Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1010: The Conditions Causing Baseball’s Winter Tragedies

Episode Date: January 23, 2017

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan discuss the brisk sales of tickets to their August “EclipseFest” outing and the strange saga of former major league reliever Jeff Manship. Then, on a much more somber note, they remember the late Yordano Ventura and Andy Marte and talk to Vice Sports editor-in-chief Jorge Arangure about the dangers many […]

There's a man who plays the game of life so well Ooh, there's such a man His thoughts you can never tell Ooh, and it's just the way he thought it would be Cause the day has come for him to be free Then he laughs, he kicks then rolls up his sleeves I'm alive and I'm here forever, this is the man Hello and welcome to episode 1010 of Effectively Wild, the podcast from Fangraphs

Presented by our Patreon supporters, I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer Joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, hey Jeff Good afternoon. So in the space of, what, five days, we've gone from not knowing that there was going to be an Eclipse game that the single-A volcanoes were playing in Salem, Kaiser in August, to knowing about it, to talking about doing an event, to announcing an event, to having that event be sold out. about doing an event to announcing an event to having that event be sold out. So all of that happened really quickly and did sell out. We got a block of 75 tickets in the lower box. Dave Cameron helped arrange this. And this is August 21st. It's the total eclipse we talked about last week. There's a baseball team in Oregon that is doing an eclipse game starting in the morning

and suspending the game for the eclipse and then picking up the game. And you and I are going and Dave's going and Rob Nyer and Meg Rowley are going and possibly Sam Miller is going, although he's not sure yet. So this is really fun and exciting. And you and I have gotten very excited about it in just a couple of days. And I guess the community was too, because they bought all the tickets. Yeah, I don't I don't know how how you act in your daily life. But I'm usually I'm not good at advanced planning. It's just not something that really occurs to me much. And so the idea of going from having nothing but the knowledge of an eclipse to having it completely taken care of, what is it seven months in advance almost to the day now,

and it just happened overnight. It's thrilling for two reasons, because I'm glad that people are so excited to come out and do this on a Monday, but also I just feel really, I didn't do anything. Just to be clear, I did nothing to organize this. This was basically between Ben and Dave, and from there, I don't know what happened, but I was not really involved. But now I get a sense of accomplishment, too, because I get to put this on my physical calendar on the wall that says August 21st baseball event. So so that's kind of exciting for two reasons. So yeah, I guess right now Dave is trying to figure out how feasible it is to get more tickets because you you all have consumed them with your voracious baseball and eclipsing appetites, which is really awesome for an event on literally a Monday morning in a nondescript month on the calendar.

Yeah, so Dave is talking to our ticket rep with the Volcanoes right now, who is also the groundskeeper for the Volcanoes, because that's the way that minor league baseball works. And hopefully we will be able to add At least 25 more tickets So by the time You are listening to this They might be available again They might be sold out again It's hard to say Just find me on Twitter and I'll be talking about it

Or go in the Facebook group Facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild Where I've been posting updates About all of this And yeah it'll be a lot of fun. However many people are there, but hopefully at least 100, which is like a significant chunk of the ballpark. I don't actually know what the capacity of the ballpark is,

but a good deal of it will be Fangraphs and Effectively Wild people, which will be fun, only enhance the experience. This is probably going to be at least the first blog event or internet event i've ever been aware of where we all get to share breakfast uh yeah it's far earlier than all events uh that have ever been scheduled because you know i think 98 of all internet events are either readings in public fora or a gathering at a bar so that people can drink beer and this is this is very much not even brunch this is straight up breakfast because it's like what seven to nine o'clock in

the morning yeah it's breakfast yeah yeah so that's a that's gonna be something else yeah it's also a west coast baseball event which is fairly rare it's definitely an east coast skew yeah i guess we have to show it off as As far as minor league operations go, you were referring to the Salem-Kaiser Volcanoes guys being the ticket agent and the groundskeeper. Here in Portland, Oregon, we have a minor league hockey team that's known as the Winterhawks, and it's a team of 16 to 21-year-old players,

and some of them are really good, and they're going to be drafted really high. Some of them are less good. But my brother gets me a small ticket package pretty much every year because I'm a big hockey fan. It's something to do in the winter when the sun goes down at two in the afternoon. And we go through this ticket agent. His name is Austin Alvarez. I might as well say his name out loud. And Austin Alvarez is a great dude. He's always on the phone. He's always very accessible. And

over the summer, I was planning to get a ticket package, but I didn't have one yet. I didn't know if I was going to get one as a gift. But Austin Alvarez knew that I was a former ticket package holder. And so like any good ticket agent, he would call several times a week. And I soon learned to screen his number, not because I don't like him, but because I felt guilty every time I said, let's just put this off. But he would always call up and he would leave a voicemail very dutifully and say, hey, Jeff, it's Austin Alvarez with the Winterhawks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he'd try to sell me a ticket package. Eventually I did end up with a ticket package that my brother, funny enough, booked through a different ticket agent. So I felt a little guilt, but I got curious one day.

I got curious about Austin Alvarez because I wanted to know who he was. Cause I feel like at some point someone leaves you enough voicemails. You're kind of like friends, you know? So I was like, who's my friend austin alvarez and i looked him up i found his linkedin profile and austin alvarez is one of the ticket agents for the portland winterhawks and also and also the mascot he is tomahawk the uh the winterhawk bird who if you go to a winterhawks game he's just like any other bird mascot wearing a hockey jersey but i knew tomahawk as the mascot i know his chance and then i realized i've been getting phone calls from the mascot all along and then i've gone to a few games and i've seen him because you know like any mascot he goes around the the rink and i feel like i i make eye contact with him and i think you know

who i am because i know who you are i know the person within you and i can't tell my girlfriend is a little like bummed out she was bummed out to learn that because i think maybe she feels like being a mascot is a little self-degrading but i don't know he seems like if you're a mascot you got to be really into it you can't just kind of like half-ass it you know he refers to himself as the director of fan enragement and it just feels like a straight up minor league operation role but maybe this is what allows him to be like a full time employer or something. So I'm happy for Austin Alvarez. He's living one of his best lives.

Yeah, good for him. You should order tickets through him next time. Give him the commission. I'm surprised that you're a physical calendar guy. I haven't had a physical calendar in years. Oh, I don't know gadgets at all. I am extremely bad at internet people every so often will ask me like what i use to do research when i'm writing it's like i don't i

don't know how to code i don't know how to do anything i don't even know sql or anything i just use straight up excel it took me like seven years to even learn a vlookup function which is humiliating but in retrospect retrospect, I don't know how I did anything without it. So I am not a smart person. And I like physical calendars, because they have nice pictures on them. Yeah, my then girlfriend, now fiance taught me the index match function in Excel, which is kind of like, it's like a shortcut. It's like you don't have to do VLOOKUP, but it kind of does the same thing. And that is, she is kind of like, it's like a shortcut. It's like you don't have to do VLOOKUP, but it kind of does the same thing. And that is, she's an Excel wizard because she does that for

her job. And that is a, that's a very powerful tool. So I've used that a lot. I use a lot of, a lot of index match, a lot of some product to get weighted averages and some pivot tables. So yeah, Excel's always handy for those of us who aren't smart. Do you find that maybe I could like rent her for about an hour just to kind of bone up on my Excel techniques? Because I am a very poorly, mostly self-taught Excel user. You want to rent my fiance to bone up. I'm just asking the question. Sounds innocent.

All right. So a bit of banter. I was thinking a lot this weekend about Jeff Manship, which I'm sure was true for all of you. But Jeff Manship signed with the NC Dinos of the KBO, the Korean baseball organization. That is the team that Eric Thames was playing for before the Brewers signed him. And I don't know Jeff Manship. I haven't talked to him at least yet. And for all I know, he's a big fan of Korean culture, and he was super excited to go play in Korea.

But I'm guessing that he started this offseason thinking that he would be playing somewhere in the United States next year, possibly even for a major league organization. And if you look at Jeff Manship's last couple seasons, and they're not quite full seasons, he's pitched just over 80 innings, 82 and two thirds over the past two seasons. But if you just go by the old school superficial stats, almost no one has been better at preventing runs than Jeff Manship over that period of time. If you go by ERA, among all pitchers, minimum 80 innings over those two seasons. He is tied for ninth, at least to two decimal places. If you go by ERA minus, he is sixth.

If you go by ERA minus, he is sixth. If you go by ERA plus, he is fifth. So he has been fantastic at preventing runs, and yet he is not going to be pitching in the major leagues this year. And I assume that's because the offers just weren't there. And I think his contract with the Dinos, he is getting 1.8 million, I think, on a one-year deal. And this is partially a product probably of the fact that Korean baseball teams can now afford to pay players more. And also they've had players go from Korea to the US, and with Thames now, players know they could go to Korea and possibly come back. So MLB teams are definitely paying more attention to Korean teams and Korean players now, which maybe makes it an easier sell. But I would guess that it's just because there wasn't much of a market for Jeff Manship, right? Like I'm guessing that no one beat the Dino's offer. And if they had, he probably would have been interested in staying.

And if they had, he probably would have been interested in staying. And so Jeff Manship seems like a victim or at least a non-beneficiary of the new ways that teams evaluate players because no one cares about ERA anymore. Like if you if Jeff Manship had had these stats, I don't know, 20 years ago or something like I have to assume that he would have gotten a fairly substantial deal right I mean not that not that people were stupid then and you had scouts and they could see pitcher stuff and they had some idea of whether they could sustain it but like the four pitchers with better era pluses than Jeff Manship over the last two seasons Zach Britton who just finished fourth in ALC Young voting Wade Davis who has been one of the best closers in baseball and just got acquired by the best team in baseball. Aroldis Chapman, who just made a ton of money. And Andrew Miller, who was like the star of the postseason and the season. So in an earlier era, teams would have been happy to sign Jeff Manship, right?

Yeah, you think they would have been delighted. teams would have been happy to sign Jeff Manship, right? Yeah, you'd think they would have been delighted. And Manship also, he made the Indians postseason roster, at least one of the Indians postseason rosters. He only, I think, what did he appear in? Like two or three games, it looks like. And he didn't do a lot.

But I mean, this isn't just coming off a couple good ERAs. Like he was, to some extent, trusted in the postseason for a team that, granted, used all of its relievers in the postseason almost exclusively. I guess you could say that from one perspective, Manship is being hurt by, I guess we can still refer to it as contemporary analysis, because he's had these good ERAs and now he's going to Korea. On the other hand, it's very possible that if it weren't for contemporary analysis, he wouldn't have had the chance to post some decent ERAs in a row. Because you said the last two years, he's had the fifth best ERA basically in baseball. And he appeared in six seasons before that. And over those six seasons, 632 different pitchers threw at least 100 innings from names like Todd Wellemeyer

to other names I'm not going to read out loud. And Jeff Manchup had the fifth worst, I'm sorry, fourth, fourth worst ERA among all those pitchers. Zach Stewart was worst. Chen Ming Wong, whose name you have now heard on this podcast, was second worst. Billy Buckner, who was a pitcher as well, but not that Billy Buckner, he was third worst. And then Jeff Manchup was fourth worst with an ERA of 6.46. But over that same six-year span, and granted, we're just talking about 139 innings here for Manship. So it's not like he was pitching all the time. But his FIP was almost two full runs better than his ERA. His ex-FIP was even better than that.

So he did still get an opportunity after that to not suck at the age of 30. And he very much didn't suck because even by his peripherals and non-ERA, he was pretty good in 2015. And then he got worse in the most recent year. But at this point, this is a guy clearly not an ace reliever, clearly not a terrible reliever. But he also, he's not one of those like wild relievers where you hope that maybe one year he just finds the strike zone. He's not like, I don't know, Jesus Colomay, I guess would be an example. It's no longer that current, but at the end of the day, he's a, he's a sink or slide a guy who tops out at 91 or 92 miles per hour. So I would think that there were probably some opportunities. Maybe there's a team out there

willing to make him sort of the eighth man, like the first guy up from AAA, or maybe the veteran who makes the club at the end of spring training. But maybe for Manjap, he realized, well, I'm going to be treated a lot better. I'll have a little more certain role in Korea. He's probably going to make more money. You said $1.8 million was what you saw him making? He's going to have a chance to start i think which i believe was important to him yeah okay so there's i guess that his record would suggest that that's not important to him but i guess uh his record has been only to some extent up to him yeah on account of you know he hasn't been so good but yeah it's a you wonder so i was thinking about playing in

korea after uh the andy martin news because you think of how difficult it is for any latin player to come to the u.s and and try to play but then try to imagine a latin player going from the dominican republic to the u.s to south korea and i i don't know anything about uh living in korea as a non-korean. It seems very much overwhelming to me, just the thought of it. And I'm American. And so I feel like my culture sort of owns the world in a horrible way. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to come from not America and go live in South Korea. So I was thinking about the culture adjustment that you have to get used to. I know it's not exactly the same, but someone like William Opeña has turned into this,

like, or at least had become this very popular superstar in Japan, even though he would have had a very similar sort of adjustment. But it's possible now with an increasing number of players who are going over to South Korea, it would be interesting to hear how the life there maybe has changed as a somewhat experienced big leaguer to see if maybe it's gotten easier to make the adjustments and maybe there's a better support system or maybe it's exactly as daunting as it seems. But maybe this should be a really good experience for Jeff Manship because you in the major leagues, you get so accustomed to these players from other countries, you just have to come and you expect them to perform. And you never really think about

the adjustments that they have to make in, you know, their entire lives off the field, beyond just trying to get people out or hit home runs. So this is sort of Jeff Manship doing an equivalent of any other player coming from a Latin American country or an Asian country to the US to try to play where he will get to see what it's like to have to change everything. And so that should grant him some valuable perspective. And maybe Jeff Manship is someone who values that and is looking forward to that. I don't know, he could be very disappointed to have to do this, but I like to see the best in people. I had Eric Thames on the Ringer podcast, and he was talking about the culture adjustment,

and he seemed to handle it really well. He was totally throwing himself into it and trying to learn the language and trying out all the new food and everything. So I guess having that attitude about it is important if you're going there with some enthusiasm as opposed to just because it was the place that you had to go. And I was emailing with some people with the Dinos because I met one of them at Saber Seminar last year,

and they were telling me about their system for acquiring American players, which is something that always interests me. Like we always talk about how American teams acquire Japanese or Korean players and no one ever talks about how it works in reverse. And I wrote something a couple of years ago about Grantland about how one NPB team does that. But he was telling me that they have like one scout and one stat person and they've been working together for five years or so. So they have a really good rapport and basically like each of them has sort of a veto in effect. Like if one of them says that he looks bad via stats or scouting, then they will just cross that player off the list and move on to the next one. And he was telling me that someone like Manship would have been unattainable to them in the past. And I'm quoting now, it says, the two seasons escalated his price tag to the point that we barely could afford him. However, now the market also has changed. Years back when we first saw Jeff, we were not in a

position where we could even discuss nor dream about scouting him. But Asian teams nowadays tend to pay much bigger money to foreign players, especially during this winter. And it came to a level where his price has suddenly become much more reasonable and at an amount that it is actually possible for us to endure, given his recent records and ability. And that was the part that interests me, the fact that his price came down, which I would assume is because of the more advanced stats or maybe also because there's a glut of relievers on the market. I don't know. But you mentioned how his FIP was much lower than his ERA in his first several seasons in the majors. And over his last two seasons when he's had that extremely low ERA, he has had the biggest gap in the other direction between his era and fib of

almost two runs so it's really been a roller coaster ride for jeff manship over the last several years he was terrible and then he was like among the best and now he is in korea so he's seen everything on your other podcast i think it was just today that went public you were talking about some of the newer pitching statistics showing up on Baseball Prospectus. Yeah. And there's so much work that's being done. We've had FIP for, I don't know, 10, maybe even 15 years at this point. I'm not really sure.

And it's not perfect. And we all know that it leaves a lot to be desired. be desired but so many of the gains that have been attempted or successfully attempted to make fit better are just so along the margins where really as a blunt tool FIP works great because FIP is not going to mislead you about Jeff Manship Jeff Manship for his career has run peripherals that are very man shippy and so the ERA has bounced around but on a on a different note thinking about what it's like to be like a a foreign scout for an asian team scouting at every level has always been about trying to identify the best players on any team that you're watching but like if you're a if you're a japanese or korean scout in the major leagues your job is to find like basically the

best of the worst you know you like you see mike trout in the field you're like well i don't have to watch this like this i don't i don't care this is not even anything that exists in our universe but like oh but look there's unel escobar coming off the bench maybe oh but probably not he's probably still too good but like maybe how close did louis valbuena come to maybe getting an opportunity in Asia he's probably still a little too good but now maybe that frees up Jeffrey Marte although maybe he's still so young that you don't bother scouting him which means maybe you look at Rafael Ortega except you don't get to see him because he's not playing because he's out of a job

so like maybe if you're like an Asianian major league scout you're just hoping for like a really lopsided terrible game so that the bad players come in and play a lot because otherwise i don't really know who who is good enough to scout but bad enough that that they don't get to play in in the majors and i guess jeff manship did just make 53 appearances last year so we it wasn't hard to see him in a game. But I mean, the scout or the executive himself said he wasn't expecting Manship to be available to them. So like, yeah, that's a player that's too good.

Right. Yeah. It sounds like the scout spends most of his time watching AAA games. And it also sounds like almost as much of his time is taken up by scouting whether a player will be willing to go to Korea as it is whether he will actually be good there. Like they have some sort of translation and they claim to have some secret sauce that they wouldn't tell me about for what type of players do well with the transition to the KBO, which is a big hitters league. But he said, we carefully examine each player's career and situation to predict whether he will be willing to go overseas and whether his organization will let him go or not. So that's a big part of the job.

Just, you know, like if we want him, will he want us, basically? So it's a strange, different sort of scouting, which is, I think, why it interests me. Anyway, we have talked more about Jeff Manchit than I expected to. But I want to close with the Google Translated press release from the Dinos website, which I was reading last night. I think this reflects more poorly on Google Translate and its Korean algorithm than it does on the Dinos who I'm sure

wrote a perfectly good press release but definitely didn't come out that way so I will link to this but I'm just going to read it now it's pretty short headline NC Dinos 2017 season finished puzzle Jeff Mainswip NC Dinos signed a contract with Jeff Manship,

an free agent status man, on June 23rd for a total of $1.8 million. The man was an 85-year-old right-handed pitcher who wore the Minnesota Twins jersey in the 14th round of the 2006 Newbie Draft. He made his debut in the major leagues in 2009 but he did not play well in minnesota he has been in the team for four years and has had a hard time as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues and as a reliever in the major leagues the manpower

moved to the cleveland indians in 2015 who also had a 312 era in in the 2016 season. NC, that's the team, said that Manfred has been in the Major League roster after signing him as a manager or sponsor for the past few years. And this is a quote, I think, although there are no quotation marks. I have a good starting pitcher experience and I am very positive to be a full-time starter. So I am looking forward to playing an important role in selecting a team for the 2017 season. NC hopes to be a good gift for both the players and the

team, especially as they reach consensus on the man's birthday. January 16th. The man is, quote, very grateful and excited to play in NC Dinos. We hope that our couple will be able to coexist in the wonderful culture of Korea and expect everything we can experience in Korea. It is expected that this is an opportunity to help the team win.

I hope the season will start soon. Last paragraph. The man ship will complete the medical check in the United States at the end of January and join the battery training. The club has been recommended to join the team one day before the start of the training, but the man ship will arrive at Tucson on the 30th day of the two days ago to meet the new team and the new baseball team. The end. I mean, half of the fun is just his name is Jeff Manship, but what I don't get is it was translated

in so many different ways, but how is it written in different ways? His name is very consistent. I know. That's what I've been wondering about. How he turns into an 85-year-old guy named Manfred slash Manpower. Yeah, I like that the NC Dinos have finished their puzzle by acquiring an 85-year-old manager slash sponsor.

Okay, well, this is going to be a weird, awkward transition because now we're going to talk about something much more sad and somber and depressing. So you wrote something on Sunday about the news about Jordano Ventura and Andy Marte, who were killed in separate car crashes in the Dominican. And you kind of were pointing out that both they and Oscar Tavares, who was killed in a very similar fashion a couple of years earlier, were kind of examples of players who didn't fulfill their potential or hadn't had the chance to fulfill their potential. And I don't know whether that makes it more sad or less sad. Like I was trying to compare, you know, their careers to Jose Fernandez and he had fulfilled his potential in the sense that he was one of the best few pitchers in baseball. He hadn't fulfilled his potential in

that, you know, he had the potential to do that for 15 more years or something, and he didn't get the chance. And so I think, you know, kind of on a human level, both are equally sad and upsetting when young athletes are killed. And, you know, it was depressing in Fernandez's case because we all just loved watching Fernandez and he was so great at baseball and he was on track to be one of the best players ever. And then it's also extra depressing in the case of players like Ventura or Taveras who have all this skill but haven't put it all together yet and you're still kind of dreaming that they will and that they will become Jose Fernandez basically someday. So, you know, both just like incredibly tragic in their own way, in addition to just the sadness for their friends and family and everyone who knew them. So terrible all around. I don't know whether you have any thoughts to add to that, because unfortunately, we've had to deal with and process this sort of story too often lately. Yeah, it's always just a way to frame it. It's one sense,

it's weird to even be concentrating on these at all, because these are, you know, these are baseball players who have passed away on a day when so many hundreds of thousands or millions of other people have passed away. And it feels a little odd just to be concentrating on them at all this is these are the conversations that you have with yourself every single time that something like this happens and clearly when you a player like Fernandez passing away it has a different feel than a player like Ventura or a player like Marte but I think that when you talk about a player who's who's not fulfilled his potential or who hasn't had the chance or even in the case of Marte but I think that when you talk about a player who's who's not fulfilled his potential or who hasn't had the chance or even in the case of Marte like he was presumably never going to

fulfill his potential his potential was was the sky just uh eight nine ten years ago but we exist in a state of being forever shy of our maximum potential this just applies to all of us across the board where it's easiest to see with a case like Ventura, who could have been an ace but wasn't yet, or Marte, who could have been an all-star third baseman but wasn't and wasn't going to become one. But with a guy like Fernandez, who had clearly maximized his own talent, well, then you just get to wonder, well, what could he have been? What could he have been over a 10, 15, even 20-year span as a major leaguer? He didn't achieve everything that he could have achieved either.

And so there's really no one who is of a moderately young age who has fulfilled their potential. And you can't score a premature death based on how sad it is. They are all the same. There are certain players who are more familiar to you and so as a fan is maybe it makes you feel bad when you concentrate on it but maybe you feel Fernandez a little more than maybe you feel Marte because you've just spent more time with Fernandez I don't think that's anything to feel guilty about it just is how we know these players it feels a little odd

to be feeling sad from an outsider's perspective in the first place, but you go through this every time. And I think that if there's one main message that I would want people to understand that I don't think that one should feel guilty about how they respond to this news. The way that you respond to news like this is valid just based on its very existence. And however you take it is how you take it. The process is what the process is. And within a few days or a week or two weeks, depending on who you are, you're going to move on. You'll come right back to baseball. You'll think of these players as being invulnerable again.

We all do. again we all do nothing there's no such thing as like the death that sinks in because we can't we can't concentrate on that very much i know that's been a theme of this podcast in the the years prior to my joining it i know that's one of the things sam is known for but i i think these things are always almost impossible for us to process, even if you've lived through personal grief with an actual loved one. It's still, you never assume that a 25-year-old or a 33-year-old or a 22-year-old, in the case of Oscar Tavares, you never think of something like this happening. You think, oh, maybe one of them is going to blow out his arm and that could damage

his career. Well, okay, but that's still a far better outcome than what we can see. But one should allow themselves to process this however it comes naturally. And you shouldn't be too hard on yourself for how you respond to news like this because it's difficult. And none of us are wired to be able to process it in a streamlined way. So back in 2014, after Oscar Tavares was killed in a car crash in the Dominican, Jorge Arangure, who is now the editor-in-chief of Vice Sports, wrote a piece for Vice Sports about the conditions that created this danger and could continue to create this danger. He wrote

that the potential for tragedy is obvious and it's not going away anytime soon. And Jorge joins us now. Hi, Jorge. What's up, guys? So tell us, for people who haven't read the piece, can you lay out what the dangers are for players, not just in the Dominican, but especially in the Dominican, when it's the offseason and they go home and suddenly they are not in the U.S. anymore? Yeah, I mean, I think essentially what sort of the piece lays out that is that it's no real one factor, you know, that goes into what some of the stuff that happens.

You know, you have sort of this terrible mix of bad roads and also not great response times when there are accidents. And then also, you know, depending on where these accidents happen, the facilities to take care of someone post accident aren't very good at all. And so you're having this sort of mix of like untrained medical professionals, roads that are not in ideal conditions, laws that are not being enforced by the police. And then sort of the stigma of, you know, like there's still that thing in the Dominican where like people don't wear seatbelts. And that's exactly what happened in this case with Ventura is he was not wearing one. It's not,

you know, it's certainly, it's part of the culture where you kind of don't wear one. You know, I've been in the Dominican many times reporting and people always kind of look at me strange when I put on my seat belt, because it's just like not something that's ingrained in the culture, that it's something that's safe to do.

So you have all these factors play in to a tragedy that happens like, you know, with Ventura and with Marte and with, you know, thousands of people every year in the country. I don't endorse following along with what internet commenters pretty much ever say, certainly not in the immediate aftermath of something that happens. But we just had the two accidents that claimed your donovan turan andy martin one of the common quick responses that a lot of people have had in areas i've seen is they just say well teams shouldn't let their players go home in the off season it's too dangerous and clearly that is not worthwhile advice that is you're you're not giving players any freedom but what do you what would you recommend doing how how can teams get through to their players uh the level of of risk that they face when they go home

and the teams aren't in control of their lives anymore? Yeah, I mean, I think you have to remember that these are grown men, you know. You can't sort of follow them around their entire time when they're in the Dominican. I think you can suggest to them that, yeah, they should hire drivers or have drivers all the time to take them. And some players do. But unfortunately, you know, it's not yet a norm for everybody to do that. And so teams are in a really tough spot because not only do they have to worry about their sort of major league players, but they have these, you know, this group of hundreds of, you know, young players that are just recently signed

who are literally just, you know, learning how to become professionals. And they really need all that help. So teams really have to focus on the kids that they've just signed that are 16, 17, 18 years old that are learning how to play baseball, that are learning what it is to have money and to have some of these risky situations pop up. So they have enough to take care of, teams do. And it's really difficult to say that the teams have any real options in how to take care of players who are you know grown adults you know 25 years old and you know Marte 31 years old you shouldn't have to try to take care of guys like these these guys have should already know what it is that the danger that they face and they shouldn't face them you know there are

things there's choices they can make, smart choices that don't put themselves in that type of position. I mean, I don't know what it's going to take for some of these guys to learn. I mean, we had Ventura dedicating a World Series game to Oscar Tavares and yet sort of fell in the same fate that what happened with Oscar Tavares. So, you know, he was obviously very shaken by what happened to Oscar, but at the same time, he didn't even learn from it. So it just has to be sort of like more of an environment where maybe teams

just stress to players what they need to do in the off season, how they need to be smarter about some of their choices. And I mean, everybody wants to be able to, you know, go home and have fun and do whatever, but there are ways in which, you know, you can sort of protect yourself. Firstly, I mean, wear a seatbelt. Secondly, don't drink and drive and, you know, and hire a driver. These guys are making enough money where that shouldn't be an issue. Yeah. I mean, in theory, teams could just hire drivers, right? Because I mean, you know, that seems like it's extreme. It seems like they shouldn't have to do that. But we're

always talking now about how teams can spend their money. They're limited on the international market. They're limited in the draft. What are they even going to do to provide some kind of advantage when there are so many constraints? I mean, I would imagine that hiring a driver in the Dominican is something that baseball teams that are making tons of money could afford. I don't know whether players would want just a driver hanging around all the time, but if it comes down to the expense only and it seems like there's no way to get the players to do this themselves, maybe that's something you start to consider at some point.

I mean, I think the issue there is sort of like, now you're sort of delving into sort of privacy issues where, OK, you have a team employee, a driver who's driving around a player. OK, well, is, you know, whatever a player does on his free time going to be reported back to the team by a team issue driver that could be used against them in like a contract negotiation, you know? Right, yeah. I think, so, like, you have all these issues of privacy where I think, yeah, it's, you know, on the surface it sort of makes sense, but then I don't think players want to feel like they're being watched 24-7, you know? I think the responsibility falls on the player,

but also, you know, these players do have agents, and agents should, you know, sort of strongly suggest to them or even them be the ones who hire the drivers for them. And maybe that's more of what the solution should be is that their agent should take up a sort of more prominent role in sort of some of these decisions. Because I don't think anybody wants a situation where players feel like they're being watched 24-7. Not that I guess hiring a driver is necessarily a way to ensure safety if the roads are bad and the other drivers are possibly drunk and just conditions are bad for everyone. Yeah, exactly. I don't think there's any one thing that you could do.

I mean, this is a Dominican government issue. This isn't really a major league baseball issue. So, I mean, I had a lot of people asking me about, you know, something like that from, you know, after I, you know, tweeted out the piece yesterday and, you know, there really isn't anything major league baseball can do. I mean, I don't think it's their issue. This is like a government issue. And I think sometimes we expect too much of what baseball should be doing in the Dominican. I think, you know, and this comes up also with some of the stuff about the steroid use in the country and something about, you know, just some of the problems that happened during the signing process. And we just all have to remember it is a separate country with their

own laws and their own responsibility towards its own people. And Major League Baseball isn't responsible for the laws of another country. So. And when you were writing this, I mean, you did talk to some scouts and some teams, and it seemed like they do make some effort at least to talk to their players. I guess it's tough when you talk to the players in season, and then there's a period of months where you don't see them or maybe talk to them at all. programs that you came across or was it just sort of people who were familiar with the conditions would talk to the players and just give them advice kind of on an ad hoc basis i think it's part of the normal orientation basis you know like when they have players sort of come in and every year you know before the start of the season i think they have this sort of discussion i mean it's not not dissimilar to what year, like the rookie symposium that they have in Virginia every year, where you gather all the players and you sort of talk them through

some of the issues of what's going on. I think it's the same thing, you know, that you gather all these young players. But again, you know, you are dealing with 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds, you know, whose sometimes advice goes through one ear and then goes out the other. So it's a really difficult position that they're in, because you can only really do so much. And again, once these players go home on the weekends, you can't 100% control what they do, you know? Do you think to any extent Latin or Dominican players might feel like they're being singled out? Because at the end of the day, when I know Marte is 33 years old, Ventura was 25. We're talking about more full-blown adults at that point.

But when you're giving instruction to younger players, of course, that feeling of invincibility is not just limited to the players coming from Latin America. So in your experience, have you seen any sort of pushback against that perception? Not really. I think we've had just the fact that there's been like more prominent names sort of that have been involved in some of these accidents. You know, I think accidents have been happening to, you know, to players down there for a long time. Um, it just, it just happens to be now that they've been more prominent names. Um, so this has been something that's people are aware of.

I mean, when you're down there, people know that the driving conditions aren't great. I don't think it's anything that they take offense to. I mean, they realize that it's just sometimes for a lot of these guys, it's sort of, you know, when you have athletes at that level, there's this feeling of invincibility that it's not going to be happening to them. And so they don't take those sort of precautions to make sure that they don't, you know, fall into these bad situations. Have conditions improved at all that you're aware of? When you

were writing this piece, the stats were really scary. You cited some numbers that said that something like one in 480 people would die because of a motor vehicle related accident in their lifetime. And I mean, is there any improvement in infrastructure that you know of? Or are things just as bad or worse? I mean, I think things are the same. I mean, I think there's been some unrest in the country about sort of the government recently. And part of it is, you know, the conditions of the roads. You know, unless, you know, you have a lot of money and you're like the Yankees or whatever, and you can basically create an entire city around where your complex is down there,

where you can pay to pave the roads and pay to have certain luxuries, it's not going to be taken care of by the government. So there's been no real push to have anything improved. I think it's still a country that is in financial distress, and so there's not going to be any kind of money to sort of improve that infrastructure. I think we're sort of in the same spot. Nothing that I've heard of or read has sort of signaled any sort of improvement at all. And how does the danger compare in the Dominican to Venezuela or other Latin American countries?

Yeah, I mean, I think I think I mean, that's probably where it's like it's a little bit uncertain now with the conditions in Venezuela just deteriorating every day. It's almost impossible to even gauge what the dangers are there anymore. You know, it's like it's hard to get any consistent read. But certainly the way that the government is going and the way that sort of the financial complete collapse of the country has happened, I can't imagine there's been any improvement. And I'm sure it's probably worse at this point and you also mentioned the insurance aspect which maybe was not a concern with these guys but you only get MLB life insurance after you're on a 40-man roster and that lasts till what the the first day of the next season you rode and basically if you're a prospect and you have no major league experience, you're leaving your family with nothing other than whatever your bonus was, which can be pretty disastrous if you come from a pretty poor family.

Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing. You know, it's, you know, all these issues we talk about with, you know, minor leaguers and sort of what rights they have. We've talked about this in terms of like the lawsuit about, you know, the higher pay and all that. Well, this is certainly applies to that. There is no real life insurance for minor leaguers zero prospects not on the 40 man doesn't matter if you're number one in baseball america prospect if you're not on the 40 man it doesn't matter so there is no financial protection for a lot of these young guys and that you know it's probably not something that they think about or they realize but you know yeah that you put your family in this sort of position where if something like

that happens, they don't have any financial protection. All right. Well, that was pretty depressing. Thanks, Jorge. I wish there were a way to say things were changing and that this weren't going to happen again, but it seems like as long as players keep going home, which is not going to change, then there's always the risk that we're going to wake up to some sad story and their families are going to wake up to some sad story. So this is really unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing is just, you know, again, it's even like subtle improvements, like, you know, making sure people are wearing seatbelts.

I can't even stress enough how something like that can make such a difference, you know. And it's, again, I've been in this country when I've, you know, gotten into a car and I put a seatbelt on and people look at me like I'm a weirdo. And it's just that sort of the mentality and the stigma sort of, it's like what it was, you know, 40 years, 30 years ago, I guess, here in the U.S. sort of, it's like what it was, you know, 40 years, 30 years ago, I guess, here in the U.S. when people weren't routinely wearing seatbelts and like people thought it was an insult when you put one on when they were driving as if it was like, you know, you were making some kind of judgment on their driving abilities. But yeah, it's sort of like how it's seen out there. All right.

Well, you can read Jorge at Vice Sports. You can find him on Twitter at Jorge Arangure. Thank you, Jorge. Thanks, guys. All right. So that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon. Thank you, Jorge. Thanks, guys. All right, so that will do it for today. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

Five listeners who have already pledged their support are Zach Rau, Chris Swick, David Dixon, Joshua Wetzel, and Logan Vesey. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectivelywild, and you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You can contact me and Jeff via email at podcast at fangrass.com We'll see you next time. The skin of the man