Tiff day, the head lights tomorrow hard times

And no one ever really knows the truth from the lies

And in the end the story deep down my spine

Deep for a deep for a deep for a deep for a smile

Yeah, scared out

Hello and welcome to episode 1499

of Effectively Wild 8 baseball podcast for band graphs presented by our Patreon supporters

I am Ben Linderig of the Ringer joined by Sam Miller of the SPAN below Sam's

Hello Ben, doing a season preview podcast today

So in a little while we will be bringing on Fabian Art Daya to talk about the Angels

And then after that we'll leech to talk about the Cardinals

And then finally I will be bringing on Craig Edwards from Fangrass to talk about how much money the red talks actually saved from getting under the competitive balance tax threshold via the Mookie Betstrade spoiler

It's probably less than you think and we'll also discuss the rumored new playoff format that MLB floated this week as well as the three-batter minimum rule that's going into effect this season

But before we do it's been kind of a busy Newsy week in baseball and it's been yet another Astros centric week

It just keeps striking me I think how perfectly constructed the sign stealing scandal is to sustain this story indefinitely

This story is not going away nor should it go away it's a big story

But the way that little drabs and drabs of information keep coming out bit by bit it seems almost like it's calculated in a way to keep it front and center

And beyond that now that players are reported to spring training there's an endless number of people that you can go to for quotes about this

And of course there was the whole Astros apology Fiasco semi Fiasco on Thursday morning it really goes back to the beginning of this because as we said at the time obviously a huge story regardless but the fact that there was this audio component of it and video component of it

And the fact that we could all go back and hear the bangs and it was just undeniable that really just made it the perfect storm because that confirmed it it showed what the extent of it was it made it possible for people in public to do their own digging and see it for themselves in a way that usually you can't even when we find out about a scandal or a sign stealing scandal

So much of this has just been sort of I guess MLB's worst nightmare in that they don't want this to continue to be the biggest story but it just will be because you know now you can ask everyone who ever played the Astros in 2017 or 2018 what they think of it

And obviously players have strong opinions about this and then players who are no longer on the Astros people can go to them and ask them do they feel bad about it do they apologize

...