Ben Lindbergh

Have a catch in the slug with me. In a virtual rise from small sample size, these fun facts must lie. It's effectively wild. A strange but good hang. Effectively wild.

Meg Riley

Hello and welcome to episode 2508 of Effectively Wild of Handgrass Baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley Fangrass and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you? Did you commit a murder?

Ben Lindbergh

I did not. No. I am not on trial. I am on a jury in a trial. So I am four days into jury duty with no end in sight. But I have hurried home from court. New York county criminal court is in recess. Podcast court in is in session. The show must go on.

Meg Riley

Who are we trying in podcast court?

Ben Lindbergh

I don't know. We'll probably put put someone on trial in podcast court today.

Meg Riley

Can it be whoever got me sick in Philly?

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, well, I'm innocent of that because nowhere near. But yeah, this is, this is how I stay so healthy most of the time. Just self isolation.

Meg Riley

It's never go anywhere. Yeah, you're just sort of like, yeah, the outside world not interesting. Who's out there? Couldn't even tell you.

Ben Lindbergh

And then I had a kid and my was foiled.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Because all the germs are brought home to me whether I like it or not.

Meg Riley

This is true. Although I think that my cold and other mild illness luck has been worse this year than yours. And I don't. I don't got no stinking kids. You know, what's up with that?

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, but you do travel anyway. Maybe I'll get sick after jury duty. That'll be a perfect capper to my. My selfless service to the community and my duty as a citizen. And perhaps I will pay that price. We will find out anyway. We're fitting in effectively. Wild around that civic duty. And I wanted to lead today. You know, we have not done a single Meet a Major Leaguer segment this year. We've certainly met many major leaguers and some of them are new. And I said the word debutante too many times on one episode and that reached semantic satiation where people no longer derived any meaning from the term and it was seared into their brains. And this won't exactly be a traditional Meet a Major Leaguer segment either, but it's really an excuse to play the jingle, which we have not played all season long. I don't think there are new listeners who probably don't even know that we have had a recurring segment called Meet a Major Leaguer which my wife, Jessie Barber crafted a pleasing theme song to, where we just talk about someone who was called up this season. This won't exactly be that, but after the song, I'm going to introduce you to a couple major leaguers who are going by new names or at least new spellings. So it almost sort of satisfies the conditions.

Meg Riley

Okay. Meet a Major Leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new. Let's meet this mysterious major leaguer.

Ben Lindbergh

Okay, first I must introduce you to Zack Thornton. Now, Zack Thornton could be the subject of a regular old Meet a Major Leaguer segment because he's a newly minted major leaguer. He is a Mets pitcher. He has made a few starts for them, but I wasn't planning to introduce everyone to Zack Thorton if they hadn't met him him already. But he has changed the spelling of his name. He is no longer Zach, he is now Zach. Could you tell the difference by the way I pronounce?

Meg Riley

So is there not a. There's not a. Is there not a K anymore.

Ben Lindbergh

There is not an H anymore.

Meg Riley

There's not H anymore.

Ben Lindbergh

He has dropped the H and he's now just going by Zac Zach. So the rare he has defected from team Zach because obviously this is a raging debate in baseball and elsewhere. Zach with a K, Zach with an H. He has opted out of that entirely. Right. And he has just dropped that last silent letter, I guess, and said the C will suffice. And. And he waited until he made the majors to do this. So he was fairly recently promoted. But he's been in pro ball for a while now. Yeah, he was a Mets fif round draft pick in 2023. He has been pitching his way up through several levels. He was at double A and AAA this year and now that he has gotten to the majors, he has unveiled that. And here's the interesting thing about both of these name changes. It's not actually that the name changed so much as it is that these players have revealed what their real name was all along because, and I'm quoting here from a Newsday story, and the lead is Zach and that's spelled Z. A C, parentheses H. Thornton has been living a lie. And then it continues. Okay, well, not really. But if you happened to peek at the Mets roster Monday afternoon, you may have noticed that an extraneous H had disappeared from the young left hander's name, despite the fact that Zachary Charles Thornton has gone by Zach within H at the end his entire professional career. But this was no rebrand. It turns out Zach Zac, now slotted into the rotation after a brilliant performance against the Red Sox to close out the first half. I'm quoting. I'm not endorsing the term. Is. Is simply showing the world who he's always been. Quote, I've actually been wanting to do this for a while. He told Newsday a day ahead of his scheduled start against the brewers, the fourth of his career. I never understood what the H did at the end of it. You're telling me, Zach, as someone with a silent H at the end of my last name, I have questioned what that's doing there my whole life. I've always wanted Zach Zac, and I've always written it down like that. And so the story continues. This is by. By Laura Albanese. So was the change the result of some newfound confidence? The belief that you've got the stuff that can play at the major league level, of finding belonging in baseball's highest level? It's not quite as poetic as all that. They don't approach you about that in aaa. He said. So.

Meg Riley

Wait a minute.

Ben Lindbergh

Wait a minute.

Meg Riley

Wait a minute.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Ben Lindbergh

It was like first.

Meg Riley

Wait, wait. First of all, what is it with Zach's. Okay. Because you might remember Zach Britton revealing several years into his big league career.

Ben Lindbergh

Actually, it's filled with a K. Right, right.

Meg Riley

And. And.

Ben Lindbergh

And there are so many options. I guess I understand some indecision maybe, and they all sound the same. It's purely an aesthetic choice.

Meg Riley

Was Zach Thornton's. How did he spell it when he was at Grand Canyon?

Ben Lindbergh

I didn't know you. Maybe we can look up his college page.

Meg Riley

I can't. So it was with an H before, right?

Ben Lindbergh

It was with an H before. Yeah.

Meg Riley

Grand Canyon. Well, and I hope it's on Grand Canyon's site. It was with an H at Grand Canyon. Okay.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. So they didn't ask. Hold on. He never corrected anyone. Boy, the. The next major leaguer we're about to meet is gonna blow your mind even more. I can't wait to tell you about that one.

Meg Riley

Okay. What I remember when I was a grad student and I was a TA and I. I would have, like, sections that I was responsible for. You know, like, help the. The students with questions and discussion group and whatnot after lecture. And every time there would be a mic or a Michael or, you know, like any of these names that are commonly reduced to a nickname, I would ask the student, you know, is that what you Prefer. And sometimes they would say, oh, I don't care. And it baffled me. I was like, what do you mean you don't care? What? Like you should care. This is an area where you should develop a preference and then insist on it. It's your name, right? Remember the end of the Crucible. I'll never have another. What do you mean? What do you mean you wouldn't immediately. What was he registered as at Grand Canyon?

Ben Lindbergh

Evidently he had.

Meg Riley

He had the H. I mean, I don't know if he. I don't know if you want the class. But was. What was he just like, he looked at his transcripts the first semester and was like, yeah, close enough. What do you mean, yeah?

Ben Lindbergh

What does that going guy? Just go with the flow. But clearly he had a preference is the thing.

Meg Riley

Right.

Ben Lindbergh

And. And he just kept it quiet all this time. It would be one thing if he said, yeah, I don't care. Whatever, you know, I'm fine with it all sounds the same. I don't want to make trouble. I mean, you can still stick up yourself about that.

Meg Riley

It's your.

Ben Lindbergh

I could imagine not even having a preference. I suppose it all sounds the same.

Meg Riley

I can't imagine not having a.

Ben Lindbergh

But if he did secretly have this preference all along, and he. He was living a lie, he just did not reveal that he preferred to be Zach with a C. Only that is absurd. Yeah. And so I. It's not just AAA where they don't ask you about this. So maybe it's meaningful that he has now been promoted to the majors. And I don't know whether they actually did. Someone on the Mets PR staff or something approached him and said, hey, just checking. Are you Zach with an H? Zach with a K. And he was like, cur. Neither. Just. Just Zach with a C. Okay.

Meg Riley

Okay. So I know. I know that, like, guys have the names that they have on their roster.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

And then like, they have. They might have like a full name, a full different name on their W2. Right. Because, like, they're athletes, aren't actors. But it's sort of the same thing, right? Where you might have a. A stage name, for lack of a better way of putting it. But like, his name, he had to file taxes. And also, I'm sorry, I'm going to tell a story and I'm going to obstruct. I'm going to obscure the name to spare this person. But I remember a time when we were doing the fan graphs, staff predictions before the season, and our listeners who have looked at those might remember One, that I never remember what mine are, and two, that we sort of present what the staff thinks at the aggregate level. And then at the bottom of the piece are everyone's full set of predictions by author so that you can, I don't know, make fun of us or something. We just always done it that way. And every year I'm like, is this nice that we make them do this? But anyway, and I remember one year after the piece had gone live, one of our writers, again, I'm not going to say, who messaged me in Slack and was like, hey, my, my last name is spelled wrong on the predictions. Except the staff members enter their own names in the spreadsheet where you make the predict. And I was like, oh, no problem, I'll update it. And the person was a little huffy. And I was like, candidly, I never thought I'd need to spell check your own spelling of your name because it's like your name and you've wrote it in there. You know, it was like a. It was a couple of vowels that got crossed up. It didn't, to be clear, it didn't matter. And the person wasn't like, you know, like a jerk about it or anything. But I was just like, it didn't

Ben Lindbergh

dropped all the vowels like the tech startups we talked about last time.

Meg Riley

I don't know why I'm so mad about this, but it's like, hey, I, maybe I bet no one did ask you because they got a roster with your name on it from Grand Canyon. Yeah, you were drafted.

Ben Lindbergh

So maybe someone assumed at some point and he's just thought, is this worth making a fuss? Am I going to be like someone at a restaurant who sends something back, like, do I have to hound someone about this? Or I have other priorities? And then it just sort of stuck. And then maybe it's like, you know, there are times where maybe you forget someone's name and then you can't ask them anymore because it's been. Been too long. It's like the Seinfeld, you know, Malva, trying to guess what, what the woman's name is. It's like, you know, it becomes uncomfortable at a certain point. And so for him to say now three years into his pro career, let alone his amateur years, to say, actually, I've been Zach, and then now it causes you to question him, right? As you are doing right now, because you're thinking, well, what kind of person, what kind of monster would have just hidden his true name preference for years?

Meg Riley

Monster? But what sort of malleable innocent boy just bumping through the world like, ah. Buffeted about by the. By forces beyond my control. Have a preference about your. I just like he's never read the Crucible. Clearly.

Ben Lindbergh

It makes you seem like a pushover. Sort of. Yes. Which. Which he probably isn't, but it reminds me.

Meg Riley

I'm sure he's not, but I'm mad at him.

Ben Lindbergh

You know, it's like the. The Jim o' Hare character from Parks and Rec. Jerry Girgich, who's just Jerry Barry, Larry Terry. Everyone decides what he is, and he's just like, okay, you know, whatever. It's a little.

Meg Riley

I really like that at the end of Parks and Rec, they're just like, jerry lived a great life.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

Died surrounded by people who loved him. That's great. Was this beautiful family. Love it.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. Yeah. So at the end of the article, Thornton says it feels good. I'm out of my shell now, so I'm happy for him.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. This could have happened earlier, but. But I'm glad he finally feels confident enough to come out as Zach Zac. So congrats to him. I've been thinking about this a lot because, you know, at jury duty, you're constantly announcing your name and spelling your name, and they want to make sure everyone's in the right place, and you have to go in in the same order every time. And then if people are coming up with excuses or whatever, you know, they have a long list of the juror candidates, the prospective juror, and so you have to announce your name and spell. They can find you and mark it off so they can talk to you later or whatever. So people are. Are just constantly. If Zack Thornton, I mean, I guess it's his. It's his first name, but if he had jury duty, this probably would have happened sooner, I think. Yeah. Okay, so that's Zach Thornton. We have met him now and met him as his true self. Z, A C. Okay, here's the other one. And this is maybe even more mind blowing. So you may have met previously. Oh, and I should say, once players express this preference, it does seem to be updated lickety split. Right.

Meg Riley

Quickly.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just pretty much everywhere you go now, it's. It's memory holds that he was ever Zach. You go to mlb.com, you go to fan graphs. I'm sure it's just in the official MLB feed as we were recording this on Tuesday. Baseball Reference still has him as Zach, but they.

Meg Riley

They use a different name chart, name file. I don't know where BRF gets their name file, but their accent stuff is different than. Than MLB's a lot of the time too.

Ben Lindbergh

So. Yeah, so. So that'll change, I'm sure. And you'll have to go to the Wayback Machine to remember when Zach was the ach.

Meg Riley

Well, this is why I, I thought that we needed to look at what it was listed at at Grand Canyon because.

Ben Lindbergh

No, it goes all the way back.

Meg Riley

Yeah, it tends to sort of filter through really quickly. And I imagine like they're thrilled when the changes that are made to a player's preferred name are to his first name. Well, that's great. You don't have to do. Other than updating it in evis. You don't have to do anything with it. Right. Like there's a whole protocol in one of the CBA documents about like players having to buy back jerseys and stuff if they make changes to their last name and how it is. So yeah, like it's a whole. It's a whole big thing.

Ben Lindbergh

Well, the second major leaguer we are about to meet or really re. Meet reintroduce was just recently called up by the Red Sox and his name is Tyrone Guerrero. Tyrone Guerrero.

Meg Riley

Tyrone Guerrero. Okay.

Ben Lindbergh

And you might remember Tyrone Guerrero because he is not a newly minted major leaguer. In fact, he had been a major leaguer quite some time ago. He has returned to the big leagues after a long absence. He was initially called up a decade ago. He was up in the big leagues in 2016 with the Padres, and then he pitched in 2018 and 2019 with the Marlins, full relief seasons for them. And now he has resurfaced with the Red Sox and his name is now Tyrone T Y R O N. Okay, but. But until now it was T a Y R O N. He has changed the spelling from T a Y R o N to T Y R o N. He's dropped the A there.

Meg Riley

He took the af.

Ben Lindbergh

Except that he has not changed the spelling. It was always spelled that way and he was listed with the wrong spelling for a decade at least. I'm. I'm reading a story about this at Mass Live by Chris Cotillo about the Red Sox. And it says the Red Sox shuffled their bullpen Friday, not out of necessity, but to give a chance to a standout who had dominated AAA ahead of a three game series against the Twins. Boston called up righty Tyrone Guerrero. Not Tyrone or. I don't know if people said Tayrone or Tyrone. T A Y R O N. Not Tyrone. T A Y as had been previously listed. Due to a clerical error that had been present throughout Guerrero's professional career. Matter of factly dropped this casual lore about Tyrone Guerrero, that his name was misspelled for his entire career. This is a 35 year old man. This is a veteran pitcher. Catillo tweeted this actually in May and I had missed it because he was still in the minors at the time. And he tweeted name news. The new Red Sox reliever is Tyrone Guerrero. Not Tyrone Guerrero with T A Y. There has been a clerical error throughout his career that's now corrected.

Meg Riley

What?

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. This man has traveled the world, has played baseball over the place. The Padres signed him as an amateur free agent in 2009. Okay, so that's, that's how far back his professional career goes. And he was in their system for years. He made his major league debut in May of 2016. They traded him to the Marlins. He was in the big leagues for basically a couple full seasons with Miami. Then the White Sox claimed him. He was in their system for a while. He was DFA'd when Luis Robert was promoted. Then he went to Japan. He was playing for the Cheap Lode Marines. Then he came back stateside. He was in the red system. He was pitching for them. Then he went to the Mexican League. He was pitching for the Diablos Rojos. Then he came back to the Angels. He was in the angel system. In 2023 he went back to Japan for a second stint with the Marines. And then finally this January he signed a minor league contract with the Red Sox. And he has shoved in Worcester and I mean sub one ERA and more strikeouts than innings pitched and hard thrower. And so on May 22 they brought him up and they added him to their active roster. And I just had missed this at the time and evidently this 35 year old man had had his name misspelled in all official sources for 15 years more. And then finally it got corrected.

Meg Riley

But how did he get corrected though?

Ben Lindbergh

I don't know. I think it's just that I don't know. There's no explanation. I'd like to know more. I don't know whether he finally spoke up and said, hey, by the way, don't want to bother anyone, but I've been sitting on this secret name spelling for my entire career. Or you know, sometimes you go to a new organization or you get promoted to the majors, maybe a PR person checks, maybe there's some new paperwork, maybe you, you fill out what your preference is. And every year MLB has a list that it circulates of players preferred display names, you know, if they're diacric marks or whatever or, or their preferred pronunciations and everything. So.

Meg Riley

Right.

Ben Lindbergh

Perhaps someone just sounded him out about this or he volunteered it finally. And it's funny because in this story from May that I was reading, it specifies that his name is spelled T Y R O N. But then it quotes Chad Tracy talking about him. And in the quote it's T A Y R O N. So I don't know if he was pronouncing it as if there was an A. And so they faithfully recreated his pronunciation. But this baffles me even more because it, it was so long lasting and he was with so many organizations in so many leagues in so many countries and his name was just misspelled the entire time. So it wasn't just like I shortened it. I dropped a letter, there was an extra letter. There was an excess A here that was out of place the entire time, evidently. And, and I could imagine there being sort of a dark or sad side to the story in that, you know, he's from Colombia. Maybe there's a language barrier issue. Maybe he's signed as a kid, as an amateur free agent. They just didn't care enough to check. And who knows, maybe he wasn't looking at the paperwork, maybe he didn't know whom to talk to. Maybe this was bothering him all along and it just, the problem got perpetuated. I don't really know. I could imagine that happening, especially because organizations often didn't support international prospects in those days as much as they do today. So I, I get how the initial confusion could happen, but it does somewhat flummox me that it could have persisted that long after he was a somewhat established big leaguer.

Meg Riley

I do want to be sensitive to all of the, the factors you're describing, and I think it's like fundamentally different. Like, I remember there was a little bit of a kerfuffle a couple of years ago, I think maybe with Fernando Tatis Jr. And there being places maybe on Baseball Reference. I'm not trying to like rank on Baseball Reference. I'm just saying their naming convention is very often different than mlb.com ors and so I don't know where they're getting their name file from, but maybe it was B ref that had diacritical marks in his name and MLB didn't. There was a concern that like he had a preference for diacritical marks and that that preference maybe wasn't being respected. At least that was a concern on like lefty Baseball Twitter. And I made the point at the time, I was like, I think having sensitivity to that is. Is a reasonable default posture. But he had, like, already signed his extension when this was happening. And I was like, I think that if anyone can say, hey, throw an accent in there. Yeah. And have that preference respected, it's probably Fernando Tati's junior. So, yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, I've thought that, too. Where baseball reference still displays, for example, Alex Rodriguez with an accent mark over the A and the I. And. And I think it's. It's with players whose careers, I think, predated when MLB actually started specifying this. Yeah. Right. And so I think wherever they're getting that info, maybe just sort of assumes. But then sometimes it's not as if a rod is in any of his public social channels or anything displays his name that way. So I. That always seems strange to me. Plus, don't you emphasize the A in Alex anyway? Because it's Alex. I don't know. But, yeah. So, yeah, sometimes I still see ones where it makes me raise an eyebrow.

Meg Riley

It seems like it's sort of out of step. But if you're a career journeyman, like, maybe you don't feel like you can, you know, assert a preference or what have you. So I don't want to be insensitive to that. And I. I am like. And I don't even know that this requires optimism to say. Like, I think we are in an environment where people with the league are very receptive to just putting people's names how they. How they prefer to see them, you know, so everybody get. Get to spelling however you want to. I just, you know, the Zach thing is. Really. Is really messing with me, you know, because a clerical error. Well, that's. That's one thing, but, like, Zach. And so podcasting is a great medium for this, by the way.

Ben Lindbergh

I know.

Meg Riley

Had a preference part. I'm just. I'm being triggered as a Megan, you know, where. Look, I'm gonna be a little bit rude. Okay. Gonna be a little bit rude. All of you Megans are beautiful, special spirits. Some of you are doing some crazy banana with the way you spell your name. You've been doing that for years, and it makes my life difficult, and I'd like you to stop. You know, the H's. Okay, fine. Okay, fine. That's. That's a. In my opinion, wrong but traditional way of spelling Megan. Right? Then there were all these extra vowels finding their way in, and then Megyn Kelly bursts onto the scene. In addition to being an odious person has that weird ass. Why in there? I think she has a why me? Negan, what are you doing? What are you doing? That just. You don't need all these extra vowels. Why are there so many? It's like. And what does the H do? Nothing. You don't need the H, you know?

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, well, that's what Zach Thornton is saying.

Meg Riley

I know, but then just like. And this is the thing. It's like, I have been spending my entire life having to tell people I spell my name. And. And it happened a lot in school because I'm a child of the 80s and every other girl is named Megan. There were, like, five Ben. There were, like, five or six Megans in my kindergarten class. There were so there were enough Megans that there were duplicate last name initials. And so it was not enough to be Megan R or Megan L or whatever. Like, people had to say their full names, like, as little kids. They can't spell them, by the way, which is another reason why insisting on an H in there, I'm like, you're just making this harder for your kid who can't spell her own name anyway.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, well, as someone with a silent H at the end, I. I understand Thornton's pain here. Although what often happens with me and happened just this week at jury duty with. With one of the court officers, I get Lindenberg a lot. Oh. Which is weird because they. They add just a whole other sort of syllable there that's not there. And it's not as if Lindenberg is a common name. Like, you meet a lot of Lindenbergs out there.

Meg Riley

So we're getting Lindenberg, Lindbergh, and the Hindenburg into one name.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. Right. And so, I mean, the one Lindbergh celebrity in this country's history is Lindbergh, not Lindenberg. I know that there are people named Lindenberg in the world. I've never met one. To be fair, I've never met Ed Lindbergh either, whom I wasn't related to. So that's not a super common name either. But. Yeah, I don't know how. How people invent the. The phantom sort of syllable there, but it happens. So I guess I understand how this A could have been inserted and just stayed there forever. And if it was a clerical error that maybe just affected the official channels for Guerrero, maybe he was looking himself up on mlb.com or something, you'd think maybe he would have seen his name on the scoreboard at some point. But.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

But if people in his life or people on his teams. I don't know if they're writing his name at his locker or something. Maybe they got it right. And so he didn't care what it was in the official MLB feed or something. But by any name, he has been lights out for the Red Sox. He's been great, so I'm sure they're happy to have him. And he's a new man in more than one way because when he was with the Marlins in that incarnation when he had the A, he was a four seam heavy guy and now he's a big sinker guy and he, he sits 100. I mean, he's pumping triple digits out there and suddenly he's got great control. So he's been an incredible find by the Red Sox this year who has really short up their bullpen. So he's gigantic. He's six, eight, you know, I mean, he's just, he's hard to miss. But it was easy to miss the spelling, the correct spelling of his name, evidently. So congrats to Tyrone Guerrero and on Zack Thornton, on being displayed by the names that are their actual names or their preferred names. And we've seen variations of this. Obviously you have the cases like say Giancarlo Stanton, who, right by Mike earlier in his career and, and his name didn't actually change. His name was, was John Carl all along. But yeah, he, he started going by Mike as a kid at a certain point because people were mispronouncing his name and he thought it would just be easier. And then he just decided, no, I'm going to embrace my name and I prefer this. And so he changed it and everyone eventually figured it out. And it was nice because we didn't have multiple Mike Stantons in the major, so that simplified things too. And then of course, you do have the cases of mistaken or doctored identity, right, where you have the artist formerly known as Fausto Carmona comes back as Roberto Hernandez. The other Roberto Hernandez, Roberto Hernandez Heredia, after it was discovered that he had changed his, his name and identity when he first came to this country. And then when that came out, he had to change everything and didn't have a visa. And then he came back with a different name, which was his actual name. That was a case of intentional obfuscation initially. And then you do have, for example, Michael Siroca was Mike Soroka. And then right in what MLB.com's Mark Bowman termed a drop the mic moment, he decided that he wanted to go by Michael, which, which happens sometimes because, I don't know, maybe it's just like, time to put away childish things or something. Maybe I don't.

Meg Riley

You just.

Ben Lindbergh

You want the more formal, mature full name. And. And this happened last year with Louis Varland, who wanted to be listed as Louis, but also still wants to be known as Louis. Like, you can call him Louis, but wants Louis to be sort of his official display name, which I guess was kind of the case with Richard Lovelady, who was like, right. And we talked about that, because he was like, yeah, it's okay to call me Dickie. But then I don't want Dickie Lovelady displayed on the scoreboard. I still want to be Richard Lovelady. So sometimes it's like you kind of want to have it both ways a little bit, you know?

Meg Riley

And, you know, like, there are instances of players who change sort of how their name is configured to honor a relative, or sometimes, unfortunately, they have, you know, they might have a falling out with a parent, and they change things. Like, people adapt and adjust their names for all sorts of reasons, and I think that they're all fine and dandy. I am just encouraging people to have a preference because it is your name. And, yeah, I understand when people get to a point where I'm gonna be mean again, but in, like, a unintentional way, I'm not trying to pick on Buddy Kennedy, but, like, if I were Buddy Kennedy, for instance, because Buddy Kennedy's on the Mariners, we don't have to talk about the bench situation for Seattle. But his given name, his. Like, on his birth certificate name is Clifton Lewis Kennedy.

Ben Lindbergh

Wow.

Meg Riley

That's like. That's like a real man's name, you know? Buddy. I'm sorry. Buddy's like a child's name, but he's what I call the Cats a lot of the time. Like, oh, hey, Buddy.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

And so he should, like, he should be Beau or something.

Ben Lindbergh

I have been thinking that lately.

Meg Riley

I am now Bartholomew.

Ben Lindbergh

I've been thinking that lately about the Cleveland Guardians. Petey Halpin. I know, but you absolutely delights me. I hope he never does. And look, maybe he will at some point. Yeah, it's like when Matt Boyd kind of wanted to become Matthew Boyd. Okay, maybe at some point when Petey Halpin is older than 24, he'll decide, I want to be Peter Halpin, but I hope he never does does, because, yeah, Petey is just so delightfully Little League. And that's the thing that he doesn't want that connotation. I'm sure he is, at least according to baseball reference, the first Petey in Major League Baseball history.

Meg Riley

Well, then he definitely can't change it.

Ben Lindbergh

No, I hope he sticks with this because he's, he's going against decades, generations of Peters who've gone by Peter, Peter and not Petey. And I really, I appreciate that. He is the premier Peter. He is hard launching Petey. That is, he is the premier Petey and, and I hope he sticks with it because it, it absolutely tickles me.

Meg Riley

Yeah. It's just a very funny. And, and look wide, wide delight in Petey, but sort of, you know, bristle at Buddy. I don't know, part of it is that like, Buddy feels like a thing you say when you're trying to like, calm down an over exhausted toddler.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

You know, like, all right, Buddy. Like.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. Or it can be kind of condescending. Yeah. If you're talking to an adult. Yeah.

Meg Riley

All right, Buddy. Yeah. Like it has, you know, whereas Petey. Petey sounds like one of the dinosaurs from the land before Time. Was it one of the dinosaurs? Who am I thinking of? Which dinosaur from the land before? You know, they made like 40 of those. There's.

Ben Lindbergh

I didn't see them all. They're thinking of Ducky.

Meg Riley

Ducky. Ducky, that's right.

Ben Lindbergh

I think that's why there was a Petrie. I think tree.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Anyway, all right, enough about names. Maybe more than enough about names, but

Meg Riley

I think just the right amount, you

Ben Lindbergh

know, now we know. Okay, everyone.

Meg Riley

Everyone should read the Crucible and watch. Just. You only really have to watch the first Land Before Time. Do they call them Lands before Time? You know, sometimes we start the pod and I'm like, I'm feeling a little sick. And then by the end I'm like, oh, I'm sick now. Anyway,

Ben Lindbergh

well, I wanted to ask you about Caleb John Rally before we go any further here. Colloquially known as Cal. And our, our friend and former podcast co host Sam Miller had sort of amusingly timed tweet or, or Blue sky post on Monday because Sam pointed out that Cal has not been very productive.

Meg Riley

It's not been going great this season.

Ben Lindbergh

No. Which, not, not breaking any news here. Obviously that Cal is having quite a surprising and confounding down year here. But Sam posted. I guess I got to get the, the timestamp here because that's, that's pretty important because Sam posted whatever day this year that you remember thinking, man, what happened to Cal Rally? He's been terrible day. He's been worse.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

That was posted on Monday at 11:21pm Eastern. And at 11:46pm Sam quote posted himself to say though he has been better as of late. And that of course came after Cal Raleigh hit a grand slam. Yeah, so, so that helped a little. Cal had himself a much needed big game. He hit the grand slam. He drove in five total. The Mariners went above.500. They took a half game lead in the AL West, a tenuous one. So yeah, milestone game in a lot of respects. But yeah, even after that good game in that big blow, Kyra's stats are unsightly. He. Oh yeah, entering well through Monday's game, he is batting.163.266.307. Yeah, that is a not so nice 69 WRC plus. Yeah, he has been worth about half a win above replacement according to fan graphs and that is in, in 69 games. 69's wild over here Cal. So he's down to, to 10 homers from the 60 that he had last year. So it's not just that he has come back to earth a bit that he has gone back to being the very reliable and consistent 120 or so WRC plus 4 to 5 win guy that he had been in the three seasons preceding his big breakout. And yes, I will call it a breakout when he hit 60 bombs and was a nine win player with a 161 WRC plus. As a catcher who was in the lineup almost every day. He has not just gone back to who he was before, but gone back to boy, whatever. This is what he was more or less in his very brief partial first rookie season. This is so rough and I just do not know how to explain it. So you've watched more of him than I have. Is it any more explicable to Mariners fans what has happened to him?

Meg Riley

I don't have a perfect answer for this. I have some theories. I do think like we probably want to know that. Breaking news. Cal's probably not like a true talent 60 home run hitter.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

You know, when you're, when you're having a season like that, you are probably enjoying a great deal of good luck. I think he had a, or, or just like you know, you're, you're, you're locked in your secret sequencing. Well. Right. You're having a, an above, a well above average season. You know, there was like more than a 20 point gap between his WOBA and his ex WOBA. You know, he was just making ideal contact and the amount of, of sort of stuff he was hitting hard in the air was pretty bananas as a percentage of.

Ben Lindbergh

That's the thing. Yeah, he Just. Yeah, because he had 56 expected homers according to stat cast. So it wasn't as if it was some sort of total fluke based on his batted ball output. But his batted ball output was extreme in that yes, 38.4% of his batted balls were pulled in the air, which is what you want if you want to hit homers. And so. Yeah, right. Everything was clicking.

Meg Riley

Like everything was clicking.

Ben Lindbergh

He didn't have a high BABIP or anything. It was just everything was working for him. Yeah, true. You don't.

Meg Riley

When you have that many home runs.

Ben Lindbergh

Probably not.

Meg Riley

And you know. No. No less illuminary than Aaron Goldsmith said this on the broadcast at one point last year. And I think he caught a little bit of guffer Mariners fans where he was just encouraging people to like really enjoy what they were watching because. And he didn't mean it as a slight against Cal, but it's like, you know, the, the odds of him being able to, to repeat this season or even anything especially close to it. I mean he was a 5 1/2 win player in 2024, but for him to. To be this guy again just seemed unlikely. So you start with a ton of mean reversion sort of baked in. Right. And then I think you got to talk about a couple of things. First is that I do think there is some amount of like misunderstood fortune here. If you look at his underlying contact quality stuff, he has declined in that regard, but not nearly as much as his results would suggest. So I do think that like where he was operating in a completely optimized zone last year, he's having some amount of bad luck this year. I think that he. My. One of my theories is that he was dinged up long before he actually went on the injured list. He kind of looked like he was playing hurt and then he was hurt. I think that when you're a guy who plays both a position that is as demanding as catcher and as physically punishing as catcher, and then you are also a guy with the amount of sort of rotational force that Cal generates when he is swinging. It isn't surprising to me that like an oblique strains affect Mike kind of linger for you. It's not surprising to me that that's what he went down with. And it's also not surprising to me that he hasn't been able to kind of get back to his prior highs. I also just think. And you know, let this be a cautionary tale to the Tigers and Dylan Dingler. Like last year Cal Rawley had 705 plate appearances. He played in 159 games. He didn't start every single one of those and he didn't play every single one of those at catcher.

Ben Lindbergh

But.

Meg Riley

But he just really sure did not take time off at any point. He played 120 games at catcher last year, 38 at DHC. Pinch it twice. I think that when you have a guy who can couple the kind of offensive production that we were seeing out of Raleigh last year with his defensive acumen, it's incredibly tempting to play that guy every day. And not just because last year and this year for that matter, like their alternative was Mitch Garver, but they wanted him to be able to take a crack at every one of these records, right?

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

He was playing so well despite the fact that they had this deep playoff run like, and won the division like they were in a playoff fight for a lot of the year. So taking your best guy out of the lineup. Well, that's a hard thing to ask. But I think that one of the reasons we see, you know, Ben Clemens has been talking about this as he's been working through his trade value series and sort of talked about some of the, you know, the macro trends that informed how he thought about the rankings in total. You know, he has been shifting catcher value down sort of across the board. There are a number of catchers who have already made the list and spoiler alert, there's another one making the list tomorrow as we record this on Tuesday. But, you know, part of why we see so much turnover at the top of that catcher leaderboard, I think is because the really good ones tend to play a lot and it's just so punishing. So that's not to say that, like, there aren't mechanical changes that Cal could entertain or that I expect him to pop another 60 home run season, but I think the combination of how much he played last year and then they had a deep playoff run on top of top of that.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

And then he had WBC action and then he got hurt. You know, it's just like, I don't want to say that he's going to bounce back entirely or that, you know, Mariners fans shouldn't be concerned, but I think that a lot of this is just the reality of like, that position kicks the out of you a lot of the time. And it, it really is hard to overstate just how like pitch perfect his contact was last year. Like, it was so wild how much he was able to leverage pulled air contact last year to do what he did. So. But it's a problem like Cal has been hurt and not good and Julio has been good but often hurt. And so when people wonder why the Mariners, who were forecast to be the best team in that division pretty comfortably, are sitting at 51 and 50 as we're recording and like barely ahead of the Rangers, part of it is, as Ryan Blake on our staff has noted several times on social media, when your two best players aren't playing well or aren't playing at all, like your entire situation is going to suffer for that. And despite the fact that they bolstered that lineup like Naylor's not hitting well and blah blah blah. So yeah, it's, you know, it's been a lot tighter than I think a lot of fans anticipated because, you know, that's a lot of production from last year that's just not in the lineup right now for a variety of reasons. So.

Ben Lindbergh

And if you want to look on the bright side, you could say, well, hey, they're holding their own. They're neck and neck at the top of that division without getting that. So if they get any kind of bounce back, then maybe they'll be more like the Mariners team that everyone expected to see. And I have wondered about that hangover effect for California, and I think there's less wear and tear on catchers these days than there used to be for multiple reasons. For one thing, you don't have as many collisions at home plate as you used to. There are new rules about that and you have the one knee down stance. And I think that is part of why we're seeing catchers, the good ones, rack up more games played and innings caught because it is a little less taxing on them. And Cal, he hit better before the All Star break than after the All Star break last year, but he finished so strong. He had a thousand plus OPS in September at the end of the regular season. And then of course he raked in the postseason too. So I don't know if he was just running on adrenaline at that point and then just kind of crashed afterward. It's a long off season. Maybe it's not as long if you have to ramp up to be kind of a red acid in the WBC or I actually thought when he had the oblique that maybe that would be a blessing in disguise. And okay, this will be reset. Yeah, and this will be some more forced rest and maybe he'll come back fresh and feeling strong and rejuvenated. But that didn't happen. So I don't know, maybe he's still feeling some ill effects from that. Maybe it'll stand him in good stead later in the year when there is a little less wear and tear. Because he's only 29. Right. He's going to be 30 in late November, which is not an age at which I would expect a catcher or, or anyone really to completely fall off a cliff. It's just such a stark decline. And, and when Ben Clemens was on last and we went through the guys who had the biggest differences between their on pace production and their preseason projection, he was by far the guy who was underperforming his projections by the most. And I'm sure that's still the case, so. And even defensively he hasn't been the best framing wise, so for sure, yeah. So it's pretty shocking. I definitely didn't think he was going to replicate last year's performance. That was a once in a career kind of year. But to have this happen to him. Definitely did not see that coming. And, and if I had to bet, assuming that he is not hiding something, that there isn't some lingering nagging Sean Murphy sort of situation where we find out actually there was something that he wasn't telling anyone about or at least wasn't known publicly. If it's not that, if it is just fatigue or a mechanical rut or something. Yeah, I would not be at all surprised if he plays from here on out. And maybe that grand slam was the start of things. Who never knows if from here to the end of the season he plays, if not like last year's Cal, at least like the Cal from the preceding few years.

Meg Riley

Yeah, I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be shocked by that. And who knows, maybe the, the grave insults of intentionally walking Domin and giving up a left on left matchup to face Cal. I tend to, I, I do want to offer an opinion about this. I tend to think that like he's disrespecting you trope. I understand why players gravitate toward it because hey, it's a long season, you need motivation where you can find it. Right. But I, I think very rarely is that the actual emotion behind that decision. Right. I, I think it unlikely and to be clear, I think it's unlikely that Terry Francona was like, let's put that cow in his place, show him who his boss. Right. No, this is as close to disrespecting as you can get. And the sequence was beautiful. As Dom Canzone would probably say, I just did the fingers because Caleb Ferguson came in also. Caleb Ferguson don't Talk to umpires that way. Disrespectful. You're just disrespectful. I'm not gonna repeat what he said

Ben Lindbergh

said to Bill Miller. Yeah, he, he body shamed him basically.

Meg Riley

It was, I mean apart among other things and I don't understand. It was clearly loud enough for him to hear.

Ben Lindbergh

How did he not get run from that game?

Meg Riley

How did he not get run for that? I don't understand. We will link to. This is one of those instances where you don't really need the lip reading. You don't need John Boy's assistance to figure out what Caleb Ferguson was saying. I do swears on here but even I don't put a mother in front of that swear because I kiss my mother with this mouth.

Ben Lindbergh

But was, was unable to get out of the way of play for anyone who didn't see this. And Ferguson had some harsh words for him. Some, some quite offensive and insulting words

Meg Riley

about that and I, I couldn't believe that he didn't get run for it because generally that is a bit of a magic word.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, those would be the magic words. I wouldn't expect even to hear those words but if I did then they would qualify as the magic ones, I think.

Meg Riley

But, but, but you know the, the bases. Well, the first base was open and they decided to intentionally walk Dominic Canzone and that brought up Cal and he hit a grand slam on the first pitch with a 78 mile an hour slurve that was. And this word I will say right down the deck.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah.

Meg Riley

And it's like, hey buddy, I don't think that that one's not going to work.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, I could understand. You know, athletes, they take things personally even they're not meant that way. Right in the, the Jordan, the Jordanian sense. And they're always looking for. They didn't believe in me. There's always a chip on the shoulder. It's how they motivate themselves. It's how they wired. Sometimes they're just psyching themselves up, sometimes they just actually are that way where everything's in a front and they just use it as fuel. So yeah, even if it's not, it's not like, you know, you're in little League or something and, and you wave in the outfielders when a weak hitter comes up. It's not quite like that, I guess but even if it's just a sort of dispassionate calculus. Well, we ran the numbers and the expected outcomes are superior with you at the plates than this other guy. Well, you could still take that as an insult, even if it was not done with any intent to offend or malice aforethought or anything.

Meg Riley

Right. But sometimes.

Ben Lindbergh

Sometimes maybe, yeah. Yeah. And from what I've seen it, it's not as if players perform meaningfully differently after that. I don't think it's been shown that they use that motivation to raise their game in that situation though. You have to account for all kinds of factors to actually do that sort of research. Well, but you could also imagine that someone would basically be on tilt. It's like, oh, you just offended in me. Now I'm going to try even harder. I'm going to bear down even more to make you rue the day that you decided to want to face me here. And then maybe that would actually get you off your game and be counterproductive potentially. Anyway, I was checking in, by the way, since I was looking at Cal. I was. I was just wondering, hey, how's one of the other notably underperforming offensively catchers of this early season doing now? Patrick Bailey, who basically hit or failed to hit his way outta San Francisco because he had a 15 WRC plus through his first 30 games of the season with the Giants, 89 plate appearances, which was bad even for Patrick Bailey. And the Guardian said, well, we'll take him and we will supplement Austin Hedges with his younger Mini Me. And you know what, he has hit like the old Patrick Bailey basically with the Guardians. He has an 82 WRC plus which is actually better than Patrick Bailey has had in any previous full season. So, you know, like that was in his first full year, 2024, he had an 81 WRC plus. So he has basically bounced back at the plate to being what he was before or what you hope that he would be, which is like a bit below average, but good enough that the glove might make up for it. And you could kind of tell because with the Giants this year, before the trade, his expected weighted on base was 282. His actual was 188. He was underperformed by almost 100 points. Well, with Cleveland he has almost the same expected weighted on base 286 versus 282. But now his actual is 287. So it doesn't appear that really anything has changed under the hood. It's just that the results are now matching the expected results based on the quality of contact. So, you know, I don't know, maybe you could say that they gave up on him too soon or that it was a smart pickup for Cleveland, on the other hand, his framing has been even worse with Cleveland for whatever reason, we we talked about how his framing had not been as good and we were wondering whether that was ABS related. He has actually graded out as a run below average as a framer with the Guardians, so that at least has not rebounded. But the bat has to the extent that Patrick Bailey's bat can.

Meg Riley

Anyway, in Patrick Bailey adjusted.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, exactly right. And you know, speaking of tumultuous trajectories through the season, so the Red Sox riding a a historic 14 game winning streak as we speak. And we talked about their recent surge when they entered the All Star break with a nine game winning streak and we talked about how they had righted the ship somewhat and they've just kept winning ever since. But their season stats right now and their win total and their projected pace and all the rest of it and their playoff odds almost an exact match for what they were preseason. It's just been the most topsy turvy path they have taken in to what we would have said was a totally predictable outcome. If we had blacked out for the first few months of the season and you showed me the Red Sox record right now, I would say that is among the least surprising results. That's exactly what we expected. And not everyone expected the same thing. Obviously people had high hopes for the Red Sox. As you've said, you picked them to win the World Series. That's looking a little better now than it was a few weeks ago ago. So. But it's looking about exactly the way it was looking in late March because According to the FanGraphs playoff odds, the preseason final snapshot of the playoff odds before opening day, their preseason full season win total projection was 85. Well, right now they are on pace for 83.5 and their updated projection is 83.3. So that's basically dead on. Their preseason playoff odds, 60.8% chance to make the playoffs. And right now as we record 63.4. So they are who we thought we were, except that they have been I don't know how many. Just completely different teams over that Spanish again, I was thinking of this in relation to the Phillies too, because the Phillies are more or less what they were projected to be. Their preseason projection, 87.5 wins. They are right now on pace for 89.8 and projected for 89. Again a game and a half off. Just like the Red Sox, their playoff odds are up from 68.8% preseason to now 89.2. Sitting pretty and that maybe has as much to do with the Mets collapse as. As anything. But the Phillies and the Red Sox, they have basically been who we thought they were, or at least who the playoff odds thought we were, except that they were not at all like that at the start of the season. And lately they've been even better than that. So I don't know if the takeaway from this is just that teams really do go through multiple identities and incarnations. There was this quote I saw that Justin Slayton, the reliever, gave to the Boston Globe. He was talking about some of their recent travel snafus and difficult journeys and delays. And he said that it. It gave them this attitude that whatever happens, happens. This might seem like a weird way to say it, but. But the different challenges gave us a new life. It's like a snake shedding its skin, he said. We wiped out all the bad stuff that happened. It was pretty much the same people, and yet it was a completely new team. So just as Zack Thorton has been reborn as Zack Thornton and Tyron Guerrero has been reborn as Tyron Guerrero, and insert your spelling changes here because they sound the same, the Red Sox have been. Been born from the ashes like a Phoenix, like a Thornton, like a Guerrero as well. Maybe a better team. That's what the Red Sox would contend now that they are playing like this. And by the way, Caleb Durbin, who is that in microcosm, more or less, because his season, I mean, he was doing nothing early in the year, I was very rude. That was looking bad for Craig Breslow because Kyle Harrison was excelling. And now things have flipped and Kyle Harrison ran out of gas and got hurt. And Caleb Durbin has been fantastic lately. And Durbin said, we're playing really good baseball. We're playing Red Sock baseball. So that alone is kind of controversial because Red Sock baseball versus Red Sox baseball, obviously we have struggled with that in the past, and mostly we. We write or speak around it when we can, but. But. But this is one where I don't think you actually have to do that. I'd be fine with saying we're playing Red Sox baseball. That would be fine, right? You don't have to. I mean, that seems okay as an adjective. I wouldn't have to make it Red Sock, even though I am more comfortable saying Red Sock when referring to a single Red Sox player. Unless I add the player at the end. Anyway, we don't need to litigate that again, I'm just saying would have accepted Red Sox baseball. And also Caleb Durbin is Brand new to the Red Sox. How does he know what playing Red Sox baseball or Red Sox baseball is? I guess this is what they wanted it to be. Maybe now they finally feel like they are the Red Sox they were born to be this year anyway. I wonder what that's like for the players. I wonder what that's like for fans. Or I have some sense of what it's like for fans. I think it can be quite fun for fans because you've kind of given up the season for lost and you think this team is terrible and then suddenly you are spared. It's like you got a stay of season execution or something. It's like, wow, okay, wait, we're right back on track. And then it feels like you almost have nothing to lose. It's like, right, we have stared into the abyss and. And now we're back from the brink and. And you almost feel like, okay, nothing can stop us now because we have overcome all these obstacles. And so if you wanted to be the eggheads baseball stat geek, not that I would know anything about that sort of Persona, you would just say it's a long season. As Joshehan says, variant swamps everything. That maybe this happens, given so many teams and so many seasons and you can't make too much of it. It. Or you could say, no, actually they made some changes and hey, both of these teams fired their managers and maybe that made a difference. Even though we know from Dan Saborski's research that after managerial firings, teams just tend to play to their projections from that day forward. But. But maybe that's the point. Maybe that they just needed to play to their projections, though I guess they've played better than that post firing so that they can return to the pace they were projected to play at.

Meg Riley

I love seasons like this though, because like, I don't know if I'm going to express this quite perfectly, but you ever run into baseball fans and even though things seem fine at the surface, you're like, something happened to you. You went through something with this team. These are the. You went through something with this team kind of seasons. And if. And if at the end of it they manage to stick around and play postseason baseball, you can end up with this sort of really magical bond with that club, even though you were furious at them when they were playing so badly. And Breslow's talking like a tech bro and you're never gonna.

Ben Lindbergh

He's still doing that, to be clear.

Meg Riley

We're gonna get to that in a second. But when they are able to do the thing even if the, the journey to get there was very winding and frustrating, you end up sort of trauma bonded. So this is like a trauma bonding season for the Red Sox and their fans. The Red Socks and their fans. How did I spell that? None of your business. You know, I don't have to write around it when I'm speaking because you can just think it's however you want it to be. I will say this and not to be a downer as they, you're right to say play the way that I expected them them to in a way that, you know, maybe won't make my preseason predictions look so goofy. It's still worth examining the vibe organizationally and seeing where there might be room for improvement. And it's hard to want to do that when things are going better and you know, you're able to forget that like the front office booted most of the coaching staff in a month into the season.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, this is the same season as Coaches for Hire llc. See, it's just this Red Sox season contains multitudes just total clown show to unbeatable.

Meg Riley

Yes. But even in the unbeatable it is still worth having some self reflection about the improvement of process because at the end of the day I just want to hear people talk about their process. That's why I liked Inside the Actors Studio so much.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. And Breslow has been asked what they're doing at the deadline because I think that has been clarified what they should do. Right. What they should aspire to do. And, and yet he has refused, declined to give a full throated endorsement of the idea that the Red Sox will be buyers, that they will be shoring up their roster. And to be fair, after you've been through this sort of nonsensical season, we know that things can change. And he was with a few years ago with the Cubs, he went through something similar. But his quotes about the deadline approach just really they don't inspire enthusiasm. Right. You know, you're not feeling the magic you kind of want when your team is on a roll like this and has come back from being out of it and giving up for dead. And, and you want them to say yeah, we're going to capitalize on this. The guys are giving us all they have and we're going to go help them. I'm going to do everything behind the scenes to supplement what they're doing on the field. And he was asked by our buddy Alex Spear at the Boston Globe about this earlier this week would he continue to fence it sort of or decline to make a definitive declaration about what the approach at the deadline will be. And he said, I will continue to do so. That is, continue to decline to make the purpose clear. And he went on to say, it's a little bit of everything. More time means we can get more information. There's understanding who we are, but also just understanding where the rest of the league is, where teams are. There are very few teams at this point who have kind of stepped out and declared themselves willing to sell or made players clearly available. That's true. So we're having exploratory conversations and collecting information going back to the off season. The conversation was about taking a step forward from. From what we had accomplished last year and a lot of belief in this group. We're seeing, I think, some signs of that on the field over the last few weeks. That's an understatement. And the guys have been playing really, really well. Our job is to do everything we can to make the best decisions for the organization. It's like he's about to say, our job is to do everything we can to strengthen this roster, to. To capitalize on this run, to finish what they've started. No, it's to make the best decisions, whatever they are, knowing that we were capable of playing better, of doing more, and then seeing it start to manifest on the field. I share the same feeling that the fans do, which is really enjoying watching these guys show up every day, compete with each other, compete for each other, and give ourselves a chance to win. I can feel the enthusiasm. But look, I understand maybe you don't want to declare yourself because maybe you want to keep other teams and potential trade partners guessing and things can change. And why broadcast your needs publicly if you don't need to? But there's something to the idea that, hey, fans are feeling it right now. They want to know that there's going to be some support here, especially because Breslo hasn't always made waves at previous deadlines when he was expected to. Maybe he's just trying to set expectations low. He doesn't want to over promise. He wants to under promise and maybe over deliver this time. And there's also the factor that it's kind of the old cliche about, like, the best deadline additions or getting guys back from injury, which is sometimes an excuse that teams that don't really want to add payroll use, but sometimes it's kind of legitimate. And in the case of this team, they've been doing a lot of this with contributions from pretty unlikely sources, and it's not as if if with the Phillies it was one thing, because it's like, okay, you got Zach Wheeler back and it turns out he's as good as before. And also Trey Turner remembered how to hit and did he remember how to

Meg Riley

field, though, Ben maybe?

Ben Lindbergh

No. But you know, it's a start. So in some cases you get guys back from injury or guys who are good, they get good again. Maybe that'll happen with the Mariners and Cal, but the Red Sox have done this without really getting those reinforcements. Suarez is about to be back, so that helps. But it's not as if he has buoyed them over this winning streak and they have continued to get nothing from Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony, who are expected to be the backbones of the pitching staff and offense, respectively. And still, the team, which was projected to have certainly the best starting rotation in baseball, maybe the best pitching staff or close to it, has just about been there, right? It's just been a pretty strong pitching team. They're up to sixth in fangraph's war for the staff as a whole now. And it's it's coming from some other guys and some younger contributors and some pickups like Guerrero and and others that have made Breslow look really smart. So if anything, the chorus of Is Craig Brussels job in danger? That has been quieted lately and not by votes of confidence, which never really instill much confidence, but by the fortunes of the team. So I think he has to put the finishing touches on this and maybe make some deadline upgrades. But getting some of those guys back and healthy and productive would be a boon. And yeah, also it certainly seemed like it should be a good baseball team and you give it enough time, maybe, maybe that talent will out. So that's what we're seeing anyway. It's a classic case of if you just missed the first few months of the season and checked in on the standings in mid late July, you would say, oh ho hum. I mean, yeah, if you were watching all along, you'd be confused. If you just skipped from opening day to now, in many cases you'd say, oh yeah, that was what we expected. But yeah, the path some teams take to get there, not at all what we expected. All right. Another thing I've noticed, I know you're hard at work on the Trade Value Series this year and that work will continue this week. That is, you're. Yeah, you're hard at work. Yeah. But many people have also been publishing the rankings of guys who actually are going to get traded as opposed to Most of the guys in the trade value rankings and I feel like that has ramped up even more this year. I, I don't know.

Meg Riley

It's.

Ben Lindbergh

It's not as if we ever have any shortage of trade speculation but we're now getting. And, and this is probably not a first but I've been noticing it more just live updated.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Leaderboards or rankings or lists of candidates. The Athletic just has like a, a big board of just like the top however many guys, 75 something guys who are likely to get traded and Kylie and passing at espn they have their top deadline candidates. It's like a hundred of them which is boy are there a hundred who are likely like you can identify them in advance and anyone cares or is excited about them. I don't know. That seems maybe over exuberant a bit to me. But there has been even more of this just constant refreshing. We're less than two weeks to the deadline line now and just who's actually on the market, who's going to get moved and to where and, and all of this is as the standings kind of clarify these situations too because there are so many teams that are just sort of in the middle.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

You don't know whether they're in or out or not. But I have been just thinking, just perusing these lists and trying to kind of of fantasy cast where I would want some guys to go if they go anywhere. And a lot of these I think are, are reaches in terms of should I actually trade this guy? It seems like it's so hard to distinguish between teams that would be trading away players and, and trading for them now. But, but I don't know. Is, is there anyone that you're thinking about that you say oh this guy would be a good fit there. Or, or I hope he doesn't go anywhere. I hope he stays like, you know we talked about Luisa Rise the other day.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Who, who seems like one of the likelier trade candidates. And so I am trying to figure out well, where would I want him to go. I'm all for him going somewhere so that he can play in the playoffs and we can all appreciate this new and improved Luis Arise. But he has expressed a preference for staying at second base where he is suddenly so adept. Not that I mean he doesn't have the, the right to reject a trade and maybe he would go along with it if someone decided to try to make him move. He has played elsewhere before. But if someone wanted to accommodate that then where might he fit? And you could point to the red Sox. Right. The Red Sox could use some second base help. Or the Rays, I think, might be a fit. You never know what the Rays are going to do, but these are. These are teams that have a combination of weak production at the position and. And then maybe some sort of vacancy. Just. I could see like the. The least productive second base teams this year. The New York Mets. That was not something that was projected for them. They've been below replacement level there. The Reds, the Angels. Not that they're going to be adding the Astros, who people thought they had. Maybe too many infielders, even have enough. Yeah. What did they do? And then, then the Rays, then the Red Sox. I don't know. They seem like the leading candidates to me. You got the Orioles in the mix there. The Tigers.

Meg Riley

I think that the, the Rays and the Red Sox make a tremendous amount of sense. And I also think that, you know, moving him to a real contender, probably soft and slow. They also are in a position where they could, you know, from his perspective, I should say, depending on where they want to play him, it probably puts the Giants in a spot where they're trading with a trade partner who can actually potentially offer them something of value from a prospect perspective. Some of these values will shift around a bit when the guys update the 100 and pull the graduates off and put the draftees on. I think later this week is when they're targeting to do that. But Tampa Bay is the second best farm system in baseball. They have a lot of options and a lot of guys who they could potentially move in. Boston sits at ninth. So in terms of San Francisco being in a spot where they feel like they're getting, you know, actual turn there, they're well positioned. The team that I just keep thinking of, and it's wild to say this given that they just fired their general manager, but, like, the Angels seem like the cleanest fit of guys who will be desirable and a. And a desire to tear down to a certain degree. I know that MOS has been, you know, reticent to say, oh, yeah, we're doing the full rebuild, but yeah, take Redemers and Jose Seriano and just throw them somewhere. I keep thinking about those guys, one of those guys, as a fit for the Cubs who just desperately need pitching. I mean, that's an obvious fit. But, like, it's an obvious fit. Yeah, you know, they. They badly need reinforcement in the rotation.

Ben Lindbergh

And so the cubs are number one in position player WAR, and 26 in pitching WAR. Right.

Meg Riley

So you could see them as a fit, you know, I would be curious to see what the brewers could make of a Detmer or Soriano. Their pitching needs are hopefully a little bit shorter term. But, you know, it seems like Misarowski is going to be, at least for the first couple of starts he has out of the break here. Going to be on something of an innings limit as they try to get him out of the generalized arm fatigue that he was experiencing. Although if they play like they did yesterday and he only goes four innings, but they score eight runs, what does it matter? There's. That's a really good baseball team. I think, you know, like, feel, feel comfortable saying that the Milwaukee brewers are good at baseball. Baseball. But, you know, it would be interesting to see in that. In that division, which despite the brewers being very good, I think is somewhat competitive. And the Cubs are certainly in a position where if they had good, you know, rotation help, could really do something come October. You have to think that they're on the market for, for starting pitching. Whether they'll be able to blow anyone away. I, you know, that I think is a little less certain because they're, at least from a farm system perspective, they're in sort of worse shape. But I imagine that they will be highly motivated.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, get. Get Detburs out of him. I'm. Get him onto a playoff team. That would be fun. I've been a Detburse believer for a long time, but he was testing my belief. And the Angels were also. I mean, I don't believe in the Angels to be clear, but.

Meg Riley

And I know speaking of baseball team and as. Yeah, like other. The.

Ben Lindbergh

The concept. Yes, also that probably. But speaking of the Red Sox and Arise, I know Trevor Story is theoretically about to be back also, and they could maybe use some power. They have the fewest home runs in the American League. Arise. Doesn't help you much with that. But run to runs, winter wins. He's a good player. He would help fill a hole potentially. You know, in the most recent ESPN update, they continue to profess that Tarek Skouble is going to get dealt. And. And this is updated the morning of the day. We're recording. Yeah, but I don't know that I see it this way because it says considering the hole they've dug themselves, they are far more likely than not to move Skubal. Far more likely than not. And I certainly trust Jeff and Kylie's sources, but they put the chance of him being traded at 60%. And I would have said that at one point, but I don't know that I would Say that now because I think the Tigers are, are too good and too close to trade him unless somebody totally blows them away or unless they somehow make a move that they think doesn't hurt them in the short term and also helps them long term. But that seems hard to do when you're trading Tarek Skubel. They're six and a half back in the Central and there are three teams ahead of them. And I like the White Sox. The White Sox are fun, but I don't know that I would see any of these teams as not beatable. And they're four and a half back in the wild card race. And the underlying numbers. The Tigers have outscored their opponents by 33 runs. The Twins and the Guardians have been outscored. The Tigers, if you look at things like base runs and third order record and all of that would suggest that they are maybe the best team in that division. And I know that what counts is the actual wins, but there's still plenty of time for, for that true talent and underlying skill to show. And, and we've certainly been no stranger to comebacks in the Central. The Tigers know how that works. So they. On both sides of it. So I, I think it's really too soon and they're too good and they're too much in the window where they want to win to. To do that. And also just. Are you going to get enough for Ter Scubal? Because it's just a few months of him. Yeah. Like if you're trading Det. Mers or Soriano or someone like that, you're getting two and a half seasons or whatever. You're getting a lot of ch. Team control. And, and even if those pitchers aren't Tarek Scubal, teams are going to give up way more than that for a rental. Even if the rental is one of the best pitchers in baseball. So I don't know if, if they have a realistic shot, which I think they do, would be tough to throw that away.

Meg Riley

I do not envy them having to figure out what to do here because I, I think. And, and I guess the good news if you are sitting in the Tigers front office is I don't think that Terry School is going to be any less desirable on August 2nd or the morning of August 3rd as he is today. So you have, you know, it's not a ton of time, but you have some amount of time between now and when you have to make a decision. I'm sure they're having conversations about it because they'd be. I mean it would Be negligent for them not to. I agree that the return that they get for him is likely going to be less than, you know, his true talent on its own would merit because of how little time there is between now and his free agency. If they stink up the joint for the next, you know, two weeks, deal them, you know, like, they might find themselves in a position where it just makes sense for them to do that. I don't know what I think of them from a true talent perspective. I don't think that they're as bad as their record. I do think that, you know, some of the struggles of their guys make me think that they are not maybe as good as the preseason projections suggested they were. And even if they are, like, these losses are banked and it's more on a nice edge. But here I was saying, you know, maybe the Red Sox should do something so, you know, maybe they should keep him. I also just am fascinated and we're never going to get enough honest answer about this, but, like, how much does do the swings that their back to back seasons have taken just mess with their brains in terms of what their expectations are for the rest of this year? Right. Like it, it has to be in there. They never admit it. And I'm sure that ultimately the decisions that they make will be grounded in, you know, the play that they see from their guys over the next two weeks and what their model tell them about their true talent and about the talent of the opposition in the Central. I've been very heartened and happy to see the White Sox enjoying this run because God knows their fans deserve it. I don't think that they're the best true talent team in that division, but they also, you know, Jeff, Jeff and Kylie aren't wrong to say that they've dealt. They've dug themselves something of a hole. The guardians remain pesky. The Twins aren't going away, which is fascinating because, like, although our projections weren't as down on them, Dan made this point when he updated Zips at, you know, sort of the, the halfway point. We kind of got flack and, and Zips was higher, I think, than Steamer was for not being totally out on the Twins in, in the early going of the season. And it's like, yeah, they're fine. This is fine. Like they're not good, but they're not, they're not a disaster. They're not a disaster of a team, which is what a lot of people thought they were going to be because of how they handled the deadline last year. Last year and all of the drama with ownership and what have you, but I don't know what the Tigers would do. I think that either choice is defensible, which maybe that's a comfort. Maybe you can't make a wrong choice. Maybe you just see how the next two weeks go and if you're game back in, in your own division or you're in the wild card, well, then keep them and hope your guys play better. Hope that, you know, you continue to get, you know, better production out of some of your bats and that, you know, I mean, like it, it is hard in a year where McGonagall has like a 134 WRC plus and is like having this great rookie season to be like, bye, Derek. Like, I know. Happy trails, buddy. Yeah, see buddy, this is what I'm saying. You need to be Bartholomew, but a real human name. I don't know. It's. It's. I don't envy them having to. To make a decision and I imagine whether they'd admit it or not, that what is going to make the decision for them is just like, how do the next two weeks go? And I can kind of go from there. Which.

Ben Lindbergh

Right.

Meg Riley

That's not a, that's not a like an irresponsible way to make a decision. That's. That's two whole weeks of information for you. And even. And I'm sure they'll be looking beyond just the win loss record. Although that will be instructive also like if they, you know, get a sense that like, hey, this is really turning around ground for us. Well, awesome. Like you were supposed to be a better team than this and maybe you go out and in addition to not trading school, you try to supplement your group a little bit and you know, like, I don't know, like Dylan dingler is a 135 WRC plus man. Like he's gonna, if, if the Cal is any indication, he's gonna suck next year, so you may as well make the playoffs. Rising green is a 139W RC Plus. That makes me so happy. I just. But you know, it, it thins out from there and some of the guys who they were, you know, able to enjoy like really great seasons from last season haven't been able to put on the same kind of show and they've dealt with injury and like, you know, it's a flawed roster. It's not a perfect group by any means. And so you can understand why they feel kind of cocky in between because yeah, sure, you got Dinkler and McGonagall and, and Riley Green and then like Carrie Carpenter as a 93 WRC plus, you know.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. And I don't want to exaggerate how much strength of schedule matters over the course of 10 days, but the Tigers are playing the Cubs right now. But then leading up to the deadline, they have four at home against the Royals, three at home against the Orioles, three in West Sacramento against the A's. So that's a fairly light schedule.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

Which might help them reel off some wins and clarify things. But yeah, you do kind of want them to pick a lane because they started okay. They were treading water. They were 500ish through April. Then they had that abysmal May, they were 6 and 22. Then they rated the ship in June. They had a winning record. They were 15 and 11 in June and they're 10 and 4 so far as we speak in July. So.

Meg Riley

Right.

Ben Lindbergh

I really feel like May was the blip. May was the out of character month for them.

Meg Riley

I think that that's right.

Ben Lindbergh

And that doesn't mean you can just pretend it never happens. It counts and it factors into projections and everything. But I would be banking on the Tigers playing more like the team that they have been outside of May. And so it would be tough for me to pull the trigger on a Tarek Skubal trade. And he hasn't been. Been dominant. He hasn't been completely lights out since he returned from the Scoopal scope procedure. He's coming off a, a vintage seven inning scoreless start though it was against the Angels, though. Yeah, he's been okay. He hasn't been as good as we're accustomed to Taric Scubal being, but some of that might have been rest and the accelerated return and everything. So he does seem to be physically fine as far as we can tell. But yeah, heavy, heavy hangs the head that has to make this decision. And, and if I were Tigers popo Scott Harris, I would be saying like, let this cup pass for me somehow. I just, I don't want to have to make an agonizing decision here. Either let's, let's win out from now to the deadline or let's be winless or something. And, and I would far prefer the former if I were Scott Harris, but either one would make the decision a little bit easier because whoever ends up winning this division or the wild card race, it's probably not gonna be by much.

Meg Riley

Right.

Ben Lindbergh

And so it's gonna be a marginal difference that decides which of these mediocre teams makes the Playoffs. And so a couple weeks, that could actually make the difference or it could fool you into thinking that it was decisive and determinative. And then as we just saw with the Red Sox over the last couple, couple weeks, things can completely change after that.

Meg Riley

Yeah. And, and you know, very often over the last couple of years when we have seen really dramatic shifts in teams, playoff fortunes, from, you know, where they were to where they end up at the end of the season, it's because of an extended winning streak. And sometimes, you know, they get to the, the playoffs and they don't go anywhere. And sometimes you're the Braves and you win the World Series. So it can go a lot of different ways. I also think that, like, this is one of those years where we, we love to do this and we're gonna, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it anyway. But you know, to the extent that you want to engage in any like, tea leaf reading about like the state of the game and how it is viewed or, you know, I keep bothering people with this idea of like, are we gonna, to be able to glean anything about what teams are projecting or expecting in terms of the length of next year's season based on how they prioritize guys with, you know, longer service time or not, as if they don't already do that at the time. You know, I just think that this, this deadline more than most might be. The, the signal is going to be drowned out by a lot of noise, right. Where the Tigers may go into August 3rd intending to move school and just not be able to because, you know, the offers are really bad or, you know, they're just the fit isn't there? Because we have all these mid teams and they're like, yeah, I don't know, like, do we want to give up a top 100 guy for a homer prone school? And that might have, that might say less about the Tiger's appetite and, and more about sort of what the market is shaping up to be. And so that I think is actually the part of the pronouncement from Jeff and Kylie that I found the most surprising, where it's like, I just think the next two weeks are gonna really do a lot to shape this market, which right now, as I talked about with Craig the first day of your jury duty, you still won't tell me what kind of trial it is.

Ben Lindbergh

I'm not allowed.

Meg Riley

I know. I'm just saying in case anyone, in case anyone from the New York state government is listening, Ben is taking his seriously very Seriously, you know, I think that right now there's the potential for, other than the, say, the Angels starters, some of the Mets, whichever ones, aren't nailed down, which sounds like it's most of them, them. And you know, potentially arise. Like, I think we're looking at a reliever heavy kind of. Kind of deadline, but the next two weeks could change that entirely. So I don't know. Like, I'm not confident I have any idea what that day is going to look like. I just hope I'm not sick still by then.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, me too. You. You might be sick after that if you are. Not yet. But I, I think what I am zeroing in on here with this ESPN trade list and probably all the trade lists, they're always. They're sorted by the biggest names, which makes sense. You're trying to hook readers and everything.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

But often.

Meg Riley

Got a job to do.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. But often the biggest names are not actually at all likely to be traded. So, for example, Jeff and Kylie have Byron Buxton number two.

Meg Riley

Okay.

Ben Lindbergh

Seems extremely unlikely that Byron Buxton is going to be traded, but both the Twins and Buxton have been pretty definitive about the fact that he's not going anywhere. And, you know, teams and players can say things and then things change and you never know for sure. But. But also the. The Twins are at least kind of in contention right now, and. And Buxton clearly just wants to stay there. And so they're not. I mean, they might be slightly overselling the chances that he'll be traded if they're 0%, but they have it at 10%, so they don't think it's likely either. But Byron Buxton's a big name, so he's number two.

Meg Riley

Right.

Ben Lindbergh

I guess. I almost wish. And this would probably be a much less effective way to hook readers. I wish it were sorted in order of like, expected trade value or something, which would be like player quality times likelihood that they're actually going to get traded. Yeah. Because as it is, okay, Baron Bruxen might be a valuable trade pickup, but he's extremely unlikely to be traded. Sure. And so to have him number two, it's like. Yeah, you're. You're listing it as. Here are the hundred best players who might. Theoretically, you could construct a scenario where maybe they might be moved, but then you end up with a lot of real long shots toward the top of the list. And so they have Scubal at 60%. I would. Would probably take the under on that personally, but I'm scrolling down to see. Okay, who's the next guy they have ranked whom they think is actually more likely than not to be traded.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

And I'm going down and I'm going down and it's like Hunter Goodman, number eight. Yeah, that would be a big acquisition. They're not going to trade Hunter Goodman. Right.

Meg Riley

They might trade Hunter Goodman. You think?

Ben Lindbergh

I. Boy, I'd be surprised for Hunter Goodman. Oh, they would. Absolutely, absolutely.

Meg Riley

I think they could get a three

Ben Lindbergh

more years of control after this. But, but that makes me think that they might want to hold on to him. Yeah. And, and they have the likelihood at 15%. So I'm scrolling, I'm scrolling. Okay, so number 10, Luis Arise. They have at a 95% chance of being traded. So that's. I, I would. On my personal trade candidate list, he might be number one or two because he is both a good player and, and seemingly virtually certain to be traded.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

All right, who's next after H, who's actually more likely than not to be traded according to their estimation? Casey M. So they're all in on Tiger starters getting dealt. They have Casey M at 60%. Yeah, you might as well, you may

Meg Riley

as well move M. Right.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, I guess so. Then they have Clay Holmes at 90%. So yeah, that makes sense. Now Clay Holmes is not nearly as exciting as Derek Kuble, but 90%, I buy it. Right. I mean he, he has an opt out after this season and seems like he maybe could help someone. And the Mets are one of the few teams along with the Giants that's clearly in the category of they're out of. Right. Yeah. So. And I understand that you're talking about any individual player. Even if they are a good trade candidate on a team that is likely to be a seller, you still never know. They might just not find a fit. Every year there are lots of guys who, their names are bandied about and they seem like, oh yeah, they'll probably get dealt and then they don't. And then there are some surprise guys who seem like they won't get dealt and then they do. But it all depends on just do teams sync up at the last second. But so I, I get kind of having a fairly low percentage on any individual guy, but they have 25 guys ranked. The top 25 have an actual chance of being traded probability. And then after that the bottom 75 are just name and team and position. But of the top 25, it looks like only three of them are actually listed as more likely than not to be dealt. It's just, just a rise and, and then skubal and Mice. So everyone else, it's like this is pretty speculative. Even the guys who are on some of those teams that are out of it, like Jung Huli, Giants, they have at 40% for instance. Or gosh, I mean they still have like Sonny Gray and Wilson Contreras on here. Guys.

Meg Riley

I just don't think that's happening. Wilson Contreras is like, don't trade me, I want to be here.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah. I mean just.

Meg Riley

Sure.

Ben Lindbergh

Before this winning streak at an earlier point. Yes. Could have seen it. Sonny Gray even I think said that he would be receptive to the right trade at some point this season. But circumstances have changed I think and. And then they have. Okay, so like Francisco Lindor. Okay.

Meg Riley

Yeah.

Ben Lindbergh

People have been talking about the possibility but given his star power and his contract and everything else, still pretty unlikely. And so they have that at 15% even though he's a Met and the Mets would certainly entertain offers for anyone, even someone who was signed to be a cornerstone guy. Even though this weird drama about Lindor and Stto just will not go away. It's just. I don't know why we are fixating on this so much. Like do I care, do I need to care this much about whether they're buds? I. I don't know, like unless they're coming to blows or something. I, I guess he would want to them to be buddies cuz they're both signed for so long and they're so important to the organization and everything. But as long as they don't hate each other. But I don't know, maybe they do. There's just all sorts of smoke going on with these guys. That stuff will just not die down. They have Detmers and soriano at like 25, 30%.

Meg Riley

See I, I think those guys are

Ben Lindbergh

out the door with any other ownership group.

Meg Riley

I think they're at the door anyway. Way.

Ben Lindbergh

This is purely the. The arty factor I think. But I would, I'd probably go higher just because it seems like it would be silly to bring in mock and then just totally tie his hands and not let him do anything at the deadline.

Meg Riley

As we've established. We don't know if they've even met each other.

Ben Lindbergh

No. That now they have. They have officially. I know they had breakfast.

Meg Riley

I want, I wanted to continue.

Ben Lindbergh

I wish, I wish that they had. I would be a great bit to keep going just like remote work.

Meg Riley

But you know, you know what they say that Molly Jolly, she brings people together.

Ben Lindbergh

Yes.

Meg Riley

I just wanted an excuse to say Molly Jolly and remember how her husband's name is Bert Jolly.

Ben Lindbergh

I do, I do. I hope she doesn't decide to go back to her maiden name. Tyron Guerrero or Zack Thornton. Style of a mid career pivot back to the original name. That would be sad. Yeah. And they have Zach Netto at 30% that. It seems a little less likely to me. Yeah, that seems less likely to Mers and Soriano. It would be malpractice not to trade them unless you get completely stiffed. Unless somehow no one is offering you anything.

Meg Riley

And I will say, if I'm mos, like I would be, I would be nervous. I think he should just accept the first round of offers you're gonna get for those guys. Guys is gonna be bad and it's probably gonna be below market because I think other front offices are like, let's just see if we can get one passed.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, probably right. It's like he's the new guy. He just showed up. Maybe he won't realize that those guys have been pitching pretty well this season or something. Anyway, I guess there will be several more versions. It's like, it's like we have mapped mock drafting onto the trade deadline now. Now where you just have multiple projections and updates and it's just like a live leaderboard of who's most likely to be traded. Except that no one really knows anything when it comes to this stuff. So we'll, we'll get several more refreshes of this between now and August 3rd.

Meg Riley

I understand the market forces that are at work and I don't really fault anyone for it. And I think that in a, in a year like this where the whole exercise seems like it is not yet path dependent. Right. Where it might change a lot between now and then. I think taking a wide approach is pretty defensible because, you know, who knows what kind of deadline we're gonna get. But yeah, I, I saw that. I was like, oh, we're doing like big. We're doing big boards now.

Ben Lindbergh

Yeah, we're doing big board. The new innovation in trade speculation and rumor mongering.

Meg Riley

Like we, we maintain a board and boy, I mean, we have all the leader boards, but the board is just like, that takes. It's a lot of time and work. You know, that board, it's such a

Ben Lindbergh

strange exercise because of course we can just wait. In less than two weeks we will know who got traded. And so it is all sort of an exercise in futility. Not really, because obviously people are entertained. They click on this. They hopefully are listening to this podcast. We we could say that about a lot of things, things we discuss uneffectively. Well, we'll just wait till the end of the season and then we'll know what happened. But obviously we like to enjoy these things in real time before we know what will happen. But there's all, all this speculation and non revelatory, revelatory rumors that go on like, did you see the report that. Gosh, what was it? I think it was that the Yankees had expressed interest in Hunter Goodman. Goodman. But not at any particular time. Just. Just at some point they expressed interest. It was the MLB trade rumors headline is Yankees have shown past interest in Hunter Goodman. And this was the sourcing was a Jorge Castillo of ESPN rumor that like at some point, I guess they were. Were interested. I mean, sure, who wouldn't have been at some point, right? It was just they have called on Goodman. As, as in they have called the Rockies asking about Goodman. Though not recently, a source told espn. Ah, okay. Well, at some point, some indeterminate point in the past, the Yankees had some amount of interest in Hunter Goodman. Why wouldn't you? He's a pretty good catcher. So this is just what we do, I guess, to while away our days and forget about the rotten slog to rigor mortis.

Meg Riley

Yep, that's right.

Ben Lindbergh

Well, as always, we thank you for slogging alongside us. It's nice to keep each other company as we all go to the gallows together. As soon as we finished recording, Meg said, you know, we didn't talk about the fact that Joshua Kuroda Grauer suffered a ruptured testicle and had to have emergency surgery. And you know what? We didn't. And that was our gift to you today. We may have made you confront your mortality, but not the potential for ruptured testicles. The incredible thing, of course, is that he managed to get a base hit after said rupture. The latest example of pro athletes being built different. Oh, and hey, we started with a Mets pitcher named Zach. Might as well end with one. I saw the glad tidings that the Mets have signed their 14th round pick in the amateur draft. That would be, of course, Zach Crotchfelt, whom we did discuss briefly before $150,000 signing bonus for Mr. Crotchfeld. But I just have to say, Zach, if you are secretly longing to be known as, as Zac Crotch Felt, don't wait until you make the majors. You're free to style yourself, Zack Crotch Felt without that first H right now. And you, you, the listener, are free to support effectively. Wild on Patreon right now, which you can do by going to patreon.com effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners, Satara, Wraith, McLean, Ferguson, Patrick, Hugh Freeze and Kate Visdos. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to a third unrestricted episode each week that one's coming up next time, plus a monthly bonus episode, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, exclusive live streams, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, Fangraph memberships and more. Check out all the other offerings@patreon.com effectively wild if you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastamgraphs.com youm can rate, review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music and other podcast platforms. You can join our facebook group@facebook.com group effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R Effectively Wild and and you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I must put my jury duty before my podcast duty, but I take both seriously. So we will be back with another episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Just a couple of baseball nights. It could be Sam or Jeff or Sam or Meg and Ben. Unless he goes on paternity leave again, in which case Meg will find someone great to fill in, but whoever it is, they'll still be judged. Couple of baseball names.