I'll be done, good roads to roam

And I'll be brought this empty child

This land, that's the forest

To the village, to the land roads

This place, that time lies

And we'll see more in the world

Hello and welcome to episode 1420 of Effectively Wild

A baseball podcast from Fem Gras presented by our Patreon supporters

I am Ben Berk of the Ringer with Sam Miller of ESPN

Hello Sam! Ben! Yes, hey, that's it, okay

I was talking to my pal Zach Graham from the Ringer

Who just listened to our most recent episode in our discussion about players who might one day dethrone my trout as the best player in baseball

And he raised the suggestion of Shohei Otani as a possible candidate who we did not really consider in our discussion

But there's some merit to that suggestion in that

I was saying that I didn't think any current player could displace trout

Because no one has been as good as he is and he's been historically great

But Otani is historically great in his own way

He's a kind of player we haven't seen in a century

And you could conceivably construct an Otani season where he could be better than trout if he maxes out his potential as both a pitcher and a hitter

So do you consider him a candidate?

You know, I was trying to remember when we talked about this when the last time I got a question about it was

And in fact it was somebody a few months ago who asked whether Otani was the... oh no, this was a different thing

...