Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1448: The 21-Soto Salute

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the latest on the Astros and the benefits and limitations of front-office diversity, Rob Manfred’s new comments about the baseball, Kris Bryant’s grievance against the Cubs, umpire Rob Drake’s apology for a bad tweet, and Yu Darvish’s good tweets, then answer listener emails about Juan Soto’s age and clubhouse […]

I could just drive you on away Decorated just like yesterday Yesterday is the day of the week There were innocents portrayed as the meek But in my hours of desperation Would I trample on over everyone? No, I sound alarms and ring in the bells So just sound alarms and ring in the bells

Hello and welcome to episode 1448 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm better physically. Not sure if I'm better in spirit, but some things have improved since last week. You know, that's all we can really ask for is marginal progress, forward improvement, and our march toward death. I don't know. I'm doing great death comment just just red meat for our listeners they love it mortality that's why they come to us yeah man sure as it's been quite a week

been quite a week it is one of those weeks that when you sit down and you think about all the things that have transpired you think to yourself how has it only been one week? How could all the things possibly fit into the span of just one week? It seems impossible. And yet here we are. Yeah. So you are writing or have written about the Astro situation? I am writing. I am in process. By the time this posts, hopefully I will be done. I have appreciated very much your and Sam's and other people's commentary about this, which I thought has been quite insightful and unequivocal in a way that's important. So I appreciate that, pal. That's a good thing to do. The piece will up so i feel hopefully as i said by the

time this post so i feel comfortable talking about it i just keep returning to the fact that like these women were just there doing their jobs you know they're they're trying to do their work and conversations on domestic violence and sport and how domestic violence and intimate partner violence interacts with baseball and fame and the league taking a role in trying to met out discipline, but also rehabilitation when it comes to this stuff. That's all very complicated and we are still grasping at the right solutions for it and the way to properly center taking care of victims in that conversation and exhibiting the proper amount of care and kindness to survivors and trying to help perpetrators to embrace more productive and healthy means a conflict resolution. And all of that is very, very

complicated. But we just want to do our work. You know, that part's like really simple. Yeah. We just want to do good work with people who respect us and embrace a culture and an environment that allows all kinds of different people from all kinds of different backgrounds to do good baseball work because that's what we're here to do and that's what we want to be judged by and on. And so it is like especially upsetting and insulting that in the course of trying to do that, that these women would face this kind of circumstance. It is upsetting that a senior person who granted is now suffering consequences, although other presumably senior people in the Astros organization who had a hand in smearing Stephanie's very good reporting have not yet

seemed to suffer consequence apart from what we would assume would be public shame, although a lot of the individuals involved seem kind of shame-proof in a way that is really distressing. But they're just trying to do their work, and part of that work is being able to properly identify and diagnose and then render the scene and circumstance they see in front of them. That's what reporting is, right, is being able to tell those stories. And so setting aside the fact that women deal with the bad behavior of men from the time they are literal children, and so we have some experience with this, reporters have experience faithfully rendering those scenes because that's their jobs. And so it's just incredibly disheartening that they would both in the moment and afterward have their ability to do that, not only as like women in the world, but as professional and credentialed and good reporters called into question is incredibly upsetting. And then it's upsetting because the project of making room for people with gender identities that are not men's is this massive project.

And we cannot do it without the help of men. Like we are often insufficiently senior. We don't have hiring authority. We, I mean, we sometimes do, but a lot of times we don't. And so it is also distressing in that way because the behavior of this organization, which we tout as one of the savvier organizations in baseball, whose model is being replicated and copied all across the league, does not seem equal to that project. The way that they talk about this stuff, whether it's domestic violence, this particular incident,

how we ought to believe and adapt to the presence of women, they do not seem equal to that. And that is incredibly disappointing because baseball is a copycat business and parts of this are going to get copied. And I don't mean to say that everyone who works for the Astros is like Brandon Taubman. And I don't mean to say that Brandon Taubmans don't exist in other baseball organizations because we know they do. But this has a particularly Astros flair to it in a way that is just a bummer. And it's been, I mean, I shared this with you off air, like writing about this has been

really hard and I have struggled to do it and I'm still not done. Yeah. And so it's just a real bummer because like I would like my work this week to be the World Series and it's this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would like to be focusing entirely on the games. These are two really entertaining teams.

I'm sort of sorry for them that they're not front and center. That's maybe not the main concern, but it would be nice if their play were just rewarded by our enthusiasm and just getting into the series. I'm enjoying the series on some level, but it's hard to enjoy it on an undistracted level with all of this going on. And it doesn't help when Astro's people

keep getting in front of the microphone or releasing press releases and just digging deeper and deeper and deeper every single time they open their mouths, which is just incredible i mean i know that this organization is not really used to apologizing i think and to be fair like they haven't had to apologize all that often for their baseball behavior because usually the things that they've gotten criticized for on the field they've turned out to be right about, or at least they benefited

from the tactics that people were saying, oh, well, you're making your players do the shift, and you're tanking, and you're not signing Brady Aiken when he has an elbow irregularity, and you're stealing signs, or whatever it is, all those complaints, tandem starters, all the unusual stuff that the Astros have done, letting scouts go, reorganizing their player development department, all of that, they've kind of been vindicated, at least in terms of the organization wins a lot of games and they won a World Series and they're back in a second one. So all that stuff about how this will never work, that they've kind of been proven right about.

And so I wonder if they just thought, well, we're right about everything. And whenever anyone criticizes us, it's because they're too short-sighted to see what we see. We're the almighty Astros. We know where the winds are and we will find them even if it means trading for Roberto Osuna, which was just not even a necessary move on a baseball level but they just like couldn't help themselves because it was like surplus value we've got to go get it no matter what and these players it doesn't matter what they've done it just matters what their projections are and what their salaries are so they're now in the unusual position of actually being held with

their feet to the fire to some extent and having to acknowledge that they did something wrong but they're so unpracticed at that and maybe don't even care that much on a deep level that it just comes off as completely mishandled and insincere and inadequate in every way yeah i i think think the only person, the only public-facing member of the organization that sits in management who's handled himself with any kind of moral, seeming moral clarity in this has been AJ Hinch, who apologized very quickly for a thing that he, that's not, I mean, it's his business because he's a member of the organization and he clearly felt that responsibility, but you know, this wasn't,

he didn't do it. And it probably should have been an indication to the rest of his org that he was swift in his, in his public apology and clearly was upset that this was happening in his clubhouse. So yeah, it's just, So yeah, it's a bummer. I mean, I think that others have pointed out rightly, and I know you and Sam have talked about this too, I think when you start to view human beings as assets and you remove yourself, you establish that important and meaningful distance between them as people, I think it's really easy to excuse and engage in all kinds of bad behavior. And so I think that I hope that this will be an opportunity for them to think about that. But based on what their senior leadership was saying literally yesterday,

yeah, I am not confident in that. And so I think it's probably now the responsibility of Major League Baseball to say that, you know, while Taubman's removal was necessary, it is not sufficient for us to move forward with any kind of confidence that that organization is equal to the challenges that it has ahead of it and that it seems to be creating all on its own. Yeah, right. And you made the point on Twitter that it's not just about hiring more women or having a more demographically diverse front office, although that would help certainly, probably. Like if you had a woman as your AGM instead of Brandon Taubman, she probably wouldn't be yelling at the female reporters about the trade for Roberto Osuna. So that's like a very simple example of how it might help. But it might help in a broader sense in that the organizational response to that news,

which clearly it sounds like a lot of people in that organization were privy to that statement that they put out an hour after Stephanie's report came out. And evidently, no one or no one senior enough to actually stop it from happening said, this is not ideal. This is not the way that we should respond to this. So I don't know how many women were involved in reviewing that statement, but Evan Drellick reported that the person primarily responsible was actually the senior vice president of marketing and communications,

Anita Sagal, I believe is how her last name is pronounced. So it was not an all-male effort. And the Astros, even in baseball operations, don't have like an all-male front office. They certainly do have women in front office roles in scouting, in analytics, but I guess the top dogs are not women in that front office and in most front offices. And maybe that makes a difference, but it's not a panacea. As you were saying, it's not just we'll hit this quota and then all the problems will go away. Yeah. I think that it's really important to make this everyone's problem. It needs to be everybody's problem because, I mean, otherwise you are, as I said on Twitter, like you're writing a job description that is probably impossible to fulfill and, you know. Come be our moral conscience as well as. Right. And, you know, come be our moral conscience as well as, you know, the women who go to work in baseball. You know, I was texting with some women I know who work in front offices as this was going down. And, you know, they just want to do baseball stuff. And they take seriously the responsibility to bring people with them and to mentor other members of marginalized, you know, historically marginalized within baseball groups.

So it's not that they want to shift the responsibility off themselves entirely either, but they need help and they want help. And it needs to come from senior people and it needs to be sincere and it needs to be viewed as an organizational imperative. It can't be something you do when you have time. It can't be something you do when you've gotten, you know, about a bad PR. It needs to be something that you view as instrumental to putting a good baseball team on the field, right? That's the thing. It's like there are so many talented people who are not white dudes who can contribute to the project of winning baseball games and love baseball and want to

help do that. And that's what they get into the game to do. And they want to help bring people along with them and keep the door open behind them, but they can't do it by themselves. and keep the door open behind them, but they can't do it by themselves. And I won't say this like I have special insight into the way that the women who work for the Astros feel because I don't, and I'm not trying to assert that, but that's been the other thing that I've just been thinking about this whole week is like, how must it feel to be a woman who works in that org and to see this stuff you know and how disheartening that must be and how far you must think you still have to go so i don't know we don't have to belabor the point and i think we you know it's important that we talk about it but it is not the only story we have this week but um we could talk about many more terrible stories if

we wanted to but you know since since the astros keep making a point of putting it out there we'll talk about it as long as they give us that special little gift this world series week and i think it is just you know jeff luna was right about one thing for sure yesterday, which is they need to do better. And we all do. And so I hope that people who care about this in a sincere way will use it as motivation to continue in earnest trying to improve the way that we handle domestic violence, the way that we talk about it, the way that we view it in terms of it being a

human and moral failing and not something that makes a player a desirable trade ship. And I hope that the way that we talk about and think about and construct baseball as a workplace, because that's what it is, even though it is a really freaking weird one. It is the most bizarre workplace, but it is one, and it means that it is a place where everyone should be treated with respect, and that's our project. And we should soldier on with it, even if one of the most important franchises in baseball is sort of dubious in their own credentials in that respect.

Yeah, our pal Emma Batchelori wrote something for Sports Illustrated on Friday just about all of these stories that are swirling around baseball at the same time while the World Series is going on. And so at Rob Manford's press conference, I guess it was before game two, he was asked about, in order, and I'm reading from Emma's article here, MLB's investigation into Brandon Taubman's outburst toward female reporters after the SES, MLB's level of concern about the broader culture around the incident, the research indicating that the baseball has been different in the postseason, Tyler Skaggs' death, which is at the center of an ongoing criminal investigation with reports that he received opioids from the team's director of communications, MLB's general approach to players' opioid use, and the news that baseball is interested in a serious realignment of the minor leagues that would mean the elimination of several teams. And as Emma mentioned, they didn't even get to ask him about umpire rob drake's tweet about uh starting a civil war which i guess that news broke during that press conference and he wasn't asked about it so that was just another one added to the mix this week in a way rob drake's apology was far better than yeah the astros like rob drake for we didn't talk about this on the show So for anyone who missed this

Rob Drake tweeted And then quickly deleted That he was planning to buy an assault rifle Quote because if you Impeach my president this way you will have Another civil war Hashtag MAGA 2020 And he very soon

Removed that tweet But there was kind of like a tepid response from the umpires association sort of vaguely expressing disapproval and then rob drake did eventually release his own apology which was like a pretty good apology as these things go he said i want to personally apologize to everyone that my words made them feel less safe. I especially want to apologize to every person who has been affected by gun violence in our country. I also acknowledge and apologize for the controversy

this has brought to Major League Baseball, my fellow umpires, and my family. I never intended to diminish the threat of violence from assault weapons or violence of any kind. I'm going to learn from this. Once I read what I had tweeted, I realized the violence in those words and have since deleted it. I know that I cannot unsay the words, but please accept my sincerest apologies. And, you know, I don't know if a guy goes from birtherism tweets and

Benghazi tweets and gonna start a civil war if you impeach the president tweets to actual contrition and like changing his views about things overnight but at least the apology said that he was trying to and owned up to what was bad about that tweet which the astros should maybe get advice from whoever was advising rob drake on his pr because uh that was a more convincing response than theirs was. Yeah, there was at least no if anyone was offended. Right. Which we can just strike from. Oh, my stars.

Yeah, that one deserves to be retired. Yep. And yeah, I should mention also Manfred's response to the postseason ball thing was more sort of dissembling. Yeah. There is a report that MLB's study, they've reconvened this committee of scientists that put out a report last year that said that the increase in home run rate was mostly about the reduced drag of the ball. But they weren't able to pinpoint what about the ball was causing that reduced drag. the ball, but they weren't able to pinpoint what about the ball was causing that reduced drag. So they have reconvened that committee, and originally they were supposed to produce a report that would come out after the World Series, and then Manfred said he would evaluate the findings and maybe

decide to make some changes at that point. Lately, it has been reported that that report won't actually come out after the World Series, that it's been delayed because of all of this new information and new scrutiny about the postseason ball. So now it's expected to maybe come out at some point over the winter or heading into spring training or something, which means that maybe there won't be enough time to change anything in time for 2020 if they haven't changed something already. But Manfred in this press conference said, we try to be really disciplined about this. I think analysis based on large sample sizes, meaning season-long samples, is really the most reliable research. We're going to have that report from the scientists, just Statistics 101, the analysis that goes on here.

Remember, you're backing into a drag number, right? And when you have a large sample, variables like weather, who's pitching, that all washes out in a very large sample. When you start picking, you know, three days in the postseason where the weather's different, you've got the best pitching, it becomes less reliable. I can tell you one thing for absolute certain, just like every other year, the balls that we used in this postseason were selected from lots that were used during the regular season. There was no difference in those baseballs. And the way that he just dismissed Rob Arthur's research, I assume this is intended to refer to Rob's research as based on three days, which it wasn't. It was based on more days than that. But also, it just doesn't take that many days to see the difference.

And for him to sort of muddy the waters by just talking about the weather and the pitching being different, it is. And Rob accounted for that, but that has no effect on the drag of the ball. It doesn't matter who's throwing the ball or what the temperature is. The drag of the ball is the same. So I get that some analyses, you'd have to take that into account. And Rob did, but the actual issue that he was identifying really has nothing to do with that. So it just seems like he's kind of casting aspersions on Rob's research for no particular reason other than just, I guess, to distract people from what Rob wrote.

other than just, I guess, to distract people from what Rob wrote. Yeah, Rob was quick to point out that, you know, the sample size here is not particularly small. He's looking, you know, in addition to all the things you just said where he's actually accounting for weather and offensive environment of these teams, like their season-long offensive production and who's throwing. He's looking at 3,500 fastballs thrown thrown in October this is not a particularly small sample and I think someone had responded to Rob on Twitter suggesting perhaps that the the commissioner was referring to Meredith Will's work and calling that a small sample because of the relatively small number

of balls that she was able to physically analyze. And he made the excellent point that if that is indeed what they were referring to, though I suspect that Rob's work was the primary target here, that that just would suggest that baseball should make available additional relevant baseballs for analysis. Or at least release the results of what they're doing with it. for analysis. Or at least release the results of what they're doing with it. Right. They don't get to close off access and then complain about the lack of adequate evidence.

That's just, I mean, they do get to because apparently we live in a society with very little shame left at all, but they shouldn't be able to. We ought not to let them off the hook for that. So yeah, I wonder if perhaps we would all benefit from that panel giving a bit of instruction to the people who craft statements for baseball about actual statistics 101 yeah right i'm feeling very sassy today ben sent everybody back to school yeah oh boy anyway it's just a confluence of all these stories and it all just kind of melds with things that we're already reading in the news that we don't want to come to baseball but they're in baseball so there's no avoiding it speaking of which rob manfred was uh at the

white house watching trump take off in his helicopter. Oh, good grief. Maybe at game five. So this will be fun. Yeah, additional incentive for sweep. I'm just going to say that. I'm just saying it because you know what? I'm saying it. And also I will say the following, which is that I think it's very cool that the Nationals,

you know, there's been a fair amount of hand-wringing about who might be throwing out some of the first pitches here. There's been concern about that. One wonders why. What could, why would one wonder? The Nationals have decided that if there is a game five, that they're going to have Jose Andres throw out the first pitch, and that's wonderful.

He does really terrific work providing meals to folks in disaster zones all over the world, including in Puerto Rico. So that's a nice story because he's just a stand-up guy doing good work in the world. So that's cool. It's Juan Soto's birthday. Yes, it is. So we can finally stop talking about that. I know we won't.

about that i know we won't i do i do like i don't say this to in any way suggest that juan soto would violate the law and drink before he was 21 i'm not saying that at all but i do i i find something very charming about us maintaining the fiction that juan soto wouldn't be served in any bar he wanted in dcC. Right. That's lovely. That's so nice of us. Yeah. We're going to answer some emails, and we did get an email about that, so I will answer that now.

It's from Jimmy, our Patreon supporter, who said, I had a discussion today with a friend about players who aren't yet 21 and what happens during series win celebrations currently relevant with Juan Soto. I haven't tripped over any footage or articles that explain what might happen here. I can imagine the other players would want to particularly mob him because he is not 21, but the team may not want proof that they are providing alcohol to a minor. Any thoughts? So this obviously has come up because the Nationals have had a whole lot of champagne celebrations lately, and Soto has been

20 for all of them. And evidently, he has been drinking sparkling white grape juice. And there are pictures of him and videos of him holding it and spraying it in the clubhouse. So at least on the surface, he has been abiding by the law of the land. Now, what happens when the clubhouse is closed? I don't know. And I'm going to guess that Juan Soto has had an alcoholic beverage in his life and possibly within the last month, but they are at least keeping up appearances and not inviting any criticism there. And Sam, in response to this question, said that when Bryce Harper was 19, he sprayed a beer, but was himself sprayed by apple cider. So they're trying to walk the line here. But you know, everyone knows that this is not something that like the cops are going to bust in and and prosecute anyone

based on this probably whatever happens no and you know having to navigate this stuff is not new to to baseball organizations not just for reasons of of some players being under age although i will point out that like the legal drinking age in the Dominican Republic is 18. So, you know, but, you know, there are players who who abstain from drinking for all kinds of reasons. And so, you know, sometimes we've heard instances in the past where clubhouses that are home to say recovering alcoholics will opt to go in a non-alcoholic direction for their post game celebration so that, you so that their players don't feel like they're in an odd spot. So teams have experience in negotiating that dynamic for a whole host of reasons. And I'm sure that they walk the line just fine and now they have one less reason to worry about it. Yeah.

I guess it's not an ideal time to have your 21st birthday, the day of Game 3 of the World Series. I mean, it's nice, obviously, if it's nice to be playing and starring in a World Series on your 21st birthday. That sounds pretty good. Yeah. But in terms of celebrations, it's the first day of back-to-back-to-back World Series games. You probably cannot get yourself into a state that you might otherwise would on your 21st birthday. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but I think he may be grateful in

the long run that he was not able to celebrate in that way on that night. Then again, if the Nationals pull off this victory, then he will have plenty of time to celebrate and he will be 21 and he can just go with a full bacchanal if he wants to oh yeah hopefully he makes although i don't know that given the legal drinking age in the dr i wonder how amped he really is over the whole the whole thing right he's had his moment he's just having to deal with our particular you know odd drinking rules here in the states so maybe it's maybe it's uh not really a big deal to him at all who's to say but it is his birthday that's exciting no matter what or like also he's won soto he's a star baseball player and a world series hero postseason hero now is he really that excited

about the fact that he can legally drink a beer like he's got other stuff going on in his life like a lot of people when they turn 21 they don't have that much going on they're just in school and going about their day and now they can get into a bar without having a fake id or something that's like a big day for them yeah but for him he's got a pretty full life i i don't know i'm not sure that this is like something that he's been marking off on his calendar for months and months because like his life's uh pretty exciting whether or not he is legally allowed to drink alcohol in this country yeah i think i think juan's got it pretty good yeah speaking of somewhat disturbing stories that were going on this week, I missed one. Although this one was just like almost, I can't believe that this is a story this week of all weeks. But the Chris Bryant grievance against the Cubs for not promoting him to the majors on opening day in 2015, was it, was just heard this week like they just heard that case which i don't

even know how that's possible i don't know how it could have taken four years to come before an arbitrator but it did and so now the arbitrator heard arguments and now months more will go by while the arbitrator deliberates but boy boy, talk about the wheels of justice spinning slowly here, like four years to even hear the grievance. So anyway, I mean, I assumed that it had just gone away at some point in the interim, like we hadn't heard about it for years. So I assumed it had just been dismissed or settled or it would never become public. But yeah, evidently it just took years and years for this to work its way in front of an arbitrator. And I don't know how good the chances are that he will win, but it seems like there's a realistic chance just because of how blatant that instance was of the Cubs just manipulating his service time and saying that he

was working on defense and then of course he came up and was a star right away and rookie of the year and all the rest but that one was like particularly blatant and so they may be able to to prove a case and maybe get him an extra year of service time or something which would be a milestone if that happened, because that could affect teams doing this in the future. I mean, maybe this is something that the next CBA will address anyway. I don't know. But that would be pretty significant if it were to happen, even though by that point,

it will have been like five years after it actually happened. So it was, I mean, like, I think if we, as we recall, part of what was really galling about all of this, just like the most, it was literally one day, right? It was one day. He was one day short. I forget. Yeah. Of a year. Right.

They left him down for, what, two weeks or something at the start of the season. So I don't remember exactly where it ended up. But, yeah, it was very close and precisely calculated. Right. And so it appeared to be especially galling. And this would make him, if they were to award him that service time, he would be a free agent after 2020 as opposed to 2021. incredible sort of consequences for the way the teams approach this stuff and establish a precedent for this kind of manipulation not standing but i don't know hopefully by the time the arbitrator's decision is coming around i'll feel more optimistic as a human person i don't feel optimistic as a human person right now. Yeah. But yeah, it has potentially very significant consequences for free agency generally, for Chris Bryant in particular, for the state of the Cubs.

They're going to have a number of decisions to make around some of their young players who will be coming up as free agents right around the same time. So yeah. Yeah. agents right around the same time so yeah yeah i i always try to remind myself and i don't want to sound pollyannish about this but the fact that we're talking about all these stories this week that they've all come to light like it's bad that it's there but at least they are stories like all of these things that we're talking about have been happening like it's always been there and if anything it's been worse but now we're just like finally belatedly reckoning with all this. So like who knows what umpires were thinking about politics in the past, like, you know,

probably just as terrible things as anyone else anywhere, but they weren't tweeting about it. So we just didn't know. So now we know, or who knows what was going on with the baseball in past years, but there was no StatCast data and we couldn't verify the drag. And so we didn't know. And obviously there are terrible attitudes persisting in front offices and domestic violence incidents that went completely unpunished at all in baseball until just a few years ago. So now we talk about, well, was this suspension long enough or not?

But at least there is a suspension. At least there's some sort of discipline. And like the story that came out about the Astros this week, well, in an earlier era, there wouldn't even have been women allowed in the clubhouse. And so they wouldn't have witnessed this and wouldn't have been able to report it. And these attitudes would have just festered and no one would have been rooted out. So it's bad that it's there at all and that we're talking about it, but at least we're talking about it, which in a way is an improvement. And I always try to remember that just because we're buried in bad news constantly constantly but it's not because the world

is worse i think for the most part i think it's just that we're aware of the ways in which it's bad and always been bad so i try to keep that perspective yeah i i think that it's important to say hopefully it is obvious but i think it is important to say as we are um sort of feeling down about the fact that this is dominating the news the week of the World Series that we don't mean to suggest in any way that we shouldn't talk about this stuff. It's really important that we do because the first step toward there being accountability on it is acknowledging the issues and dissecting them and understanding their nuances and being able to sort I mean, sort of appreciate and, and, um, diagnose what is necessary to fix them. So I agree it is, it is a bummer, but it is a necessary bummer and one that, you know, we shouldn't shy away from because then, well, we'd still be having a better week than the Astros, but it wouldn't be a good week and we'd be abdicating an important responsibility too.

So it's important to talk about, even though, boy, is it a, it's a drag. Yeah. Much like the baseball, a lot of drag going around, just drags everywhere. Yeah. At least we have you Darvish. You Darvish is pure and wonderful. Yeah. And, and, you know, Juan Soto, man.

Like, what a beautiful thing. What a beautiful thing for everyone. Yeah, Soto's great. And you Darvish is so good at Twitter. I love that he has revealed his Twitter talents. So like a couple of weeks ago, he tweeted at someone to eat fried chicken until death because the person's Twitter name was fried chicken. And he said some weird things to you, Darvish. So Darvish told him to eat fried chicken for every meal until he dies, which a lot of people are probably already doing with pleasure.

But I think that there were T-shirts made of fried chicken until death and then of course he just sat and waited to get justin verlander back years yeah how long was it it was like like five more than 500 days yeah something like that verlander had tweeted about you darvish making some ungraceful Defensive play and saying like You're making pitchers look bad at defense And Yu Darvish I don't know if he Answered at the time but he just was lying In wait all that time

For Justin Verlander to embarrass Himself athletically And then he did he struck Game two when Verlander Threw a ball into his own Feet and Yu Darvish just verbatim used the same language that Justin Verlander he'd used in his original tweet and just got him back and it was so well crafted just revenge best served cold it was wonderful oh it was it was so beautiful and pure. It's just the exact right kind of pettiness.

Yeah. It's perfect. It's pitch perfect pettiness. And Verlander, he responded like, ha, ha, ha, you got me. Yeah, he took it in stride. Yeah, which is why it was perfect. Darvish's tweet was perfect. Darvish's tweet was perfect. Verlander's response was perfect.

Everybody's just responding in the way they should, that this was a comical, a completely hilarious. I'd never seen anything like it. Yeah, it was great. I don't know if you saw this one. It is an indication of where I am emotionally as as a human being that Adam Jones, in the midst of all this Astros nonsense, had retweeted. There's a Baseball for All campaign that has this great new commercial about young girls

playing baseball, baseball and not softball. And like Adam Jones retweeted it. I love this new campaign from Baseball for All that supports girls in baseball. And, you know, marketing is marketing, man. But, like, that got me. I was like, yeah, Adam Jones. Because he's, you know, famously a good dude, Adam Jones. And I'm sure he was very sincere in his tweeting of this.

But I was like, yeah, Adam Jones. It's been a week, Ben. Yeah, it really has. It's been a week. All right. Let's take a few emails, I think. So Theo in DC says, here's what you're missing about the Nationals. The Nationals are different this year because of that which we don't know how to quantify.

They have a mix of personalities, particularly the Latin American players that let them play loose and carefree. I know this is easy to dismiss, but it is the real deal. And he links us to a Tom Boswell article about this, and he says, this is the secret sauce or the sauce too complicated to quantify. So Sam and I were talking about how everything's coming up nationals in the past month or so,

or really in the past several months, and Theo in DC and also Tom Boswell in DC, essentially making the case that it's clubhouse chemistry that they have a good group of guys that it's an international group of guys Tom Boswell called them the internationals and that it has made them play in this kind of carefree brand of baseball that we all see when they hit a home run and everyone celebrates or the whole baby shark thing they have a clear chemistry or at least like a very demonstrative visible from a far chemistry and so some people are attributing their success to that and i don't want to say that it's not that i don't want to discount that it's always tricky to figure out how to. Obviously, we can't quantify it. So how to attribute a portion, some credit for the team's success to the clubhouse stuff.

And I don't know. The Boswell article made it sound almost simple, like just go trade for Gerardo Parra, and suddenly you will start winning more than any other team because Serato Parra is fun, and just go get these Latin American players, and they will give you a good clubhouse, and I'm sure it's more complicated than that. Barry Sverluga wrote something good, I thought, for the Washington Post, same paper, about this,

and it was headlined, Are the Nats Winning Because They're Dancing or Dancing Because They're Winning? Yep, and that's kind of what it always comes down to. It's the chicken and egg thing. Headlined are the Nats winning because they're dancing Or dancing because they're winning Yep and That's kind of what it always comes down to It's the chicken and egg thing Are they happy because they're winning a lot Are they winning a lot because they're happy

It's probably a little bit of both I think that they are a very talented Team that's the thing that we probably Shouldn't lose sight of like We've noted on the podcast how the Framegrass playoff odds continued to believe in the Nationals even when they were off to that extremely slow start. And obviously the playoff odds are not factoring clubhouse chemistry.

And if they can't, if they could, we would. We'd add it to the formula, but we can't do that. So just pure talent alone, they projected to be a very good team. So it's not solely chemistry, but has chemistry helped? Perhaps. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Could be.

Yeah, I'm sure that it doesn't, certainly can't hurt, you know, and I think that the Nationals in particular are a franchise that has had, you know, an up and down relationship with team chemistry, shall we say. Yeah, right. Over the last couple of years, they've had some notably toxic clubhouses where people seem to just genuinely dislike each other. And, you know, not even all of those involve Papillon, just a couple of them. So I think that it can't hurt.

And I agree that there is a benefit that we struggle to quantify. And because we struggle to quantify it, I think that we uh struggle to quantify and because we struggle to quantify it i think that we are right to point out that we don't know how big a difference that makes right we don't know how many runs that's worth and i think the clubhouses that um are home to jerks can be also home to winning teams and uh there are definitely clubhouses where everyone likes each other and the team's bad so it can go a lot of different ways but it seems like it can't hurt and if if nothing else it is increasing our enjoyment of the nationals significantly because good gravy are those dugout celebrations fun yeah there's fun yeah definitely yeah and barry writes here baseball

is so interesting in this regard it is a team sport in which every single play hinges on an individual interaction, that between pitcher and hitter. Whether Victor Robles gets along with Steven Strasburg should have no impact on whether Strasburg can execute a 3-2 curveball with two outs and two on in the bottom of the sixth. Whether Sean Doolittle goes to dinner with Trey Turner won't affect whether Turner can steal a base or Doolittle can close a game. Still, there's something

To this Strasburg for instance Is how to put this an introvert Yet late in the season reserve outfielder Gerardo Parra and fellow starting pitcher Anibal Sanchez occasionally with help from infielder Estrubel Cabrera have engulfed the Big right-hander in massive hugs at the Conclusion of his outings they are

Uncomfortable then they are a riot And yeah that has been really fun from a spectator perspective and i have no idea whether it has an impact asbury no it's like it really seems like it should matter less in baseball because just compared to basketball or hockey like you're you're just not passing to other players you're not like your styles are not really complementary or conflicting in the way that that really matters in those sports it's just you know you have a batting order and you go up and you hit and better hitters do better and it's just it's hard to know how like the fact that maybe your dugout is more relaxed or your clubhouse is having more fun

actually impacts you when you're in that batter's box or you're on the mound or you're in the field. But it could. It could. So I don't want to discount it. And I think the place where it probably has the greatest potential to really sort of move the needle is that if everyone is getting along and there seems to be, you know, the team is operating as a cohesive unit, I think that you're probably all rowing in the same direction on some like strategic stuff that might matter, right? Like if everyone gets along and there's trust, not only between teammates, but between individual players and the coaching staff, you know, you're probably able to try stuff out with greater ease, right? You can do, I don't know, like weird shifting stuff or whatever.

Or maybe the starters don't want to work in relief as much as they have if they hate everyone. Right, exactly. So I think that there are places where that kind of, you know, we're having a positive work environment allows you to work together in a way that is really important, especially when you're dealing with situations like the playoffs where you might be playing baseball a little bit differently than you would otherwise over the course of the regular season. So I could see that having an impact and mattering. Although I, you know, I don't think that you probably have to rely on good chemistry to tell max scherzer he's going to pitch more innings in the postseason the fact

that they're able to keep him off the mound at all is really spectacular perhaps that is their greatest team accomplishment so i could see that stuff mattering how many you know runs that's worth in a game i don't know but like i'm sure it matters some and like we've said it's fun to watch so that's uh that's a benefit to us yeah maybe we're guilty of paying it short shrift i don't know we tend to talk about other things more just because we can quantify and analyze those things and this is so resistant to that that we can't so there's only so much you can say about it it's like hey this team looks like it's having fun and maybe that's helping if you go beyond that into the realm of this team is winning because of this or it's beating that team because of that then i find

that to be a bridge too far or at least you have to convince me of that because again it's a really talented team without accounting for any of this and that much we do know so the other thing is that it's hard to talk about in advance because you can't really discuss it in any predictive sense because it seems like it fluctuates wildly from season to season like we were talking about with alex spear when we interviewed him at saber seminar and read his book homegrown it was like one year at the red sox clubhouse was a disaster. And the next year, everything was great and everyone was pulling together. And as you just said, that was the case with the Nationals, too.

It's been the case with like the A's in the past several years. They had the 2013 team was like all chemistry. And then soon after that, they were like having fights in the clubhouse. And then soon after that, they were like having fights in the clubhouse. Right. The 20, what, 18 Mariners were amazing in the beginning and then things fell apart. And then, you know, Mike Zanino had to like separate people in the clubhouse. So, you know, everybody has their, it turns out that human moods are not consistent moment to moment and that there's fluctuation there. Yeah.

and moods are not consistent moment to moment and that there's fluctuation there. Yeah. So it's not really, it's not like, well, just go get Harada Parra and your team will make the playoffs. Although I guess that has been the case for the past few years now, but not in every year. So it's like sometimes certain teams, certain rosters will really gel and you can have the one Johnny Gomes or whoever who comes in and actually seems to elevate the clubhouse. But it's really hard to predict because it's all just like personalities and how will this guy get along with that guy. And who knows in advance or from year to year. And also it's like the 2017 Astros were like a big chemistry team supposedly. And I don't know if they still are.

It's not maybe as demonstrative, but it looks like they're still having fun for the most part. Like they seem to be celebrating too and seem to be pretty comfortable with each other, despite all the ways in which their front office seems to be trying to sabotage that. Like it seems like they're not like moping around and punching each other. Like, it seems like they're not like moping around and punching each other. And I think I wrote something for BP years ago that was like, every team has good clubhouse chemistry because I looked like going into one spring training. And maybe this is just a product of the fact that beat writers need something to write about every spring during those long weeks when nothing is happening. But you can find just about every team before the season starts. We'll have some story written about it that's like, oh, this team gets along so well, and they're playing ping pong in the clubhouse and great chemistry. And I just Googled, and I found one about the 2019 Astros in the Houston Chronicle from

April 4th. Chemistry felt in Astros' locker room before home opener, and it's all about how they get along, and it's a great group of guys, et cetera, et cetera. So it's like, you can't really predict it. You can get people together. And it seems like they get along well. But that's before the season starts. And then the season starts.

And guys have good years and bad years. And the team starts losing. And suddenly, people are not getting along so well. And Sam and I saw it with the Stompers back in 2015. Because our season started out so well that everyone was getting along great. Yeah, I think it can help. Yeah, I think that that is all right. Okay. So Sam, not our Sam, another Sam. Well, he's our Sam sort of.

But he says, I'm curious about the strategy behind pitching matchups. Why do teams match their aces, Scherzer versus Cole, instead of starting their best pitcher against one of their opponent's weaker starters, Scherzer's Nationals chances of winning are low against Cole's Astros in Game 1. This was obviously sent in before Game 1. But if they pitch Scherzer against Corbin in Game 3, they would have better odds in that game.

Can teams ever do better over a seven game series by offsetting these matchups? And you had an article at Fangraphass by one ben clemens this week about this very topic and there's another good another good ben yeah all these good bens yeah floating around this was a good article valiant attempt by ben to try to find something here by staggering your starters so that you're essentially conceding the game that you don't think you can win anyway and giving yourself a greater advantage in the other games. And

there is a lineage of articles that have looked at this topic at Fangraphs and at the Hardball Times. And I emailed Sam some of them, but I think Ben's article makes at least four in the past several years that I'm aware of that have studied this and used probability and tried to figure it out. And they've all essentially concluded that it just basically doesn't matter to like whatever edge is just so tiny that it could pretty easily be outweighed by almost anything else, like keeping guys on a certain schedule or something. Yeah. And that was essentially Ben's conclusion right he's he found that there is a there can be a small benefit to doing this in a seven game series but that like really what's

important is that in that seven game series you're throwing your best three pitchers in the first three games to allow them to have multiple starts that is that is the most important thing and then from there the team with the best pitcher should seek to match up ace to ace while the other should try to hide their worst multi-game starter against the opponent's best. It's a small advantage, but it might also be overwhelmed by something else you care about. Ben points out, for example, pitching your best pitcher in the first game so that he

can throw a few innings of relief in game seven. Yes, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, right. I think it's because no pitcher in baseball is actually Yes, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, right. I think it's because like no pitcher in baseball is actually unbeatable. And the Nationals showed that against Cole in game one, although he was as close to unbeatable as you can get

for a stretch of months there. He was not literally unbeatable and they beat him. But if you do take your ace from one game to another game, like you're subtracting some winning percentage from one game and adding to another, and it kind of evens out because you can't really guarantee yourself another win. You're not really guaranteed to lose that first game. So really you're just sort of shifting the probabilities around

and it doesn't actually make that much of a difference and also as you said yeah you wouldn't want to like save scherzer for game four or three or something to try to give yourself a better chance in that game because really you want him available in a potential game seven to go a couple innings and that outweighs everything else so yeah yeah i don't think there's that much you can do here no no all right fun to think about though oh yeah definitely but uh obviously people do keep thinking about it and asking us about it and keep writing about it but the answer is always the same so all right martin says if there were a third place series with the championship series losers would you watch so if baseball had a like a series with the championship series losers would you watch so if baseball had a like a loser's bracket would we absolutely i would absolutely watch it i think

it should start immediately upon the conclusion of the world series because then we don't have any more baseball and then there would be more baseball and it's always good to have more baseball than less baseball and this year we don't even have the fall league to go into november because they moved the darn thing up so yeah i would watch that i was very quick with that answer yeah well we'd watch it because we like baseball but so i don't know i like on the one hand you wouldn't want it to distract from your centerpiece series so unless you could like set it up so that they only played on world series off days or something you wouldn't want them going up against each other so that would be bad and then

if you had it after the world series yeah sure i'd watch the delay the off season as long as possible except that like would the players have any motivation like what's their incentive here because they want to start their off season when they lose yeah i guess are they are we paying them more are we giving them something like i guess this would have to be collectively bargained first of all but uh yeah you'd have to give players some reason to want to keep playing after their vacation starts so i guess that's true but i'd still watch it yeah i'd like it just because like the playoffs are you can exit so suddenly after being so successful for so long and then you lose in a wild card game or in a best of five or a best of seven and it's all over

and we accept that like that's what the playoffs are, and that's how it works. And we all have agreed or resigned ourselves to this system where it's not really that reflective of true talent, and we just try to have fun, and it's a tournament and randomness, and anything can happen. But it would be kind of nice if teams didn't just disappear after playing so well for six months. So, yeah.

I'm sure that A's fans would love to see more A's. Yeah, sure. I would too. Yeah. So I think we could probably finagle it. And if it's a reason that we end up paying players more, well, that's fine too yeah it's on my money yeah sure and i mean maybe owners would like it too right getting more

more dates more tickets sold people would go to those games i think yeah probably right we'd probably need to have some rules depending on when we scheduled them about like they might have to be end up being neutral site games because if you're playing baseball in november in minnesota that might that might go badly yeah that could be a concern and you worry about like pitchers and their workloads and guys getting hurt and but i wonder if the answer is just for us to put the fall league back on the schedule it was on and do more of those games and really put the sort of marketing muscle of major league baseball behind the fall league yeah that's that'd be one way to do it i doubt it it would not generate nearly the same amount of interest

no but it would be more baseball all right question from zach During the broadcast of game two last night, John Smoltz said that stealing third is the easiest base to steal in baseball when Altuve attempted it in the early part of the game. Although he was, of course, thrown out. Is this true? Just caught me off guard since it's closer to home plate than second is. And Sam answered this via email and he had the numbers. So base runners were successful this season when they were trying to steal third 79% of the time. They were only 73% successful when they were trying to steal second. So in that sense, when guys try to steal third, they are more successful than they are when they try to steal second but that doesn't really mean that it's easier to steal third it may mean that you're only trying to steal third in situations where you have someone who is better qualified to do that maybe there there are fewer situations where you have a big incentive to steal third because you're already in scoring position so it's probably a different distribution of runners who are trying to steal third base and then as sam also mentioned

it's harder to hold the runner on because he's behind your back if you're the pitcher and you can't make quite as tricky and sneaky a pickoff move so you do get certain situations where runners get really long leads like much longer than you'd probably get at first base in most situations and so if it is one of those cases then it may be easier to steal third at those times but as kurt suzuki showed of all people it is far from automatic yeah kurt suzuki I'm gonna I agree with everything you just said and I don't have anything to add so I'm going to instead talk about Kurt Suzuki who is not a very good framer but now has been a very good blocking catcher especially this postseason which you know we know over over a full season one's blocking ability pales in importance compared to one's framing ability

just because of how many more runs you can prevent with good presentation but it has come up in several important moments in this postseason so good for kurt suzuki that's what i have to say about kurt suzuki also his dugout celebration was delightful i appreciated him being old enough to really have the vibe of the macarena down right like he's like i have done this i know this life and i will do it again i appreciated it greatly right yeah the other thing about still in third i think is that sometimes the batter gets in the way even more so than he can if the throws to second so if you have a right-handed hitter. Yeah, it's harder, you would think, for the catcher to effectively get a guy.

Sometimes the batter will not make that much of an effort to get out of the way because he's trying to help his runner out. So that can be an issue too. He will make enough of an effort to not be called for interfering, but otherwise will be a little slower to get out of the way. It's like, me take some time. Why would you even say that?

Yep. All right. Last question here. This is from Landon. Given the extraordinary ball to ball variance in performance described by Rob Arthur, who I should note also wrote another piece for PP on Friday where he showed that the variation is higher this postseason than it was during the regular season.

Do you think teams are attempting to train their pitchers to identify the juiced versus de-juiced balls? Seems like that could be a real advantage to the extent that it's discernible with the naked eye. Is that what Garrett Cole is up to? It seems like the answer to this is no. Yeah. Cole is up to it seems like the answer to this is no yeah because even though we have had pitchers note say like they they've noted the difference in seam height and the texture of the outside of the ball um I don't imagine that ball to ball there I think it would be a lot like you know a blind taste test for somalias where it's like there is expertise here but sometimes it fails you yeah i think it would be kind of like that

although you know there might be some pitchers who depending on their their specific repertoire would be more reliable narrators of that difference than others like you know tanaka might be able to tell a bit better because the surface of the ball has had such a significant impact on him based on what he throws. So maybe, but I still think that ball-to-ball, you're without something to compare it to, the odds that you'd be able to say,

aha, this one, it seems low to me. Yes, I think that's probably right. Actually, Nate Silver tweeted something last week, I think it was. He said, maybe MLB should just embrace the whole juice ball thing and each stadium employs like a ball sommelier, ball mellier, who chooses the perfect set of balls for any particular occasion. I liked the idea that you and Sam, I think that it was the two of you who discussed this.

I don't know what day it is or even what month sometimes. So if I'm imagining this entire conversation, you should tell me and then I should go to sleep. But didn't you guys talk about how it would be fine to have there be some variation and they should know in advance? Didn't you talk about this with Rob? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I agree with you. and they should know in advance like what the didn't you talk about this with rob yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's so nice to know that i have like at least that kind of grip on reality right now um i think it would be great fun for them to announce like hey you guys this uh this series this this juice ball series this one next week who to say? I think that would be delightful.

I would get at least one article out of that. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I'd like it at least for an exhibition maybe just to see like it'd be quite a hassle for teams to plan for that and players to have to adjust based on that and for all of us to have to adjust our expectations. It is truly a nightmare. Yeah. It is truly a nightmare. But for like one week in spring training, what a fun nightmare it would be. Yeah.

So I think you're right that pitchers probably can't detect this from ball to ball with enough precision to actually identify, yeah, this is a dead ball and that's not just. Sometimes it might be as obvious as the seam is feeling different or the surface feeling different. But usually these differences are pretty minuscule and still they produce these large results. And it could even be something you can't see or feel. Yeah, it might be internal. Yeah, the pill is centered inside the ball or something. You can't just like shake it and see if it rattles. So I don't know that you could do this. Someone else asked us, like, could a team be tricky and like, you know, reserve a box of de-juiced balls and then put them into play at certain times or something like that? And I just, I don't think you could do that. I don't think you could do that in a way that the same team playing on that day wouldn't also be using those balls because I think they're stored in such a way that like the umpire goes and picks them out and then uses them for both teams so I don't know I wouldn't put it past

someone I guess to figure out a way to do this but it'd be pretty tough to do it in a way that wouldn't also apply to your opponent on that particular day or in that particular ending well I don't know how even if you were able to properly identify that i i don't know how useful that information really ends up being i mean you might have some variation you know if you're a pitcher with a deep repertoire and you know if it's juiced or not juiced you might adjust what you throw but i don't know you know, you probably should just throw your best pitches. Yeah. Right?

Like just be, just throw your pitches. Yeah. And execute them well, and that's probably more useful than, I don't know. I would be skeptical of on balance how significant a change that is for a pitcher on the mound. It might change the decision a team makes about who to throw in that game yeah but you know what i mean yeah it's like you're garrett cole

it's like just be garrett cole i don't know man yeah it's probably gonna be fine except for that one time that really mattered yeah i mean he was pitching with the juice ball all year didn't seem to hurt him too much yeah i think he did okay so Yeah I just saw a tweet from Mark Sheldon the Reds beat reporter Who says that the Reds announced that a 2020 addition to Great American Ballpark Will be the Press Club premium Seating area that will be in the former

Press box the Reds are moving the Press box to the suite level past third Base along the left field line Here's the new view media will have Next season and it is indeed where he says it was. So the Reds are essentially kicking the press out of the press box and selling those tickets to wealthy people, which, you know, I'm not surprised. I'm surprised it took that long.

I guess the press has had these cushy seats behind whole plate and no team has thought, hey, we could make that into a luxury box or something. But they're coming for us we're not going to have press boxes anymore it kind of makes sense just because of like you don't even need the press anymore like you're on tv and you've got twitter you don't need newspaper people to get the word out about your team the way that you did in the olden days and uh i I guess teams are going for the profit maximization. So we'll see pretty soon. All the press boxes will be like out in left field where the auxiliary press boxes are in the postseason.

It's very cold and far away. This is disappointing. Yeah. Well, no one listening probably cares. I care. I think the following, if you're going to force everyone, I mean, like, here is one thing that I'm not going to give Houston credit for this. This is just where it is.

At least the auxiliary press box in Houston is near Torchy's. So you're by Torchy's. It's the one benefit, but you can't go there during the game. You got to do the game. Yeah. Ben, why does bad stuff keep happening? Well, this is only bad for

a select group of people, and there's probably no sympathy for us because we only get to get free tickets to go to the baseball game and sit in this place instead of that place. Poor reporters. But, you know, they might have some controversy at home plate, and it would be to the benefit of the folks at home to know about it.

And the press won't be there to say, hey, I was looking down at the plate and I saw this. Yep. Goodness. Well, we'll always have podcast podcasting even if they keep us out of the press box happy birthday juan soto yes happy birthday happy 21st i hope there's some kind of chant or something will will the crowd sing him happy birthday at national park they should right that'd be a nice moment yeah that would be a nice moment. Soda made soda. Yeah, I have to say, Ben, just in terms of the engagement between the team and the fans, whether it's the dugout stuff or Baby Shark, you know, I don't have children.

So my baseline tolerance for Baby Shark is probably higher than the average parent, just by virtue of not having heard it ad nauseum for the last year. But man, that's just fun stuff. It's just fun. Yep. There are fun Astros things too sometimes. Yeah, the player part is pretty fun. Yeah.

Except for one player. Some of them. Oh, good grief. All right. Jose Altuve, fun. Yeah, Altuve. Not his birthday, but happy birthday, Jose. Unambiguously a source of joy for all of us.

There you go. All right. We'll end there because we've got to put this podcast up so that we can go talk to our Patreon people during game three. So I will talk to you soon. Sounds good. Well, after Meg and I finished recording, there was yet another Astros comment. They just never end and they never really get better.

This was tweeted by Mark Craig of The Athletic, who quoted Astro's owner Jim Crane, who declined to take questions but did say, quote, we made our statement. We got it wrong from the start. Jeff had reached out to the reporters and apologized. We made our statement. Other than that, we're not going to revisit at this point. We'll play baseball. And yes, we know you'll play baseball. You're very good at playing baseball. That's not the problem. The problem is that playing baseball seems to be all that they're good at. It does seem likely that whether or not Luno statement, accused SI of fabrication, Manfred said. Manfred said there are, quote, aspects of this that go beyond the incident, end quote. I had another somewhat depressing thought just strike me, which is that the publication that this reporting first appeared in, Sports Illustrated, was just recently acquired by this company called the Authentic Brand Group, and it's being operated by

this wannabe tech company called The Maven, which is run by these two guys, James Heckman and Ross Levinson. Levinson is the CEO of Sports Illustrated now, and he was the subject of multiple workplace allegations for sexual misconduct. When he was with Tronc, there was a months-long investigation into that, which cleared him, but then he left the company not long after that. Then there was another NPR investigation into Heckman and Levinson that touches on what Deadspin calls their frat boy approach to business. So even apart from what they seem to be trying to do to Sports Illustrated, turn it into

this kind of content mill and probably sell it off, they don't seem to be particularly good dudes. kind of content mill and probably sell it off. They don't seem to be particularly good dudes. So the publication that reported Brandon Taubman's bad behavior is now owned and operated by a couple of guys who've been known for bad behavior themselves. It's just bad dudes all the way down, which of course has nothing to do with Stephanie Epstein or Emma Batchelary, who do great work and did great work this week, much like maybe Jeff Luno and Jim Crane and Brandon Taubman have little to do with Jose Altuve. But it's unfortunate that the actions of the Astros front office can even temporarily overshadow the fine play of some of the Astros players, much like the actions of

the new owners of Sports Illustrated temporarily overshadowed the good work and reporting that gets done there, even still. So on that somewhat demoralizing note, that will do it for this week. Thanks for listening. I know it probably wasn't always an easy listen this week. We would have liked the circumstances to be such that we could just talk about the games too, but off the field issues inserted themselves as they often do. Hopefully this weekend we can just focus on the baseball and enjoy the baseball, and we'll be back to discuss it, as always, next week. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support and are helping keep

the podcast going and getting themselves access to some perks. Owen Ricketts, Bill Gallagher, Matt Lindner, Shane Horn, and Mackenzie Watton. Thanks to all of you. And happy 30th birthday to faithful listener Taylor Perk from Allison and from us. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Please keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg and Sam via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system.

If you are already a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. Hope you do have a wonderful world series weekend, and we will be back to talk to you soon. Oh, these words were thrown together when I still had my faith in hand. Kept it in my back pocket with a change I had to spare. Swim through the skies

when it's night. Let the stars be my sea breeze. I love when the record echoes. Reminds me of the trees. But I, I, I should not say this to you. No, you, you know how to live life.