Meg Rowley

when Teddy Bridgewater was a Viking, my mom, completely ignorant of NFL draft discourse, saw him playing once and unprompted said how concerned she was about his skinny little legs, so she might just be a very good unintentional troll of Minnesota sports teams

my mom, visiting, watching Jhoan Duran pitch: "why they'd trade that guy, he seems really good?"

Get more from Effectively Wild on Patreon Creating a baseball podcast

I feel like the pod has really been humming lately. If you like baseball, and want a podcast with whimsy and stats and absolutely no gambling ads whatsoever, I hope you’ll give it a listen and consider supporting us on Patreon: patreon.com/effectivelyw...

Oh the trade deadline? Yeah, we podded about that.

His transparent delight during Duran’s entrance and save was so great.

Sweet Home San Francisco Robbie Ray has more in common with Melanie Smooter than you might think.

I forgot to post when it went live a couple days ago, but I finally got to excise this particular brain worm I have that connects Robbie Ray to Bobby Ray from Sweet Home Alabama. So if you like your pitching analysis with a side of romcom, I gotchu.

honestly, I'm amazed anything broke through today more than "tuna purse," but...

... please, can that dialogue happen amongst yourselves and somewhere far, far away from us, because watching "have interests and consider treating her like a human being with agency" wash over dudes as revelatory is exhausting and honestly pretty alarming to witness.

Let's see if I can thread this needle: I think what today's discourse has revealed is that while it is super important for men to have non-incel sources of dating/relationship advice (and that advice *is* wanting, as that article suggests)...

saw the phrase "purse tuna," going to need a minute

FanGraphs Membership Help support FanGraphs by becoming a Member. With Ad Free Membership, you will experience the FanGraphs website completely without third party ads while you maintain an active Ad Free Membership.

I think FanGraphs is pretty special. If you like our work, I hope you'll become a Member. It's the best way to support the site and comes with a ton of great benefits: plus.fangraphs.com/product/fang...

The 2025 FanGraphs Trade Deadline Roundup Miss any of our deadline coverage? Don’t worry! Now it’s easy to find all of our analysis of this year’s wheeling and dealing in one place.

We ran 19 trade deadline pieces at @fangraphs.com yesterday, two more this morning, and we still have more to come! You can find links to all of our trade deadline analysis in this handy roundup:

FanGraphs Membership Help support FanGraphs by becoming a Member. With Ad Free Membership, you will experience the FanGraphs website completely without third party ads while you maintain an active Ad Free Membership.

The day after trade deadline feels like a good time to mention that the price of an annual FanGraphs membership is going up from $60 to $80 on Monday. The good news is that this makes a three-year membership for $150 a massive bargain for the next 72 hours.

plus.fangraphs.com/product/fang...

also, this game made me think of an absolutely unhinged joke to tell @benlindbergh.bsky.social on the pod tomorrow, don't let me forget

I am *very* tired, and the world is an absolutely terrible mess, but also, Big Dumper go boom.

the Mariners vibes right now? simply immaculate.

the Correa back to the Astros crash out on Mariners twitterbluesky is going to be something

lol this deadline rocks

Twine Palmer

Trading for Jhoan Duran Is One Way To Shore up a Bullpen Last season, Dave Dombrowski tried to walk the middle path. The middle path turned out to be covered in spiders. This time, he’s gone for broke.

I wrote up the Jhoan Duran trade. It's a steep price. Abel is a changeup and a good luck charm from being a midrotation starter and Tait's upside is gigantic.

But Phillies fans have wanted the mythical closer who never blows a save...this is about as close as you can get in real life

Oh boy, just when I thought I'd finally cured my urge to write about Ke'Bryan Hayes, they pulled me back in

I've updated our roundup with this afternoon's analysis - more to come!

Baumann rocks

Mets Plug Leaky Bullpen with Submariner Tyler Rogers is good, relievers are expensive now, and fame does not always equal value in the prospect world.

Currently writing the Duran trade up, but until then: Tyler Rogers is a good get for the Mets, and while the package they gave up includes three guys who will probably have major league careers of some length, it's not as beefy as the name value is leading some to believe.

The RosterResource Transaction Tracker is updated from 2020-25. You can select "trade" in the Transaction Type drop-down and see what happened (and when) during previous trade deadlines. Trade details are also included.

fangraphs.com/roster-resou...

Two pitchers have thrown more than one, and one of those pitchers is Emmanuel Clase. It’s already easy to find people digging through every pitch that might fit the pattern with some faux authority and righteous indignation, even though they’re missing more than half of the equation. It’s important that leagues and sportsbooks and their associated watchdogs track and investigate suspicious moments. Still, I know what I did when I saw that Clase news. I winced. Just like I will when the first pitch of an inning slips out of an innocent hand and clangs against the backstop. I want to trust the universe and the powers that be to strike fear into would-be gamblers or prove the system so infallible that this is a short-lived concern. But even a one-off incident erodes the conversational ground beneath our feet for at least as long as you can store a purportedly incriminating screengrab. Which is to say forever.

In retrospect I feel silly for not realizing this before, but I think @zcrizer.bsky.social identified what's going to be the most annoying part of the legalized gambling era in baseball

bandwagon.substack.com/p/52-pitch-f...

60,000 Gazans have been killed. 18,500 were children. These are their names. Palestinian children have been killed at a rate of more than one per hour since the war began.

This is a historic horror that the United States government allows to get worse every day.

Me imploring men not to Ryan Day their beards, and us contemplating making outfielders sit in little chairs? That's the sort of deadline week analysis you've come to expect from Effectively Wild.

(We talk trade stuff too, don't worry.)

Go gray, gents, you look distinguished as hell.

The relief of it not being a Very Bad Thing, the frustration of still not knowing What It Is: The healthcare in your late 30s experience