Effectively Wild Episode 2415: Catch if You Can
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2025
⏱️ 100 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Ha-Seong Kim, Adrian Houser, and Foster Griffin signings, a prospect-for-prospect Red Sox and Nationals trade, and the Twins’ partial sale, then (34:00) answer emails about saying “pitchoff” instead of “first pitch,” the value of a cool nickname, a Hall of Fame reference in The Wizard of Oz, whether teams value batter performance against elite pitching, protesting ball/strike calls from the dugout, keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall, a running start for pitchers, and moving the catcher back instead of the mound.
Audio intro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Link to FG post on Kim
Link to Anthopoulos comments on Kim
Link to MLBTR on Houser
Link to MLBTR on Griffin
Link to FG post on pitching prospects trade
Link to Twins sale story
Link to $/WAR analysis
Link to $/WAR analysis 2
Link to ceremonial first puck wiki
Link to “baseball exceptionalism” series
Link to Sam’s hockey quote
Link to Raleigh “Beef Boys” story
Link to Sam on Trout in 2012
Link to The Wizard of Oz song
Link to halls of fame wiki
Link to Hall of Fame for Great Americans
Link to Schwarber’s postseason stats
Link to pitcher quality adjustment post
Link to Capps hop post
Link to Ben on moving the mound
Link to listener emails database
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Let's play ball. It's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. |
| 0:09.8 | Hello and welcome to episode 2415 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from |
| 0:19.9 | Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The R Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. |
| 0:23.0 | I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. |
| 0:27.3 | Oh, hello. |
| 0:28.4 | Well, we have a few transaction appetizers to sample here. |
| 0:32.7 | It's tough when we do back-to-backs, you know, as they call them in the NBA. |
| 0:37.2 | You have to play back-to-back |
| 0:38.2 | games. In MLB, you don't call them anything because that's just the norm. |
| 0:43.0 | Call them. |
| 0:43.9 | Call them playing. |
| 0:44.9 | Call them. |
| 0:45.5 | Play in the game, Ben. |
| 0:46.9 | Yeah, exactly. |
| 0:48.5 | But it's tough when you do back-to-backs on effectively wild in mid-December because the league, |
| 0:56.0 | the sport does not always accommodate us with new news, with the fresh material. |
| 1:01.1 | Fortunately, our listeners do. |
| 1:03.3 | They replenish our mailbag and what would we do without some emails, so we will get to some |
| 1:07.5 | of those later. |
| 1:08.1 | But a few transactions have occurred. |
| 1:11.0 | I'm clinging to the news. |
| 1:13.2 | I'm refreshing MLB trade rumors. |
... |
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