Good morning and welcome to episode 645 of Effectively Wild, Daily Podcasts from Baseball

Respect This, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben

Lindbergh of Grantland Hello Ben. Hello. How are you? All right. Good. Later in the shows

of Hadov we'll be talking to James Wagner of the Washington Post. In the meantime we will be

talking to Chris Swick, newly hired writer and big leaks to Hello Chris. How are you? I'm

doing great. How are you guys? Very well. How is the job? Can't complain yet. That's a good thing.

You're literally just complained to us off. Yeah. I was going to play it exactly but it was

it was completely. It didn't let me finish. Okay. By the time this airs things are going to

get pretty busy Sam. All right. Fair enough. That is all you complain. That is hardly a complaint

more of an observation of the weather. All right. You're on here because you wrote the Washington

Nationals essay for the BP annual this year. Why don't you just tell us what the thesis of

it was. It was an interesting thesis. You can explain it and then we'll have the Jason

Worth portion of this episode covered. Sure. What I wanted to kind of do is look at how the

nationals had become probably one of the most embarrassing franchises in baseball to the best.

And the most provocative way or the biggest hot take that I could could muster is the

signing of Jason Worth. And I actually I mean it's something I believe. So I don't know how much

of a hot take it really is or how controversial is at this point based on his production. But I

looked at how that contract has kind of changed the entire franchise not just with his performance

on the field but also with some of the stuff that he's reportedly done in the clubhouse. And

so I just I found the whole thing interesting because the nationals were perceived as such

losers is is recently as five or six years ago. And now they seem to be the favorite for the

world series the last two or three years. So what has changed? Well Jason Worth has come in

...