FanGraphs Audio: How the AL West Was Fun

by
December 2, 2021

Episode 951

This week we attempt to react to the tidal wave of baseball news and transactions, including a focus on two teams that look like they’re ready to compete in the AL West.

  • To kick things off, David Laurila welcomes Matt Hicks, a radio broadcaster for the Texas Rangers, and Shannon Drayer, an ESPN radio journalist who covers the Seattle Mariners. David asks about their respective clubs’ spending sprees, from Marcus Semien to Corey Seager to Robbie Ray. We also hear about how important Chris Young is to the Rangers, what Scott Servais means to the Mariners, the clubs’ biggest rivalries in the division and elsewhere, and what effect these moves have on the teams’ willingness to go for it in 2022. [2:42]
  • In the second half, Ben Clemens and Jason Martinez take in the flurry of moves leading up to the expiration of the CBA. They discuss who a lockout is hardest for, how to encourage competition, and what expanded playoff formats could look like. We also learn about brinksmanship and what a break in transactions over the winter could look and feel like. [41:42]

To purchase a FanGraphs membership for yourself or as a gift, click here.

To donate to FanGraphs and help us keep things running, click here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @dhhiggins on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Audio after the jump. (Approximate 1 hour 11 minutes play time.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS





 

Dylan assists in producingFanGraphs Audio, Effectively Wild, and the FanGraphs Live Twitch channel. He also enjoys the Waxahachie Swap (RIP), the Air Bud principle, and the Oxford comma. You can Tweet him about any of those things @dhhiggins.

Comments are closed.