Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest lockout stalemate and how to decide where to lay blame, a changing of the umpirial guard in which Joe West (finally) leaves and John Libka enters, and whether there could be an MLB equivalent of the NFL’s current tanking scandal, then answer listener emails about watching baseball during the playoffs, whether to raise a child to root for the Yankees or Red Sox, the root of Hall of Fame culture, the criteria for becoming a baseball cover model, a foul-tip rule, and identifying MLB players without their identifying features, plus (1:11:54) Stat Blasts about home run trees, the modern equivalent of “Three-and-Two Jack” Graney, and whether MLB adheres to the Pareto Principle.

Audio intro: Sloan, “Laying Blame”
Audio outro: Boat, “I Believe in the Principle”

Link to Evan Drellich’s latest
Link to MLBPA statement
Link to MLB statement
Link to AP lockout piece
Link to player tweets collection
Link to Emma on players and social media
Link to umpires press release
Link to story about umpires and age
Link to another story about umpires and age
Link to Umpire Scorecards leaderboard
Link to Libka episode wiki
Link to story on Flores lawsuit
Link to Hue Jackson tanking story
Link to Joe Posnanski on the Browns tanking
Link to story on tanking and the NFL draft
Link to Shakeia Taylor EW interview
Link to Posnanski on the Hall of Fame
Link to Lawrence Taylor story
Link to another LT story
Link to MLB rulebook
Link to foul-tip thread
Link to EW’s Trout hypotheticals
Link to home run trees info
Link to “Three-and-Two Jack” story
Link to 3-2 count leaderboard
Link to Pareto principle wiki
Link to Pareto principle post
Link to combined WAR leaderboard
Link to Travis Sawchik salary research
Link to Ben Clemens on Super Two
Link to Clemens on arbitration

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs writer Dan Szymborski briefly set aside the lockout blues to discuss the current state of rosters and projected standings, touching on how the talent still available via free agency compares to previous offseasons at the same stage, how the division races stack up today, the weakest-projected team positions, the best-projected players, the teams that have the most and least to do when the transaction freeze finally thaws, and much more.

Audio intro: The Cranberries, “Astral Projections”
Audio outro: XTC, “Burning With Optimism’s Flames”

Link to Dan’s 2022 ZiPS intro
Link to Dan’s team ZiPS series
Link to ZiPS player projections
Link to projected NL standings post
Link to projected AL standings post
Link to Dan’s 2021 hitter breakout picks
Link to Dan’s 2021 pitcher breakout picks
Link to Dan’s 2020 team projections review
Link to Dan’s 2020 hitter projections review
Link to Dan’s 2020 pitcher projections review
Link to Ben Clemens on Cardinals consistency
Link to Jeff Passan on the labor situation
Link to Evan Drellich on the labor situation

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley ask their audience how to handle their team preview podcast series with the resolution of the lockout still in doubt, then banter about Shohei Ohtani becoming the cover model for MLB The Show 22, “Big Boss” Tsuyoshi Shinjo pioneering a new model of major league manager for the Nippon Ham Fighters, and the alternate-timeline MLB career of former Expos draftee Tom Brady. Then (44:19) they discuss what would be covered in an “Eleventh Inning” of Ken Burns’s Baseball if the documentarian made an update to cover the last 12 years.

Audio intro: Grateful Dead, “Big Boss Man”
Audio outro: Pinegrove, “11th hour”

Link to 2021 season preview series
Link to ESPN on labor deadlines
Link to story about Ohtani cover
Link to photo of “Big Boss”
Link to Shinjo’s latest outfit
Link to Shinjo’s ride
Link to Shinjo’s economic impact
Link to Kyodo News on Shinjo
Link to Jim Allen on Shinjo
Link to Allen on Shinjo again
Link to Jason Coskrey on Shinjo
Link to Brady’s retirement post
Link to Sportsnet on Brady and baseball
Link to SI on Brady and baseball
Link to ABC News on Brady and baseball
Link to Kevin Clark on Brady
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2010
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2013
Link to Burns on a sequel in 2021
Link to Ben on the team of the decade
Link to remastered/restored Baseball

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about one of Ben’s most laborious baseball-writing experiences, answer listener emails about playing MLB games at minor league affiliates’ parks, how scouting reports affect the times-through-the-order penalty, and what they would do if they discovered that Roberto Clemente had been credited with one hit too many, share a Stat Blast (36:20) about times when the best hitters in each league (and best pitchers in each league) played in the same city, and then (46:24) talk to Aidan Gruber about his website, MLB Trade Trees, which tracks and displays trade/transaction trees for every trade in AL/NL history.

Audio intro: Still Corners, “Into the Trees”
Audio interstitial: David Duchovny, “3000”
Audio outro: Pulp, “The Trees”

Link to FanGraphs redesign
Link to Ben’s trade trees article
Link to Ben Clemens on fastballs
Link to article on old stat changes
Link to article on Wilson’s RBI
Link to Craig on artificial scarcity
Link to video of Clemente’s hit
Link to Stat Blast hitter data
Link to Stat Blast pitcher data
Link to episode on lopsided trades
Link to Ben on Schilling trades
Link to Aidan’s Dybzinski post
Link to Dybzinski trade tree
Link to Stephens trade tree
Link to players traded for themselves
Link to Baseball Trade Values site
Link to Aidan’s code on GitHub
Link to contact Aidan
Link to MLB Trade Trees

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about FanGraphs adding fancy “photograph” technology and whether Dick Monfort is any better at collective bargaining than he is at running the Rockies, then discuss the pioneering lives and careers of 2022 Hall of Fame inductees/honorees Bud Fowler and Jack Graney and Graney’s dog mascot Larry, with detours into Yankees mascot Dandy, whether dogs are eligible for the Mascot Hall of Fame and, yes, whether bat boys and bat girls violate child labor laws.

Audio intro: The Midnight Club, “Dandy in the Underworld”
Audio outro: Lucinda Williams, “Fruits of My Labor”

Link to FanGraphs photo post
Link to FanGraphs redesign announcement
Link to Drellich’s Monfort story
Link to Freedman’s Monfort thread
Link to Nick Groke on the Rockies
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past
Link to Fowler story
Link to Graney story
Link to Larry story
Link to Jack and Larry video
Link to Dandy story
Link to story about Bronxie the turtle
Link to Mascot Hall of Fame rules
Link to story about Butler’s Blue
Link to Arkansas Travelers mascot
Link to Mrs. Met wiki
Link to Portland Pickles tweet
Link to 2022 Child Entertainment Laws
Link to NYT bat boy labor story
Link to AP bat boy labor story
Link to WaPo bat boy labor story

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the election of David Ortiz, the ballot banishments of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Curt Schilling, and the rest of the Hall of Fame voting results (including Scott Rolen’s auspicious surge), react to reports about the latest labor talks (with an emphasis on the problems with using public WAR metrics to determine pre-arbitration bonuses), wonder why the Giants avoided the Kevin Gausman market, marvel at the virtues of throwing fastballs right down the middle, and discuss two sudden-death scenarios: the Frontier League’s new extra-innings solution, and an NFL-inspired one-game-playoffs plan.

Audio intro: Another Michael, “Big Pop”
Audio outro: John Cale, “Sudden Death”

Link to 2022 HoF voting results
Link to 2021 HoF voting results
Link to Jay Jaffe on the results
Link to Jason Sardell’s projections
Link to projections comparison
Link to BBHOF Tracker
Link to Emma on the Tracker
Link to Passan on Bonds
Link to Michael Baumann on PED players
Link to data on new votes for Bonds/Clemens
Link to Ben on abstaining from voting
Link to January 24 MLBTR labor update
Link to January 25 MLBTR labor update
Link to later January 25 MLBTR update
Link to MLBTR on canceling games
Link to Sean Forman WAR thread
Link to Jonathan Judge article
Link to Russell Carleton on WAR use
Link to Ben on ever-evolving WAR
Link to Gausman report
Link to Forbes franchise valuations
Link to Justin Choi on fastballs
Link to Frontier League announcement
Link to J.J. Cooper on the Frontier League
Link to Tango’s Frontier League tweet
Link to FiveThirtyEight on the NFL weekend
Link to Neil Paine on true talent
Link to Michael Lopez on playoff randomness
Link to Joe Sheehan’s playoff proposal
Link to Ben on Schilling

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the demise of the Rays’ two-city, split-season scheme, Carlos Correa hiring Scott Boras as his agent, and Brandon Gomes of the Dodgers becoming the latest ex-player to ascend to GM, then (31:18) talk about numerous listener nominations of baseball events that predated the podcast that would have made great fodder for Effectively Wild, before closing with a Stat Blast (1:05:20) about the biggest intra-season gaps between Triple-A and MLB performance (plus a postscript about robot umps coming to Triple-A in 2022).

Audio intro: The Smiths, “I Won’t Share You”
Audio outro: Flamin’ Groovies, “Ups and Downs”

Link to news about Rays plan
Link to Sternberg quote
Link to Evan Drellich on Endeavor
Link to Drellich on Endeavor again
Link to Ben Clemens on Endeavor
Link to MLBTR on Correa
Link to Travis Sawchik on Boras
Link to Gomes profile
Link to Facebook suggestions thread
Link to story about two balls in play
Link to story about Raines and collusion
Link to Sonnanstine story
Link to Allan Travers SABR bio
Link to hitter Stat Blast data
Link to pitcher Stat Blast data
Link to Ben on experimental rules
Link to robot umps news

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley lean into the lockout by exploring two antecedents to today’s MLB labor stalemate. First, they banter with Emma Baccellieri of Sports Illustrated about whether the Hall of Fame Vote Tracker has helped or hurt Hall of Fame conversations, then talk to Emma about the Players’ League, a short-lived but groundbreaking 19th-century rival to the National League that was founded by and for players, touching on the origins of the reserve clause, the Players’ League’s rapid rise and fall, where it went wrong, and whether a Players’ League equivalent could be created today (plus Joe Torre’s proto-keto diet and catching fly balls with one’s cap). Lastly (52:32), they bring on Dayn Perry of CBS Sports to talk about the 50th anniversary of MLB’s first work stoppage, exploring what caused the 1972 strike, how the circumstances then mirrored today’s, and how the strike was covered (plus a mustache panic, entrance songs, and other notable events from 50 years ago).

Audio intro: Al Stewart, “A League of Notions”
Audio interstitial: Eleventh Dream Day, “The People’s History”
Audio outro: The Inbreds, “Moustache”

Link to Hall of Fame Vote Tracker
Link to Emma on the Tracker
Link to Buster Olney on the Tracker
Link to Emma on the Players’ League
Link to Emma’s previous pod appearance
Link to Torre’s diet
Link to John Montgomery Ward SABR bio
Link to The Great Baseball Revolt
Link to SI Union thread
Link to story about 1940s Mexican League
Link to Federal League wiki
Link to Continental League wiki
Link to antitrust exemption post
Link to Casali facemask video
Link to EW episode on throwing gloves
Link to Drellich update
Link to Dayn’s 1972 retrospective
Link to The Infinite Inning episode
Link to The Athletic’s fan survey
Link to Rosenthal column
Link to Dayn’s website

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Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley reconnect with former cohost Sam Miller to discuss what he’s been up to since he stopped working for ESPN in December 2020, how the 2021 Giants rekindled his fandom, the pros and cons of paying attention to projections, what (if anything) he’s missed about covering baseball professionally, his plans for the future, the virtues of trying new things, doing dishes, and more.

Audio intro: Donovan, “Skip-A-Long Sam”
Audio outro: Ohio Players, “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow”

Link to Sam on projections

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Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs writer Ben Clemens banter about a few details of MLB’s latest labor proposal to the players, the conclusion of and possible confounding factors behind a Bill James study about how switching teams affects a player’s chances of Hall of Fame induction, another historic hire of a woman in baseball, and a prospective “Lab League” logo, then (22:52) extend a cherished podcast tradition by conducting the ninth annual Effectively Wild Minor League Free Agent Draft, in which they select 10 minor league free agents each and compete to see whose roster will accumulate the most combined MLB playing time in 2022.

Audio intro: Ronnie Spector, “Try Some, Buy Some”
Audio outro: The Bens, “Stop!”

Link to CBA proposal details
Link to J.J. Cooper on the prospect proposal
Link to Bill James HoF study
Link to article about Red Sox hiring
Link to Lab League logo
Link to revamped Lab League logo
Link to MLB “duck” logo
Link to list of MiLB free agents
Link to Jeff on Shoemaker
Link to Bannister on Hill
Link to Castellani delivery
Link to Ben on pitcher deception
Link to EW competitions and drafts

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