How can you not be pedanted?

A stab blast will keep you distracted.

It's a long slog to death, but the shore to make you smile.

This is effectively why? This is effectively why? Hello, this is Effectively Wild, this is Effectively Wild, this is Effectively Wild.

Hello and welcome to episode 2270 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraffs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer.

Ben, how are you?

I'm enraged.

Oh.

Can't you tell this is my enraged voice?

This is what I sound like when I'm enraged.

MLB Network, the network whose airwaves I appeared on last week, turned right around and chose violence. They heard my rant

about breakout players and the definition of breakouts last week. And they decided to twist the

knife. MLB Network's social media team put out a post entitled MLB.com's breakout players to watch in 2025. This was just this

week. Now, I corresponded with someone at MLB.com who denied all responsibility for this list and

suggested that MLB network has its own social media people and that they were

freelancing here.

It's not entirely clear to me what the sourcing for this is because some of the players

who appear on this purported MLB.com breakout players to watch list did appear on the breakout

article that I ranted about last week, but others did not and do not

and don't appear to be on any MLB.com actual article of breakout. So I don't know what this is

other than, I guess, engagement farming slash rage baiting. And I took the bait. So here's who we have. It's one of these Instagram posts that's

...