Japanese free agents signings, weird 2025 baseball records, Era-adjusted WAR Ep. 643 -1.5.26

We're also going to talk about a couple of records that we didn't mention last week's podcast that happened this past season. We'll cover Era Adjusted War, which is a stat we mentioned last week, which is an interesting one. And we'll give you just a little bit about a post came up this week on reaching base 300 times. It's this week in baseball. And this week in baseball was boring.

You really feel that we are in the doldrums of winter right now because you're not getting any baseball news You know, you're deep in the middle of the seasons of all the other sports So, know one of the kind of nice things at least while you're you know with a baseball fan is that you know If you're like if you like other sports during the baseball season you have the playoffs for a lot of the other sports You're getting to watch the basketball finals. You're gonna watch the beginning of the football season. But right now you've got regular season football

Regular season game basket, but right. It's not exciting right now games were good So you've got still more right? I feel the loss of baseball right now I'm not up for sports in the same way that I normally am and I think in part because this offseason You know compared to last season which was so electric as a met fan because my god We got one soda so that carried us really for the whole offseason so the

I'm so hard up that I saw that the Dominican League World Series is going on right now. I think I to call it the World Series. Dominican Championship. I'm just saying I don't think it can be Dominican's champion. You might maybe maybe I overstated there. And so that is the winner. They're playing it right now as we speak. And the winner there gets to represent the Dominican in the Caribbean World Series. They're not exactly sure where they're to play that because there's a lot of unrest down that way right now. And it makes me think about.

players from Venice the Wheel, like give them what's going on and...

Almost Cooperstown (01:47.917)
I know that some of the Met players like Luisangel Acuna was down there and so all these guys that go home to Venezuela for the winter time and playing in the leagues or not, are they gonna be able to get out of there? Right, right, who knows what's going on right now. That doesn't seem to be quite that bad yet. So that's baseball news, but it's like why am I thinking about stuff like that? And then we had a few things happen. I guess it was sort of like the Japanese week last week. Right, right, Amai signs with the Astros. Right, the Astros. Big deal going there and that was Murakami

the Dodgers. Right. Murakami gets signed with the White Sox and then the Blue Jays completely all the Japanese players go into the American League this year as they as they get a Kamado Okamoto. I'm sorry. Right. And so they he's going to play third, which is both a really interesting move for them. He's a good defender. He's shown at least he's got solid bat skills. We're not 100 percent 20 to 30 homerun guy in Japan, assuming the and assuming the power translates. And that's what the Jays are clearly hoping for, considering they gave him a deal with no opt outs. It's just

straight three year like $60 million deal. But I think that's telling you that the Blue Jays are both going for it this season. Yep.

And that Boba Shat's probably not going to be a Blue J. That's the signal, right? I got the same message right there. There's simply not positions left for him to play, let alone money. And you weren't going to get Boba Shat for 20 million a year as a third baseman if you were going to move him to third base. And so what the J's are going to do is going to take Ernie Clement, who played third base this year in the playoffs. Put him at second. Put him at second and then Akimoto will play third base. Amede is at shortstop and...

This is the kind of move that I That's the only part of this move that leaves me questioning because I feel like the blue J's are remembering the guy that had the pesky at bats and seemed to come up

Almost Cooperstown (03:30.543)
with a big hit in Dachette. And no, in Jimenez every time at shortstop in the postseason, conveniently forgetting that he also kind of hit 180 during the postseason. It's like, OK, are we going to be are we going to be loving that when he's hitting 180 for like the regular season? Like, I don't know. But that's the only kind of he's such a defensive wizard that I think they can put up with. Right. But maybe not 180. But you really need you really means that you need your third baseman to produce, because if he's also not producing for power and average, that's

a real power vacuum on the left side of your infield all of the sudden. I put a piece out recently where I divided everybody into tiers and the true champion contender where I had the Dodgers sort of by themselves. And I alluded that the Blue Jays are kind of floating around and that was before they made the deals. The recent deals with Okamoto. It's kind of like with the NBA where you're like, yes, we could put the thunder in a tier by themselves. But it's more fun if we talk about the teams that can conceivably challenge. Right. Right. My next tier was like, you know, definitely

you know, would be contenders. Right. Right. So I'm like, I'm willing to talk about the Dodgers and then the couple of teams I think can compete with them in a series. They're kind of all in the same tier. Right. And it's the same teams from last year. And then as you went down there, I say, wish they were contenders, you know, and teams that are definitely not contenders. So you can read about that if you want. And then there's the Rockies tier down at the bottom. That's right. They're with the White Sox at this point. And then in big news, you know, the Angels finally move on as Anthony Rodone packs it in restructuring his contact with him as

complete day.

just dreadful time with the Angels. Just they signed him to a gigantic 200 million dollar deal and it was not worth anything close to that. a guy who doesn't really even seem to want to play baseball is really where it comes down. Although he said he's going to play this year, nobody knows where. Right. Nobody knows where. And then proving that fools never learn, the Angels decide to go right back out and get interested in Nolan Aronado, which is the most Angels thing you could ever do. You're like, hmm, we decided aging third basement to a really long term contract.

Almost Cooperstown (05:31.941)
And it was absolutely awful and everybody involved was miserable

that same category with Rendon. He was a Hall of Fame player, he isn't anymore, he gets paid an amazing amount of money, but why you'd go and do that? I don't know. When you're just asking for this, they're like, oh, it didn't work out for us last time, but I think it just might this time. Come on, this guy's a Hall of Famer, Rendon wasn't a Right, right, right, right. Clearly it's not gonna go badly, only for it to go badly again. Oh, Los Angeles, I just. Right, right, right. Now obviously that's not fair, but you'd almost have to think, God, what if it did?

feel like just on that alone. also, it doesn't make sense. No one Aeronauto doesn't fit your timeline. If you're the angels, are you thinking about your competing for a World Series in the next like two seasons? I don't think so. No. So if that's the case, why are you going to trade for Aeronauto? That makes no sense. to play third base, I guess. Because Anthony Rendon was picking up on how much the Cardinals are going to have to pick up to that. Something like that happen. I don't really know. But I mean, I think part of it is interesting that we just had such a not interesting period now where that's one of the biggest

pieces of free agent news is Anthony Rendon retiring. It's like it's like we're having the lockout already. Basically, it's like, no, no, no baseball news. Nobody signing anyone. Well, and so I had posed that going, you know, are the owners kind of by default colluding to not sign any free agents to show the players that they don't, you know, need a salary cap and that we can hold, you know, our salaries down just by not paying you guys or making you wait. I don't think so because there's no way they could come. That's too Machiavelli in a scheme.

to come up with it discussing it. That's what I'm saying. Is it possible? Yes. But then that actually relies on them getting together super villain style, discussing about how they're going to do this. I don't think they would do something like that. I think it's possible that the teams independently could all come to the conclusion of

Almost Cooperstown (07:29.805)
Hmm. There might be a lockout who looming on the horizon in which the entire structure of how we're gonna pay guys is gonna change and especially if a salary cap is about to get instituted coming in we don't want to be stuck signing some guys to gigantic long-term deals that now we're eating up a gigantic portion of our salary cap that we don't know it's gonna be so I Right, you know, I don't think there'll be a salary cap We still don't think that but I think it's fear that it could go in that direction is why you're both seeing nobody getting signed to these big long-term

deals for the most part. So let's think about a whatsapp group that has Steve Cohen

Mark Walter of the Dodgers. They're using something more secure than WhatsApp. WhatsApp is really secure. That was the whole point of the encryption and that kind of stuff. And so they kind of have a texting, you know, discussion on the platform between all of them going, don't you dare sign him. Don't you dare do that. feel like if they were doing that, that almost make it more likely for one of them to sign him, because if you're like, well, everybody else is a negotiator. Now I got him right where I want him. Now I can lowball him with an offer. And he's freaked out because nobody's talking to him. might all of a sudden I might get Kyle Tucker for like six through one twenty and everybody's like, how did the

Let's do that. you know, and every day, know, and that fans are like, I think you always say they're losing their minds collectively and you read all the backstop. Oh, my God. And then what they're they're talking about. That's fans on Twitter. They've been just losing their mind. There goes another one. There goes another one. Dumpster bar, dumpster dive day. You know, the bargain bargain. David Stern is not going out and sighing people. Bregman, who now seems to me more likely to go back to the Red Sox than anywhere else, only because I feel like if the Tigers were going to have brought him in, they would have done it already.

And so I can't think of any other place that he would go right now. seems so... That's a competitive and ready forehead. Right, right. then if you look The Yankees. Right, right. Well, the Yankees have...

Almost Cooperstown (09:18.06)
You know, they have guys that play third base. I don't know if they're better than Bregman. Is Ryan McMahon going to be better than Bregman? No, not not offensively, not offensively. And then what about, you know, Bellinger, right? I mean, every day that he doesn't get signed, you just like, well, you know, the Mets clearly need him. The Yankees.

Clearly could use it. Every team could use Kyle. Every team could use Framber Valdez. So it's not that these guys have a lack of interest is that there's something else holding up the market. My guess is teams are probably unsure of what they're war willing to commit to right now. Length or value of the contract, because they're like, OK, a higher, really high value contract that short might entice him to join. But if then we get salary capped.

We're screwed because we're paying him way too much money. We might have to shed guys we don't want to shed because well, I would think any salary cap if that were to happen. And like I said, I don't think so. It would be gradually put in over time. They're not going to, you know, as long as they if they were able to get it. You know, is that going to be is that going to be next year? We're not going to do it next year. You know, we're to kind of ease into this. But I think I think the uncertainty is why you're not seeing these guys get signed to deals because teams don't know what they want to sign them to. And we're you know, we're a month.

away from spring training starting pictures and catches report around February 12th. So that's something you can really say. It's not quite, you know, a little over 30 days at this point. I mean, it's getting serious and it just feels like we're in this stalled thing where this I would be I think as we come out of the weekend here into the first week of January, I think now we're going to see stuff moving again. I think the holiday freeze kind of does stop even baseball. That's not that unusual. Right. Right. And I wouldn't be surprised if it's and especially as soon as we see one of these guys moves, I think they're all

going to wrap it's going be dominoes really quick. Everybody's going to come off the board one right after another. So pulled a couple of stats from the week last week and Sarah Langs who we love as well as everybody else does noted that Juan Soto was one of a record seven players that had a 30 30 season in 2025 which breaks the previous mark of four.

Almost Cooperstown (11:24.334)
I was surprised, actually, because I didn't really think about that happening. Soto and Lindor became the third pair of teammates on the Mets to have 33 in the same year. So who the other two pairs that had it? I had to go back. It's a Rockies pair, right? Oh, yes. You're right. It's it's first. was another pair of Mets in 1987. Howard Johnson, Donald Strawberry did it first on the same team. Then Ellis Berks and Dante Bechet, right? And Julio Jazz Chisholm, Jose Ramirez, who was his third

time doing it, is just really impressive. PCA did it. Right. And then Corbin Carroll. Yeah. I mean, that and all those guys, if you look at them, there's no reason to think that any one of them couldn't make a run of doing it again this year. Right. Right. You could. And I think it is especially with the change to the way stolen bases are done, you're going to just see more guys ever than ever do it. It kind of devalues 30 30 a little bit, I think, because when you've got seven guys doing it in the season, that's the most almost doubling the old record. Well, clearly it doesn't. It's not as meaningful as it was.

when guys had never done it up until 1987. But I think it's also a change in the type of guy that's capable of hitting 30 home runs nowadays is a lot more capable. big muscles and run fast too. Right, right. Back in the day only giant, you know, muscle guys hit 30 home runs. You didn't have fast guys capable of stealing bases hit at 30 runs, home runs for the most part. And the other one I pulled was Nick Kurtz, the Rookie of the Year in the American League, was one of three players with a four homer game this season. I do remember that there was a few of that. That is the most times that's

Never happened in one season. Because you had Suarez and Schwaber did it too. Right, right. Schwaber did it. He was the third guy to do it. The fourth player, he became the fourth guy to have a shot at a fifth home run and he didn't do it. Right. Nobody's ever done that. Nobody's ever hit five. But I think that's one that's just more of a fluky thing. I don't think that speaks to anything other than three guys had unbelievable games more than anything else. And before we get to a couple of our topics off, I wanted to ask you, have you seen or have interest in the I think it's on HBO Max, the Alex versus A-Rod, because I was reading about it today.

And I hadn't really, I knew it had come out, but I hadn't really thought about it. And now I'm like, I want to watch it. I've not thought about it at all. OK, OK. Yeah, I think that is he producing it? I.

Almost Cooperstown (13:37.099)
I don't know. I see. Is he the producer? I don't know. Is he involved in the production of it? I think he wouldn't have done it if he wasn't somehow involved. Apparently he shows, you know, basically that, look, if what I did, is which is a lot of dumb stuff, it cost me the Hall of Fame because of the things that I did in the field. can live with that. Yeah. Which is about the most humble thing. A-Rod or Alex. He doesn't want to be known as a rod anymore. He's Alex. He's Alex. Now this is the part of life where he's like, I'm not that guy. You know, me came up at 18 and so obviously didn't handle things.

in many ways, in different times of his life. But it seems to me like he's trying to look back on it going, yeah, there are a lot of things I would do. Probably should have done those steroids. But I'll watch him. We'll talk about that. topic, what we mentioned in the last one, and that is era adjusted war.

never really thought about, right, because war basically, you know, is you against your peers in a particular season. But it doesn't account for what's going. basically is a level playing field for everybody who's ever played baseball. So it doesn't take into consideration that there were no black players allowed to play before 1947, that, you know, the the rosters were different, you know, in the amount of players that were in the league were a lot different. If you go back to. Well, it's even simpler than that. War isn't already era just

A from 1911, a replacement level player from 1911 is treated as the same as one from 1998. Even though I think we'd all say those are probably not the same level of replacement players. Right, and so the average replacement player today is a lot better baseball player than they were way back when. So, you know, a guy named Daniel Ek came up with ERA Adjusted War, and what they did is, and I like that they did it this way, they did it in both...

baseball reference war, B-War. And fan-graphs war. And fan-graphs war because we know that they don't evaluate things the same. So you can really see because sometimes we are to see that F-War values somebody a lot higher than, you know, B-War is. I think that's like I always forget which one. One of them does framing for catchers and the other one doesn't. So like that completely. B-War does not have framing. Right. Right. So that completely changes how you look at catchers. But when you look at the greatest players of all time and obviously they're both going to be represented in both things. The numbers aren't exactly the same. Some of them are ranked

Almost Cooperstown (15:53.419)
little higher than others, but Greg Maddux is fifth all time when you look at it from the era just at F war, but he is ninth in B war. And again, that has to do with the way they value different aspects of it slightly differently. Well, like Randy Johnson comes in at eight on a ninth on F war. not even on the list for B war. I think to me, the guy that's most interesting when you look at these lists is Roger Clemens because he comes second on F war and third in B war. So clearly when you're looking at the era when you adjust for era and really

How good he was relative to his peers during when he was playing is, yeah, it's Clemens was clearly in a class of his own, which I think a lot of people that watch pictures and would probably agree with. who's number one on both lists? F4 and B4, you're adjusted Barry Bonds. And I think that surprised me a little bit because I kind of expected Ruth and Garry and those guys to be. This is a Garry's not even on this. Right. Garry's not even I was I don't even understand how.

could happen that he's not you know because he his stats were amazingly maybe Ruth had driven on all the runs already I don't know but you would have I always equate their careers in a much closer than this sort of list would say and yeah the you know the F war people are you know well they're also hurt because they're playing at a time because you know you are adjust for the dominance over their peers and the size of the MLB talent pool during each era so guys like Garrag and Ruth get hit a lot harder because they're not

having to play against everybody.

Right, that's a real, that hits you hard. I think basically the names, and you can go to see, we'll post the notes, post it in the notes on the show, and all this stuff. It's a list of Hall of Famers, besides Barry Bonds, obviously. And I can't even find a non-Hall of Famer other than somebody who's not eligible, because Mike Trout isn't yet eligible to be a Hall of Famer. He checks in at number 32 on the B wards. Or their steroid. Or their steroid. So Pujos is there at number 10.

Almost Cooperstown (17:55.041)
So it's really fun to look at these guys and to say okay. We think they're the greatest players We have two different scales to measure these guys We're adjusting for era and these guys are still the best that ever played well, right? The people on the list don't change that much when it which is good that shows you that war itself is actually probably a pretty good statistic and that is as difficult to adjust because we can't look at errors as all the same way because it's Yeah, just for years. I thought that was that was the most interesting part of it and the last thing I thought we might mention

is just I put a post out this week and when you think about getting on bass

300 times an individual player in a season. I don't even think it's a number I even thought about like how many times did the guy get on base because you know you always evaluate hits you evaluate bases on balls, but you don't usually add them all together say well how many times did this guy get on base in his 600 played appearance. So you think about across all of MLB history just in terms of the number of seasons that have been put up or a player has gotten on more base more than 300 times only 157 times across all of baseball which tells you not easy.

157 instances of it right and of that of those 157 instances only 24 of them belong to players that did it more than once So there's not a lot of guys that did this irregularly and the guy that did it more than anybody else Well, there's actually two and they were teammates

They breathe in Lou Gehrig. And that's why I said before, you're right. the Gehrig isn't represented in the, you know, you're a just a war. But here he did something that, you know, is like that's pretty impressive to do it nine times. And Barry Bonds, there he is again. And Ted Williams did it seven times in there. They're right behind Ruth and Gehrig. But it's just so interesting in that when you look over the list, you kind of realize how quickly that so many of the guys on the list that did it ton of times played just so long ago. And it just clearly seems like you're not good guys.

Almost Cooperstown (19:45.235)
aren't getting the opportunity to get on base 300 times in a season nearly as much. I'm not exactly sure why, you know, like I think of a guy like Ichiro and I thought, well, he must have done it a bunch of times.

One time because because remember this this stab beginning on base has nothing to do with home runs All right, so that takes three true outcomes destroys this right, right? takes it out of the equation So, you know, how do you you know? have to really have an exceptional season to be able to do that both with a number of hits as well obviously I'm surprised Soto has not done it. He did it He's done it once and then he did it. He had 299 one season So but you're right you think of him with his great eye and his ability, but he doesn't get as many hits per

season he doesn't get a hundred eighty hits. But this is the thing about this list is if you look through it some people get on there that you would never guess. Would you guess Shin-Sue Chu managed to pull it off one season. I saw his name in there and Mo Vaughn. know like hey Mo Vaughn had some great season. He's from our area here in Connecticut in Norwalk. And to think I mean I knew Mo Vaughn was a great player but that kind of singular stat that is so hard to achieve kind of makes me think you know he was really good. It's too bad he didn't play longer without getting hurt because I think he had a

has to be a whole thing. Chuck Knobloch managed to pull it off one year. It blew my mind. Right. it's not the kind of thing that's right. Which shows you that he was now in legal trouble again. Yeah, I know. But but it shows you the kind of thing that's not unattainable for any one player to have. If you have the kind of magical season, it's just really hard because one guys don't really get 200 hits anymore. And you kind of need to get 200 hits in order to have a shot. Or something close to that. Or you're walking 130 times and getting 100.

80 hits. Right, right, right. But there's not a lot of guys like there's there's Soto is the only kind of guy that I think is going to approach any walks that's going to approach that many walks, which is why I think you more have to go for the thing of like getting like 210 hits in a season and then walking a bunch. Now, Aaron Judge has done it, obviously, the past two, obviously, but the past two seasons. And that just tells you how.

Almost Cooperstown (21:49.826)
damn good those seasons were, right? That, know, something that's only happened 157 times. This guy has done it the last two seasons. Right. He's been something special. I wonder if he'll do it for a third. Yeah, I think he's I think he's got a real good chance to do that. So, yeah, you can check it out. There's basically just lots of Hall of Famers and lots of really good baseball players like John Olu-Rud. And then some and then a few fun names where you're like, who is that? Why is this guy in there? So it's always fun to look at guys like that. Anyway, that's our show for this week. And thanks for listening. We will be back next week with more baseball.

talk even if there's nothing to talk about.