Room, room, here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's Inn, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels,

Williams Astadillo, and Mike Trout hypotheticals, waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic

corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction.

Hello and welcome to episode 2448 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon

supporters. I'm Meg Rally of Fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindbergh of the ringer. Ben, how are

you? I'm entertained by the concept of Team USA facing just one team, which is the warm-ups for the WBC.

It's like all the best players at baseball versus the Giants or whoever's left, I guess.

It's quite a mismatch.

I mean, it could be worse.

But I don't envy Adrian Howser or whoever has to go up against modern murderers row here.

No.

I don't know that he enjoyed his first inning, although, you know, it could have gone a lot

worse because the first four Team USA hitters reached.

And I thought Adrian Howser in for a long day being sacrificed on the altar of patriotism.

They've ridded the ship. They're only down two runs. But it does go with Harper, Judge, Forber,

Bregman, Calerale, Roman Anthony, Byron Buxton, Bryce Terang. That's, um, that's hard. That's a rough,

that's a rough bit of business to deal with.

Well, on, on Wednesday, Team USA will run into the Rockies. And that'll be the real test, I think,

of whether they're ready to take on the best in the world. Can you conquer the Rockies? Because

the Rockies, you know, I haven't looked, so I shouldn't make any assumptions.

But I'm guessing there aren't that many Rockies who have been recruited for WBC service, at least not on Team USA, maybe.

So, yeah, I guess they're probably at fuller strength than some other teams that are diminished by guys who have gone away to play in the WBC.

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