Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mariners clinching the AL West, the benefits and drawbacks of MVP debates, the power of great players to enhance a season for spectators, the Cardinals’ and Giants’ reciprocal eliminations, the near-extinction of the 200-inning pitcher, the Nationals’ new head of baseball ops, and how predictive a track record of adept drafting is. Then (53:15) they answer listener emails about whether a player could/should ever challenge a ball/strike call that went their way, whether increased pitcher injuries have contributed to the lack of great teams, sticky-stuff inspections on broadcasts, how many pitches it takes to evaluate a pitcher, whether/why baseball managers incur fans’ wrath more than other sports’ coaches, whether teams are turning fewer double plays than they used to, and Trey Yesavage’s many 2025 teammates, plus (1:40:47) a postscript.

Audio intro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to 2015 MLB promo
Link to Ben on Judge vs. Ohtani
Link to Giants elimination story
Link to Cardinals elimination story
Link to pitcher IP leaderboard
Link to preseason pitcher IP projections
Link to Passan on Toboni
Link to MLBTR on Toboni
Link to WaPo on the Nats
Link to Ben on pitcher injury rates
Link to Ben on pitcher workloads
Link to Rodón quote
Link to MLB GIDP%
Link to Jays tweet
Link to quote-tweet
Link to Kenny Jackelen
Link to 2025 teammate leaders
Link to single-season teammate leaders
Link to listener emails database
Link to BP on Blalock
Link to Blalock leaderboard
Link to highest ML ERA (min. 55 IP)
Link to highest ML ERA (min. 100 IP)
Link to FG wOBA values
Link to BP location research
Link to FG playoff odds
Link to Darowski update

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Give a Gift Subscription
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
 Effectively Wild Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Apple Podcasts Feed 
 Spotify Feed
 YouTube Playlist
 Facebook Group
 Bluesky Account
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I can’t tell you why the structure of the big leagues seems to bend towards close races. On August 31, the teams on the right side of the playoff cut line were all at least 2 1/2 games ahead of their nearest competitors. All baseball has done since then is collapse into chaos. The Mets have gone 8-13 to fall into peril, though that’s nothing compared to the Tigers, who have gone 5-15 over the same stretch. The Guardians are an absurd 18-5. Playoff fortunes have ebbed and flowed mightily.

Which players have featured most prominently in those games? There are any number of ways of answering that question. You could look for the highest WAR among contenders, the worst ERA or the most blown saves. You could use fancier statistics like Championship Win Probability Added, which accounts for how much each game mattered to each team. You could use the eye test, honestly – I can tell you from how frustrated Framber Valdez has looked this month that he’s not helping the Astros.

But the closest thing to matching the way I experience baseball, as a fan, is regular ol’ win probability added. My brain doesn’t distinguish between the importance of games when a team is in the pennant race. They’re all important. You can’t lose a random game on September 7 when you’re three back in the standings; you never know when the team you’re chasing will lose five in a row. Championship Win Probability Added distinguishes between whether your team is a long shot or playing from ahead, but when I’m rooting for one of the teams jockeying for a playoff spot, I don’t do that. I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. If every game in the race is equally important to you, Win Probability Added will measure the players who have mattered most in that framework. So I’ve compiled a list of notable players from the past month in each playoff race – and as a little bonus, I threw in a few players who have either stymied contenders or gotten trounced by them. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the lower minor leagues’ regular seasons are over, teams have commenced with instructional league activity in a traditional sense, with a select group of players from several of their affiliates working out and scrimmaging at their spring training complexes. While “Bridge League” (the unofficial period of scrimmage activity that occurs after the late-July conclusion of the Complex Level schedule) frequently includes some newly drafted players, most of the rosters are made up of the guys who have been on the complex all year. But once “instructs” begin, the talent and quality of play of these games ascends to a different level as teams test their most interesting young players or get an intimate look at prospects who might be up for a 40-man roster spot during the winter. The snowbirds haven’t returned in full because the weather here in Arizona is still pretty gross, so driving across the metro is easier now than it will be in a few weeks (and during next year’s spring training). For that reason, I decided to focus my early looks on teams based in the western half of the Phoenix metro, farther from the house. Read the rest of this entry »

12:01

Dan Szymborski: “Give me an introduction message for a Dan Szymborski FanGraphs chat that sounds like it’s from a deranged person with limited connection with reality and an obsession with history who also really really like FanGraphs”

12:02

Dan Szymborski: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your WAR calculations! I rise today in this digital amphitheater not as Caesar, not as Napoleon, but as a humble pilgrim trudging across the blood-soaked battlefields of history in pursuit of a single shining truth: FanGraphs is the Rosetta Stone of civilization. When Rome collapsed, did the barbarians have wOBA? No. When Napoleon marched on Moscow, did he consult ZiPS projections? He did not — and look what happened! Yet here we stand in the Year of Our Lord 2025, blessed to witness the holy gospel of OBP+, xFIP, and Dan Szymborski’s inscrutable oracles. I have not slept in three nights, my parakeet now knows what BABIP is, and I carved the FanGraphs logo into the oak desk of my landlord while screaming about FIP- minus. Brothers, sisters, eternal strugglers against the darkness of ignorance, we gather not to talk of weather or bread, but of spin rates and aging curves, of regression to the mean and the cruel march of time itself! History collapses into the present momen

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I have not found this. It’s possible simply that they’re more exploitable, that the general declines makes them more obviously platoonable than a similarly talented player with small splits

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Like the 350/500 guy an ages to be a 330/450 guy and still hits 310/430 and 340/460

12:04

Dan Szymborski: But maybe the PLATOONY 350/500 guys is suddenly now a 280/350 and 390/550 guy where he once awas a 300/400 and 420/600 guy

Read the rest of this entry »

He did it! Cal Raleigh launched his 60th home run of the season last night, joining a rare club of elite sluggers. In hitting 60 so quickly, he’s left himself with a chance to match Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62, or perhaps even surpass it. With four games left in the season, how likely is it? I fired up my computer to ask. As a refresher, last week I modeled Raleigh’s home run hitting talent, the parks he’ll play in, and his scheduled opposition to work out which side of the plate he’ll hit from and how likely he is to hit a home run in any given plate appearance the rest of the way. Then I simulated the season a million times to work out the probability of each milestone. Read the rest of this entry »

“Don’t grade trades on deadline day,” said the wise man. It takes months to find out if Jhoan Duran will put the Phillies over the top, years to learn how Carlos Correa’s second stint in Houston will go, and perhaps as much as a decade to learn exactly how much the Padres might eventually regret trading Leo De Vries.

At least, so says the wise man. “Hogwash,” says I. Let’s grade the midseason trades now. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the delights of the last week of the regular season, the Dodgers’ bullpen problems, and what kind of compromise the challenge system is, then (43:09) answer listener emails about where the warning track extends, the easiest day at the office for a batter, a player who exclusively hits one single per game, whether MLB front offices are Bayesian or frequentist, the relative strength of the AL and NL, and ticky-tack tags, plus (1:37:08) a postscript.

Audio intro: Sean .P, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Austin Klewan, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Skubal error clip
Link to MLBTR on Fry
Link to Tigers/Guardians game story
Link to MLBTR on Sasaki
Link to D-Backs/Dodgers game story
Link to Sheehan on challenges
Link to Goldstein on challenges
Link to Posnanski on challenges
Link to warning track definition
Link to Arenado play
Link to Stanton post
Link to Sam on NoPAPH
Link to NoPAPH by year
Link to 2025 NoPAPH
Link to Yount incident
Link to FG wOBA values
Link to Bayesian inference wiki
Link to frequentist inference wiki
Link to Marlins listing
Link to multiple Marlins listings
Link to Guardians listing
Link to Red Sox listing
Link to Rockies listing
Link to Angels listing
Link to Mets listing
Link to Springer tag
Link to Cameron on sliding 1
Link to Cameron on sliding 2
Link to listener emails database
Link to 2014 F1 story
Link to pitwall explainer

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Give a Gift Subscription
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
 Effectively Wild Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Apple Podcasts Feed 
 Spotify Feed
 YouTube Playlist
 Facebook Group
 Bluesky Account
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

I was going to start this piece by acknowledging that a month ago, it would’ve been logical to write the Cincinnati Reds off. Then I remembered something: I actually did write the Reds off. From FanGraphs Dot Com, on August 29: “Unless the Reds Do Something Wild, the NL Playoff Race Is Over.”

Well, the Reds did something wild. As a rule, I try to caveat my predictions; rather than saying something absolutely will or won’t happen, I’ll use a frame like “This is extremely unlikely to happen; we’ll write about it if and when it does.” Well, from August 29 to September 22, Cincinnati went from playoff odds in the low single digits to a virtual coin flip:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Nationals will remember 2025 as a gap year, if they’re lucky. The 2023 and 2024 teams, invigorated by many of the prospects acquired in the Juan Soto trade, each won 71 games, dragging Washington out of the bottom-of-table ignominy that it had occupied since winning the World Series in 2019 and then blowing up the roster. This year’s squad is going to finish with a win total in the 60s and some developmental hiccups, a step backward from the recent past. But lost in the broadly disappointing year is one bright shining beacon: Daylen Lile might just be a keeper.

Lile, a high school draftee in 2021, missed all of 2022 rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, then spent the next two years methodically climbing through the minor league ranks. He started 2025 hot, with a .337/.383/.509 line in his first 40 games in the minors, and got his first taste of the majors when Jacob Young briefly hit the IL. Lile struggled during that first stint but landed in the majors for good a few weeks later when the Nats overhauled their bench. By the All-Star break, he’d carved out a role as a rotational right fielder.

That’s the boring part of this article. The exciting part? As Lile settled into big league life, opportunity beckoned. Young scuffled. Alex Call got traded. Dylan Crews was still out with injury. Lile? He just kept hitting. By August, he was locked in as a starter, and why not? Since the break, he’s hitting a sensational .323/.371/.552 for a 153 wRC+, and turning heads with his aggressive approach and hair-on-fire baserunning. Move over, other baby Nats – there’s a new top youngster in town.

Lile’s game is built around a sensational feel to hit. He regularly ran gaudy contact rates in the minor leagues, and his zone contact rate in the majors is above 90%, squarely in the upper echelon of the league. Like many hitters who make a ton of contact, Lile likes to swing. Unlike those peers, though, he’s done a good job of avoiding the over-chase downward spiral that traps so many singles hitters into lunging at sliders off the plate. Read the rest of this entry »