Hello and welcome to episode 1943 of Effectively Wild, a fancraft baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly, a

fan of graphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindbergh of the Ring, our Ben How are you? Doing well. Another day, another big contract for a Carlos. So, talked about Carlos Cray last time. Today, we have Carlos Radon to talk about. Six years, 162 million dollars for the New York Yankees. How about that? A lot of millions of dollars, you know? Yeah. By the standards of this offseason, it seems almost pedestrian. If it's under two or three hundred million dollars,

and if it's under eight years, it seems like nothing at this point. Compared to where Carlos Radon was a couple years ago, it's quite a windfall, which we can talk about, I guess, yes, definitely. So, this is, I guess, the last elite picture on the market, you could say. I sort of disparaged Dance B. Swanson and Carlos Radon last time. I know. When Carlos Craya came off the board, that was kind of like the last real

lead like difference maker gets me super excited kind of reagent, but Carlos Radon, you know, he has a case to be in that group. And people have called him an ace that the Ben Clemens fan grass posts called him an ace in the headline, right, referred to the fact that the Yankees now have two aces. Yeah.

Not just one, but two ace definitions. That's one of my least favorite arguments over who is an ace and what is it? I don't know that I would put him there, I guess, but everyone has a different definition. And it's mostly meaningless, but really like the only reason I was sort of sliding Carlos Radon was not because of his recent performance, but because of his long term track record, which may or may not be relevant at this point, but over the past two seasons.

If we go by fan graphs were and why wouldn't we, why would you trail only Corbin Burns and Zach Wheeler in fan graphs pitching war from 2021 to 2022. Now he was 40 second in innings pitched over that span, because of course he missed some time, particularly in 2021 down the stretch.

But he was just so good on an inning printing basis that he was still one of the most valuable pitchers in baseball and projects to be again, at least in the short term. So there's maybe a bit more uncertainty about him than your typical ace level effectiveness picture, but probably not that much more because every picture is risky and could potentially break.

And you know, at any moment, like they could be walking down the road and they could be like, oh no, I have broken, you know, the old sound like cartoon characters.

Yeah, it could happen. Yeah, it could happen. I guess I could happen to all of us, you know, ace or not. But yeah, I think it's funny how we think about injury risk when it comes to pitchers because on the one hand, they could all break it any moment. And on the other hands, like, they, the ones who have broken previously,

we look at slightly more scans. And I think that's appropriate. And then on our third coming out of our head and there's like, you get to the other end of the like all the way to one end of the spectrum so you can loop around where it's like, oh, this guy, like very recently had Tommy John. So I'm weirdly less worried.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, you know, then it's like it's brand new, you know, and it doesn't mean he can't injure it again because guys do that, but you kind of swim in weird waters when you're when you're signing a really good starting picture. But when you think about the ways that this Yankees team had to improve itself or sustain its level of play going into the off season, like the obvious thing that they needed to do was

resign Aaron judge and they did that. And then you're thinking about like, what are the ways that they can kind of raise their ceiling relative to the rest of their division and one of those ways would have been safe bringing in like Carlos Correa, the other Carlos and

the other thing that you can do is just sign the best free agent picture who isn't Jacob de Grame available. Am I under rating Justin Burlander? I might be, but I still think I would prefer Carlos.

I think I'm comfortable with the assertion that I just made. Maybe not, but for like this deal, you know, yeah, over the next six years cheating, cheating what I just did. Yeah, okay, one of the best pictures on the free agent market there. That's appropriately

aviated to be very good as you said on a perining basis. You hope that he's able to sustain the improved health and availability. And now all of a sudden, you know, a rotation where you were like, wow, we're really, you know, banking a lot on like Frankie Montas now you can bank on him less like Frankie Montas as a five that's that's five

that makes good sense. And then you know, you go coal and rodon and severino and quartets and you're like, wow, that's a that's a real good rotation that they have right there. So I feel I feel like they did they did a good thing. And now when you look at our payroll breakdown, like look, it's perfect.

Ben as it's currently constituted, I want to make an argument for this array being what I want to see from baseball, are you ready for me to make an argument. It just makes good sense that the bets and the Yankees would lead the payroll rankings. Like that is that is the teams in the biggest media market in the country with all kinds of resources doing what they ought to. And then it speaks to the health of, you know, the game more generally that the third team is the pot.

And then the team is the Padres, much smaller market, but one dedicated to winning and really excited and then and then that you would have the Phillies who had a big payroll in 2022, but were, you know, disappointed by their World Series last say, no, no, we're going to get better too. We're doing the thing. And then you have Toronto, which had, you know, the ability to spend maybe hasn't spent quite to the extent that their fan base would like, but is like, you know, finally getting to know the luxury tax threshold. And then you know, we're going to get better too.

Finally, getting to know the luxury tax threshold in a way that they haven't before. And then you have the angel, so you have the angel, I don't know, man, like at some point it'll work. Right. Like, it reminded that spending is not necessarily.

Always corral. So sometimes there's, you know, and so I am pleased, I'm pleased, because you want, you want teams to deploy all of the resources that they have available to them to try to win, particularly when they're in divisions that are as competitive as both of the East.

And we're seeing the Yankees and the meds sort of answer that call and many of their division mates doing the same. And then, you know, Boston's trying or something. I don't know what Boston's doing, but there you go. I'm pleased. It doesn't feel great to me, Ben. Can I say a thing that doesn't feel great to me? Are you ready?

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