Let's run up this mountain.

Good morning and welcome to episode 500 of Effectively Wild, the David podcast from

baseball prospectus presented by the play index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with

Ben Lindbergh of Grantland. Ben, how are you? Very well. Thank you. Good. We're going to skip the

Diamondbacks headlines portion of the show. Today, although there were some good ones.

That's what segment on Monday. We have, yeah, maybe we have special guests. Two of them, in fact,

one is Grant Brisbee, who you know from Espionation and McCovick Chronicles, and the other is Jeff

Sullivan, who you knew from Espionation. But now you know him from fan graphs, as well as

occasionally 538. And this is, I don't know, it might not be exciting for you guys out there.

But for us, it's very exciting. I would say that Grant and Jeff are the two writers that I love

the most in the world. I don't want to say that they're the two best. They probably are, but I don't

want to say they are, because then people might think that I'm dismissing other great writers. But

they're the two that I love the most. And I think that's close to true for Ben as well. Is that true

for you as well, Ben? Yes. Yeah. And I mean, the biggest challenge in writing, I think, for me,

and probably for Ben is to not go over the line into just completely plagiarizing Grant and Jeff's

work. So Grant and Jeff, hello. Hi, I like to call you on something. First of all, I don't know

what the what the swearing rules are on this podcast. I'll try not to do it. But just the other day,

when you were you were saying you're fond farewell to Ben's 10 year baseball prospect, this you asserted

that he was the best in your opinion. Therefore, you have some decisions to make and tread carefully

on identifying the best. There can only be one best. Yeah. What if you're not too to side,

you still have made a choice, Sam? Uh-huh. I think that one could make the case that right now,

I'm speaking to the three best baseball writers in the world. And that is a daunting thing. And

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