think above all that is the Jays' goal this year. They know that some starts are going to be good, some starts are going to be bad, but if they get 28 starts at a Trey Savage, I'm pretty sure they'd call that a win regardless of what the results are. Sure. But in terms of his individual goals, he's talking about adding a curveball that he had in college. I know when the Jays drafted him, they viewed that as a plus pitch. But talking to you as savage, he's like, it's magically disappeared and he can't really get it back. So that's something he's trying to do. But I think above all else, and one of the reasons they signed Dylan Seas, they signed Cody Ponce, and they have Eric Lauer slated as a sixth starter right now is because they don't want to put too much pressure on this guy and need him for too many innings this year. And I have no concern about the makeup of seeing how he went through everything he went through last year, just jumping up as many levels and advancing as quickly and then just being cool as a cucumber, cool as a bag of milk on the biggest baseball stage. But there was some question about, well, will hitters adjust with that over-the-top angle? Is that giving him some advantage? that lack of familiarity. Maybe it's so extreme that even a traject arc pitching machine can't quite replicate the arm angle. So hitters are not seeing this and practicing against this and that maybe the next time around the league, there will be some catching up that happens. So how valid a concern do you think that is? I think there's definitely a concern of like familiarity in the way that like any rookie starter would have that concern. But I do think if you're going to bet on a guy to have that not be as big of a problem, it's probably a Savage. And I think mentioning Traject, I think the Jays, they probably wouldn't say this publicly out loud, but that is a big part of baseball preparation for hitters these days. And they're signing Tyler Rodgers and having Traeasavage in the rotation, kind of looking for those outlier guys that are going to be harder to prepare against on any given day. We'll see if in like two years Traject comes out with like a super Traject that reaches the floor and also like 20 feet above the air. But for now, I think there is going to be an adjustment. But look at Trey Savage from last postseason was striking out 11 Dodgers, one of the best lineups in the game. So if the fallback is he only puts up like a 3-8 ERA, I think the Jays will be pretty fine with that. I love that new money ball idea. Just compose a staff of Chris Sale and Trey Savage and just submariners than just anyone that the machine cannot replicate right now, just so that no one can practice against you. Good idea, but it might be tough to collect those guys and might not last all that long, but clever. Well, maybe we can stick in the rotation and go through a couple of other arm angles. I want to ask you about Cody Ponce and sort of what they saw from him after his run through NPB and the KBO that made them excited to bring him in for three years. Yeah, I think that he kind of has everything that you look at those guys coming back over from overseas that get money and that teams are excited for. They don't really care if you go over and have success. They care if you go over and your velocity jumps. You add a new pitch. And Cody Ponce did both of those. His velocity is way up from the last time he was in the big leagues. He has the kick change that everyone's loving these days. And also, I think in terms of guys that they're not too terribly concerned about struggling when they come back over because of the new ball and the differences between the KBO and MLB ball, is Cody Ponce has practiced these pitches in the off-seasons before on a Major League ball. And you talk to him, and it sounds like he's pretty comfortable. He says he's more comfortable with the Major League ball, which you were just the best pitcher in Korea. I'm sure you were pretty comfortable with that ball too. But I think it is still that market, and you talk to Jays people, they'll tell you that market is still kind of like a nebulous unknown, and teams' valuations on those guys range way more than they do in other markets. But I think they're pretty confident, as confident as you can be, in a guy coming back over from KBO, which is why they gave him $30 million. So one of the big questions after those additions is where does Jose Barrios fit in? Because he was moved to the bullpen last season and then ended the season on the IL, and then there were or maybe are trade rumors surrounding him. So what's his projected role slash future with this team? Yeah, I think when we arrived to spring training and we were told that Shane Beaver was probably not going to pitch much in the first month of the season, he hasn't even gotten off a mound yet. That made the Barrios decision a little easier, at least punted it down a couple months into the season or a couple weeks into the season at least. But right now, like if the Jays had a team knocking on the door, offering really good prospects, and the Jays didn't have to eat any of Rios' money in the offseason, not even really good prospects. Like if they were offering stuff, he probably wouldn't be on his roster right now. We can be honest about that. But that didn't happen. Like he had a subpar season. He had injuries at the end of the year. And he's owed a lot of money. He has a player option after 2026, but it's very unlikely he's going to opt out of his deal. And so the Jays got to figure out what to do with him this year and the next couple of years. And the thing that Jose Brios does is he posts. And so you're not going to try to mess around, at least at the beginning of the year in the bullpen with him. You're going to put him in the rotation. And then maybe when Shane Bieber comes back, you have Bieber, Lauer, and Yassavage, who you're probably not comfortable pitching 190 innings each. And you kind of patchwork ways, give guys rest. Maybe a guy goes on the injured list for three weeks, even though it's only like a little bit of shoulder soreness to make sure Treyas Savage doesn't get to a crazy innings max. I think Brios is probably going to be a constant in this rotation unless he really struggles just because his ability to be a constant is kind of like his number one capability right now. One guy who can throw 190 innings and did just that last year is the guy who we project at the top of their rotation, which is Kevin Gaussman. He leads one of my personal leaderboards, which is guys most likely to star in a remake of The Three Musketeers. because of that hair. It's hard to know what to ask about him at this point in his career, but I am curious if there's anything that he's working on or has worked on over the offseason that he's hoping to bring into 2026 because he didn't have a bad 2024, but 2025 seemed like everything sort of stabilized. All of his ERA and ERA estimators were sort of in line and better than they had been the season before. He had a four-win season. As I noted, he pitched a bunch. So tell us what's going on with Kevin Gassman. Yeah, ever since he arrived in Toronto, you look at his end-of-season numbers, and they're always kind of the same. You look at his even game logs, and they're like, he's such a consistent starter. But within the issue for him is, like, the fastball velocity has just fluctuated so much throughout a season. And when he's throwing 93, it's, like, not great. And when he's throwing 96, 97, it really is great. And so coming into last season, his goal was he put on a decent amount of weight and it was like, okay, I'm going to kind of survive this season because he says he sheds so much weight during the season. I'm very curious what Kevin Gosman looks like this year because he pitched on the last day of the season, or I guess the second last day of the season, and he has as short of an offseason as anyone has had. And so how do the Jays combat that? I doubt we see Gosman much in spring games this year. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not hauling significant innings at the beginning of the year, especially if you have a guy like Eric Lauer who can soak up three or four innings in a piggyback role. I think it's considering how well last year went for Gossman because of the weight he put on and how prepared he was to go 200 innings over the course of the season. It will be interesting to see if he can repeat that because everything in the offseason was working against him to do so. The good news is that there haven't been many pitchers more durable than Dylan Cease and Kevin Gossman. But you can't say the same about Shane Bieber. I liked that pickup for Toronto last year, worked out pretty well for them. But there was that rude greeting this spring when they arrived and suddenly there's bad news about Dowden Francis and there's bad news about Anthony Santander and there's bad news about Bieber. And people were sort of surprised that Bieber picked up his option, that he stayed on those terms with Toronto. and people even speculated that maybe he was not completely confident in the health of his arm or was worried that teams wouldn't be. And then that seemed to be backed up a bit by this problem he's dealing with now and the late start to the season. So what do we know about his status and outlook? I think we know about his status, but kind of every, as you mentioned, everything else is still like kind of a bit of a mystery. I was told very early in the offseason that he had kind of like an issue with his forearm fatigue. And like that was like no one told me that's why he opted in. But like you can connect the dots pretty easily. And the way the Jays have said it is that was revealed in kind of like an offseason MRI. And so, yes, there is still a bit of a mystery box there. But in terms of his 2026 outlook, it sounds talking to Shane, he seems pretty comfortable and confident with his season. Now, it's a guy who's in another walk here, and so you would want to project both of those. But I expect we don't see him for the first month of the season. He's not yet off of a mound a couple weeks in his spring training, and he is still throwing. It's not like he's completely shut down, and so he's kind of just going to be three or four weeks behind the other guys. I think once he gets off of a mound and really starts throwing, then you can start projecting in Shane Bieber. but I think the Jays are going to have to at least look at the first month or two of the season and figure out they're starting pitching without him. So it did seem like there was really depth here, but that depth is already being tested just a bit by Bowden Francis being done for the year Tommy John surgery and now the uncertainty surrounding Bieber And as you said suddenly Rios seems possibly indispensable Behind those other guys though who else is in line There's Eric Lauer, one of many postseason heroes. There's the concept of Ricky Tiedemann, at least. There are some other guys on the death chart. So who might potentially take the ball in a non-opener capacity for the Blue Jays this season, if called upon? Yeah, Ben, that's kind of like my number one question coming into spring training. And I have it like a little bit answered so far. But I think that is underratedly like the biggest question around the Toronto Blue Jays this season is like if they have another starting pitching injury or if like Eric Lauer isn't Eric Lauer from last year, the Jays could be in trouble really quickly. I think they have this group of starters, guys named Fernando Perez, C.J. Ben-Ike, Chad Dallas, Gage Staniford, who are all kind of like double-A, triple-A arms to start the year. But they're just not guys that the org would want to pitch in the big leagues in the first six weeks of the season, at the very least. And so that is like, there's a guy named Max Scherzer who still exists in free agency. And I think if the Jays have an injury during spring training or at the beginning of the season, I would say he is more likely to join the Blue Jays than any of those kind of prospect types and pitch in the big leagues in the first little bit of the season. The bullpen was a bit of a weakness on a relative basis for the Blue Jays last year. We mentioned that they brought in Rodgers and his incredible funky arm angle, and he had a fantastic season last year, projects relatively well. But talk to us about how they're thinking through these guys. Who is going to be the bridge to Hoffman, assuming he is sitting in the closer role? How many days in a row will Louis Varland pitch? Inquiring minds want to know. Yeah, I think I would put maybe 120 games for Varland on this late year. I think he thinks he could pitch that, but I don't know if any medical person inside the Blue Jays organization would consent to that. But this bullpen on paper looks a lot stronger than the one they started last year with. at least, but people probably thought Chad Green was going to be pretty good last year, and he didn't last two months into the season for the Jays. So I think you're looking at Rodgers, Varland, Brendan Little. I know the organization is very confident in bouncing back after a really rough, like last month in October, last year. He's got two new pitches, both of which he can reportedly throw in the zone a lot more often than the pitches he was throwing last year, which is kind of the problem for him. I would say those are the big guys to get to Hoffman, But even Hoffman in the ninth inning role, the Jays at the beginning of the offseason said they weren't penciling him into the closer job. And I don't think they brought in Tyler Rogers to be the closer. But I think it's going to be kind of just like a group of four or five guys at the back there that they let sort things out. And if they think they need a true ninth inning guy at the deadline, they will go get one. Well, let's talk about some bats. The big story in October and for part of the regular season, too, was that the Blue Jays had managed to upgrade their guys. It wasn't as if they had changed their lineup so much. It's just that a lot of guys got better and seemingly managed to tap into their power without sacrificing any contact. And that they seem to have done that by just focusing on bat speed training and trajectories of swings and so forth. We were talking about that with the traject machines before, potentially that's related to. So tell us what we know about how the Blue Jays pulled that off and whether you think it will be repeatable. Yeah, I think most of the credit inside the organization goes to the hitting group, their hitting coach group. When they had David Popkins come in as a first-year hitting coach, they brought in Lou Iannotti as his assistant and Hunter Mentz, who had been with the Jays for a couple years and is now the head hitting coach with the Giants, kind of took on a slightly different role and became kind of like the game planning mastermind for the Jays. Like you talk to any player and any hitter especially, and they were just glowing about those guys and kind of how they worked in conjunction and the ability to go to Popkins and like get swing adjustments and the trust they had in Mensah's game plan and the one-on-one work with Iannotti. I think George Springer, undoubtedly, those guys helped a lot. He made changes all throughout spring training last year that turned him from a potential cast-off to an MVP vote-getter. And you just look up and down. Even Dalton Farshow last year, he didn't play much. But when he played, he was on pace for far and away the best offensive season of his career. And so we'll see if with Mence gone, does the game plan take a step back? Are they able to keep that up? Is the second year with a hitting coach as effective in making those changes? Are people just as willing to buy in in year two? I'm sure if you're a good team, it's easy to buy in, but those questions will remain. And also, teams are not going to be caught off guard by George Sprayer in the first month of this season like they were last season. He carried their offense for the first month last year, and I'm pretty sure they're probably the second name they're penciling in the lineup this year. I'm curious about a guy who isn't in this lineup anymore. How much effort was there to try to bring Bichette back? I know you talked about how they were in on Kyle Tucker. They did make a real effort to bring him into the organization. But was there ever really an idea of them bringing Bo back? Or were they just like, you know, Andres Jimenez, you're our guy. I think very early in the offseason they decided Jimenez was their guy at shortstop. Like, I don't think that if Bo came back he was ever going to be playing shortstop for this team. The question, and it's still kind of a question for me, is how real they were with Bichette. I know they were in contact with him throughout the offseason. There's a spectrum between courtesy contact and real interest contact. It falls somewhere in between those. And if I were to guess, it is probably closer to the courtesy contact than the real interest. I'm sure there was a number they would have brought Bichette back on. I don't think it was anywhere close to $45 billion a year. You look at Bo as one of the best hitters in baseball, one of the best pure hitters in baseball, and I'm sure that the Jays would agree with that. But he's not going to be a shortstop for them anymore. He's gotten slower the last couple of years. The Jays this offseason in particular, I think we're more interested in kind of like long-term deals. If they were to offer something big to Bichette, I bet it would have been closer to the offer he got from the Phillies. And is a guy who's kind of declined in speed and his profile is maybe not one with a great eye that you project to play well deep into his 30s. Is that the guy you want to be given a seven-year deal? I'm not sure. I think that is why attention turned around the time of the new year much more to Kyle Tucker. Well, yeah, speaking of Tucker, we talked about the one that got away to the Dodgers in Game 7, so we can talk about the free agent who got away to the Dodgers too. Not that it's a new experience for the Blue Jays to miss out on a free agent who ends up siding with the Dodgers. They've been through that before. It was reported, I believe, that they were offering more typical long-term type deals to Tucker. that we might have seen in an earlier era of free agency, whereas the Dodgers and the Mets were maybe going through the framework of the short-term high AAV. Were the Blue Jays fairly flexible when it came to that? Do you think they were close? Was it just a, well, tie-goes-to-the-Dodgers sort of situation these days with free agents? I believe they were around 10 years, $350 million, which that's like $100 million more than he ended up getting. And so you could argue that it's close, but I think you look at the deal he got from the Dodgers, and even the reported offers from the Mets don't sound particularly close. I believe the Jays thought they had a shot at Kyle Tucker, and I think their perception of that chance grew as the offseason went on. I think they became more and more aggressive in recruiting him and trying to get him to sign the dotted line as the winter went on, and they wouldn't spend that time if they didn't think it was a real shot. But I'm not as sure on the Dodgers' end how that timeline worked, but I think the second the Dodgers' offer reached what that was, the Jays weren't going to be like, okay, we can go short and beat that. As rich as Rodgers is, I don't think they have the financial capital to beat a short-term deal like that. I think they were kind of at their top on the long-term deal. They weren't going to add to go to 12, 13, 14 years. They weren't going to probably go past $400, $450 million to him. So I think they made kind of their best in final at 10-350, and I don't think, at least on the dollar figure, anyone can blame Tucker for taking the deal from the Dodgers. Well, one guy who did take their best in final offer was Kazuma Okamoto, who signed for four years and $60 million. I want to hear about the bat and how the Blue Jays see that playing in the transition to MLB, but I really want to ask about the long-term defensive fit for him. First, on Okamoto's defense, I think the long-term position is actually one of the more interesting questions around him. I think if he's hitting this year, he's playing 120 to 150 games at third base. I think he will be given an opportunity to be an everyday third baseman. I think one of the reasons the Jays signed him and were willing to give him the most money is they were a lot higher on the third base defense than a lot of other scouts and a lot of other teams. So to start, I think that'll be the answer. I think moving forward as George Springer hits free agency, who knows what happens with Anthony Santander in future years, but then you kind of have the DH spot open up and maybe Okamoto's playing more third base and Vladdy is DH-ing more. I think they view that as kind of like a long-term potential. But on the hitting side, that is kind of maybe the biggest offensive question surrounding the Jays this year. Like he was their big hitting addition this offseason and they lost Bobachette. And those are big shoes to fill, and especially for a guy who's never played in Major League Baseball. I think a lot of the issues that have plagued some of the guys who have come over from Japan and haven't worked is like a struggle with high-velocity big-league fastballs. I think you look at the little bit of WBC data from 2023, and he didn't whiff much on those high-velo fastballs. You look at kind of the data that I don't have access to, but you talk to people who have seen the MPB data, and they think that he can hit a fastball in the big leagues a little bit better. And so I think the Jays are confident in the offensive profile, but it is still such an unknown. Is he like a 108 WRC plus guy or is he a 128? That's a big band for him. And you mentioned the defense. Obviously, team-wide, that was a strength for the Jays last year. They led all teams in stat-cast-based fielding run value. You could make a case that they could be even better. perhaps there's some regression there. But on the other hand, you have Jimenez at short. You have hopefully more Varsho in center. So given this slightly rejiggered alignment, do you think that will be as big a strength as it was for them last season? Yeah, I think I was a little concerned about some defensive sliding if Anthony Santander was going to play in the outfield every single day. But at least for the first five to six months of the season, that does not sound like it's going to be an issue for the chase. Like if you're putting Nathan Lucas and Addison Barger in the corner of fields, I think the Jays are pretty happy with that. And yeah, you mentioned the jump. Like who knows what Andres Jimenez will be a full season at shortstop defensively. Like the little taste of him last year, he looked great and the metrics really liked him. We'll see what 162 games looks like, but there's no way it's not a very significant jump from Bobachet. Like, you're maybe going from one of the worst defensive shortstops to one of the best, and that alone is going to turn you into a really good defensive ball club. What is Santander's prognosis for this year? I feel bad for this guy because he just hasn't been able to get going for Toronto in the way that they were anticipating. I guess his injury in some ways makes things more straightforward in terms of how they can align their team, but obviously they'd love a healthy version of him in the lineup. So what's the latest and when do you expect to see him back on the field? Yeah, so he had shoulder surgery. I'm going to say labrum, but Google that if it might not be right. But he had a shoulder surgery. Labrum is what we have on roster resource. I think he got it. Okay, nailed it. Sweet. So he is going to be out for five to six months from the time of surgery. And so I think like earliest, earliest, he's coming back kind of late July around the trade deadline maybe. but for a guy who's kind of big tool is power and the way other players have come back from shoulder surgeries I think the Jays are going into this season kind of not banking on any of Tony maybe something like last year where he comes back just before the playoffs and sees if he can like get it going if the Jays need some offense but yeah it is really tough for him because you signed with a new team you want to come in and prove yourself and the team's like really really good and he's basically watching from the sideline for two full seasons. Yeah, and I guess there was some question about where he would fit in and how good he would actually be for them given their other options in the outfield at DH. Of course, they picked up Jesus Sanchez in a trade with the Astros, so that's another bat for them. But how do you think this whole collection of potential bench bats, platoon guys, starters, will shake out with Lucas, with Straw, with Schneider in the mix, and then also Sanchez and Barger, et cetera. Yeah, I think Sanchez is going to get the first crack at kind of like every day versus righties left field. I'd expect David Schneider is probably in a pretty straight platoon with him in left field. Dalton Varshow, if healthy, that guy's going to play every single day in center field. Maybe he comes off in the seventh inning when a hard lefty comes in and Myles Strzok can get his defensive innings in. And then if Okamoto is what the Jays think he will be, if he is a solid defender at third base and he can hit big league pitching, that's going to push Barger into maybe a potentially everyday right field role. And then there's one name left that doesn't really have a clear role, and that's Nathan Lucas. I think there is a chance for him. Like this guy was the team's number two hitter against righties throughout the postseason in the World Series, and now he's like maybe an odd man out. I think there's a chance they could get him pretty regular reps against righties. If you're sliding Barger back into the infield, you're giving rest to Okamoto, or maybe Okamoto's moving over to first and Vladdy is playing at DH that day, but it's just not clean. You're going to have to, either someone will be hurt, or you're going to have to bench a regular player to get Nathan Lucas in the lineup these days. Well, given that glut, maybe the answer to my question is going to be no one, but I'm curious, you know, of the guys on the position player side who they have in the high minors, who would you say has an opportunity to maybe see some big league time this year? No one might be the right answer. It's a very full roster. Yeah. But I think the guys to watch for is, like Ross Atkins almost never shows up specific prospects when he's asked, like, oh, who are you excited for? But before spring, he gave a little shout-out to outfielder RJ Shrek, which I found interesting because it's like, this team has a million outfielders. How is this guy going to get the roster? So maybe he's just hyping him up as a potential trade candidate, or maybe he is really excited about what he could do in a couple injuries. We would see him in the big leagues. The other interesting question is kind of like the depth infielders around this team. Like Leo Jimenez is out of options, and this team might not even break camp with a bench infielder, but if he wins a job, he can be on the roster. Behind him, they have a guy named Josh Kasovic, who's like a glove first prospect who, if Jimenez goes down for an extended period of time, you could bring Kasovic up as kind of a consistent option there. But it's like there's a lot of paths for young pitchers to break onto this team through injury and attrition and just like them needing innings. The path for the hitters is just not as clear. No recounting of the playoff heroes would be complete without mention of Ernie Clement. That was quite an incredible performance from him. Now, he's been a slightly below league average bat the past couple seasons and still a pretty valuable player overall. but perhaps his performance in the postseason raised expectations for his offensive output. Where did that come from, if you have any idea, other than just playoff randomness? And do the Jays think that he can hit, if not like that, all season, then maybe more than he did in the past couple seasons in more of an everyday role? If anyone has an explanation for playoff Ernie Cimendates, I'm all ears. I think you ask Ernie, he says, like, I'm just kind of built for the moment. And he points to his college World Series run and he points to his World Series run last year. And I'm like, who am I to argue with that? I don't have a data points that can go against that. But it is an interesting season for Ernie because this is like as much as this guy's kind of been a regular the last two years and really burst onto the scene in kind of like the national audience last year, this is going to be his first season having the keys to one single position. Like, he still has his versatility, but, like, Ernie Clement is the Blue Jays' opening day second baseman, and they hope he is their second baseman again on game 162 and into the playoffs. And I do wonder if that allows him to focus a little more on offense and kind of put a little bit more into that this coming season. And, yeah, I think the Jays, if he's, like, a league average hitter, would be stoked if he is any better than that. Like, he's got five-war potential. Like he is, I am afraid a bit about a bunch of Blue Jays fans who kind of locked in for the playoffs and started really watching games then expecting Ernie Clement to be like the world beater. And then they get to this season and he's like 98 WRC plus. And they're like, what the heck happened to that Ernie Clement? But Ernie Clement is still like a really valuable player if he's putting up a 98 WRC plus with that defense. Well, somehow we haven't really talked about Vladdy or Kirk. And it seems like we should, at least the former. Those guys are great. Vlad, we talked a lot about the extension last season, and then there were various conversations throughout the season about, well, is this the guy that they thought they were getting? Is this enough if this is the offensive output from Guerrero? Does that justify the contract? And then October happened and he just reached some other sort of stratosphere. And that was maybe a little bit more repeatable, sustainable than Ernie Clement's performance because it is Vlad. So are they hoping that he can be and expecting that he can be more than the very good hitter he was last year, be the great hitter he was in October or to some extent in 2024 or certainly in 2021? can they get that guy to show up for a full season every season yeah i think they are hoping that i think they're not going to say it in that many words but you listen to the way like john schneider talks about vlad this year and he's like putting a lot on his shoulders he's saying when asked about like what will vlad be like without bow around schneider didn't like give some canned answer about like oh it'll be sad he's like this has always been vlad's team and this will continue to be Vlad's team. The confidence they're exuding around him tells me that they're expecting him to take a jump. And you look at the offense they lost from Bo, and you think about the potential of George Springer not being MVP 7 this year. You think about the Barger maybe taking a step back in his second full season. There are ways for regression around this roster. The easiest way on offense for the Jays to combat that is Vlad being closer to playoff Vlad than regular season Vlad. I think he was on a 75 home run pace in the playoffs. They probably don't need him to do that. But he could legitimately double his home runs from last year, and I don't think it would surprise anyone. He had 23 home runs in the regular season. If you told me at the end of the year Vlad hit 46 home runs, that would be a great season, but it's definitely in the realm of possibility. To be clear, I would enjoy watching Vlad hit 75 home runs in the season. I think I'd be game for that, and I'm not a Blue Jays fan. Well, I guess the answer to the final question then of what would constitute a successful season for the Blue Jays in 2026 is one in which Vlad sets the single season home run record. That was probably qualified. But putting that aside for a second, now that you've had a little time to mull this over, do you want to go with, well, there's only one way to go up from losing in Game 7 of the World Series, and that's winning the World Series? or do you want to adopt a more measured tone and set an easier-to-achieve target for the team? I think I'm going to take the measured tone. I know that's not fun. I think there's a section of Blue Jays fans who, as long as they make it further than the Yankees, it's probably a successful season. I did consider saying that, but I think maybe the Yankees fans will latch a hold of that and really run with it, and my mentions will be a nightmare. But I think I'm going to say if they win a playoff series, I think that's a successful season because that is building off of last year, and it is showing that this kind of version and this era of Blue Jays baseball is different than the one that could not even win a single playoff game in 2022 and 2023. Like, they can't afford, like, it is very easy to take a step back from almost winning the World Series. Basically, every other outcome is taking a step back. But as long as they don't regress to the team that people kind of pointed to and said this team cannot win in the playoffs, I think they can at least continue to build with this version, with this core of Vlad and maybe the new Dylan C. Sarah. One more thing, one other way in which Rogers Center has been splurging is on its eponymous ballpark, Rogers Center. And that's been an ongoing renovation for a few years. And Blue Jays fans have seen some of those upgrades. How has that been received? How has that transformed the experience of seeing a Blue Jays game in person in Toronto? And there's more in store, right? That's not quite finished. they've been tinkering and doing stuff this offseason as well? Yeah, I think for the average citizen, the renovations are done. I think all they kind of have left is like the bougie boxes and the executive kind of like lounges. So if you're listening to this podcast, then you will be buying tickets in there. Shoot me a DM. Maybe I need a new car. But yeah, I think it has really enhanced. I've lived in Toronto my entire life. I've been to Rogers Center at times when it was like one of the worst viewing experiences in baseball. And I think they've gotten themselves up into like solid respectability and just like meeting the modern needs of baseball fans who, hey, if you have 40,000 people at a baseball game, maybe 18,000 of those people are just wanting to like have a couple of drinks and like lock in for the big moments and the bars and the stuff around the stadium are like allowing people to do that. So it is certainly on top of like not even to mention kind of like the player facilities below, which are a lot of money went into. It's a better ballpark now than it was five years ago, for sure. Also, it seemed like such a love fest in that Blue Jays clubhouse late last season. And I know that a lot of teams talk about how great their clubhouse is, especially if they go deep into the postseason, because winning does tend to lead to good feeling if it's not already present. But how much did you sense that that was actually a distinct quality of the Blue Jays, that they had some sort of clubhouse culture, morale above replacement value that was significant? And do you think that that has persisted into spring training so far? It's interesting. So I first covered this team in 2021. And so I was not around on a daily basis the 2015-16 Blue Jays, which was kind of like the previous iteration of playoff success for the Toronto Blue Jays. But you talk to people who covered that team and the way they talk about how those personalities of Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson, Russell Martin, and Troy Tulewitzki kind of all mesh together versus how these personalities mesh together. I think that is what told me that this team is kind of distinct. it's the 15-16 teams were kind of like gritty professionals who like maybe they didn't really like each other but they were really good at baseball and this team is kind of the opposite they embraced the underdog status they embraced the 74 wins they won the season before and I do think like on this team a bunch of the players were like legitimate friends which who knows maybe in 20 years we'll be able to quantify the value of friendship but probably not but maybe in 20 years but I think it will be interesting this year when the clubhouse lost Chris Bassett and lost Max Scherzer at least for now we'll see if he comes back because on top of being kind of like part of those friend groups they were kind of north stars in the clubhouse they're able to get the team back on track and able to kind of lock in on the day-to-day grind and so I think it was a combination of just kind of good vibes but also having teammates that kept the team uber focused on winning. Well, I snuck in a couple of bonus questions after the closing question. Thanks for indulging us. And I hope the natives have noticed that I've taken pains to say Toronto for most of this interview because I was very conscious that I said Toronto when I started like an American. And it's okay for Meg to say Toronto because she's an American. But I'm a half Canadian. I can't be out here saying Toronto. And so I have adjusted. I sounded like, you know, in Return of the Jedi, when C-3PO is regaling the Ewoks with the story of Star Wars so far, and he's simulating the AT-AT sounds and everything, and he goes, Toronto-Bosh! Toronto-Bosh! Toronto-Bosh! It's just coming to that. Toronto-Bosh! That's how I said Toronto. Actually, I guess it was Toronto-Gosh, not Toronto-Bosh. Toronto-Bosh was when Chris Bosh played for the Raptors. Anyway, I've adapted. I've adjusted. I'm a dual citizen. I can say Toronto. Sloan's my favorite band. I'm one of you. I see you. And thanks for bearing with me. And also, thanks for coming on, Mitch. This is great. You should read Mitch's coverage now that I've grandstanded about my saying Toronto. And you can judge whether I'm saying it right now because, you know, you went to McGill and everything. So read Mitch's coverage at The Athletic and listen to him, support him on his brand new podcast, Bluebird Territory. They have, what, four episodes under their belt? So check it out. I would give that a solid 8.5 out of 10, Toronto. I think you can get a little smoother with it, maybe even get a roll a little more. But, hey, I didn't notice it when you were saying it during the episode, so I think that's a positive. Okay, that's all I'm going for. I'm pressing is the thing, is I'm conscious of it because I'm trying to say it naturally that the artificiality of it comes through. Well, at least half your brain space is being occupied by the Star Wars reference at any given time. So you're like, what do I do? And I'm half American, so I'm trying to overcome that. Would it be better if I if I tried to say it like someone from Toronto? It's like I say Oregon, even though it's unnatural to me as a New Yorker. I'm not going to say Colorado, but... Colorado. No. Thank you, Mitch. No problem. Thanks for having me. We'll let you leave now. And we'll be back after one more quick break with Adam Barry of MLB.com to talk about one of the teams that Toronto... See, I tried too hard. Toronto will be trying to take down in the AL East this season the Tampa Bay Rays. Baseball is a simulation It's all just one big math equation You're all about stats we compile Cause you listen to Effectively wild With Ben Lindberg and Mac Rowley Come for the ball The event turns free Baseball is a simulation It's all just one day conversation. Effectively wild. Well, we are rejoined now by our perennial Rays previewer, Adam Barry of MLB.com, who's coming back for more. Hello, Adam. Good to have you back. Good to be back. It's good to listen to you guys do the season preview series. I listen every year, and it's always great to be on as well. Oh, thank you. Well, the Rays, I think it's safe to say, have been a bit overshadowed in the AL East this offseason because some of their rivals have been quite busy and have made major moves. But the Rays, in the absence of maybe major moves, they have made many minor moves, as is their way. And I made a remark on a recent episode about how busy they had been, and the brilliant Sean Dolanar of Fangraphs heard that and took it upon himself to hack together a kind of homebrew summary of this offseason's activity by team, which I think we haven't verified these numbers, but I think it basically backs up my sense that the Rays have just been cat dancing, and they've been trading, and they've been adding and subtracting. And what that all amounts to, I don't know exactly. That's what you're here for. But they have made an enormous quantity of moves, if not quality of moves. So this is all players in the organization, not even players on a 40-man. But they have added the third most players after the Mets and the Red Sox, who have been notably busy. And they have also subtracted the second most behind the Red Sox. So I think they've made the third most moves if you just add up the additions and subtractions. And yet the net war that they have derived from that, if you just look at the difference between the war that they lost, the war produced last season and the war projected for this season, is just a little more than negative one. Pretty net neutral then, yeah. Yeah, they've been kind of very busily standing in place, or so it seems at least, based on those stats. Do you think that's a fair characterization of the Rays offseason? I think that's a great characterization. It's some great research that backs up my feeling of not really recognizing anybody when I showed up for the first couple of days of spring training. It's a very new roster. It's a very different roster in a lot of areas. You know, you saw them part with, you know, not the household names outside of Tampa Bay, but recognizable faces for the Rays like Brandon Lau and Josh Lowe and Shane Boz. But then you also saw just the usual, and maybe even a little bit more than usual, bottom of the roster churn. And it wasn't really even churn so much as it was just overhaul. I mean, they cleaned house in some areas. The outfield is completely different aside from Chandler Simpson and maybe some reserves than it was last year. There's a lot of new faces. The rotation's pretty well remade. But, yeah, I think you could look at the group and say, well, they could be about a 500 team like they were the last two years. So, you know, what is it all for? I'm sure we'll get into that. But it is a lot of movement and not necessarily maybe changing the way that you feel about the team's competitive chances for this season, I'd say. I don't mean to linger over long on the trade piece of it, but not only a lot of trades, but how do they keep being in these three-team trades? You know, because they did three of them this offseason, right? They made three separate three-team trades. And sometimes, okay, you see meaningful pieces, but sometimes you're like, what are you bringing to this party? You know, where are you here exactly? I want to be included. Are you invited to this barbecue? So what's that about? That's a great question. I asked pretty much that exact thing with that tone of voice to Eric Neander after they made the third one, which was the Ben Williamson trade where Brenda Johnson obviously went to St. Louis to Seattle because obviously the first one was Brandon Lau, Jake Mangum, and Mason Montgomery going to Pittsburgh. They got Jacob Melton and Anderson Breedon from Houston, and that Angels Red one where they traded Josh Lomondo with Gavin Lux. I asked that, and his answer was jokingly, obviously, I think, maybe, that they just haven't found a way to make a four-team trade yet. So they're working on that, I guess. But I actually do think it kind of speaks to just the way that they are always transacting. They're always in conversation with other teams. Like, they are always looking for ways that they can align with other teams and, you know, trade assets and make moves that might be mutually beneficial for both teams. So whether it's a situation where they're in a conversation with the team and, you know, they're not quite lining up on what they need and what they want to make happen, they have a pretty extensive database of conversations that they can look back to and say, all right, well, you need this and this other team needs this. And we can kind of, you know, triangulate that and make it work. And I think they're very good about being active in conversation and obviously in moves as well. But the two kind of go hand in hand sometimes. So they are always in the middle of it, it seems like. Yeah, I guess you can't call them a third wheel because they are wanted. They are invited to be part of these trades. But they're just sort of like a universal blood donor or just like an element that chemically reacts with a lot of other elements. They're just the great facilitator, the lubricator of trades in Major League Baseball. Yeah, that's a praise, definitely. I regret that last term maybe, and they might too. But I guess they do have a lot of players. They're always just with a full 40 man and needing to get rid of all the players they have stockpiled. So maybe it's just like a clearance sale. It's just everything must go. Hey, can we get in on this? And I guess they're probably involved in a lot of text threads about transactions, and maybe people know they can go to the Rays if they need to get a deal done. I think that is definitely the case. They also make their needs pretty well known. So teams that are having conversations like the Mariners and the Cardinals, my understanding of that trade, were obviously trying to come together on Brennan Donovan, and then, well, Ben Williamson doesn't really fit. Do we know anybody who wants Ben Williamson? Hey, the Rays want Ben Williamson. Let's go make this work. But it's interesting that they were kind of all three three-team trades, that's fun to say, very fast, is that they were playing a different purpose in each one. Melton and Brito were more toward the future. Melton could help this year. Gavin Lux is very much a short-term thing. He's a pending free agent. They got rid of Josh Lowe, who had the potential to be around for some time. That was more addressing a hole on the roster. So they're doing different things with each one. And Ben Williamson is a little bit in between a longer-term fit where he could bounce around the infield, but also they needed a right-handed hitting utility man, and that's what Ben Williamson is. So it's kind of funny that they've shopped in every different department via the three-team trade store, which is a very interesting, very raised way to go about it. Yeah, and they didn't spend a ton of time in the non-minor league free agent aisle, but they did make a few pickups there. They signed a couple of swingmen, Nick Martinez and Steven Matz, and you know the Rays love their swingmen. But they also added Cedric Mullins, a familiar face in the AL East, one of many midseason Mets pickups who did not pan out in Queens. So maybe we can start with Mullins and how he fits into the picture and what they think he has left. Yeah, they plan to have him be their regular center fielder, at least against right-handed pitching. I think the outfield was kind of a catastrophe for the Rays overall last season. You look at the power production, and it was, I believe, the worst in baseball. They had 20-something home runs as a group of outfielders last season, which is not ideal. Obviously, they had some Chandler Simpsons and Jake Mangums out there. That's not their game, but you need more power production from the outfield. They see Mullins as a guy who can provide some of that from the left side of the plate and play reliable center field defense, which they didn't really have last season, in part because Johnny DeLuca was hurt for so much of it. But, you know, I think they can also plug in DeLuca or, you know, one of these other right-handed hitting options that they have to play alongside Mullins so they're not exposing him against left-handed pitchers as much. I think you're going to see a lot of those platoon-type situations in this kind of remade outfield that they put together with Mullins at the middle of it. I imagine one of the other guys that they're looking to in that group is Chandler Simpson. And I don't know what to make of Chandler Simpson. I want Chandler Simpson to work because, you know, when you have a guy who manages 44 stolen bases in 109 games, well, that's great fun. When you have an 88 WRC that less good And then the defense doesn grade out as well as you would imagine for a guy with his speed So sort of how did they approach the offseason with him And what adjustments do you imagine him making to try to be sort of a more complete player a guy who can be rostered for a full season at the big league level? Yeah, I think you're completely right in that they really want it to work. And basically everyone who watches them wants it to work because it is so fun when it does work. He's just doing things that other players don't do, scoring from second on ground balls for the infield or whatever. It's just a really unique, dynamic skill set. But like you said, it doesn't necessarily look great when you look at the stats at the end of the season. So some of this work took place last season when they sent him down for a brief stretch. They know the defense needs to get better. He knows the defense needs to get better. They've had him working actually with Kevin Kiermaier, obviously one of the best defensive outfielders of the generation when KK was in camp for the first week or so. So that's been a constant focal point. He's still a relatively new outfielder. He was college infield. are still getting used to the reads, the jumps, the routes, and the plays at the wall and everything. They think with time that will come. Chandler Simpson is a very hard worker. He's a really bright kid. You know that the effort is going to be there. It's just a matter of kind of reps and experience and maybe not trying to overexpose him in center field because you would think, all right, 80 runner should be an 80 defender in center field. Clearly it doesn't work that way. They're going to give him a little bit of an easier assignment in left field. And then as far as the offense goes, it is more just about kind of boosting the on-base percentage, and that's just being more selective, you know, not necessarily chasing just because you can put the bat on the ball because you're right, like you look at the 88 WRC+, and that doesn't really play. You know you're not going to get anything, basically, from the slug, so you need it to come from the on-base, and I think that's just going to be more walks, you know, selecting his pitches a little bit more carefully to see what he can. Not drive, because him driving the ball is almost a bad thing, but like find a hole through the infield. And I think they're going to give him a fair amount of run, at least to start the season, in left field. So we'll see how it goes. Let's talk about a couple of success stories from last season, Jonathan Ronda and Junior Caminero. Ronda was a popular breakout pick heading into last season. And you know what? Even I would say success on that score. It was certainly looking like a breakout season. Of course, he then did break, and that was a big loss for the Rays lineup because he was really a linchpin in that lineup with that high on base. But what went differently and well for him in 2025? I think it was largely just opportunity. I mean, he'd been up for stints before in the big leagues and nothing really to write home about until, I would say, probably September 2024. He got a little bit more regular time coming back for an injury, and you started to see kind of all the work that he'd been doing in the minors and some of the adjustments that he'd made as far as getting the fastball start to pan out in the big leagues with regular playing time. and then he came in last spring. He was on the team. There was no question about that. He was going to get regular work at first base. He didn't have to worry about bouncing around to second or third or whatever it might be. His focus was just on being the version of Jonathan Arana that they saw in the minors because they had preached for so long that anybody who put up the results that he did in AAA for as long as he did, it was going to work out at some point in the majors. And I think their belief in him was validated, and I think the work that he put in was validated as well. he's going to be the first baseman moving forward for the foreseeable future. And some people probably had Cannon Arrow as a breakout candidate, and that I would veto just because, oh, they were out there. Believe you me, they were out there. I believe it was me. How dare you? But maybe special dispensation when a guy hits 45 dingers, even if he is a top prospect who should be expected to be pretty good. And that was pretty spectacular power for a guy in his age 21 season. And sort of a strange shape to the offensive profile. He had a 260 Babbitt. And I guess part of that is that he hit a lot of balls out of play and over the wall, which is good. But you could imagine maybe he could be better because he was so dependent on the dingers. So tell us a little bit about what went right for him, clearly a lot. and also what further growth we could project. You're right to the strange shape also in that he grounded into 31 double plays. It just felt like, especially at the beginning of the season, that pace was even more ridiculous for the first three, four months of the season, I believe. It just felt like every ball he hit on the ground was with a runner on first base, hit directly at an infielder, and he hits the ball so dang hard that it's an automatic double play because he's not a great runner down the line. But I think you saw a lot of the reason that he was a top prospect and perhaps in some corners not qualified as a breakout. candidate is that like he has elite bat speed he has a pretty good feel for the zone as well um when he chases he is able to make contact and again he hits the ball so hard with such tremendous speed that he can miss hit balls and this was especially the case at stein runner field last year he miss hit a lot of balls to right field that went out for home runs um and that's how you get to 45 with 110 rbi so i i do think there is another step for him offensively you look at it was a 311 on base percentage that is probably got to come up at some point especially if you're going to lose a few of those home runs, moving back to Tropicana Field this season. But I think he's got that in him. You started to see it a little bit more down the stretch where he was being a little bit more patient and just really kind of turning into an all-around hitter. The other thing that I think really stands out about Junior is the way that he improved on defense. He was taken out of games the first month or so of the season, usually replaced by Jose Caballero at third base because Kevin Cash didn't necessarily trust him at third, you know, with a game on the line when it was close in the final innings. And he turned himself into a much better defender. The numbers won't look great overall. They're probably about average. But that was really negative at the start and really positive at the end. And he came into camp this season saying he wants to win a gold glove or at least get close to it, which I think is a pretty mature mindset for a 22-year-old who just hit 45 home runs to come in focused on that. I think it just speaks a lot to Junior Caminero's kind of perspective on his career and sort of the way that he carries himself as already kind of a young leader in the clubhouse. I'm curious how much leash Taylor Walls has this year because the organization has really stuck with him and he doesn't play a bad shortstop, but a 66 WRC plus is just really not going to get it done. And I know that as they think through their future at that position, it wasn't like Carson Williams' time in the majors went swimmingly last year, but he's such a special defender. So talk to us about the present and the future of that position. Yeah, I mean, they think Taylor Walls is the best defensive shortstop in baseball. I know a lot of people say that about their shortstops, but I would say the Rays' actions and their continued insistence on playing Taylor Walls at shortstop as often as they have really shows that they actually mean it. They're going to give him the run there to start the season, it seems like. Carson Williams has a chance to come in and compete for the job in camp, but like you said, I think what you saw in the big leagues from him was a pretty good indication that he could use a little bit more time in AAA to cut down the swing and miss, to reduce the strikeout rate. I think it was roughly 40% during his brief time in the big leagues. So they're going to give Taylor Walls a chance. I think offensively they're just going to take whatever he can give them. He's done a lot of work on the backfields and in the cages this spring. Some of it's more focused on just kind of small ball and being productive and not giving away outs basically. But I think they view his glove as so special in whatever analysis they're doing of it that it is worth carrying the bat for as long as he's able to play that kind of defense. Let's talk about that single-season sojourn to Steinbrenner Field, which did not play as an offensive park the way that the other minor league park in the majors last year did in Sacramento. It still did grade out as a hitter's park, according to the baseball savant park factors, but not nearly so extreme. And I know that there were plenty of complaints about the lights, the wind, other factors. So tell us how it played, how the facilities held up, what the sort of lopsided home road schedule did, if anything, to the team. Yeah, it played weird. I think that's probably the sort of summary of it. Like, you go in in April and you expect, all right, you know, it's coming out of spring training. You see the way the balls fly out, you know, on windy days or whatever. And it just felt like the wind was consistently blowing in. So, like, every fly ball that got up for a stretch of games early on just did not get out. You really had to cut through the wind almost to get out. And we thought, all right, did we just not know anything about this part coming into it? Like, what are we doing here? But then it started to play a little bit more kind of as you would expect, I would say. Once you got into the summer, it started to heat up a little bit more, and it was quite hot. I can say that, and I think the Rays would agree, and they are very grateful to be back in the air-conditioned dome of Tropicana Field this season. As far as the facilities, I think they held up pretty well. The visitors' clubhouse was quite small, as you would expect from a spring training minor league road clubhouse. But, I mean, they had no reason to complain, the Rays did, about the facilities that they had just based on, you know, what the Yankees have done to that side of the ballpark. It was tremendous. They probably had more amenities, I would say, even than they do at Tropicana Field or even making some updates to their home clubhouse as they move back into the Tropicana based off of their experience at Steinbrenner. So that just kind of speaks to how much they enjoyed that part of it. And then, yeah, I do think there was something to the scheduling aspect of it. you did see kind of that fall through July and August, where they were actually in a pretty good position through June, when they had been largely loaded with home games to that point, and they started to go on the road a lot. You know, the home schedule was tough when they were back, and it obviously fell apart from there. So they never complained about it. I will give this team a lot of credit. Like, they had every right, probably, to complain about certain things, but in the way that it was all affected, it was totally out of control. But they were pretty good soldiers about it. They, you know, wouldn't use it as an excuse, even though I think he probably could point to certain aspects of it, like the schedule is a reason that their season kind of unfolded in the way that it did. Well, I want to go back to one of the guys who was part of one of those three-team trades. What did they see in Gavin Lux that made them excited, even if it's only for one year? Yeah, they needed a second baseman after trading Brandon Lau. They knew that they were not going to be able to match Lau's power at second base, which was pretty rare, but they did think they could kind of make up for some of that production with on-base ability, which Gavin Lux has. you know, a little bit more contact and better defense. Lux is not a, doesn't grade out as a tremendous defensive second baseman, or at least he hasn't recently, and the Reds were kind of moving him at left field in DH where he was kind of miscast. He wasn't able to focus on one specific position. So I think you're going to see him play regularly against right-handers, you know, try to be that kind of on-base guy, hit doubles, work the gaps and everything, and get on for Deion De Diaz as the Jonathan Ranas and Junior Camineros. basically just kind of raising the floor a little bit there because Brandon Lau was, I believe, the lowest graded defensive second baseman in baseball last season. So just having Lux focus at one position at second base, I think that's the way that they're going to get the best out of him and ideally kind of solidify the rest of the infield defense with him there. I should probably ask about where they will be playing this year as well. What's the state of the chop? What kind of work has gone into it? Is it ready? How's it looking? Yeah, I actually have not yet been inside. They've given a couple of media tours. The city of St. Petersburg has, and for whatever reason, it just hasn't worked out. But you've seen pictures. We've heard from people who have been in there. It looks like a baseball stadium again, which obviously was not the case recently. The roof is totally repaired. All the panels are back on in place. They put the turf down. They're doing work in the seats. They're expanding the video board and getting the sound system back up and running. So it is expected to be ready for April 6th, which is their home opener against the Cubs, after a nice, long, cold road trip to start the season to St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Minnesota. So it is expected to be good to go. Some upgrades from before. Clubhouses should be in good shape and everything by then. So really just kind of an incredible amount of work that went into it by the city of St. Pete and everybody that they contracted to do that job, and also some really good fortune that it was not nearly as busy of a hurricane season this past year as it was before because that had the potential to just kind of wreak havoc on the entire process. But they were very fortunate in the way that it worked out. So it looks like they will be back in the trot for the next three seasons that are remaining on the use agreement with the city. And then? Oh, no. Yeah. Good. Great question. Always the question with the Rays. The new ownership group that's come in made no secret whatsoever. Like, their top priority, their main focus is getting a long-term ballpark built in Tampa Bay. They moved pretty quickly, I would say, to get an agreement to work toward an agreement with Hillsborough College, which is located actually adjacent to Steinbrenner Field. It all comes full circle. Right across from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. You know, obviously that would be an appealing destination just given the proximity to everything. You know, you could build kind of a little sports district there in that part of town working with the college to make it. They just keep adding verbs to these things. I believe it's now Live, Work, Play, Learn, I think, is the last one, District. You know, I think that project has gotten the approval of the state. Governor Ron DeSantis was in town for a press conference at one point, and, you know, threw his weight behind it. Rob Manford for sure came in through his weight behind it and offered his support and said that baseball still belongs in Tampa Bay, and they want to see the Rays stick in Tampa. There is, of course, the significant issue of who is going to pay for it. They're still working on the negotiations and things along those lines. I believe the Rays have said that they will pay half of the ballpark, which I think has had an estimated cost of $2.3 billion. So that is still a sizable tab that they are going to ask the county and the city to pick up. And that, as ever, remains the question of how that will work. I liked the part of the concept drawings they released where it looked like all the various mascots were preparing to get in a cage fight, you know? It's like the mascots with a bunch of fans. I'm like, are they the WWE thing? That seems like it would be possible in Florida. Yeah, live, work, play, learn, fight. I believe that's the next one. We were kind of confounded, as I think many people were, by how the previous ballpark arrangement fell apart under the previous ownership group. What is your understanding of what happened there? Because we've seen this play before. It seemed like a done deal. And then it seemed like that regime just got cold feet and suddenly wasn't so into it. And then there was the question of, well, they're being pressured by MLB to sell potentially. And so do they just not want to commit? And then that sale happens. So what can we conclude about how that fell through? Yeah, I mean, I do think that was the intent, was to build that ballpark on the Tropicana field side as part of that historic gas plant district project. And then for whatever reason, you know, the delays with the county and the increased cost, they just felt they couldn't handle it. And then they kind of backed their way. The team, I should say, the ownership group couldn't handle it, couldn't afford it, and, you know, found a way essentially to back out of it. That is kind of a conclusion that I think you have to draw at this point. They didn't feel like it was a responsible thing to do. And then Sue Sternberg was pretty open about it. Like, that was the part of the gig that he couldn't do. He couldn't cross the finish line with the ballpark in the Tampa Bay area. So we thought it was time to sell to somebody who could and obviously profit quite handsomely from doing so. So that was, again, like it was his 20-year quest or whatever to build a ballpark in the area. It didn't work out, and that proved to be the end and a change in ownership. We have not forgotten that the Rays employ pitchers and some pretty good ones, so we will get back to that in just a second. But while we're on the subject of ownership, obviously the Rays under Sternberg's tenure, they were pretty successful, especially given how much they spent. but there was how much they spent. So how much, if at all, will those two things change, the success and the spending under this new ownership group? What do we know about what they might be willing to invest in the payroll? And then what do we think about, well, will they leave executives in place? Will they empower smart baseball people to do smart baseball things, which was certainly a hallmark of the Sternberg era, where there was lots of continuity with people like Neander, but then also just an enormous network of X-rays executives running every other team, seemingly. Yeah, I'll start with the second part. They were really open from the start that they are going to basically just leave Eric Neander and Kevin Cash alone. I think that was their phrase was in Eric and Kevin We Trust. And Jeff Sullivan. Don't mess with Jeff. And of course, yeah. I don't think he came up at the press conference, but that sounds about right. It was implied. They were very upfront about that. They don't want to mess with a good thing. They know what they have. They saw the way that it can work, and they don't want to get involved. They don't want to meddle. I think they even said they had an agreement that nobody is allowed to meddle in baseball decisions, which has to be reassuring when you're a front office that is used to not being meddled with, to hear that you will not be meddled with any further. So that seems to be the case on that front. And then as far as payroll goes, I asked that question at the introductory press conference, and Patrick Zalewski, who is the managing partner, kind of the head of the new group, basically said, you know, I believe his quote was the economics of the club haven't changed and payroll won't either. You know, it's always kind of the far off hope that if they do move into a new ballpark to be able to invest more of that money into payroll. So I think that is the timeline, I would say, when if things are going to change on that front, it'll be when and if I guess that happens. All right. I guess we should get to some of these pitchers now because there are a lot of them. They are quite good. They do project to be a Top 10 pitching team by War. You might not have heard of many of the pitchers, but nonetheless. Well, one guy who I think Rays fans have heard of but haven't gotten to see in a long time is Shane McClanahan. So I want to start with him. What is the state of Shane McClanahan? How many innings can we expect from him this year? Talk to us about Shane. It's a great question. Just a bizarre couple of years for Shane. Obviously, I had the second Tommy John surgery that ended in 2020. season, which was the second straight All-Star year, then looked good coming into camp last spring, went through a very normal, healthy spring, and then had just that freak nerve issue in his triceps that left him unable to even feel his hand and move his fingers for about, I think he said, a month and a half or so. So really scary injury. They did not know how long it was going to take to recover from it. It wound up taking the entire season, had another procedure near the end of the year to address that. By all accounts, he had a normal offseason. He came into camp having thrown bullpens. He's throwing bullpens now. I believe he's going to face hitters tomorrow as we're recording this, so he'll be a little bit slower into games. I don't think they're going to push him past five innings, certainly in spring training, probably for the first month of the season. You saw kind of how carefully they managed. Drew Rasmussen coming back from his third major elbow surgery last year as he got back to being a starter. I would think that is probably the blueprint, if maybe not even a little bit more conservative, just given the time that he's missed on the mound period and some of the uncertainty with that. But from everything everyone said, pitching coach Kyle Snyder, manager Kevin Cash, and everybody who's seen him, he looks like Shane McClanahan before this injury. And he looked like that last spring as well. So as long as he has passed the nerve thing, I think you have a really effective starter. It's probably just going to be in shorter bursts than you would expect from kind of your typical ace. I wanted to ask about the other Shane, the Shane who's no longer there, Shane Boz, who was traded to Baltimore. in the division. And so he's the Shane who is like the Shane, the titular character of Shane, the movie, who at the end, the little boy named Joey is yelling, come back, Shane. But he rides off into the sunset. I guess that's what's happening with Shane Boz. We tend to think of the Rays as a team that can make the most of pitchers and unlock whatever latent talent is there. But Shane Boz was always a bit of a riddle, and now they're trading him to a division rival. So what prompted that move? I don't necessarily think they went into the offseason saying, okay, we have to trade Shane Boz. They thought that he was due to improve this season just based on the fact that he finally put together a full healthy season. It wasn't a great season. It was an ERA near five, but 31 starts. I believe it was 166 innings, more strikeouts in innings. You know, you've started to see some progress with the rest of the arsenal to complement a very good fastball. So they didn't necessarily head in saying, all right, we've got to get rid of this guy. But the offers for controllable starting pitching started to kind of creep up into a territory, especially in terms of just the haul of young talent they wound up getting in that Orioles trade that they felt like they couldn't say no, and then they could move to kind of backfill from there. Because I do think they really liked Shane Boz. They really felt that he was due for a step forward. You're right. Like, that is the kind of guy typically that the Rays go out and acquire. But I think the offers just got so significant that they felt they couldn't refuse at that point. Well, maybe we can talk about some of the guys who pitched more recently for them. And by Rays' standards, pitched a lot, you know. Tell us about Drew Rasmussen and Ryan Pepe out and sort of what you're expecting from those guys this year. Drew Rasmussen is so good, and I feel like I'm keeping a secret when I cover him because I just feel like nobody actually recognizes that Drew Rasmussen is incredible. And one of the more ridiculous stories in baseball last year, two Tommy John surgeries and an internal brace procedure, comes back as a reliever the year before, and then throws 150 innings over 31 starts as an all-star. Just a remarkable comeback to be basically the exact same pitcher that he was before, if not a little bit better. I mean, the consistency of his performance since he got into the big leagues is remarkable. I think it's an ERA always between 2.6 and 2.85, and a width always between 1 and 1.1. It is just metronomic consistency from Jurassic. And even with all of the questions, all of the injury concerns, and all of the challenges that he faced, given his workload and he got pulled back into kind of an opener role for a stretch in the middle of the season, came back from that and was basically the same guy. I think, again, just like a really elite-type pitcher who's probably not done any favors by the fact that he's not qualified for an ERA title and doesn't show up on leaderboards and things like that. So a tremendously valuable starter. He's going to be the opening day starter this year. Maybe that brings a little bit more name recognition for him as well. And then Ryan Pepio, I think, probably stands to benefit as much as anyone from the move back to Tropicana Field for two reasons. One, he's obviously a fly ball guy. He tended to get hurt a little bit by some of the dimensions at Steinbrenner. Two, it just felt like he drew every single noon start at Steinbrenner Field when it was 98 degrees outside. So he's just getting away from that. He's got to help the guy. But they like his stuff as well. They've seen kind of a little bit of an expansion of his arsenal and the way that he's gone from maybe just purely fastball changeup into adding a little bit more breaking stuff in there. They see him as kind of also like a pretty consistent source of innings along with Nick Martinez who they brought in via free agency. Yeah, and then those aforementioned swingmen, Martinez and Matz, which way will they swing in 2026? Will they stick in the rotation? Will they go back and forth? You never can tell with this team. Yeah, it seems like they like Martinez coming in. Both of them are going to be in the opening day rotation as planned right now. It seems like Martinez is probably more likely to function as kind of a traditional starter over the course of the season, depending on what else happens behind him. Whereas Matt, just given the fact that he hasn't pitched over 100 innings in a number of years, might have to be shortened up in kind of that way that Rasmussen was last year. He obviously showed that he could be really successful as a reliever last year. So if it's not looking great as a starter, they have that as a pretty good fallback option. A two-year, $15 million contract, you know, obviously that would have some appeal either for them in the bullpen or potentially as a trade candidate. And then I think where they go with those two guys over the course of the full season depends on how McClanahan holds up, how the other two hold up, and then whether or not they feel like they need to kind of make room in the rotation for Joe Boyle, who is most likely going to start in AAA but still has just such overwhelming stuff that it doesn't feel like the Rays are ready to give up on him after one kind of, you know, up-and-down season after they got him from the A's. And then Ian Seymour as well, a lefty, would be another candidate to potentially slide into one of those rotation spots. So they have depth, and I think they like having that flexibility, of course, where they can make up for, you know, some of the innings' uncertainty with just sort of a volume of pitchers that they can throw at the problem who can do different things. And that bullpen does project to be a strong unit sixth in the game. And that three-headed trio at the end there of Edwin Useda and Griffin Jacks and Garrett Clevenger, not the biggest names maybe, but those guys are pretty nasty. And I guess three-headed trio was perhaps a little redundant. Nonetheless, those guys are good. but I have heard Useda's shoulder described as cranky, which I guess is a somewhat worrisome adjective. So there's a lot of crankiness going on with elbows and shoulders at this stage of the spring, but how worrisome is that? I was going to say and beat writers. Yeah, that is a concern, obviously, early on in spring training. He came back from his arbitration hearing in Arizona, which he attended in person. No wonder he was cranky after that. He won. He went back to the Dominican and resumed throwing, and he started to feel a little bit of crankiness in his shoulder, apparently. Tried to get back to playing catch yesterday as we're recording this and started to feel it barking at him as he started to throw from longer distances. So he actually went today for further imaging and a visit with Dr. Coco Eaton. So as we're recording this, we don't know the state of Edwin Houston's shoulder and what might be next for him. But that's potentially a huge issue for the race because he would be a very big part of that kind of leverage by committee group with Jackson Clevenger. And, you know, he's a guy who's proven that he can do it. And, you know, four outbursts or multiple inning bursts, he can come out and get the biggest out, you know, of a game with runners on base. So that is definitely a big injury to watch because you can look at maybe throw Brian Baker into that group as, you know, the for sure things in the bullpen heading into the season, and then they have some questions to answer beyond that. So any injury does kind of just chip away at that depth pretty quickly. I feel like this is a more relevant question for the Rays, and it maybe is for any other team in baseball, just given the way that they move guys on their roster and you have these dudes shuffling up and down. You know, we have this group. You've talked about a couple of the younger guys, but who are some of the guys at the high minors who you expect might end up, you know, making their way to Tampa in the event of injury? I think a couple. We touched on Carson Williams earlier. You know, I think he should have the opportunity to play his way into a role in the big leagues, you know, based on what he shows offensively in AAA. Jacob Melton, I touched on him. He was one of the guys that got in one of the three-team trades from the Astros. They are really high on him, just a great athlete. They love what they've seen in the batting cages so far in spring training. Kevin Cash said that he kind of hits the ball like Yandy Diaz and Junior Camonero, just in terms of exit velocity, which that certainly catches your attention around here. I think Eric Neander said they view him as a potential 20 homer, 40 steel, you know, quality defender in center field. So they got him in that trade as ideally kind of part of their younger core moving forward. I don't know if that happens right away. He got a little time in Houston last year. It wasn't great. So maybe they'll give it a little bit more time to develop in AAA. And then the next group from there would probably be Trey Morgan, a first baseman, great defender, more kind of bat to ball and on base than power, and catcher Dominic Keegan, who could maybe potentially possibly answer some of their long, long, long running questions at catcher. He's a very good hitter. He's earned very high reviews from the staff as far as just the way he's kind of worked to improve defensively. Not a great thrower, but has a really good presence behind the plate. Good game caller, works well with pitchers, has come through their system after being a little bit more of a first baseman at Vanderbilt. So they want to give him time and potentially have him kind of factor into their mix at catcher at some point this season. Speaking of pitchers and catchers, has the pitching philosophy changed at all for the Rays, which for a while there at least was just trust your stuff and don't aim and try to be finessing anything, and catchers would just put their targets down the middle and just trust in the natural movement to bail you out? Is that still the predominant approach? And we've talked about the Marlins fully embracing calling pitches from the dugout. might the Rays go in that direction too? Hey, don't worry about where you're aiming your pitches. Don't even worry about which pitches to throw. We'll take that all off your plate. Just throw hard. No, I would not expect that to come into the Rays dugout anytime soon. I think they're going to leave it with the pitchers and the catchers. Philosophically, I think it's pretty much the same. It is obviously very pitcher-dependent. Somebody like Drew Rasmussen doesn't necessarily have to angle a big spot. He's got a type of command where you can focus a little bit more on location, sequencing, and things like that, whereas for a Joe Boyle, we referenced earlier, that is more just like the Tyler Glass now model, just throw to plate and hope for the best because your stuff's so good and overwhelming that it should work for you. So I think it is very much kind of pitcher dependent. They've gotten really aggressive, as usual, as every team has, about kind of expanding arsenals and looking for ways that they can fill out pitch mixes. You've seen even probably untraditional guys like Kevin Kelly, a reliever, you know, big sinker, sweeper, you know, side-arming right-hander, worked to make some change-up, just trying to give him weapons to handle both-handed hitters. I think it is very much an individual kind of approach to pitching the same as it really ever has been with the Rays. Okay, let's go to our closing question then and ask you what would constitute success for this team in 2026? have you ever had one that's just purely off the field related for one of these answers to me to me it's it's get a stadium deal across the finish line that is what they came in and said was the number one goal that is a top priority for the ownership group it's basically the sun around which the entire organization is going to have to to orbit you know is where are they going to be what is it going to mean for their revenues you know how does that impact the future of the franchise, I think, moving forward. So to me, that's the most important thing. I don't know if that counts. You can define it however you want, but I do wonder where the Rays see themselves. I don't know whether the Rays think in terms of competitive cycles or whether it's just kind of constant perpetual churn and trying to stay within striking distance, but it's really hard to stay within striking distance in this division in this year. So do they see themselves as building up to something soon? Do they see themselves as sort of a dark horse contender? If things don't go great at the start of the season, are we going to be talking about Yandy Diaz, ground beef, or Pepio, or others as potential mid-season trade candidates? Because we have established that this team likes to trade. Yeah, I think that would be, that's always possible with the Rays, that if they do fall out and they have the opportunity to build, you know, to improve a future team that they will take advantage of that, especially with a pending free agent, or just to get creative with the roster and address areas that they feel need improvement for the long term. And they did some of that this offseason. I probably should have touched on it earlier. Just the idea that, like you said, they were kind of treading water. They didn't necessarily make substantial improvements for this season. They didn't get substantially worse by the time it was all said and done. But they did get better for the 2000, maybe 28, 29 window, where they've added some of these younger controllable types like Melton. They've added prospects like Brito and everyone in that Orioles trade for Shane Boz. And then, you know, I think one thing Eric Neander made pretty clear this offseason, I don't know if I've ever heard him articulate it the way that he did on multiple occasions this winter. It was just the idea that they don't want to give up on a year ever. They don't want to head into a season thinking that they won't be competitive. So in that sense, I don't think they believe in competitive cycles. They do believe in giving every year's team a chance to win. You know, I asked about it, and he said basically it's for the players. It's not fair to ask players to come into camp and feel like you don't have a chance to win this year and you only get so long to play this game that every year you should feel like you have that opportunity. So I think they view themselves as having the ability to be competitive if things break their way. But obviously, yeah, they know where they stand in the division. They've seen what everybody has done this offseason. And as Neander said, there's opening press conference this spring. If they try to go about it the same way that everybody else in the division does, they'll probably finish roughly where their revenues rank among their division competition as well. So I think they get it, and I think that kind of influences a lot of the way that they go about it. I hesitate to invoke him. Maybe out of sight, out of mind would be better, and especially to end on this note. But does Wander Franco's status, does that have any bearing on the Rays' situation? He was convicted last year in the Dominican Republic, but then a new trial was ordered in December. Obviously, they aren't paying him, but I suppose as long as his legal fate is sort of up in the air, the contract can't be voided. Does it even matter whether it can be voided to them? I mean, obviously, they don't speak about this publicly, just given an ongoing investigation and everything. But I think the fact that there was a retrial ordered, which was supposed to be today, actually, as we're talking, and then was postponed to March 30th. Yeah, that does leave some things in limbo because theoretically if, you know, the verdict is reversed and he is, you know, let off, then it would come down to obviously MLB would have to investigate and that could impact things. But if at any point he's able to obtain a visa and cleared to work, then, yeah, I mean, they would have to ask themselves some questions about that and what that means for their payroll because there is still a substantial amount of that contract available. But as long as he remains unable to enter the country with a visa and everything like that, then he's not being paid. It doesn't have an impact. But, yeah, I think some clarity, which they thought they received with the initial verdict, would go a long way toward answering that question kind of once and for all. Well, you have answered all of our questions, so we will let you go. As always, we recommend that people read Adam's coverage of The Rays at MLB.com. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks, Adam. Thank you. That'll do it for today. and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. And glad tidings to all. 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