I'll play baby, go play, go time

I know what's on your mind

What's the baby qualified?

What we want now is it

What I'm never safe, don't stay still

Hello and welcome to episode 867 of Effectively Wild

Daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus

Presented by our Patreon supporters and the play index at baseballreference.com

I'm Ben Lemberg of 538 joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Howdy. Do you have anything you wish to discuss? No.

Okay. Well my colleague at 538 Neil Payne just published a piece on Harper and Traut and I can no longer resist.

Okay. Is that today? Is that the whole thing? This is not banter but this is the thing? No. That's the thing.

Alright. Alright. So there have been a few articles about Traut and Harper lately and just to be clear

I don't know why it is that we need to weigh one of these guys against the other every so often

It's wonderful that they both exist. It's possibly unprecedented that there are two incredible historically great players

playing in the same time at different leagues and doing it in different ways and both being entertaining in their own way.

So it's great for baseball, great for baseball fans that we have both Bryce Harper and Mike Traut

and I don't know why we need to establish which one is better at any one time but the temptation to do so is very strong.

Is it? I feel the pull. It is. I think it is. I'm not sure why I don't feel that temptation. I often do feel such temptations.

I don't know. Maybe I'm telegraphing that I'm just going to be a complete drag on this entire episode.

But maybe you can explain to me why and maybe I don't know. Maybe I have to think about what?

Because I do I wanted to debate such things constantly. Yeah. So we have debated this very thing.

So I don't know. I wonder if it's just too difficult or you know what I think it is. Here's what I think it has been.

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