Effectively Wild Episode 2460: The Arc of History Bends Toward .500

We're gonna crunch those stats, we're gonna talk about baseball, sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all, if you want good takes on baseball and life. Hello and welcome to episode 2460 of Effectively Wild, a fan-graphed baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fan-Graphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay. I am disappointed and relieved that Joey Weemer has made an out or even multiple outs maybe on the season because it was entering. I saw a bowman blogged about this. Yes. About how long could this have continued before you suspected some shadowy outside forces or if this were an effectively wild hypothetical, which it has been, I'm sure. It's just if something supernatural happening here. But no, just natural, just the natural talent of Joey Weemer, which we all knew. He is still at the top of the Fan-Graphs War Leaderboard, so that's something at least another day in the sun. Mike Trout has plummeted to ninth since we talked about that yesterday. So I know we jinxed him, I guess. But yeah, this was a fun little run. The record for most consecutive times on base to open a season tied with Carlos Delgado in 2002. Carlos Delgado, good hitter. I can't decide. Is it just the natural order? Reasserting itself has a bog which been defeated. But then if you're Joey Weemer, you're rooting for the bog which. You know? Keep doing whatever you're doing. Yeah. Come on, lady. I did this Etsy charm wear off. What's going on here? Yeah, quite odd. I guess that's live ball era only that stat that I just shared with us. Right, yes. It was less likely, I suppose, in a deader ball time. But I think it's good for a morale because the Nationals, they're off to a nice little start and part of that is because of Joey Weemer. And I don't think the Nationals are going to be good. And I don't think most Nationals fans think the Nationals are going to be good. But it can be nice when you think your team is going to be terrible not to get off to the most demoralizing start possible because then it's why even watch? What are we in for? There's six more months of this. So just a little taste, a little preview of, hey, when this team gets good again, this is what it'll be like. And of course, it reminds me of Joey Meneses because what doesn't remind me of Joey Meneses. But in this case, I think I can be forgiven because we were talking about an unexpected performance by a Washington Nationals. So it's not a huge leap. But when Joey Meneses came up in 2022 after they traded Juan Soto at the deadline and you're upset, we just we lost Harper and now we've lost Soto and we've traded him and we'll never get him back again. And how are you possibly going to replace him? And then it turns out, well, all you have to do is call up Joey Meneses and he will out hit and out produce Juan Soto over the remainder of that season. Not thereafter, that's for sure. But for a couple of magic months, it takes your mind off the loss of Soto. And so Joey Weemer and his hot streak to start the season, I think it takes your mind off what's in store for your team. So that's good. That's the simultaneously positive and pessimistic perspective on this. Well, and I feel like, and I might be reaching for too grand a conclusion here, but when you're a fan of a team that is mired in mediocrity, you can feel, you know, disconnected from the sport in a broader sense, right? Because sure, they're they're the old tried and true standouts, you know, that are there in October every year. But we do see change, right? There's churn to the playoff field. There are clubs that sort of manage to ascend and you're like, when, when will it be my turn? When can I say that my team is part of the broader, you know, capital B baseball narrative. And you know, random guys being good for a little while, that's very baseball. That's very of the sport. And you know, failure is a big part of it too. But that isn't as fun to sit in. And so I think it makes you feel like, huh, we can we can do normal stuff by looking at abnormal stuff, you know, by witnessing abnormal performance actually. So I think it makes you feel connected to your fellow fan. Yeah, there's the old Saber 1.0 Vorosis law named after Boris McCracken of Babbit fame. And it basically says any player can do anything over a span of 60 at bats. Yeah, I would probably say play appearances if it were Lindbergh's law. And maybe I could lower the threshold a little bit. Who knows. But one way or another, small sample. That's one way of citing that, that is a little more entertaining than just saying small sample. So we have enjoyed the Joey Weemer run and Long May he run, even if he does make an out occasionally. It's been so long since we've done a proper email show because we just we did the season preview series and we've hardly got any emails in during that. And so there's this big backlog. I just I opened up the inbox and it was like the Indiana Jones storage facility. There's people just like wheeling effectively wild emails into the dark recesses of my inbox. So I have a few of those. I guess just the bit of banter we talked yesterday about an extension for a player who has not yet made his major league debut, the Brewers Cooper Pratt, which is still being finalized as we speak. But since then, your team, Megs Mariners, has also signed a pre MLB debut player to a long term extension. Colt Emerson, Mariners shortstop of the future, perhaps near future. He has signed an eight year contract extension, reportedly 95 million guaranteed. There's a club option for a ninth season. It's a record, at least inflation, unadjusted for a player who has not yet made his major league debut. Yeah, there's no trade clause. There are incentives that can take it up to 130 million. But he is not immediately being summoned to the majors, reportedly. I imagine it won't be that long. But yeah, maybe we could talk about the implications for the Mariners and Emerson specifically, and then I wanted to bring up extension trends. So what do you make of this move? Well, I like it. I can imagine. Yeah. There are any number of ways in which it's a good good to compare to to Jackson Shuria's extension. But it sits in that comfortable range where you're you're not worried that the young man left all the money on the table. You know, like he definitely left some money on the table, maybe. But when you're approaching $100 million, I think you can be like, good job, Colt, you're you're going to be comfortable for the rest of your life. And your kids probably will be too. I do like because it's sitting in that territory where the the amount of money is is comfortable. It feels less like a hey, and then you get to be on the on the active roster, which I agree with you. I imagine that he will be up relatively soon. But like you can just you take your time now. If everyone's comfortable with that, you can just take your time. I like the name Colt Emerson. Like he's a terrific hitter. And I think, you know, he profiles for us as like an everyday infielder. I think that, you know, especially a guy who has improved both his projected game power and also defensive ability. You like that? Because when he first came up, at least our prospect team was like, I don't know if those guys are shortstopping. I think he is. I'm I'm hesitant. I want to make sure that I'm not mentally comparing what I imagine he can be once he's come up and adjusted to the diminished version of JP Crawford, but it's hard not to. I suppose the more relevant and immediate comparison is like, how does he compare to little Leo Rivas? And I say little Leo Rivas just because that's how I always refer to Leo Rivas. Postseason hero, lover of walks, bench guy, you know, like Leo Rivas has a place on a big league bench. She doesn't really have a great place in a starting lineup. He's been pressed into everyday service by Crawford's injury. I imagine he'll make his way back to the bench when the time comes. But yeah, like I like it. I think that one thing that we have, and I say we, uh, to implicate you and also to try to change the memory people have of how much I talk about the mariners on the podcast relative to Ben, um, one of the criticisms that we have had of the mariners over the years is that like they have been on the precipice of being what we thought was a maybe an actually great team, but had had a reticence to spend that had made them at times like Pennywise and pound foolish. And then we noted that one way, one way to assuage that criticism is to commit financially to your own guys. Yeah. And if you feel confident that you have your talent ID is correct and that you think you know who the good guys are. And I don't think that like assuming the Colt Emerson is going to be an everyday player is like a minority opinion. Well, then okay, great. Like bring him up there. It's really nice to have homegrown guys who you've invested in. It does make me curious. And this is a more mariners specific thing. And then we can move on to sort of the pre debut extension as a broader phenomena. It does make me kind of curious, like, how are they thinking about extensions within the rotation? Uh, is that something that they would entertain because of their young, core, the places where they have invested. And I think this is a defensible strategy, just given the injury considerations have been in position players, right? They famously extended Julio. They gave Cal that extension last off season, walk off Cal as, as we're calling him now. He walked off the Mariners yesterday after being on the bench for part of the game. That was nice. I enjoyed that. I was like, Oh, the dumper. I just want everyone to be excited about Cal because it's more fun than the alternative. Yeah. Let's make Cal fun again. Do you say, do you say walk off? You said walked off the Mariners. Do you say I guess he walked off. But right, I was going to ask, because often you'll hear walk off the opponent. I just didn't want to introduce any pedantic point emails. So that was more of a, that was more of a misspeak than a philosophical statement. Correct. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't saying anything as I was saying. Just getting that on record. Sorry. I'm, oh gosh, I'm so, I'm so sorry. Stangers. I, yeah, you know, we, we, we have some, we have some pendants in our pen, pen dance, pen, pen, penance, penance. Yeah. Penance and pendants or penance might wear pendants, but. Pendants. Yeah. Anyway, I like it. I think it's good. You know, I will be curious to see how quick he comes up, but you know, what's the little service time between friends when you've already committed to exchange in close to a hundred million dollars. So. Yeah. The bar for, I mean, you're rarely going to find a fan of a team. And I know you're looking at this as, as an analyst, a clear eyed analyst in addition to a fan, but, but you're rarely going to get, oh, I'm against this. This is bad. We just signed one of our young top prospects long term. Now we don't have to worry about him leaving or becoming a free agent or anything. Grumble. I'm against that. That's bad. No, you almost never hear that because it's always now, again, people are not always factoring in what our players actually paid and you're going to be making League minimum for a few years and then it's arbitration. And then you don't get to free agency. You don't start making the most money until years down the road and not everyone factors that in. And so they see the terms and they're mentally comparing it to what a free agent would cost and they're thinking, what a steal, what a bargain. Obviously you're not doing that. But I think a lot. Yeah, I'm giving you credit for knowing the very basic, important rules of baseball economics as the editor-in-chief of the cohost of this podcast. But I think even so, very rarely is there an extension signed for a young player where you think, oh, that was, that was too much. It like, when does that ever, and there are some that don't work out for the team. Don't get me wrong. But I'm trying to think of one. You're familiar with those. Yeah. Even for pre-debut players specifically. But, but rarely do you get sticker shock on a young player like that, which just goes to show, I mean, typically they have been team friendly on the whole. And it's hard to overpay a young player because they are so underpaid by design. That's just the system. And so even if you give them more than they would be getting anyway, they're just, it's rarely going to make you do a double take and say, oh, yeah, if them, unless you're happy that you gave them that much. And that's, of course, if you're looking at it from the player's perspective too, and you don't want to get the player to get cheated, you know, many fans are not really looking out for the player's interest when it comes to the terms of a contract with that team. But yeah, we look at things both ways. I've only ever worried that someone sort of sold themselves too short. And I remember on this very podcast before the season, um, imploring, uh, Connor Griffin, not to take too little, right? Not to take too little. And here I am telling, maybe telling Colt Emerson, congrats on taking too little, but I don't know that I, I really did that like $95 million. I can't wait to get that close to, and, and one club option, and he's only 20, right? Like, I mean, he turns 21 this summer, Colt Emerson does. And, uh, you know, he entered camp this spring sort of with, I think the opportunity to like blow the doors off the place and make the opening day roster. And he had a good spring. He had a fine spring. It didn't really force the issue. He, you know, he hit for some power and the fielding looks good. And so I, I just think that, um, when you're talking about the, to your point, the, these extensions where you're, you're only really giving up a couple of years of the free agency period, the, the meaningful comparison is, you know, what would you get not only as a, as a league minimum player, but in arbitration. And you just, I just have to imagine that Colt Emerson is probably doing quite well by those standards, because he wasn't guaranteed to play in the majors at all this year. Um, again, I had the opportunity, but like, you know, if he had stayed at triple A for half the season, I wouldn't have been like, Oh, those Mariners, they're, they're a job in Colt. They're not bringing up their best guy. No, I have been publicly concerned about the quality of play of J.B. Crawford. Yes. So defensively, specifically. So yeah. So I'm excited about seeing what he has, but it's a, it's a fun, it's a fun thing. You know, and Colt Young's bat seems like it's coming around. You know, the real issue that we have introduced Ben, the, the men us that we are close to unleashing. And the last names being different and appreciably so will help, but we are dangerously close to a Tyler Wade, Taylor Ward kind of situation with the Colts and Colts. Yeah, it's true. You know, the Mariners need to be good so that there is a distinction to be drawn by a national audience between us two young men, because otherwise we are, Oh boy, we're going to have some Colts and Colts Colt. Colt Emerson sounds like, you know, like he should have been in Tombstone, you know, Colt Emerson doesn't Colt Emerson sound like he's one of Wyatt Erps guys. Like, not a, you know, they were all mostly, well, not all of them. Doc Holiday wasn't, but like they were his brothers. The other three were two. The other two were his brothers too. There were two. Weren't there two? I'm actually asking. You're testing my knowledge of Old West gangs here. Do you not? No, but, but you've seen, you've seen Tombstone though, right? You've seen Tombstone. Yeah. I've seen Deadwood. You've seen the movie. Is Wyatt or Deadwood? I've never watched Deadwood. Some time ago though. Tombstone. Tombstone is one of those movies where, sorry, we will move on because I know other people don't care about this the same way, but Tombstone is like an important movie for me. Yeah, Virgil and Morgan, they were the brothers, just the two. And then of course, there's Doc Holiday, who was not a relation so far as I know. But maybe like Colt Emerson could be like a helper, you know, like when Virgil got winged. Yeah, they were in Deadwood also. Were all of them in Deadwood? Well, Doc Holiday is and Wyatt Earp certainly is. OK. Just, you know, the Old West figures, they make cameos in there. They passed through town at the very least. Yeah, at a certain point when you have names that are that similar, it's actually easier if you have identically named players. Ben Zimmerlisner was emailing me the other day about the fact that there's another Cade Smith. There's a Yankees pitching prospect, Cade Smith. Yes, it's a nightmare. In AAA. Yeah, but I think it's less of a nightmare. See, if you have a second Max Muncie or you have another Cade Smith, I would rather have that than the close names, because if you're aware that there are multiple Cades Smith or whatever, then you can be on guard for that. And you can just clarify which Cades Smith are we talking about? Obviously, there have been a lot of instances in Major League history of same named players in the same era. And that's confusing, absolutely. But as long as you're aware that there are two, then you are on the watch for it. But if it's a close, if it's Tyler and Taylor and Wade and Ward, and it's just really hard to keep it straight or the Taylor and Tyler Rogers or whatever it is. And so I'd actually rather deal with multiple Max Muncie's than like Mark Muncie or something, you know, Mark Massey or whatever. Right? I think it's just that's even harder, I think. So spoken like a man who doesn't have to resolve player link or describe. Well, that's true. Yeah, unless they're in a podcast episode summary. But yeah, I do enjoy, though, when the prospect people will concede that someone can stick it shortstop because it's so hard to get them to concede that because the standard is hard to do. I know it's hard to do. I'm saying, but their standards are so stringent. Yes, they're exacting. I don't think that guy can stick it shortstop. He's going to move to a corner like to pin a prospect person down and get them to acknowledge that, yes, this player is a future big league shortstop long term, especially if it's not a glove guy, you know, because if it's one thing, if you're a no hit all field kind of guy, but your offensive, it's like the Nichols law of catcher defense where if you're a good offensive catcher, then people will underrate your defense. There's a little bit of that going on, maybe less. So now when obviously we're used to short stops, who's swing a big stick to. But even so, to get a prospect person unreservedly to just say, yeah, the Skype is going to be a big league shortstop is just so exciting because you never twist their arm. You have to like threaten them. You have to like lock them up and just to make them concede that like short stops come from somewhere, you know, every team has one. I mean, some of them aren't good. Some of them are JP Crawford at the stage of his career. I understand that. But it's like the platonic ideal of a major league shortstop. It's OK to be average. Like there are some guys who can just hold down the position without being good. They won't embarrass you. Yeah. So I'm just relieved when we get a guy where it's like, yes, you know, because it's difficult to do. And then at some point over a long enough time frame, sure, everyone will have to move off of shortstop. But I'm just saying, let's not sell them short. Let's give them a chance at least. I think, though, you will concede that there are a great many current big league infielders who are former short stops. Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, like I'm just. Yes. And there are many minor league shortstops who will not be future big league shortstops. If you're good and talented and a high draftee, you often start out at shortstop and then there's there's like a positional diaspora and people move down the defensive spectrum, you start at shortstop. And so, yeah, you get winnowed out. But it's just such a relief to me because it's always like the clock is ticking, the days are numbered, he's going to have to move over. And it's an important distinction because the standards offensively are much different. And so I understand why people obsess over, oh, can he stick at shortstop? But just just saying it's so rare to get to a unicorn who can stick at shortstop. Everyone agrees on it. So the question about extension trends. So Passon, when he was tweeting about this, he said, between Colt Emerson today and Cooper Pratt with Milwaukee yesterday, teams more and more are willing to give big money to players with no major league service time, but the pedigree to be frontline players, the allure of having a player's prime locked up makes it worth the risk. So I guess we could check this. We could quantify is it true that it's more and more or is it that two happened in two days and suddenly it seems like a trend? Because the interesting thing is that I feel like extensions have been a thing for decades, even in their current form. And yet they always seem like they're the new innovation or something. It's like, oh, yeah, teams are doing this with extensions. And then you think, well, wait, didn't John Hart do that with Cleveland in the 90s? And then everyone's been copying that ever since. And then Atlanta signed all their guys to extensions. And so is anything actually new? Because this is not unprecedented. This has happened for more than a decade, at least going back to Jonathan Singleton. That was what, 2014 or something when the Astros signed him to an extension before he made his major league debut. Scott Kingery, Evan White, the Mariner. Now that trio of names, I just cited, might lead you to think that this is risky. And maybe that's why teams haven't wholeheartedly embraced this tactic. And so much more often we've seen either, I guess, the canonical example of this would be the first Evan Longoria extension. Just right after the debut, shortly after the debut, you signed the long-term contract or the Jackson Churrio, where it's right before the debut, and then maybe you're on the verge and then you get called up right away or you break camp with the big club. And maybe it's because you signed the extension. But rarely do we get this sort of not quite knocking on the door. But in the long run, it should work out for the team if the player is any good. But it seems like the way that Passon worded it is kind of, oh, this is the new trend. This is what teams are willing to do. I wonder, because they're at least isolated examples of them doing that for years. And I remember a piece that Sam wrote for Baseball Prospectus, the future of contract extensions. This was exactly 13 years ago. This was the first week of April 2013. And he was talking about, OK, what's next? Suddenly teams will be testing new frontiers when it comes to extensions. And it was signed earlier extensions. And it was about, oh, well, they'll sign more guys who are not yet making their debuts and that happened. But it's not like that really caught on and then sign longer extensions, sign more extensions, say, sign more mediocre players to extensions. So not just your top prospect, but just an average guy. Why not sign average guys to extensions too? And we've seen that sometimes too. But none of it has become sort of the new meta, like the standard, like this is just what you do. And this is what all teams do. And this is what the smart teams do. So it's still sort of case by case and team by team. And it's hard to say that anything is quite caught on. There are certainly more extensions signed than there used to be, and thus fewer free agents, as we have discussed. And obviously, players just aren't always willing to sign extensions. But it doesn't seem like there's necessarily one set agreed upon consensus way to do it. Yes, you should always try to sign your tap ex prospects to an extension before they make their major league debut. It's still something of a rarity. And maybe it's because some of those have backfired and there's not that big a sample of contracts meeting that exact specification. I think that that has a lot to do with it. And I also think that it is not uncommon to see early career extensions. And I think that that sometimes just puts everyone at ease. Right? Like you can you get the guy up, you see what he can do, you see how he's adjusted. The player gets some additional information about what they might expect in terms of how they are going to perform and be compensated over the pre free agency window in like the couple of years right after. And so I think everyone comes to the table with like more information integrators comfort level with it. So I think that's part of why the the pre debut doesn't happen quite as much because it's not like it's pre debut or Hacey and free agency. Right? Like you can sign an extension all the way along the line. You know, I think that that there have been a number of lucrative correctly sized deals that have come like a year into a guy's career. They do tend to be a little more at least a little more lucrative than the pre debut extension. You're not getting quite the same discount that you were. But also you have a greater level of assurance and comfort if you're the team in addition to sort of a greater understanding as the as the player. So I don't know. It seems seems pretty normal. Like Corbyn Carroll signed a year in. Right. And I think his extension, if I'm remembering correctly, and now I'm going to have to go back and look, it was March of 2023. So he had had, you know, the 32 game cameo the season before everybody was like, let's be in business together for a long time. And then he went in one rookie there is great. So like that happens and, you know, Julio's extension with the team is sort of more akin to that, although his was so convoluted that maybe it's like a bad comp for anyone. But yeah, I don't know. I also wonder, you know, it would be interesting in the sample is still small enough that I don't know that we could really draw any like firm conclusions from it. But it is interesting to see these extensions getting signed when presumably there will at least be some sort of change to the way that pre free agency players are compensated in the next CBA, even if it's just raises to the league minimums, but like who knows, we could come out of the next CBA negotiation with like a completely different arbitration system. I don't find that particularly likely, but it is a possibility. And so I wonder how, if at all, the potential change to the labor landscape is factoring on the player side on the team side as well, I suppose. But, you know, all of these deals are so they're all fine, you know, and you might, if you're higher on Cooper Pratt than our prospect team is, maybe you think Cooper Pratt didn't get the deal he should have, maybe you think Cooper Pratt left money on the table and that may well end up being true, but they blur just seem OK, you know, and that one can max out at $80 million. So it's not like he's well, and then there are escalators on top of that. Escalators. Escalators. All right. Let's escalate this episode to the email portion. And I have a few transaction related ones we could segue into. So here's one from Charlie in Bristol, in the UK. As I was listening to the news that AJ Prelar had been extended, I got to thinking we've seen coaching trades before or manager trades. Ozzy Guillen from the White Sox to the Marlins in 2001, for example. But what would it take for Prelar to finally jump the shark and trade himself? What sort of return would have to come back to San Diego for such a trade to make sense? Surely some GM needy teams might be willing to make such a trade. And if he was able to seek his own permission to be traded, then it could happen, presumably with added input from the Padres front office. I feel like this would be the ultimate Prelar move. And it really would. This is the appropriate way for Prelar to depart the Padres. I don't want to see him just get laid off at some point. I want to see him throw a smoke bomb and just disappear because he has traded himself. I mean, that would be like the prestige that would be. This has all been building up to all these years of trades and transactions has been building up to the ultimate move of trading himself to another team. And it's almost plausible because almost anything is plausible where AJ Prelar is concerned. Yeah. The Padres are up for sale. He's been there for a really long time. He probably doesn't have that long a lease shift. Things don't go great for the Padres. And we've talked about how he's up there on the leaderboard of executives who have presided over many managers during their tenure. So how long does he have? And if new ownership comes in and maybe they don't work well together or they just want their own person in charge, that's just the way to go. Like after all he's done and the number of times he has remodeled this roster and he's just torn down the farm system and built it back up again and traded it all over again. That's just the perfect exit for him, just to trade himself to another team. How would it work? Imagine the scrutiny they would come to bear on that transaction because, you know, presumably like whoever the control person for the Padres is would want to say, if you're leaving to go to the org where you're like, are you getting the best possible deal for the Padres? I mean, you probably think quite highly of yourself, so maybe it's fine, but it's interesting. I thought you were going to say that like the ultimate way for him to depart the Padres would be for him to like wicker man. And I was like, that's pretty extreme. You know, that would be the most extreme way for him to go. I don't know that there would be a ton of appetite for it, which isn't to say that, you know, I think AJ does a bad job or anything like that. But I think that if you're, if you are on the receiving end of that, wouldn't you just say, why am I bringing my own replacement in? Like if you're the GM on the other end, are you like am I wally pipping myself? Like why would I do that? Yes. Who is consummating this on the other side? Who's your trade partner? Because unless so, if you had a GM vacancy, yeah, then that's one thing. And then I guess who would even be executing that trade, but maybe the ownership does or something or your assistant GM, whoever's keeping the seat warm. Yeah. Does the does the league, does the league intervene just to be like, we got to make sure that this is all above. Yeah. Especially with AJ because like, hey, sorry to remind everyone, but like there have been times where the medicals have been weird for the pod race and then they've had deals on dawn and all kinds of stuff. So I have to imagine the league would be like, we need to take a look at that, please. Yeah, maybe. And then usually what you do in that situation, if you have a vacancy, you don't trade for another team's GM, right? Just hire an interview and then hire them. Now, if if Adrian Peller wanted to go somewhere else and he's just such a committed trader that he wants to. Not a trade tour. Not a trade tour. No, a trader. A trader. Yeah. And so he wouldn't want to leave in the conventional way. He wouldn't want to ask permission from ownership to interview and then just leave. He would want to get something for himself, I think. Well, maybe, but maybe he would maybe he would be like, I got to get out of here and they get nothing. You know, it bright if you wanted to stick it to them on the way out. If it was a bad working relationship or something. Right. But then it hasn't. We haven't seen that to really be the case. No. Yeah. So a new ownership group comes in and maybe gives him his walking papers or something. And then maybe just on the way out, he trades himself. Just as a courtesy or something. Or I don't know. I just I love the situation where he has been dismissed, but still has trading authorization. Yes. Yeah. Like he hasn't been locked out of the system. Yeah. Like they didn't take his key card and, you know, they haven't changed his his ebis again. And so he's able to just go, bloop, bloop, bloop. Yeah. It just seems like something he would do. It's just he's always unconventional when it comes to transactions. He's a stamp. Yeah. I'm not going to give myself up for free. What are you now? He would be hamstringing himself if he did that because wherever he's being traded to, he is then sacrificing something. He's surrendering some prospect or whatever a bag of balls, some, some cash payment. And so maybe knowing that he's going to this other team that he would want to hold on to whatever that is. But I just I see him as he just loves the game. He's just so committed to the art of the deal, basically, that he just would not sell himself short and would want to go out this way. It just feels like, yes, this is fitting. So I hope it happens. It won't. Yeah. I hope it does. I would like it to happen. We'd have so much fun. Yeah. What's a pobo or a GM worth? That's a big question that always comes up. What is it worth? What are they worth? Expressed in prospect capital. How do you value an executive? What's the executive's value over replacement level? That deranged trade value account on Twitter. What's African field day? Oh my God. Maybe it would break their model and then we wouldn't have to see those tweets anymore. Maybe Ben Clemens can do the executive trade value series this summer. We can we can do we can do the this or that trade tool, but with executives and we can like, but it would be fun because I think even your most committed baseball sicko probably has like how many baseball execs do you think you could you could ID on site? Or you if you're walking around winter meetings, I know you don't normally go to winter meetings, but if you were walking around wondering, we need to be like, oh, it's AJ like AJ. Well, he'd be wearing his basketball shorts or something. So that would stand out. But I mean, most of them, you know, GMs these days are GMs. Always what GMs used to be. But but the top level exec, the head honcho. You think you'd be able to identify all of them? I think the I think you would and I think most of our readers would. But I also think that we could slip maybe five to eight fake photos in and full people and that would be. No, I don't think most even fangrass readers could come close to say picking Scott Harris out of a crowd or something. I just not to single him out. He's a perfectly normal working person. I'm just, you know, there's some executives who stand out more than others. Either they've been executives for longer or they're just more outspoken or just it's a function of the team. Yeah, like everyone knows what Jerry looks like, you know, of course. And everyone and the former players, you probably have a higher hit rate. And as you have written more of them lately. Yeah. OK. Here is a question from Nat. When the Giants signed Harrison Bader, his introductory press conference was a conference call and Nat links to an athletic article. Headline Harrison Bader plans to make an impact with Giants, quote, I love running balls down. That's a nice person. Now, for a big free agent signing, you almost always see an in-person press conference where the player gets his New Jersey and everyone shakes hands. Bader's wasn't the biggest contract, but two years and 20 million is still real money. What's the threshold for getting flown out to San Francisco or any city for the press conference? That is a really good question. It's like a great question. Yeah. When when Passon was on here in December and I was asking him about the threshold for a breaking to preface one of his tweets with breaking. And he did really have kind of a rubric for what's breaking worthy. And I bet if we talk to maybe a media relations person for a team, I bet they have a feel for that. Just is this like Seinfeld, you know, is he sponge worthy? It's like, is he press conference worthy or is this can this be an email? Can this be a press release? Can this be a call? I think part of it too is like, it depends on where does the team live and where does the player live? So like take Bader, for example, imagine Harrison Bader. And I don't know if Harrison Bader still lives in the greater New York area. I know he's from Broxville, right? Imagine he had signed with Yankees. I think any amount of money over five million dollars, he probably gets a press conference because he's like right there, you know, if the Diamondback signed somebody and he lives in the Valley, you know, why not? Come on down. Just get in the car and come on down. If you live in California, I think you do a presser in person for any of the California teams plus the Mariners. If you are and maybe the Rockies, the Rockies might insist on it, regardless of the dollar amount, just to be like, we did it. Here he is. Look at our special boy. It's definitely team specific. I would think so. Yeah. I think there are thresholds. Yeah. Maybe it has to do also with the players' fame or when you talk about Murakami, for instance, he got a press conference. I believe with the White Sox, it was an entertaining one. Now, he didn't get a huge contract, but it was a surprise that his contract was as small as it was in short term. I guess maybe it's more about the AV than the total dollars. I think maybe even if you signed a high dollar one year deal or something, but you're a superstar and you signed for 30 million or whatever. And I do think that the potential impact to the organization matters. You're right, Murakami signed for less than people were expecting, but he was a big name-free agent. And it was a big deal if he went to Chicago. Or just in Verlander, only signed for 10 million dollars, but there was no way the Tigers weren't going to do. Well, I say that. I assume they did a press conference in person with Verlander. That didn't go well last night, Ben. No, I had a bold prediction about Verlander being good this year that I don't feel as good about. But it was one start. It was one start. He looked cooked at the start of last season too. And then he figured it out. Yeah, but it didn't go well. Also, time and the back, you guys got to get some relievers, man. That bullpen is a freaking nightmare. What a time. Tonneger's pen, not the best either. You know who was getting closer to her bold prediction goals though? One Meg Raleigh. Thank you, Corbin Carroll. Triple animal run. Yes. So it has a lot to do with what the player has previously accomplished and just how well known they are and whether it's unusual for that team to sign someone to a big contract. But there's probably, if we were to research this and someone could, and if you do, by all means, let us know. But I bet there's a press conference cut off. I bet it's got to be market adjusted, team adjusted somewhat. But I bet... Five million? Ten million? Ten million. I go, yeah, definitely over. I mean, five million is nothing these days. It is nothing. Ten million, AAV. So Bader got 20 total. Yeah, I feel like that's about the line maybe. Well, that's two years. But yeah. I'm kind of surprised he didn't do a press conference, honestly. Yeah, because it's the Giants and how many exciting free agents have they had, right? So, but I think there's probably, I don't know, if I had to ballpark it, I guess if you're, I mean, if you're getting anywhere near like 50 mil, if you're getting up to that range, then you're probably gonna... Ten million a year is like reliever money. Yeah, right. Some of it's roll too. But Harrison Bader's supposed to be there every day, center of field or platoon allowing. So I'm a little surprised, but I guess I'm not, because like 10 million bucks a year is like reliever money and you're not doing it. Now, if you're Edwin Diaz, you are gonna have a press conference. And again, I assume he had one. Here's the other thing. Who's watching those? It's good that they have them because it's an opportunity for reporters to go and ask questions. And for the editors out there, great. Because then you get the photo of them in the jersey before they've ever played. And so you can just be like, here he is. I promise I know that he no longer plays for the Mets or whatever. I wonder what the viewership is like for those. Probably lower than the readership the day after, based on the quotes that you get from it. Most of them, I'm sure, could have been a conference call, I think, would be the conclusion. But it's nice. And why not? Did they send you my hat? I don't know. But part of, I think, signing the free agent is the marquee value that you get for that, the publicity. You've got someone to slap on the cover of the media guide. How much does that matter? But someone you can market, someone whom you can hopefully hype up your fans and sell some season tickets. I don't know if Harrison Bader is doing that. But that's the question, really. It's who gets fans hyped. If you're big enough to get fans hyped, then probably you're big enough for a press conference because you want to get that publicity value and that little pop from the signing. So I'm sure that this is a conversation that team personnel have. I'm sure that this has come up. Does this guy cross the line? Yeah, does he merit a press conference? Or should we demote him to? And you don't want to seem desperate. You don't want to be disrespectful to the player. That's the other thing. But you also... Yeah, you don't want to insult the player by suggesting that he's not press conference worthy. But then... Wow. So Edwin Diaz did have a press conference, but none of the photos from it ended up in our photo service. Well, that's annoying. I mean, it doesn't matter because now he's just played games for the better. So yeah, you don't want to insult the player. But I do think that if you are rolling out an everyday guy who's getting reliever money, then maybe it reads as pretty desperate to your fans where they're going to be like, why are you doing that? You don't want to seem like a small-time operation. Yeah. Right. And I don't mean it as an insult to Harrison Bader. Like, he's a fun player to watch. But he's making relief from money. All right. Here's a question from David, Patreon supporter. I was watching the Dodgers ring ceremony before their game Friday night. And when Emmett Sheehan's name was called, Anthony Anderson, the emcee, explained that he wasn't going to come collect his ring right then because he was the starting pitcher. He being Emmett Sheehan, not Anthony Anderson. The broadcast then switched to a camera that showed Sheehan throwing long toss in the outfield. So yeah, he was busy warming up. But the camera stayed on him as the crowd cheered him. And I was struck by the fact that he made no reaction whatsoever, no tip of the cap, no wave, not even a smile. He just kept on doing his throwing as if nothing was happening. Is this eye wash? I get it that starting pitchers are sacred figures on the day of their start. I get that Sheehan needs to get in the zone. But you're getting your first World Series ring in front of a sold out home crowd. Also, this thing went on for a really long time. It wasn't as if he was about to enter the game. I do understand that this is absolutely not important. But Emmett, my man, you're allowed to enjoy the moment at least a little right. So yeah, maybe he's coming from the Clayton Kershaw School of don't talk to me on my start day or I will bite your head off. But even so, this does seem like a moment to loosen up and enjoy and doff your cap and take a bow. Yeah, at least take a pause and go, here, here I am. Emmett Sheehan also sounds like he could be in the Tombstone gang and looks like it. He has sort of an old timey Western face. I guess what I'd say is that Emmett Sheehan was important to the Dodgers winning the World Series last year insofar as his performance during the regular season was strong. He didn't have a girl right October. So maybe that was going through his mind. Like it wasn't disastrous, but like, you know, he had, well, his fit was much better than his year, but like he did, he gave up some runs, you know, he gave up seven earned in the post season last year. He walked five guys. So maybe he felt like he didn't earn his moment in the sun. Or maybe here's a possibility that people should entertain. Why are all the sound systems so bad that you can't understand what the PA guys are saying anymore? What's up with that? What's going on? You know, like, oh, I feel like, did you see, sorry, I don't know why I'm so pop culture heavy today. Did you, did you see the weekend update before the Oscars where what's his name was doing, Tucker Carlson on, okay, so I find my, I find myself, I thought it was a very good impression. I'm, and I've been going, what's going on in a way that is disturbing because I don't want to be invoking Tucker Carlson. But anyway, Emma Cheen, one possibility is he just didn't really hear it, you know, he just didn't really hear that that was what was going on in that moment. He was locked in, maybe the sound was muffled, although it's hard to believe in Dodger Stadium because good God is the sound loud there. My stars. And also if he was up on the video board and he was tossing, he probably could have seen himself up there. So anyway, if this was just act like you've been there before or something, then I don't think that applies to the World Series because even if your team has been there before, if you haven't, savor that and, and even if he didn't have a great post season, he played a part in propelling them to that point. So yeah, absolutely acknowledged the fans appreciation and that you did a good thing. You made it to the top of the mountaintop. Even the Dodgers can't count on that happening every year though. It hasn't seemed like that lately. So yeah, loosen up a little, Emmett, if that's what was happening here, you don't have to put on a stoic face when you were celebrating one of the ultimate baseball accomplishments. I agree, Emmett, if you felt a need to hold back because you had serious business to do, sorry, buddy, you should have been able to loose a little, but also maybe he just didn't want to. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe he just has a hard time taking compliments. He feels self-conscious. He's self-facing, but I say that you looking like you belong in Tombstone, I mean that compliment, as a compliment, I mean that in a complimentary way. I'm not, that's not Zorogeitory, Emmett. I'm not saying you look funny. I'm just saying you look old-timey. You have an old-timey vibe, you know, and an old-timey name. Okay, here's a question from Trevor, Patreon supporter. I was watching the Padres face the Mariners in their Cactus League opener and noticed that Calrally faced a lefty in his first plate appearance and a righty in his second, allowing him to get reps from both sides of the plate. This made me wonder whether teams do any casual communication about handedness of planned pitchers that allows their opponent to line up switch hitters such that they get reps from each side of the plate. This then got me thinking about the hypothetical inverse of this friendly cooperation. Say there was a switch hitter who was incredible from each side of the plate, Aaron Judge from the right, Barry Bonds from the left. Could the rest of the league come together and attempt to nerf his production by allowing him to see only pitchers of one handedness for the entirety of spring? So every time this player is up to bat, his opponent would ensure that a righty is on the mound. The hitter would be taking all his plate appearances in spring games from the left side of the plate. Then when the regular season starts, the opponent would then use only lefties, forcing the hitter to hit from the right aside he would be less built up with. The hitter would obviously still be able to take swings in the cages or live BP from both sides, but in cactus or grapefruit league games, opponents would allow him only to hit from one side. Would this actually impact the production of the hitter? Could the strategy be used in the regular season where teams force a hitter to see long droughts of hitting from one of their sides before switching to the other? Or would this be a case of proving that spring game action doesn't actually matter that much for preparation and the hitter would be just fine? I think that the hitter would be just fine because there are so many other ways to replicate reps. If a team noticed that their opponents were doing this, they'd be like, well, I guess you're just gonna like, you're gonna face our guys in like a sim game and get some reps in that way or like, let's dial up the trajectory and you can face, you know, the handedness you're not seeing that often. In answer to the first question, like you might not get lineups and pitching until like, you know, a little bit before, but you can kind of game it out based on who's thrown most recently and when and what have you. I don't know that it would make a huge, huge difference. I mean, I don't think that spring reps are useless, but like I said, I don't think they're the only way to replicate reps. I also, I don't think that this would be a tremendous priority for other clubs. You know, I don't think that teams are like trying to help each other out by saying like, yeah, you're gonna get a, you're gonna get a mix of lefties and righties today so that all your guys can see all the different kinds of dudes. Like they're, they're not doing that, but the, the notion that you would coordinate your entire spring training, like, you know, deployment strategy around denying a particular hitter reps against a particular handedness is like, you know, that's something the Bowman would write about, you know. Yeah. This seems like it would be self sabotage. It would not, not nearly be benefiting you, even if it did actually impair the hitter's performance, it would hurt you more because you'd have to make some decisions not to pitch people and then those people wouldn't get their reps. And so and then the coordination that would happen across teams, I think maybe in spring training, even in the regular season, sometimes we get emails about, well, what if a team just never announced who is pitching and these days with pretty predictable rotations, there's not that much of an element of surprise usually, but also the reason why they don't do that, except for really isolated occurrences in the postseason when they do want to get that advantage and it's important enough is that everyone would retaliate and no one would share any information and no one would divulge who was starting and no one wants to be on the receiving end of that strategy either. So they all just, it's like a mutual disarmament sort of thing. But in spring training, it's probably more unpredictable, but they're probably even more willing to just as a courtesy, just to be polite say, Hey, here's what we're going with in case, because you have to decide which hitters you might be bringing with you and their split squad considerations and everything. So probably they get even more of a heads up than they usually do. But yeah, I don't think this would be worth it because you're, if you're tying one hand behind the hitters back, you're sort of doing the same to yourself. And I think there might be a perceptible impairment in performance if a guy really went all of spring training without getting a single game look from one side. I know that there are trajectory machines now and that would probably minimize the impact. But still, if there's any value whatsoever to the game situation, it would probably, it would hurt. I don't know how measurable it would be, but I think it would produce some dip in performance. I think it would matter some. But I do think that you can, like if you, again, if you notice this, you'd be like, Oh, well, I guess you're just gonna, we're gonna have one of our guys throw to you in a sim game. And I don't know that that's a lot less competitive than- Yeah. I missed that Nat asked whether we thought that the Giants fed X Harrison Bader, at least a ceremonial jersey. Well, wait, because it's like, does he have a hat? It's like, you know, it's like during the NFL draft where they will have, I guess they do this to baseball players now too, but, you know, they put a hat on when they're, if they're at home, when they get drafted and they're a high profile prospect, and it's like, do they just have like a tray of hats? And then do they send the rest of the hats back? Yeah. And sometimes flashy, but ill fitting suits at times at those vents, but, you know, you don't often have to wear a suit at that age. Yeah. Okay. Here is a question from Harry who says, after hearing you speak about Addison Barger's couch t-shirt giveaway, even as a Jays fan myself, I was thinking, wow, anything could be a giveaway. This got me thinking, why don't teams have giveaways for every home game? For my experience, giveaway days have higher attendance, so any costs would likely be covered by the increased food and merchandise sales. However, I also thought it would be like syndrome from the Incredibles, where if everyone is super, no one will be. And having a giveaway every day would take away the uniqueness of it all. The Jays for their 50th anniversary are doing 90% of games with a giveaway. So why not just make it a clean 100%? What do you think about this idea? I think there has been some giveaway creep, it seems like, and I know Kiri just did a post for Fingers about some of the highlights on the team giveaway promotion schedules. Yeah. I don't know. I'd be interested in if someone could quantify the percentage of games that have a giveaway and how that has changed over time. I would guess that it has gone up. And maybe if there's more of a premium put on attendance, because the broadcast model has changed and who knows, maybe revenue sharing changes, if it turns out that teams can't just sit on the cash that they're getting before the season even starts and they actually have to really drum up business and get people to buy tickets. Well, this is an additional incentive to do that. Yeah, maybe it's just that there is an expense, it is a logistical hassle, even if the cost is defrayed by increased attendance, maybe certain promotions don't really move the needle that much. I was going to say, I think that there are a lot of promos that don't probably inspire ticket sales on their own. And then you have bobbleheads, and that's probably where things go the best. Yeah, so it's probably that, that there just aren't that many that produce a really perceptible uptick in attendance. And then even if the expense of offering all those things is defrayed by the increased ticket sales, then how much are you really making? And do people even want some of these things? Some of them I want very badly, Ben. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, but can you come up with 81 things a year that people really want? No, definitely not. Absolutely not. The Mariners are doing a fanny pack hat. Fanny pack hat. It's got like a little zip on the front. It's got like a little... It's a fanny hat. It's a fanny hat, which I understand if you're a UK listener sounds vulgar, but I need it badly and I can't be there when it happens. So I need someone to send it to me, please. Yeah, I think just diminishing returns maybe is the answer here and just too much logistical. Just to coordinate all of that. And yeah, it's a headache. It really is. I don't know how much it would really pay off in many cases. But yeah, if you're going 90% games with a giveaway, then the 10% just feels like why even go that day? But maybe you're reserving that for games when people are going to be going anyway because it's a compelling opponent or something. So... I don't know, but it does seem like teams are testing this contention at least. Okay, here's a question from Ali, Patreon supporter who says, I write to you sitting here watching Craig Kimbrel pitch in the fourth inning of a spring training game and I believe I've figured out the reason behind Kimbrel's struggles the past several seasons. All right, this would be big if true. As I watch him get the signs, each pitch in his unique stance, I think it's the pitchcom that's the issue. The last time we saw vintage Craig Kimbrel for any extended period of time was 2021 and every team started using the pitchcom in the 2022 season. So why did this affect Kimbrel so much? Well, prior to the pitchcom with catchers flashing signs, Kimbrel would be leaning in closer and squinting to see them. He could really mean mug the batter while taking his signs and it's pretty darn intimidating. However, with the pitchcom, pitchers will often have a puzzled or very pensive look on their face as they're trying to hear the signs, the opposite of intimidating. And Kimbrel still goes into his stance while he's getting the signs from pitchcom, despite there now being no actual reason for him to lean forward like that. It's clear he's just half-assing it and just going through the motions. The very thing that once struck fear in hitters hearts is now giving them confidence and a psychological edge. What are your thoughts on this theory? It's certainly a theory. And I don't mean to suggest that intimidation doesn't matter. When Craig Kimbrel was at the peak of his powers, he was intimidating, sure, but he was intimidating because he was really good and he's like 99, 98, 99. I think that him throwing 93 probably has a little bit more to do with the diminished intimidation. Also, is he intimidating physically? He's funny. Like, he's doing a funny thing. You can't claim that you are intimidating wholly, at least in terms of your presence on the mound. If kids imitate your delivery behind home play, Mary Hart made fun of Craig Kimbrel. Okay, Mary Hart. Mary Hart makes fun of you. You're not intimidating, which isn't again to say that he wasn't good because for a while Craig Kimbrel was lights out phenomenal. One of the best in the biz. But again, when that was true, he was throwing like 98, apart from anything else. That wasn't the only reason he was good, but that did have something to do with it. So I think if you have a funny delivery, like a, and by that I mean odd, not necessarily humorous. It's hard to say like, oh, how intimidating. Yeah. Because it's like, he's kind of funny. He's kind of funny. Yeah. And it does get imitated in a mocking way. And maybe it always did. Maybe that's more common now, now that he can no longer back it up with his pitching performance. And so it looks kind of, look at you. I'm so scared to face Craig Kimbrel. Not really anymore. So maybe it has that effect now where he's trying to project intimidation, but his, he can't cash those checks, right? Or he's signing checks that, whatever the saying is, exactly. There you go. And this is probably one of those just like spurious correlations, right? You see two things that are closely correlated, but there's clearly no positive relationship there. I think maybe a pitch calm, whether there's a pitch calm or not, and Craig Kimbrel's performance, as you said, probably some other metrics that we could link his decreased performance to, such as fast ball speed, such as other things, stuff related. So yeah, it's an interesting theory. And maybe if he wanted to test it, he could go away from this. He could give up on trying to project intimidation and just be intimidating. Maybe that would work better for him. Maybe that would be, it's like when pitchers have to transition from being power pitchers to more finesse late in their careers, that can sometimes be a difficult transition for some pitchers to make psychologically, physically, and maybe also if you have an intimidating mound presence, but you're no longer intimidating in terms of your stuff. So maybe you should give it up, but it's his signature. It's his trademark. It would be weird if he didn't do it. All right. Corey says, in episode 2444, I think you banter a bit about Artie Moreno being in your bottom five baseball owners who are in your top five baseball owners. And why? Boy, that's a tough one. Can we come up with five? This is a challenge. Okay. So the criteria for good owner, obviously someone who spends, someone who gets out of the way of your front office, doesn't meddle, someone who doesn't move your team to another city or threaten to, and I guess someone who doesn't try to extract public funds from your city or municipality, in a sense, I guess that makes them good at the things that they're trying to be good at, but of wider ethical sense, that's kind of a consideration. And I guess just maybe like how terrible they are as people just in general, that's different from how good an owner they are, but yeah, how morally compromised do they make you rooting for them to, is it blood money, just that kind of thing. So it's tough. So obviously, John Middleton is going to be on there, right? Yeah, he's toward the top. Yeah. So John Middleton, he's letting the Phillies do their thing. He's investing in that roster. Seems like a pretty good steward of the organization. You do probably have to hand it to Steve Cohen here, I think. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you know, even if you don't venerate or glorify him, he certainly spends on the team. That seems to be a top priority for him. That is what you want. So Cohen Middleton, both NLE East and I'm out of good ownership. I mean, you should include the Dodgers ownership group. Yes, Mark Walter and Co, of course. You need to be on that list. Yes. I mean, I think it's also hard because it's like these things can change and they can change rather quickly. There are a lot of ways to treat people well or poorly. You know, part of our issue with Artie Moreno isn't just him saying like doofy stuff in public, although we don't love that either. But you know, this was an organization that didn't take care of its people during the pandemic. Yeah. And the Tyler Skaggs and the minor league conditions. Yeah, like it's just, you know, that's seems bad. You can have owners like the Reyes previous ownership group where it's like, hey, you're not investing in the team, but you're really investing in all the people around the team. Yes. And seemingly empowering competent executives and letting them do their things. So that's something I think that you can put I'm going to say something and I just want I am not putting this person in the good hang away from the field category. Okay, everybody, just you take your fingers off the keyboards. But I'm going to describe a type of ownership approach after a successful playoff run that I find admirable even if I don't love the people involved. There's what the Blue Jays have done very recently. Good. There's what Ken Kendrick did with the Diamondbacks after their World Series run where he spent money on the club. That's good. That's good. Yeah. Ken Kendrick, a person who I super want to hang out with. No. To do a little threatening to move in order to get Yeah. Does he want the valley to pay for it? Yeah. So again, sometimes it's like you're you can be successful along one vertical and not successful on others. So that makes it that makes it difficult to like unreservedly endorse like an approach and an ownership group is my point. And like, you know, John Middleton, I think what he does with the Phillies is great. And I think the way he talked about he has talked about like being a steward of a civic institution is great. He did make his money off tobacco. Like that doesn't seem the best, but that is a reality of his life. So yeah. And this is you would have included, say, John Henry on this list at one point and pre-mookie trade. And so it can change as the level of investment varies. And I guess there's a special, well, circles usually reserved for hell, but I was going to say you get sort of a special star if you are a local owner who helps keep a team somewhere and helps prevent them from moving. So that's bonus points when that happens sometimes too. So maybe you could say give an edge to the current raise owners or others who like, oh, this team is making noises about moving. And now they're not moving. So if you're the local fan base, then you're going to be indebted to that. So yeah, most owners are kind of in some just generic owner range. They're not notably good or notably bad. So it is almost hard to come up with five like really good ones. But yeah, we couldn't quite do it. I don't know. It's hard. Yeah, Cohen Middleton, we gave some credit to like Rogers for spending on itself on its own team asset. There are a bunch that are just, yeah, Dodgers, just a bunch that are kind of unobjectionable-ish. Obviously, like Padre's previous owner would have been probably number one on the list. Yeah, I don't know. No one stands out. This is the hardest email question we've ever gotten. Who are the good owners? So we landed on the Phillies. Phillies, Dodgers. Metz. Metz, Jay's, I guess. Blue Jay's. I don't actually want to put Ken Kendrick on the list of good owners to be clear. It was an illustrative point. Who's going to be fifth? Like a David Rubenstein or something just because he's a Baltimore guy? I guess like, I don't know. Sure. I would grade all of the new owners. They get an incomplete. We're not, and I guess that Cohen's like relatively new, but I think he's satisfied some of the conditions. We're starting to see that in Baltimore, right? Where it's like, okay, you're giving some extensions to some guys and you signed Peter Lanzo. John Sherman Royals. He's definitely playing the ballpark stadium. Right. Right. He's playing a game too. Right. But local businessman at least. He got some points for that maybe. I don't know. Right in if you want to nominate a great owner out there, but after those top four, I'm sort of running out of steam here. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. JJ, Patreon supporter, says, given modern understandings of pitch counts, times through the order penalties and leverage, would a perfect game bid in the World Series necessarily have to be a Maddox to be allowed to happen? Yeah. Close, right? Yeah. I think it would make it much more likely at the very least. Yeah. I think it would be because you'd have to occupy this weird in between because if you're doing it, but your team is blowing out the opposition, well, you might get to a point where if your pitch count is crusting 100, they're like, you can't continue. We need you. We got it. And we're winning by seven runs. I don't know. I picked an arbitrary number. So it needs to be really close, but it can't be too close where it's like, okay, any sign of wavering, we're going to pull you for a leveraged reliever so that we can win this postseason game. You know what I mean? It's a very narrow set of conditions. If I'm understanding the question correctly. Yeah. It's tough. And if you're... It's like a really narrow window. If you're an ace, if you've got a bad bullpen, it can happen. Yeah. But pretty much pitch counts being what they are. Yeah. Especially in that context. So not strictly, not literally, not necessarily no, but yeah, you got to be quite efficient. It's got to be within that realm at least. But I do think there'd still be something. Perfect game. Look, all of the cachet that comes along with the no hit bid, the perfect game bid has fallen away, of course, but perfect game is still meaningfully different from no hitter and World Series perfect game. Right. Yeah. Still a lot of luster to that, obviously. Be a legend. Yeah. And then again, it's also a spot where you don't want to mess around and you don't want to go against what your model says. So there's high stakes either way, but yeah, I think you get a little extra leeway there. Okay. What about Braves? Like just the other kind of corporate ownership group maybe or Brewers? Are the Brewers in consideration just because I put them in the race. I put them in the race category where it's like there's a, there are ways in which they are very good and they are important and we've talked about this a lot, importantly different than like the Pirates. Yeah. Right. Where you have financial constraints. I think those financial constraints are simultaneously genuinely more profound than they are for a team like the Dodgers or even just like a mid market team, while also being probably more self-inflicted than the ownership group would necessarily allow. I think both things can be true simultaneously. But there's a real commitment to winning. There's a lot of investment in the people who work around the team, even if it doesn't manifest in payroll, you know, they invest in infrastructure, they seem to treat their people well. And so I think that they are importantly better than like cheap kind of rent seeking over. It's just like put it in the most annoying terms possible. But you know, I do think that there is at least to some degree a self-inflicted wound there from a payroll perspective. Yeah. It is a legitimately small market, but yes. Yeah. So, and so maybe Cardinals are up there too, another one that's sort of a smallish market these days, but long track record of success and they seem to be thinking about their rebuild in the right way. So that's encouraging. The way that they are going about their business now, I think is probably likely to yield a winning club. So that's exciting. I think that it's okay for our answer to be there aren't a lot of owners that are sort of unambiguously good quote unquote. First of all, none of them are going to be unambiguously good in the like off-heeled hang impact on the world way. Like there's just going to be levels of compromise there regardless, some of which are like way worse than others granted, but there are going to be levels of compromise regardless. But I think that it is a correct diagnosis of the current moment to say that like there are good aspects to clubs that we wish would spend more. There are good teams that spend enough to be competitive, but would benefit from greater payroll. But I also think it's fine to say there aren't a lot of unambiguously we're in it to win it, let's fricking go kind of clubs. And that's a problem for the sport. And I think we would be of the mind that it is a much more profound problem for the sport than the Dodgers running a high payroll. These are the sides that we are likely to continue to explore over the next while. Yes. How long? I don't know. Andrew, Patreon supporter says, I was watching March Madness, specifically UConn versus UCLA who have head coaches who are famous for getting technical fouls. And I got a very stupid idea that I thought would be a fun hypothetical technical fouls in baseball. If technical fouls were a thing in baseball, instead of managers getting ejected immediately, they get assessed a technical foul and are ejected only after two or an egregious blow up. What would be a good punishment for committing one? In basketball, it's free throws and possession. So there's not a great correlation to this in baseball. My initial thought was to have the batting practice picture come out and get to throw live BP to the current batter for one plate appearance. If the manager's team is batting, this would just happen to start the next half inning. But that felt a little too extreme. Yeah. Maybe a balk. I'd love to hear your thoughts. So technical foul managers. I think that ejection is way better. I think ejection is way better. And I appreciate that it is less satisfying perhaps to the other team because you don't have the opportunity to score. But that's not on the table for us anyway. That isn't part of the penalty structure that exists within baseball. We award guys bases. We award guys balls or strikes. Sometimes if you suffer a quote unquote penalty, you hit a guy with the bases loaded or you balk under the right circumstances, maybe a run does score. So it's not like you can never score. But the scoring isn't the penalty that you're incurring. It's a change in the game state that might result in scoring. Does that distinction make sense? Am I thinking about this the right way? Whereas if you get a tech now in some circumstances, that's an automatic run in a way that it wouldn't be in a technical situation in basketball because you still have to make the free throws. But anyway, I don't think that having the scoring like piece of it, I think the way that we have decided to like met out punishment in baseball is either you get a little treat or your opponent gets a little treat or you need to time out away from other people. You're being an embarrassing baby. And I like that. I think that we could stand more of that culture where it's like, Hey, Aaron Boone, just to pick a random example out of the clear blue sky. I think that we should say, Hey, hey, hey, you're an adult. And sometimes you got to get big and loud for your guys. And sometimes you got to do like what Cora did the other day to prevent Trevor's story from getting ejected, where it's like, you got to go be an embarrassment to help your dude save face so that he can stay in the game. And so really what you're doing is admirable and a demonstration of leadership and not you being a whiny baby. But if you're being a whiny baby and you're a big enough whiny baby, you need to go have a time out away from the other kids because you need to be a grown up and set an example and learn to regulate at work. Yeah. And you've of course, have contemplated the potential for a penalty box in baseball. I have. Yeah. I want to remember when I used to write about baseball. That was so fun. I like it. Thank you. I did too. I'm going to try to get back into it. It's one of my goals for the season. So right every now and again. Yeah. But I think that ejections are great. I mean, I think that they can be abused, but so can technical fouls, right? Like you, assuming a fair judge, assuming a fair official, I think that ejections are great. And I think they're underutilized. I think they're underutilized in college basketball. Some of these coaches, man, they are real dicks. And I think they should have to go. I think they should have to send them out of there. We can at least pretend there's pedagogic value to the proceedings because it's college. I know that that's a farce anyway. And that's fine. It was better when we acknowledged that it was first because then we started paying those kids what they should be paid. But, but then sometimes those boys need to go sit and time out, not the players, the coaches, I'm calling them boys because they're acting like children. It's an intentional choice. Would you like to hear my Aaron Boone, Graeme? Yes, what's your, your boon to pick? Okay, very good. I like that a lot. So of course I was watching the Mariners play the Yankees yesterday and I was expecting them to lose and they didn't. Thanks to Cal. Thank you for walking off the Yankees. I don't know what happened, man. It was just like my brain did a weird funny little thing. I think it was because I expected them to lose. I was like, this is going to be a really annoying Mariners loss. This is Luis Castillo's out here doing a great job. He's dominating and then they do a bunch of weird infield Aaron nonsense and they're going to lose to the stupid Yankees at home and I'm going to be so annoyed. And then they didn't. It was great. Probably that's so if you're a Yankees fan. But there was a moment in that game where Aaron Boone was considering challenging a safe call on the field. I do not remember the circumstances. It could not matter less. He decided not to challenge. Ben, it was like the length of the movie Titanic. It took him to decide whether or not he was going to challenge. And if we are going to have a society and they are going to do challenge system stuff, they got to start cracking down on these guys, taking too long to decide whether or not to initiate replay review. It is ridiculous. It was almost a minute. It felt like it was probably not quite that long, but it was a long time. It was in excess of when they're supposed to decide and he's standing there with his little finger out like, wait, wait, wait. And I was like, hello, home plate empire. Tell him his time has come and gone. He didn't and and on top of all that didn't end up initiating a replay review. Didn't end up initiating a replay review. He made us sit there and wait for nothing. And it was fine because then the guy was safe and I was in favor of that. I think that it was a safe call. It doesn't. Ben, they got a crack down. Okay. Challenge or get off the pot is exactly, exactly. And especially if you're Aaron Boone and you are known for being a fussy. He is so famous for being fussy that they were talking about it on the broadcast last night and he didn't even really get all that worked up in that Mariners game. They were like, you know, one time he got suspended for getting ejected too much. And I was like, he did. And then I called him a bad example on the podcast and I was only half doing a take. The other half of me meant it. All right. I like this righteous rant. Sam, Patreon supporter says something that has been part of the discourse pretty regularly in this era is how the random reliever roulette isn't an ideal viewing experience. Curious to get your two cents on something. I think watching a lineup where you might have three regulars with the other six being mix and match platoon types is a worse viewing experience than the reliever roulette. I totally get why platooning happens. It's a legitimate strategy and a way for cheap teams to get the best out of flawed players. It helps the team win and puts players in positions to succeed. However, there is something to be said about waking up and knowing these are our dudes and setting it and forgetting it. In your opinion, what is the ideal lineup ratio between every day and platoon players? Okay. So I'm going to ask a question and you're going to tell me if I just didn't hear you say this already. Okay. Give me an email. Is this person a fantasy baseball player? Unspecified. This strikes me. I could be wrong. I was the complete of a fantasy baseball player because of the set it and forget a piece of it. Like, are you talking about the team's lineup or your own? That doesn't matter. Setting that aside. I would just say the following. Teams would prefer to just have every day guys too. You know, like teams would prefer to have a guy who is not like so disastrous against, you know, same handed pitching that he can't be in there. But sometimes that's not the guy they have. Sometimes they have Carrie Carpenter, you know. Let me tell you something. You don't want to watch Carrie Carpenter batting against lefties. That goes badly. It sucks. So I understand what you're saying, but I think it's okay. I'm going to invite you to consider it this way. There are only so many guys on the roster. Most of them are on the roster most of the time. Most of the time when they're not on the roster, it's because somebody on the roster got hurt and they're filling in. Right. So like, it's okay. You don't have that many guys you have to remember because you don't have to remember the pitchers for this question. You just have to remember the hitters and there aren't that many of them because benches are small now. I think that a well executed platoon can just be a lot of fun because you get to see the very best of guys. They're often shielded from their worst. Would they prefer to be able to hit, you know, same handed pitching? I'm sure they would. But guess what? Again, Carrie Carpenter can't do that. He can't. He's Babe Ruth when he gets to face righties. When he has to face lefties, it goes very badly. So I think that it's fine. I don't think it's that many guys. And then think about it this way. You can have a love for like the guy who is like the short side of a platoon, but then maybe he has to come up in a big situation because there's no one else and he does it anyway. And you're like, wow. And you have an appreciation for how big a moment that is because he's failed previously or because he never sees lefties. And all of a sudden, what are you going to do except make him face a lefty? And then he hits a home run and you're like, oh my God, Carrie Carpenter. I don't know why I'm picking on and flattering simultaneously Carrie Carpenter. I'm fascinated by Carrie Carpenter. I'm like, you're so good from the one. How is it such a dramatic split? It's so... Well, let's see if other Ben's bold prediction comes true. It won't be. Right. But yeah, I don't... It will, but it will be. Yeah, but I don't think this is... 135 to 69 WRC plus. That's bonkers. That's a whole baseball player in between. I don't think it's akin to the reliever roulette issue because, well, for one thing, benches just aren't that big. I mean, other than the bullpen bench, the roster has been swallowed by pitchers and relievers even with some nominal limit to the number of pitchers you can carry now. So it's just not as big an issue. You're not having as many interchangeable faces and guys getting sent down and coming back up again. So how many spots in a lineup are really regularly going to be platooned? Well, it can't be that many because there's just no room on the roster at this stage. Right? So if it's just a couple of positions, yeah, like who actually has in this hypothetical three regulars and then the other six being mixed and match platoon types. That doesn't really happen very often. Yeah, you've kind of run out of roster spots at that point. So I think it's a less pronounced problem. Maybe some people wouldn't consider either of these things to be a problem, but I think there's less turnover. And also it can be satisfying, whereas relievers, okay, yes, you absolutely have specialists and everything, but maybe even less so than you used to when you had more Lugies before the three-batter minimum. And so often the relievers are pretty interchangeable. Yeah, you got lefties and you got righties, but and you've got guys who get grounders and guys who don't and different skill sets and everything. But for the most part, you just kind of got a lot of guys who throw hard and have a slider. You know, it's just it's not that entertaining. So if you have different skill sets, I think that's actually kind of fun, right? I mean, I guess you usually have righties and lefties in the bullpen. The Diamondbacks don't, right? They had no left-handed relievers on their opening day bullpen and they're just rolling with it. But I think it's so bad. It's going. You already complained about the Diamondbacks bullpen in this episode. It's not going well. It's going badly. You need at least one leftie in there. There used to be a site, I guess there still is, but it's inactive. Now, I think it was a tumbler called Things Fitting Perfectly Into Other Things. And this was, this was not porn. This was just like objects, household objects. It wasn't porn to you. No, I mean, it was in a sense. It was viscerally satisfying, not really arousing in that way, at least for me, but it was satisfying because you'd see these objects that just happened to just neatly and they weren't designed to do that. They weren't designed to do it. Yeah. It was just really serendipitous that they did. Okay. I'm pulling this up. I'm so afraid of what you're going to find. You're going to have to do age verification to see this site. No, one of these is like an Oreo fitting perfectly into a Mentos tube. It's just like things that are not or an oven knob fitting into an AC, like in a car, the knobs that you twiddle, but the knobs, it's the same. Because the back ends, the it doesn't help that in a lot of, in a lot of these situations, like where there's like a connector, they do, they do describe it as like a male and female. It's true. Yeah. So it's like the end on the back is the same. Yeah. And even though, yeah. Right. So I find platooning sometimes satisfying in the same way. Yeah. If both guys are good and if they have complimentary skill sets and they can carve out spots on a roster, that's fun. I think ultimately what you care about the most as a fan is are your guys good and does your team win? And that applies to relievers too. I think even though many fans might have a preference for starters staying in the game longer, if you said, okay, you can do that and every other team won't do that, and you will lose X wins per season. I don't think many fans are making that exchange because you're going to lose a lot of entertainment value because your team is losing. So I think if there are the carry carpenters of the world, it's, there's something clever about it when it works well. And of course, yes, you would rather just have superstars. You don't have to mix and match because they just are durable and they play every day and they can hit pictures of both handiness. That's ideal. Or at least well enough. You know, it's not be a liability. Yeah. So in a sense, maybe it's better as a fan to have that because it maybe means the players are better and your team is better on the whole, but all else being equal, if you're just recreating the everyday player in the aggregate from your part-time players, then I think, you know, there's sort of a special fondness, I feel, for that type of player. And it's sort of satisfying when it works well. So yeah, if it were more, if it were like the majority of roster spots doing that, and sometimes like a team pretzel team as, as Joshi and his called them, like the Dodgers used to be or some teams where everybody's playing different positions all the time, that's kind of cool. It's kind of impressive when you have that sort of versatility. But I get the idea that I just, you know, I want to have some predictability and stability in my life as a fan and I want to know which guys I'm going to see if I'm showing up to the ballpark. But variety is the spice of life too. So yeah, this just does not bother me nearly as much as just the parade of largely interchangeable relievers. The cleverness of it is something I appreciate. I like it when there is sophistication in the way guys are deployed beyond just handedness matchups and that dictates a lot especially for position players. But like, you know, there are teams that are, I would actually venture to say that a lot of teams, you know, they're thinking about how they match guys up beyond just like, well, he's a lefty and it's a righty and today's who he gets to play. And it's like, here's, you know, where this guy's swing plane interacts with that guy's pitches here, you know what I mean? Like the, the, the platoon is more complicated than it used to be. But I also, there's like the cleverness of it and that's fun on its own. But also like, there are just guys who have careers because of that cleverness. Right. Yeah. Just like the island of misfit toys idea. Yeah. They just, yeah, your major league quality in some way, some subset. And in an important way, right. And if you can, if you can, again, I'm just going to keep coming back to Kerry Carpenter because he's just such a great example of this in the modern game. Like if you can hit the way that that guy can hit when he is standing in against a righty, well, that's, you're a big leaker. You're, you're not just a big leaker, you're a good big leaker. Right. And you, you have real, you bring real value to the club. And if they can figure out a way to make sure that you bring, you put all that value on the field and then you don't have to give any of it back by facing a southpaw. Amazing. That's great. Like you're going to have big, big moments for your team and he has. So I think that there is absolutely like a point of diminishing returns at which point it's like kind of exhausting and it's like, you're having a cobble this together. It does that's up. But I, I think that the, the roster limits just sort of put a natural cap on how, how much that can come to play at any given time to your point. Like there just aren't enough spots for position players. And the bullpen composition, that's the thing is that I don't think this is really trending toward this getting out of hand. The relievers, yeah, you can look over time, they're way more of them. And it's the same as what you were saying. If you just have one really lights out majorly quality pitch or at least two, you can be a reliever and you can just, it's basically like platooning a game on the pitching side. It's just with several different relievers and it's every game basically. So it's a difference of degree, but degree is important, I think. And I'd have to check, but I, I don't think there's like a pronounced tendency towards teams having the platoon advantage at the plate more often than they used to, because even if they're maybe more conscious of it, I mean, people have known about the platoon effect for a really, really long time, almost since the beginning of baseball, but because of those constraints with the roster, it's not something that's quite as exploitable as the bullpen stuff has been, basically. So it's not seeming like it's getting out of hand the way that the pitching usage has. Okay. And then lastly, Misha says, while listening to the Pirates season preview episode a few weeks ago, I was perusing their franchise register on baseball reference and came across an interesting tidbit. And during 2026, their all-time record stands at 10,910 and 10,910. In recent history, the Giants and Red Sox have earned notice for sustaining streaks of in-season mediocrity, and the Angels, I guess you could say, but not withstanding their track record of success or lack thereof over the past decade, the buck goes longer term achievement of a perfectly 500 ledger strikes me as more impressive or at least more unusual. That got me wondering if this is merely an anomaly or perhaps historic. I recalled that in previous episodes, you examined topics along the lines of what is the latest point within an individual season that team X or player Y achieved metric Z. I was originally going to ask what is the latest point in a franchise's history that its overall record stood at exactly 500, but quickly determined that the Pirates must hold the record for holding such a mid-record. Due to their longevity, the club was formed in 1882. According to baseball reference, Pittsburgh is one of only two teams to accumulate at least 10,910 wins and at least 10,910 losses. Would you like to guess what the other franchise is? And after you spoil the answer for yourself, does it seem strange or at least interesting to you as it does to me that so many franchises are within one or two seasons of attaining lifetime 500-ness? Maybe it's not unusual at all given regression to the mean and that even within smaller samples, i.e. single seasons, MLB team winning percentages tend to cluster more closely to 500 compared to other professional leagues of the clubs that are in striking distance of this feat. Which team do you think is most likely to be next to hit the 500 mark? The easy answer is the Blue Jays who can level up to 3856 and 3856 with an opening day win, so let's toss them out. So I guess the main question here maybe is, is it unusual, does it strike you as surprising that many teams are close to 500 over the long haul? No? Yeah, so the extremes are Yankees. They are 2,658 games over 500 lifetime since 1903 and the next closest is the Giants at 1,520 over and then the Dodgers. And then on the down end it's the Phillies at negative 1,091. So more positive than negative, there are more teams that have run up high tallies of positive win differential here than negative, which I guess makes sense because this is probably like a survivor effect. Like if you're perennially terrible for a really long time then you're less likely to still be an active franchise and appear on this list. So that probably has something to do with that. But it is true that a lot of the teams are pretty closely clustered. So the teams that are within, well let's just say 162 games in either direction. You've got the Braves, the Tigers, the Astros, the Blue Jays, the Pirates, the White Sox, the Rays, the Diamondbacks, the Angels, the Brewers, or the Brewers are just beyond that. So there are a lot of teams that are kind of close to 500 given how long they've been around. And yeah, the Pirates are now negative two as we speak. The Blue Jays are plus one. And then I guess the Astros I would say are most likely to cross over next because they're positive 57 even after their run of sustained success. And I don't know how much longer it will be sustained. So if they rebuild sometimes soon or just enter a down cycle, then they'll cross over into sub-500 territory. And if we want to be optimist, the White Sox are at negative 62 and they've probably got brighter days ahead. So yeah, and there are some expansion teams here that are clustered closer to zero, which makes some sense. But I think Misha identified some of the reasons that it's hard to be that far above or below 500. And then it's just like the law of large numbers, I guess, basically. It's just if you're going to stick around for a really long time, then you have to be kind of competitive, right? Or else you're just going to get drummed out of the league. And most teams, you have down years, you have up years, but it balances out in the long run. Not for everyone, but close enough that you're at least within shouting distance of 500 in one way or the other. Yeah, I think that that's right. That strikes me as intuitive. Yes, it does seem like, gosh, you have all these teams and all these seasons, shouldn't more of them be more underwater? But then if they were, they probably would not still be members of the league. So that makes sense. Yeah, so the only other franchise to accumulate at least that many wins and losses, because that was another question that Misha had. I think it's Atlanta Braves. It's the Braves franchise dating back to 1876. They're 11,193 and 11,036. Probably wouldn't have guessed that immediately. Okay, well, that's a fun little quirk. Thank you, Misha. 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