Let's play ball.

It's effectively wild.

It's effectively wild.

It's effectively wild.

Hello and welcome to episode 2351 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought

to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined today by Michael Bauman, also of Fangraphs, because Ben finally took a vacation. Hello, Bowman. How are you? I'm surprised Ben's not podcasting from, I was going to say, the beach. She's probably, like, vacationing at the gym down the street from his apartment.

I think they might have gone to the beach.

Maybe.

We'll get the full Ben vacation report.

Man, I hope he's wearing sunscreen if that's the case, because that is one pasty man.

I told him that he could take Tuesday off.

He's like, I could podcast. I was like, no, I think that that he could take Tuesday off. He's like, I could, I could podcast. I was like,

no, I think that that's unnecessary. We can hold down the fort in your absence at least for one day.

But we have sort of a hodgepodge agenda for today because we are, we're in this weird

interregnum between the all-star break and the trade deadline where the pod might be

completely out of date by the time folks listen to it if somebody swings a big trade between now

and when we hit publish but i thought today we would do a little brewer's talk because look out

the milwaukee brewers are coming for you.

And also just the state of the National League in general as we approach the deadline

because I was struck by a line in a piece that you wrote for the site today about how

there were no like really invulnerable teams in the NL, which was not my guess coming into the year.

...