Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1013: Were the Cardinals Punished Appropriately?

Episode Date: January 31, 2017

Ben Lindbergh, Jeff Sullivan, and Sports on Earth Senior Writer Will Leitch banter about the accuracy of a Jarrod Dyson declaration and the fairness of the penalty levied against St. Louis in the Cardinals-Astros hacking scandal. Audio intro: White Rabbits, "They Done Wrong / We Done Wrong" Audio outro: The Ramones, "Punishment Fits the Crime"  iTunes Feed (Please […]

Is it done wrong? And we're done wrong Now what makes you so certain All that finger pointing's done Is they don't know What they've been told They say it hurts Now they've been told this day it hurts, now I lay there

And it's not the way it seems at all Hello and welcome to episode 1013 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangrass Presented by our Patreon supporters I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer Joined as always by Jeff Sullivan of Fangrass Hello Jeff Hello And today we are joined by our friend and friend of the podcast, Will Leach, who is

a senior writer at Sports on Earth and I suppose a less senior writer at many other places and a podcaster. And probably the best place you can find all the things he does is by subscribing to his newsletter at tinyletter.com slash William F. Leach. Hello, William F. Leach. Hello, William F. Leach. Hey, hello, sir. I'm a senior writer at Sports on Earth and have senioritis. I've never seen one of my publications. Okay, stop recording. Start over.

So we've called you onto the carpet to answer for the sins of the St. Louis Cardinals. That's not really true. I guess they've been punished enough, but we'll talk about whether they've been punished enough. But before we get into that, Jeff, you have some banter? Yeah. Okay. So this is good. I can ask questions of you both. So over the weekend, the Mariners, like every team in baseball, I think had their fan fest event. They do one every winter. It was both days. And of course the Mariners traded for Gerard Dyson not too long ago. And he happened to be one of the players present. And someone at some point asked Dyson of his expectations for the 27th season, which is 2017 season, I should say.

He wouldn't know much about the other one. And it's, of course, a very boring question. But his answer, I don't know if this is his full answer, but I think it was his full answer. It was, quote, wherever I go, the champagne flow. So now on the one hand, I don't know if this is rehearsed, if he like planned this and then thought, I'm going to drop this bomb at FanFest, or maybe he just like speaks in a natural rhyme. But my question to both of you, and there's going to be more details after this question,

is let's assess the validity of the statement. Because, OK, so for one thing, Gerard Dyson, as a major leaguer, this was the first other place he's ever gone. He was always a Royal. He never changed teams. And of course, the Royals made the playoffs just the two times that he was with them. So I know champagne flows for winning a division and then every round and then the World Series. So okay, he made the playoffs twice with the Royals over seven years. But so detail number one, he's never done, he's never been anywhere else as a major leaguer. But do you consider and would you be willing to fold in minor league

success? The 2009 Burlington Bees lost in the finals. Dyson was a part of that team. The 2009 Northwest Arkansas Naturals lost in the finals. Dyson was a part of that team. The 2010 Northwest Arkansas Naturals were the league champions. Dyson on that team. 2011 Omaha Storm Chasers, league champions. 2012 Omaha Storm Chasers lost in finals. Dyson was on that team. And the 2013 Omaha Storm Chasers were the league champions and Dyson made a cameo appearance with that team. So is it fair to fold in Dyson's minor league record of success when evaluating his FanFest statement? I think it is. I think that since he's never been outside the organization, I think it's fair to include all of his time in the organization. I don't know, it might be more of a correlation than a causation because the Royals at the time had,

what, one of the best farm systems ever. And maybe that had more to do with the fact that he was in the minor league playoffs every year. I don't even know at what level you start getting champagne. I don't know. Do you get champagne in rookie ball? Do you get champagne in the Arizona Fall League? I don't know where you start getting champagne. Yeah, that's why I didn't look up college success because I figured they probably weren't pouring it then. Right. But yeah, on the whole, I would say his statement is pretty true, right? Because he played on some bad Royals Major League teams. But I would say that he wasn't really a part of most of those teams. His first sort of full season with the team, he played 120 games in 2014. And that was when the Royals started getting good and won things. So I think it's probably fair to say that and not penalize him for like coming up in September of 2010. On one hand, I want to account for the quality of the beverage in the minor leagues. I think at best, it's like a low-grade Prosecco at best.

But to be fair, in the major leagues, they're spraying Bud Light. But to be fair, in the major leagues, they're spraying Bud Light. I mean, I think there's one bottle of champagne and the rest of the time they've got those little aluminum bottles of a domestic brew. So I don't know if champagne is actually being spread either way. So I will give him the credit for the theoretical notion of what when we think of what being spring sprayed, it's champagne. But I suspect the beverage is at a lower level than generally champagne. but I suspect the beverage is at a lower level than generally champagne. Maybe that's an additional detail because really when you envision a team celebrating, the champagne isn't, it's not flowing, right?

It's spraying everywhere erratically and violently. And it's not like the team sits down and they all pour themselves a glass of champagne and raise a toast to a season well done. They just waste the champagne completely all over their goggles and clothes and then they go to the beer like Will said. So maybe that's the real problem, the real lie. So what he should have said is, wherever I play, the champagne spray. There you go. For what it's worth, in Cardinals clubhouses, they pour. They pour over a napkin very carefully. Well, yeah, they know the right way to drink champagne. I'm just helping to segue. Okay. So yeah, to continue talking about America's least favorite baseball team,

let's talk about why the Cardinals were just somewhat harshly, but maybe not harshly enough disciplined. I guess we'll... Maybe we'll just start. Will, what do you think about the penalty that was given to the Cardinals? Should I summarize what the penalty was? I guess I should lay the groundwork because this has been pending for a while. We knew there was some sort of punishment coming for the hacking scandal, the intrusion by former Cardinal Scouting Director Chris Correa into the Astros ground control database. And this past weekend, we found out many more details about what that hacking constituted because some of the documents were unsealed. And today we found out the punishment, which is Cardinals surrender $2 million, which goes to the Astros.

Cardinals surrendered their top two draft picks in the upcoming draft, which in their case are only number 56 and number 75. Those go to the Astros and there's some transferring of bonus pool money as a result. And then Correa, who is already serving about a month in prison

for every intrusion, 46 months, 48 intrusions, is permanently banned from baseball. Not that he was going to be at the top of any team's hiring list when he got out of the clink. So continue well now that we've summarized all the punishments. Well, I think clearly this is not like, it's not like there was a couple of years ago where there was another team that did this exact same thing and got punished worse or better than the Cardinals did. So we're kind of on new ground anyway.

I think, you know, when you look at the punishment, to me, it seems probably lighter than I think certainly a lot of the rhetoric that had been tossed around, how angry all the general managers were. I saw Buster on these things this morning and every exec was out for blood and they had to send a message and so on. And so to me,

Jeff Passing tossed out the idea that maybe the competitive balance, like losing from the competitive balance pool, that might've been an extra level to get them. And I think that's probably fair. That said, there's really only so much they could do because there's two major things on both sides of this punishment. One is the $2 million fine, which is the literal maximum. I think of the reporting that came out this afternoon that in the new CBA, $2 million is actually the maximum a team can be fined in this regard. It's something that both the Astros owner and Bill DeWitt, the Cardinals owner, agreed on. So certainly we can argue whether or not it should have been more than that. The Cardinals have a big cable contract. They're about to completely start feeling the windfall from as much as you can feel the fall of wind. And so they, that's not very much money for them. And so for any major league baseball team, particularly the Cardinals.

So that's really a drop in the bucket. And then on the other hand, because the Cardinals knew that this punishment was coming and knew there were only so many things that you could possibly punish them with uh that they're like banned them this is not college football they would not be banned from the postseason uh that'd be an excellent way to gut an entire uh section of the of the baseball schedule that that would send them out there to be like wow it's an exhibition season um but uh no it does it does for, it certainly seems like a fun potential mailbag segment on this show. Like what would you do that season

if you were banned for a post-season? You could actually put Yadier Molina on the bench for a game or two. No, there's no way Matheny's doing that. Free Tony Cruz. But so for me, because the Cardinals knew this punishment was coming, John Moselak,

the Cardinals have not signed a free agent that would cost them a first-round draft pick in 10 years. I think it is perhaps not a coincidence that they did that this year. So certainly, you know, you can make an argument maybe they should have, maybe it's next year's draft pick, that they should have added that to it or hit them maybe down the line or so on. But I think there's a lot of uncertainty in that. You know, these things are always up in the air and the idea of guessing what a team is going to,

what's going to happen with the draft a year from now and all the, who's going to get this pick and who's going to pick there. It adds a lot of uncertainty to it. So really, there's really only so much Major League Baseball could do here. So I think this is, I don't think this is a empty punishment. I think the Cardinals draft is all,

it was, is going to be toast this year. It's going to be a completely empty draft. But Moseley kind of had, I think,, what would have happened? Because they would have lost that second pick. And then what do you punish them with? So, you know, I think that Moselec saw this coming and saw this as the idea and took a draft that was already not going to be a particularly great draft for the Cardinals. And also he spent a bunch of almost their entire international pool money. So that is now off the table too. Because this took such a long time, because it was such a good process, and because Moeselic is smart and knows how the rules work, he took a lot of stuff off the table for him even to be able to punish him. So this feels like about the maximum

punishment, save for maybe that competitive balance thing that they could have done. But yeah, I find it hard to argue they probably didn't deserve a little bit more. Somehow we ended up complimenting the Cardinals for their handling of the situation. That's what the Cardinals did. We can argue whether that's right and whether MLB should have said, nope, we're not going to let you do that and we're going to hammer you even more. But it is also worth noting that this was not like two teams suing one another. These were two teams, which I think is also banned by the CBA.

This was each owner going to Manfred and saying, you are the arbiter in this situation, and them coming to an agreement. and saying you are the arbiter in this situation and them coming to an agreement. So as much as I think in an unprecedented case like this, to me looking at it, yeah, it looks like maybe the punishment is a little bit light to the offense, but this is really kind of the best they could have done. And it's worth knowing that the Astros

are not screaming bloody murder about this. Well, I think it's within the commissioner's rights to contract a franchise. And maybe there are people out there who are arguing that the Cardinals got off a little too easy and they could have ceased to exist. So there would be that angle. I guess it does seem to me like the real, I guess I don't know the expression, but the thing that gets me is the Dexter Fowler angle. And losing that draft pick first because, like you you said there were only so many things that baseball could do outside of a completely unreasonable and a never acceptable postseason

ban so i guess it troubles me that i think we we can guess that if they hadn't signed fowler baseball would have taken their first two picks and then they signed fowler so baseball's like well we'll take your first two picks as if it didn't matter but i guess i just kind of wish that there had been some sort of response to that and been like okay well you if you thought you're going to get around it we'll take your first round pick next year and it surprises me that down the road we'll look back on this you know the next time someone hacks another team because there's going to be more and then they'll be like well the the penalty then was a fine and not a first round draft pick

and that that seems to set a really troubling precedent to me. Although I guess maybe the real deterrent is the fact that Correa is in jail for 46 months. And that's, you know, that would stop me from doing a lot of things. Yeah, but you know, it's worth noting that while I agree with the people that argue that, well, come on, Correa could not have been the only person that knew about this. I think he even testified to that effect while saying other people weren't responsible for what he did. They were aware of what he did. And remember, when this story first came out, when Michael Schmidt had this story in the New York Times in June of 2015, very fun day for me, by the way, I was literally out on a run and came back and got an alert on my phone. I'm like,

well, here's my next 48 hours of my life is getting yelled at by a bunch of people um which is it's actually continued since then so um but it's worth knowing our thoughts on that at the time where oh it's a couple idiots in jupiter at spring training like i guess they attract it to a to a rented room that was near their spring training park so we i think that the cardinal i think not just the cardinal, anyone that wanted to think this was not a big deal, the angle was, this was just a couple of idiots that typed in XT4364 or whatever Luna's password was and were dorking around and the Cardinals would not really be involved.

It's not because they're so much the Cardinals, but because these are professional human beings that would seemingly not be so stupid. Frankly, on both sides. I think one of the things I think that Michael Baumann, your colleague over at The Ringer wrote today, I thought was really smart, Ben, was the idea that remembering that these people, we think of these people as such intelligent people. And we all have these notions of they're running a franchise. These are two of the smartest front offices in baseball. But the level of just dumbness

or the dumb decisions that each side made on this, which is password protection and how easy it would be to be able to track these things were like shockingly dumb for people that really should have known better. But the idea, as it turned out, that Correa, you know, Correa was not just the scouting director. He was a rising star. He was in a lot of ways considered at the time, like the next Lunau within the Cardinals organization. They were thought that he was like was going to be this next star. The Cardinals was going to have this pipeline, and he was going to be the next one to do it.

So this was far from a low-level guy. So the notion, as he admits, that he's not the only person that knew about this, while there's been, I think, everyone, if there's anything to be frustrated by, in addition to the fact that the punishment feels a little light, it is the idea that Major League Baseball seemed to say, well, we, it's really just this guy. Like other people knew about it, but really it was, it may have known, we can't really prove it,

but it's really just this guy. So he's in jail. So no one will do it again because he's in jail. And so we're all fine, right? And to me, I think that the notion that he is the only person that takes a personal punishment for this seems unlikely. I know it's not the same thing. It seems a little unfair.

I know it's not the same thing as knowing that a crime is being committed and committing the crime, but knowing that a crime committed is still a crime. It's not as bad as a big crime, but I still feel like there's something there. but I still feel like there's something there. I guess the punishment is also then applied to the two people who get drafted by the Astros instead of going through the Cardinals' magical player development system and then becoming multimillionaires within just a couple years. No, but the thing is, is that's the trick, man. Those guys come from the third round and the fourth round and the fifth round. We get them right where we want them.

The mad carpenters. I think that maybe there are a few industries. I should preface this by saying, I don't know very many industries. I write about baseball and that's the only thing I know, baseball and volcanoes. But I can't think of too many industries where things are kept so close to the vest as baseball teams are extremely secretive about the things that they're researching or the information I have. Every team a database and you you because of that security you'd think these people are holding tight onto something that is immensely valuable but not only is baseball so helplessly random almost all of the time for example this news story existing in the

first place i don't know where that came from but also every team is so similar in the ways that they evaluate i have to wonder how much is there really to gain i get if you break also every team is so similar in the ways that they evaluate i have to wonder how much is there really to gain i get if you break into every team's database and then you have a full understanding like your base basically baseball information god at that point then you would really elevate your own status but how much could korea slash the cardinals even really benefit from having unfettered access into what the astros were doing like how different could how different would the astros database be from red bird dog or whatever horrible name they have that's true red bird dog sounds like a wonderful to me it's really

the notion i think this is one of the funny things about this story too is that as with everything we again we all have this notion that we're have this notion that everyone working in front offices are these impartial observers and just all about the data and all about the facts. This appears to have been started by a petty personnel dispute in the idea that Correa was kind of frustrated. There had been that Sports Illustrated cover story about how the genius of the Astros and Bloomberg had written this great story about their database. And there was just a lot of Correa feeling like they – remember, Correa felt like the Cardinals had been wronged. I do not agree with him, just to be very clear before anyone starts yelling at me. I do not agree with him, but Correa did feel that way. He felt that they had maybe taken part of Redbird Dog and used that for the Astro system.

of Redbird Dog and use that for the Astro system. So that was kind of what had started this, which is a good reminder that, again, these are all just petty, vain human beings. And they all kind of, like, they have their rivalries within one another. And I don't like the credit that he's getting. I'll show him.

And you go back and it felt like, and in a way, I think Correa thought that he was pulling one over on them because they were being so stupid as to have the X-Teen related password that Luno had. I think that he felt he was outsmarting them in a way that in the kind of bubble of this universe may have sounded briefly reasonable for him, but certainly does not seem so now. It's a sort of a slippery issue because every team employee signs an NDA and you're not supposed to talk about what you did while you were with that team or that work product is supposed to be owned by the team.

But people are constantly changing teams and changing front offices. You know, like I was just reading about the guy who's running the Marlins quantitative department now and he was just the number two person in the Blue Jays quantitative department. And that happens all the time. You know, Tigers just poached someone from the Yankees and he's now running their department. And that happens all the time. The Tigers just poached someone from the Yankees and he's now running their department. And so I don't know if there's really any practical way to prevent people from taking what they learned while they were with one team to another team. Like even if you're not actually taking the files or the database, you're taking your knowledge of the files and the database and you can't expect someone not to reproduce that, which I imagine must be frustrating if you know that you just came up with some kind

of competitive advantage, and then someone leaves for a different job, and suddenly there goes your advantage, and he's just going to reproduce it with that other team. But most people probably don't hack into that person's account and then try to get even in some way. It's strange, too, because there's a finite number of teams like this is not yeah this is not like okay well like if one of these guys takes all of their secrets to a league in north korea or something then that is yeah there's no like they're all competing against each other they're all so the idea that of course like if chris correa thought oh i'm just gonna spend my entire career with the cardinals and all secrets die with me here in St. Louis.

Like that's like it's unreasonable in the first place. So, yeah, it's weird, though. And again, you know, this also feels, you know, think about how new really these systems are in baseball. Like, of course, we've got this new thinking in baseball. But really, you know, that Bloomberg piece about the Astros system was like it blew people's mind. Like I worked for Bloomberg at the time and everyone just could not, and it was a great story, but it really like, wow, they're really getting quite technology crazy in baseball. But really this is still relatively new.

So when things are relatively new, the lines on this stuff get blurred, at least in the minds of the people involved. And I think that's what happened here. And that is not to justify it in any way, shape or form. I think, I think he's, I mean, the guy's in jail for 40, 40. I'm glad I see he's got to be happy, by the way, that like, there were a couple times right before he got caught. He's like, okay, maybe I'll check this one. Nope, because that would be another month. That'd just be another month onto a sentence right now. So he must be glad he stopped it. He stopped at 48. month onto a sentence right now so he must be glad he stopped it he stopped at 48 did the hacking started in what was it 2012 yes right yeah so i you can talk about maybe the the jealousy aspect

2012 if that's when the hacking started well let's see that's the year after the cardinals won the world series in 2012 the cardinals lost the nlcs in seven games the next year they lost the world series so that would have been what they were coming off in the year where Bloomberg wrote the article about the Astros getting all the press. It's like, you got to be okay with your own product, man. Your team is like the class of baseball at the moment. But it's also worth knowing too that the Cardinals were not the only team that was irritated by the Astros at this time. Remember that, that Astros cover story, I think interrupted, irritated a lot of people because they're like,

why are they getting this cover story when they haven't won anything? I think that was probably Correa's idea. And this has not to justify not only what he's, I think that all those people were wrong. I think the Astros are starting to prove why they were wrong, but I think that was not an uncommon thing at the time for it to be like, why are people assuming that the Astros are these geniuses? They haven't done anything.

And also, in large part, thanks to the work of, you could say, one Chris Correa, the public also got to see what the Astros were doing. It was so annoying. Like making these ridiculous off-the-wall trade proposals, which is just delightful to know. I guess as far

as the whole non-disclosure agreements and that sort of thing, where you have so many analysts who are changing teams, it makes me feel like the Indians must have security clearance where one guy might be able to see the full picture, whereas everyone else has just everything is redacted in their database. Because I mean, they're everywhere. And I can't imagine in the articles about talking about the MLB's ruling coming up soon, which I guess were published yesterday and the day before it talked about some of the things like the health records that Correa hacked into or seeing where

the Astros were, were ranking players. But at some point, I feel like you look at that and you come away and I don't know if you're Chris Correa and the people with the Cardinals he was talking to. come away and I don't know if you're Chris Correa and the people with the Cardinals he was talking to I don't know if you come away feeling like you've gained useful information or just feeling like you've gained information kind of like stalking an ex-girlfriend's Facebook page where you just kind of get hooked on it even though you know it's unhealthy but like the the amount of times that he went back to it even though the I think it seems to me there would have been so little to gain like if you know the Astros' exact draft strategy, how much is that going to help you as one of the 29 other teams in baseball?

It just feels like there was so little to gain, and clearly, very clearly, so much to lose for Correa, and also for, to a considerably lesser extent, I'd say, his employer. Yeah, and I think that speaks to again the personal idea aspect of this and how if the i don't think i by time 23 or 24 korea had to think okay i'm not getting anything good here like i'm not but it just feels right your your facebook analogy is not a bad one because that kind of idea of i can just i know i can get in there and they don't has to be almost its own high. Cause you're right. The idea that, and not to say, and to me, this is why the punishment probably should

have been worse because in this particular case, Correa may have not gotten a lot of incredible advantage on this, but he certainly could have. And I think, I think that is why you've got to hit him so hard. But when you get into the psychology of what he was thinking, you're right. By like the 24th or 25th time, like, oh, wow, they've got their 13th ranked left-handed high school pitcher, and we've got that guy 15. Like, what are we going to do? And we've got to switch everything around here. And I think that speaks to why the weird rivalry between those front offices.

And frankly, how kind of weirdly cultish, cultish the Cardinals front office had become and kind of, kind of cliquish. I think that there was, you know, remember a lot of this had come out of the age of La Russa and remember La Russa and Lou now had famously fought and famously battled. And there were all these kind of quiet,

these, these really kind of backbiting battles in the Cardinals' front office involved once Louisa was gone, who was going to take this role? And remember, all of these people were former Cardinals employees. This was not like going to a random team. There was a personal aspect to it

and rivalries that had been built and been fighting long before Luna had moved to the Astros in the first place. So I think that that spoke to this as well. Yeah. And it also seems like in addition to the vendendetta aspect, maybe there was kind of a cover your ass element to what he was doing in that I could see how this could really serve an individual from a personal advancement perspective, even if it didn't really benefit

his team all that much. If you can go into another team's database and essentially just look at their ideas board and pick out the best ones, that's like taking the best ideas generated by a front office of, I don't know, a dozen people or more. And you can kind of claim them as your own. to draft a certain player, even just knowing that one other competent team thinks the same way you do, or at least, you know, like they don't, he was looking at medical records and that sort of thing just to see, well, they don't know about some horrific injury that I missed, or, you know, they don't have him in the fourth round when I think he's a first rounder, that kind of thing just seems like just to get not a consensus, but at least be able to check your own opinion against some other smart team's opinion would kind of prevent you from making any indefensible decision or just being so wildly off on something that you would lose your job because of it as a result. Of course, he lost his job because of this as a result anyway, but I could see the appeal of that.

Sometimes I'll write an article and I'll think, is this crazy? Am I being stupid here? Am I missing something? If I could look into some other smart writer's draft who was working on the same article I was and see, did I miss some great argument here? Am I completely off here? Or does some other smart person think the same way I do? I could understand the temptation, I suppose, of doing that. Yeah, the temptation would be powerful. And I think that what there is to be gained materially is quite slim. But like you, if I'm writing an article or going through the process,

and you do your research to make sure you're not going to write something completely stupid but then if you feel like you're onto something and then you see some other good writer who's already said something similar or if not that then if you get feedback from that writer after the fact that's positive then it feels it just feels good to know that you're not out there i guess on an island with your ideas i don't know to what degree chris correa ever had a lack of faith in his own ideas but i guess maybe when you're doing this and it's so easy it's probably easy to feel like like you're untraceable and that no one's ever going to know it's probably no different from like torrenting at that point you can just google how to torrent and then you torrent and you're probably not going to get a

note from comcast but you might but you're probably not and you're not going to even think about it until you do and you think what am i going to do about this i don't have internet anymore or you know a life for two years four years yeah that could even hurt them potentially because like if you have some off the wall opinion that's actually good and you read some other person's opinion and they're wrong and you let that influence you. It's like, I don't know, hurting in political polls or something, where everyone kind of gravitates toward the center so as not to look crazy, but that can end up making everyone worse.

So I could see how it could come back to bite you, too. Okay, a hypothetical for both of you. Yeah. Okay, let's say it's the Cardinals also, and let's say this is this summer. This hacking incident never happened. Chris Gray is working with the Cardinals also and let's say this is this summer. This hacking incident never happened. Chris Gray is working with the Cardinals this summer and the Cardinals in July make a trade with the Padres and the Padres

send whoever player to the Cardinals for whoever player going back and then Chris Gray is like, oh, I know the Padres passwords. I'm just going to hack into the Padres database and then while Chris Gray is hacking he finds out, oh, the Padres didn't reveal all of the medical information for the player that they traded us what do you do how can you play sort of like

who gets to blackmail whom in that circumstance i guess you leak it to deadspin yeah yes yes that's exactly what you do yes and you thereby you implicate will leach for founding deadspin yeah leave me out of this i i did not get Deadspin. Yeah, leave me out of this. I did not get owned by Ted Cruz, people. Leave me out of this. I've been gone for eight years. How would you guys have gone about determining the penalty if this was in your court? Because we're all, I think, relatively quantitatively minded people.

And we'd want to try to come up with some sort of formula to mete out justice fairly here. And I don't know how to do that because there's no real precedent for this. And we have kind of draft pick values that we could point to and say, well, you add this number of draft picks, I guess that's how much they were hurt, but it's really hard to quantify that. And maybe that explains the Goldilocks range of responses to this punishment. I've seen people say it's too light. I've seen people say it's too harsh. I've seen people say it's just right. So I don't know. How would you have gone about determining the proper penalty? I mean, I really, I feel like they really, I missed this beginning, but I really feel

like they did the most as much as they could short of saying, okay, also we're taking away whatever your first round pick happens to be in 2018. And to me, that's a dangerous thing because that pick is, could move so many places by so many other people that the, I think one of the reasons they didn't do that was because they don't actually know what that punishment will be if they hammer it right now.

And so, and, and you also can't say, well, in a year, we're going to decide whether to punish you some more. I feel like that's, that's another thing that doesn't work. i don't know i mean like the short of

as we said it's hard to come up with something different than this and i i say this that as someone i believe it's light i just i don't know what other format for never minding the precedent to me if there's anything alarming about this it's that this may be actually the maximum you can punish a front office for anything. And maybe we can argue this is the worst thing that a front office can do or things that are worse. But this seems like within the constructs of the CBA and within the constructs of the way this works, this actually feels if you are someone like the Cardinals and you know this is coming and therefore you have time to prepare for it and you can spend your national money and you can you can get rid of your and go ahead and give up your first round pick I just don't know what more they could have done even though I suspect they probably they and in Houston would have liked them to have suffered more I think for me there are there are two options one I think that Major League Baseball could send all

further communications to the St. Louis Cardinals organization exclusively in Chinese, and then they could just try to figure out what they're supposed to be doing, according to Major League Baseball, by interpreting Chinese. We're failing that. I think in this case, because the penalty was just meted out well after the Dexter Fowler signing, there's nothing you can do, there's not a lot you can do to penalize the Cardinals immediately. As Will mentioned earlier, it seems like the maximum they could have been fined was $2 million. And the best immediate penalty is money. And the Cardinals have to pay that within 30 days. But of course, we all know that $2 million to a major league baseball organization means very little. So I like the draft pick idea because

the only alternative to that that I see is taking them out of the international signing pool for a window or two. And that's even more like slanting the penalty toward the future because none of those players are going to become prospects for even more years than a lot of the people that you were talking about drafting. So I think it does have to be picks. I think that because of the penalty, I don't know how recently it was come up with. We only know how recently it was meted out. And that was today. I think that you leave the picks, like picks after 50, they just aren't worth very much.

Because I think based on the analysis that we've seen most recently, picks even after like 25 or 30 are barely worth anything. And this is also based on historical analysis of draft picks where we've only had the slotting system for the last few years, whereas before people would slip in the draft because they were going to be prohibitively expensive. And that would only skew the numbers to look like the draft is less extreme and top heavy than it really is so i think that you you have to take two or three of the highest picks available that maybe you spread that out between years so it's really not meaningfully different from the penalty that the cardinals absorbed except instead of losing maybe the 75th pick this year they lose their earliest pick next year and

maybe you think well we'll also take a pick from the year after that because the first pick this year wasn't until 56 I think that you won't really get an organization's attention until you're touching one of those first rounders and thanks to Dexter Fowler that Cardinals just didn't even give baseball that option and I think that's the thing that really doesn't sit well with me is that the Cardinals ultimately didn't lose a first round pick they barely lost a second round pick for doing this. And and that just historically means so, so little. Yeah. OK, so lastly, I think fandom is a pretty irrational act.

And yet a lot of us participate in it and we feel better about ourselves. If our team wins, we feel like we've accomplished something, even though we really had nothing to do with it. Like we've accomplished something even though we really had nothing to do with it. So, Will, do you feel any worse about yourself or about the Cardinals because of all these revelations and this transgression? Like has it become part of your psyche that you feel shame because they did something bad whereas you would feel pride if they did something good? bad whereas you would feel pride if they did something good uh no not really uh because a fandom is such an uh as you said such an irrational act that i mean it's possible the cardinals could go out with jerseys that say will leach is a horrible person i hate everything about him on the back and i would still root for them to win the world series so that so there's there's there's no actual um but i would say that for me i I tend to, my general thought, the thing that really frustrated me about this is, you know, sports teams are really a, they're not legally a public trust.

But in 30 years, the people that own the St. Louis Cardinals, the people that run the St. Louis Cardinals, the people that play for the St. Louis Cardinals, they're all going to be gone. The stadium might be gone, but the fans that are there watching them, they're going to still be there in 30 years. And the thing that angered me about this, not just Correa, but really Moseley Locken, kind of what I would argue is arrogance of the Cardinals organization, even I think with this,

because I think there is an aspect of, well, no one is saying this, everyone's appropriately contrite, but I guarantee you there are people in the Cardinals organization that are like, we made this easier for ourselves. There's just no question that I'm sure that's a mindset. The thing that frustrates me about this happening, and then even some of the other stuff, I think, not to get overtly political on this, but I thought the way that some of the Cardinals

organization handled when there were those Black Lives protesters and Hands Up, Don't Shoot protesters outside of the playoff game a couple of years ago. And to me, that would have been a time for the team to make a strong statement about safety to individuals outside the stadium that they did not, that I think would have been very helpful for them to do. To me, what's frustrating, it doesn't make me feel bad about my team, because my team is not the people that play for the team or the people that work for the team or the people that own the team. It's the team. It's the same way that there is no connection between the 1982 Cardinals, the team that made me fall in love with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the 2017 Cardinals, other than to unfortunately quote Jimmy Fallon in Fever Pitch,

me and my father and my friends and the people that have loved the Cardinals all that time. That's the only connection there. So for me, what frustrates me and what makes me angry at them that they would hurt something that I care about and treat it so cavalierly and treat it as if it is something like their personal play thing, because it's not.

It's something that's going to, there are people that are involved with the Cardinals that will be taking their children to Cardinals games and going to Cardinals games and caring and reading every single story about cardinals games and going on twitter and arguing with people about whether this punishment was fair or not about cardinals games these people are going to care about the cardinals forever just like every fan cares about their team forever so to see them do this so kind of casually to be like well we can get away with it because we're geniuses we're awesome like the team doesn't

actually belong to you. And I think that that's what made me most angry about it. All right. You can find Will Leach writing about sports and movies and the general unraveling of society at Sports on Earth and the New Republic and many other places. And you can find it all collected in his newsletter, which is linked on his Twitter, which he grudgingly maintains at William F. Leach. Will, thanks for coming on. Of course.

An honor. Thanks, guys. Thank you. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Five listeners who have already pledged their support include Colin Ray, Chris Barncard, Danny V, Brenda Block Young, and Jeremy Reynolds. Thank 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 if you're looking for something else to listen to. Michael Bauman and I interviewed Mariners GM Jerry DiPoto on the Ringer MLB show this week. Jeff and I talked a couple weeks ago about his trade activity, and Michael and I asked him about it. So he told us how and why he makes so many trades and what the strategy behind them is. He was really frank and interesting.

So you can find that on the Ringer MLB Show feed. You can contact me and Jeff. We'll be doing an email show next, so send us emails at podcast at fangraphs.com or by messaging us through Patreon, and we will talk to you then. Let the punishment in the ground Let the punishment in the ground We'll talk to you then.

Hello, Jeff. How are you? I'm doing okay. I just realized your name is Itch in it. I haven't thought about that before. Le Itch. It's French for the itch. You name a variation on my last name that could be mocked.

I can tell you the first 12 years of my life. Well, kudos to them because I'm 31 and I just noticed this now. They saw my name every day. It was on the back of my underwear and they were pulling it back over my head. Lech. Was that a big one? It was more just leech you suck, which in retrospect may not have actually been a pun. They may have

just been saying that and not even realized that I was in fact a sucking parasite. So did anyone ever describe you as particularly lecherous? Lecherous? Lecherous? Yeah. Is this working? This isn't working. Forget it. It's hard to call anyone with that big of braces okay so you don't have the commanding sexual desire i mean not then and not now now it's a

different story yeah now oh howdy what's up um anyway jeff may i just tell you before we get started i'm i'm having a blast listening to you on the show. You're already, I'm a huge fan. So good work, man. Well, thank you very much. I'm having a blast listening to you on the show right now. And we're not even recording. We're not? Well, screw this. Actually, there is a blinking red light. Yeah. I always turn it on just in case anyone says something funny.

Well, good news. I think the last time I was on, I was in a hotel and I put a sign on the door that said, do not disturb. And literally just the lady just came in anyway. They always do that. It's just like, I'm just happy I was podcasting. I was doing, like seven years ago,

I was doing some radio hit for Fox Sports New Mexico. I had this thing I did every Thursday for God knows what reason. And this morning I happened to be in a hotel down in like Bend, Oregon. And I put a sign on the door. I was like, hey, the occupied don't come in. I had ordered breakfast to come in at like 830 in the morning. And I had my radio hit at eight o'clock in the morning. It would only take about 10 or 50 minutes. So I thought, hey, no big problem. So I kind of roll out of bed and throw in a bathrobe and start doing my radio hit and the door opens and breakfast and breakfast comes in at 802 and i'm i'm in an untied bathrobe in the room on live radio and uh so i had to i

clearly no one's ever allowed to swear on the radio or exactly explain what the circumstances were but i had to hustle into the hallway where i realized i was then doing a live radio broadcast basically naked in a hotel hallway this is my favorite Penthouse Forum story. Breakfast is good, though. Those are the Penthouse Forum stories I want to hear. It's all just about great omelets.