Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1468: The Scott Boras Guessing Game

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley link up during the Winter Meetings for a brief bonus episode in which Meg tries to stump Ben about genuine and fake media-scrum statements supposedly made by baseball superagent Scott Boras. Audio intro: Yo La Tengo, "If it’s True" Audio outro: Jethro Tull, "Sparrow on the Schoolyard Wall" Link to photo of […]

If it's true, I don't mind. There's a million other things that keep me up at night. Maybe it's not quite right, but we'll find out if it's true. Hello and welcome to episode 1468 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, reporting to you live from San Diego, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am in total Scott Boris blackout, as planned. We're here for our Scott Boris quote guessing game, in which I will attempt to discern the real quotes by the linguistically adventurous super agent from the fake.

I'm very proud of our listeners for not, you know, tagging you into tweets and blowing this. I appreciate their restraint. I know it had to have been difficult for them. Well, they may have. I have avoided Twitter just in case. A couple of them did very helpfully tweet at me earlier to tell me when Scott Boris would be addressing the media at the Winter Meeting so that I would not be spoiled. And at that time at 3 Eastern, I closed Twitter. I have since not looked at any tweets. I have not looked at any

baseball sites. There's an email to our podcast address that I have not read just in case. I almost got spoiled because someone, a well-meaning person and listener of this podcast who is not aware that we were doing this, sent me a link to a tweet. Fortunately, he did not send me the text of the tweet. He just sent me a link to it. And I said, is this about Scott Boris? And he said, yes. And I said, well, then I cannot view it because I am in Scott Boris Blackhill. Well, I appreciate their restraint and yours and the diligence with which you approach this. So I think maybe the way that we'll do this,

because I know which quotes are real and which ones aren't, is that I will just read you a quote and you will guess. Yeah, I think so. And the listeners can play along at home. Are you going to give me multiple options, like a fake alternative, or am I just going to guess real or not real? I think you'll just guess real or not real. I think that's the way that we'll do this.

Were you in the presence? I was not, which I think was just as well because, well, you wouldn't have seen the pictures of the Boris scrum. But I imagine, as usual, it was one of the better attended stand-ups at Winter Meetings. So there were a number of folks who I know who were there who learned what he said by looking at Twitter because they were so far away that they couldn't hear him. Right. I'm sure it was being tweeted simultaneously by everyone in attendance. And I was worried that he might run out of things to say. I shouldn't have doubted him because he never runs out of things to say. that he might run out of things to say.

I shouldn't have doubted him because he never runs out of things to say, but because the Strasburg signing happened on Monday and he had to talk to the media about that and he had his line about markets are like flowers, the beauty begins from below. And of course, last week he had the revenue festival and the cherry trees. Hopefully that was just a warmup,

but I was worried that he was using his best material. And meanwhile, he's fielding offers, presumably for Garrett Cole left and right. I thought it might not leave him enough time to hold court. But of course, he found time. So, all right. He always does. Here we go.

Okay, here we go. We'll start with this one. Okay, we've got six coming. I think six, five and a half. Okay. Five and a half. Okay. Five and a half. Okay. Look, if you're setting out on a long journey, you might start with a destination in mind,

but after a while you have to adapt. Tough water, sandbars, a bad mooring. Sometimes there are sharks and sometimes better beaches. The best port isn't always where you first thought. Oh my gosh. Totally plausible sounding. In fact, it sounds almost too much like a Scott Boris quote. I'm suspicious because it is a nautical analogy and there's sandbars and sharks.

So it almost sounds like what one would construct as a fake Scott Boris quote. So I'm going to say fake. Ah, you have me. It was inspired by an actual Boris quote that was relatively tame, and so I thought I would start us off by grounding our insanity in reality. Yes. Scott Boris said at this that he doesn't think geography plays an overriding factor in players' decision-making, and that inspired me to write a little bit.

So there we go no if someone had sent that to me at another time on another day and told me that was something scott boris said absolutely would have bought it it's just that uh i'm on high alert right now i'm looking for the fake boris quote okay well here's another one are we ready another quote mlb teams are like birds there's some hummingbirds that buzz. Sparrows get something they can't carry the weight of. A lot of owls who are wise and work at night. A lot of hawks. And you don't want to be an ostrich and lay the biggest egg. start with teams are like X, that sort of construction. That's classic Boris. I want this to be real because this is a really good one. On the one hand, it raises my alarms a little bit because now we've moved from nautical into zoological and we know that he has entered that territory before. So it could be another case of trying to come up with something that Boris would say, but

I don't know. The ostrich with the head in the sand, I like this one. I want to believe that this is Boris. I'm going to say real. It is, in fact, real, and this is our one and a half. He followed that up by saying that the Mets, meanwhile, are birds of a different feather. Give this to me again, the full quote. MLB teams are like birds. There's some hummingbirds that buzz around. Sparrows get something they can't carry the weight of. A lot of owls who are wise and work at night. A lot of hawks. And you don't want to be an ostrich and lay the biggest egg. lot of hawks and you don't want to be an ostrich and lay the biggest egg wow this is elaborate okay so so who would each of these birds be so so a hummingbird they're just hovering maybe keeping busy talking to everyone moving very quickly perhaps swooping in from time to time to suck

some of that sweet nectar from the free agent market and And an owl who works at night, that's just someone who gets a deal done late at night, I guess. I suppose. Just burning the midnight oil. So what's a sparrow who, what is it? Picks up something they can't carry? Sparrows get something they can't carry the weight of. What would that be? I don't know.

Maybe a team that signs a free agent to a very big deal but then doesn't do anything to supplement around. Someone who gets into bidding maybe and realizes that they don't have the budget for it. It's too rich for their tastes and so they have to bow out. Yeah, perhaps the White Sox are the sparrows of the baseball world. Or they have been until this year, yeah. I think the part of this that I'm the most interested in is the ostrich bit. You don't want to be an ostrich and lay the biggest egg. And I have a couple of questions about this.

I would imagine that what he probably is referring to is not participating in the market at all. Yeah. Right? But laying an egg, that's an active thing. You have to do a thing, which feels much more like the kind of thing that you marry with actually signing a free agent, which Boris is famously in favor of. And so I find that one to be a bit funky. It is, yeah. When I heard ostrich, I thought it would be burying your head in the sand,

which I thought would be just staying on the sidelines, not thinking that you have to be in the bidding, and then watching some other team pass you by, like Cleveland this year, for instance, maybe was an ostrich that was burying its head in the sand. But laying an egg, yeah, i guess that is just uh disappointing your fans by dropping the ball basically dropping the ball is sort of an active term for failing to do something so yeah all right i guess and hawks hawks are just uh aggressive teams i guess they're

just yeah a lot of hawks or maybe they're eagle-eyed they're they're spotting the deals and uh going after the good value. I don't know, but all right. Taking advantage of the sparrows now, Doug. This is good. Good work. Good one, Scott. Okay, this one I am going to deviate a bit, and I'm going to give you a choice between which one is real and which one is made up.

Okay. Okay. So your first option is these will both be in reference to Garrett Cole's market. If this were a thermometer, it would be room temperature heading towards a hot climate. Okay. That's your first option. Your second option is Garrett's stove is heating, and I expect a nice char on this one when it's over. Not too well done.

It'll be just right for him. Oh, wow. Huh. All right. I'm kind of at a loss here because the first one sounds more realistic or it sounds like something a normal person would say, but that's not a very good guide to what Scott Boris would say. gives me pause is that he's lowering expectations of anything or it would be he's saying it's room temperature right now whereas i would expect him maybe to be acting as if there's even more interest like it's sweltering in there so i'm kind of torn on this one but i think i will go with b is the real one the chart thing no that No, that's a Meg Rowley special. Ah, okay. The first one.

That's a good one. I just, it sounded preposterous, but so many of his real ones do. And I just, I didn't really think he would describe the market for any of his clients as room temperature. I guess I should have figured that because he has complained in the past about teams not bidding and not spending and talking about how the stove isn't hot. So I guess it makes sense that he would say something is room temperature. But, yeah, I was seduced by that elaborate imagery. I wanted that to be the porous one. Yeah.

Well, who doesn't like a nice char on something that they're cooking? Okay. Room temperature. Moving toward what? What is it moving toward? Well, this is what I thought would tip you off because he loves to mix his metaphors. It will be room temperature heading towards a hot climate. Yeah. That sounded kind of funky. I mean, I guess you could say that an indoor temperature is a hot climate. I guess an indoor can be a climate.

Yeah. I don't know. It's sort of strange. Yeah. All right. I was very torn on that one. Could have gone either way, but good one. And here's our final entry.

Free agents, they're the seeds that grow into winds, into rings. I think a lot of teams looked around this year and wanted a better harvest, enough of both to get them through the next winter. And who knows? Maybe you need apples and onions. Apples and onions. Huh. So up until you got to the apples and the onions, that sounded real to me.

Now I'm questioning everything. Apples and onions. Huh. All right. So he's saying that you need multiple types of free agent. You need to diversify your crops, I guess. I'll go with real on that one. No, I made that one too.

Wow. All right. I was starting to question my career choices. Like, am I a writer at all? Am I able to understand the motivations and approaches of other people, especially this one special weird weirdo who dictates so much of our professional lives? I feel vindicated that I could join the Scott Boris writer's room, even though I am quite satisfied with my current position. You definitely could, especially with that last one. That one definitely got me going.

Apples and onions, that triggered some alarms. I debated the combination of crops for at least five minutes, Ben. At least five. First, it was apples and zucchinis. Then it was going to be potatoes and onions then i thought apples and onions i don't know why that felt better it's like when you're uh you know when you're writing a thing and you strike upon a number and you're like well i should say the number 10 here because for whatever reason uh that's funnier than 15 yeah you know it's just like that yeah that's how comedy writing works you know you get your bits going sure yeah apples and onions didn't sound to me like the like two crops that one person would grow necessarily.

I don't know. Right. They don't grow the same way. They do not. An apple is in a tree and an onion is something you plant. And I don't know about the climates or the regions where they come from, but I wouldn't necessarily expect Scott Boris to be accurate about those things regardless. So, yeah, that one was plausible for sure. All right.

So I guess it was a fairly tame performance by Boris. The bird one, I mean, that's classic. That's vintage Boris right there. But he didn't have a whole lot of fake ones that were worthy of his usual work, it sounds like. No, they were pretty tame as these things go. I will highlight a couple of other things that you would have missed from having not listened to this. So Boris said that there's not one, but two new mystery teams in the Garrett Cole market.

Two mystery teams, wow. And that there's a probability, that's the quote, that Cole will sign during winter meetings. Okay, really? So that, I mean sign during winter meetings. Okay. Really? Yeah. I mean, the winter meetings end on Wednesday. Thursday. Yeah. Yeah, I guess everyone leaves on Wednesday, right?

Or a lot of people start leaving. So even though we're at room temperature right now, he's expecting that we're going to get to the hot climate so soon. Boy. Yeah. I mean, it's going to ramp up very quickly, it sounds like. Then again, if he said there's a probability there's a probability of almost anything the probability could be zero that actually doesn't tell us much at all that is extremely unrevealing i guess it reveals that

it's not completely impossible that he could sign he also indicated that each team's meeting with garrett cole has been extensive and each has lasted at least six hours. Six hours. What in the world? With Garrett Cole. With Garrett Cole. I mean, here's what I'll say. As a human being who is an adult and has been in the world, you can go on really good dates, like really good first dates.

And six hours, you're like, okay, this was a really really good date but now i need to go home this might just be um i might be projecting how i have um been really good at just going to bed and have been given grief about that this week but um uh yeah you you're like okay and now now i need to recharge from this what could they possibly talk about for six hours yeah so he's he doesn't mean at the winter meetings. No. He means like the visits that Cole has made to various teams or that they've made to him over the past few weeks. Yeah. I get the sense that that has been a couple weeks developing. He has not been going six hours back to back to back with potential teams.

That's good. Yeah. Well, I guess you throw in a tour of the ballpark or something, and then maybe there's a meal, and you have to meet the GM and the manager and a star player or two and the owner probably, and there's probably a couple meetings there, and then maybe there's some transit time involved.

I guess you make a day of it. It probably makes sense because he's going to have to travel to them or vice versa. So you'd want to get your money's worth there. So that makes sense. But yeah, I don't know. What can you do? I guess it's partly or mostly for Cole to quiz the team about what they envision, I don't know, his role being or their future being. What other moves they're planning to make. what the city is like to live in, because I don't know that there's that much to ask Eric Cole about.

He's really good. So not many questions about that. No. And then Boris also said, and we'll remind folks that he, of course, represents Rendon and also Hyunjin Ryu, believes there's no stop sign, that's the quote, for fillies in pursuit of top-level free agent talent. Quote, I'm sure that John Middleton is sitting back and saying, what can I do to be the best? I'm sure he's doing that. All right.

So. Okay. But yeah, it seems like as these things go, it was relatively tame. I'm sure having Stra the off the board helped yeah um but but yeah the bird that bird one we're gonna get some classic yeah we're gonna get some juice out of that for a little while yeah it's understandable because he must be a busy guy i mean he's always a busy guy at the winter meetings but unlike the last couple years the winter meetings are actually active this year so things are happening and he is probably texting and talking to clients and teams constantly. So

that doesn't leave a lot of time for brainstorming lines. Although again, as we speculated, he may have people who are feeding him these lines. If so, if there's someone out there who wrote this bird material for Scott Boris, please please step up take credit drop us a line let us know the process the the creative process behind this amazing ornithological analogy here really just spectacular so all right well we did it i'm looking at my twitter mentions now and uh three people spoiled me or attempted to. Those jerks. Yeah, they probably didn't realize. They probably didn't.

A couple other people hoped that I was not being spoiled and that we would convene for this exercise so they will be pleased when they see that we did. So maybe this can just be a bonus episode. Maybe it'll be an annual tradition as long as Scott Boris is delivering lines. We'll be there annual tradition as long as Scott Boris is delivering

lines. We'll be there to speculate about which ones are real or not real. How's your winter meetings experience going otherwise? It's going well. I will say that in an assessment that will shock absolutely no one, I continue to prefer San Diego to Las Vegas. So in that respect, this winter meetings is far superior to last year's. I did get to see friend of the show, Jeff Sullivan for a drink. Jeff says hi to everyone. Um, the hotel we're staying at is not the conference hotel, but it is immediately adjacent to Petco. And my hotel room actually looks out on the, on the ballpark. So when I open the curtains in the morning, there is Manny Machado, bright and early. Hey, Manny, there you are. But yeah, San Diego is great.

It's always nice to get to see people. That's the part of winter meetings that I enjoy the most because we're all spread out across the country and it gives us an excuse to come together and eat good food and talk about baseball and see our pals. So that part is really good. an excuse to come together and eat good food and talk about baseball and see our pals. So that part is really good. And when you are in your 30s and just decide, I'm tired, and I will now go to bed, you wake up and you don't feel terrible in the morning at winter meetings either. So I think I've cracked the code, although I have been given guff for being an old lady. So, you know.

Well, I've never been more grateful for you than when you bowed out of our post-Saber seminar drinks in Boston because I was there with Jesse, my wife, and we were tired and I had some work to do and we were kind of looking for a way to extricate ourselves, but we didn't want to look like bad guests because David Oppelman was taking us out on the town as he always does. And I didn't want to look ungrateful. And yet I also did want to go to bed or do whatever I had to do. And then you left first. And once you left, it was fine for me to leave because you're the managing editor. So that gave me permission to say, yep, well, it's about that time. So that was a

great moment. Yeah, I'm glad that that terrible head cold I was nursing in Boston was good for something. It gave us both an excuse to bow out and be well rested for the next day. Yeah. One of the two winter meetings that I've attended was in San Diego and the other was in Nashville. And I far preferred the San Diego edition because the Nashville one in the Opryland, San Diego edition because the Nashville one in the the Opryland I did not see the sun the entire time unless there was like a fake skylight that was supposed to resemble the sun but you just don't go outside there's not much really to see outside and it's just a whole self-contained ecosystem and everyone is just roaming the halls and you never see natural light and it's uh very disorienting

after a few days of being there. So San Diego was sort of nice. You could go outside and feel the room temperature that was not too hot a climate. Yes, exactly. All right. Well, thank you for bringing me these Scott Boris analogies, real and fake, like a sparrow. It was not too heavy for you to carry And bring to me and all of our listeners

And have a nice rest of your trip And we'll talk a little later this week Sounds good All right, that will do it for this bonus episode Thank you for listening and perhaps playing along I don't know that Scott Boris could ever Potentially be a Hall of Famer Not sure there's really room in the hall

For a player agent Technically, I don't think agents are eligible But maybe you you could call him a pioneer. He didn't engineer baseball's economic structure, but he has found ways to maximize its value for the players. He's almost an heir to Marvin Miller in a sense. And by the way, that often dormant Boris Corp Twitter account did tweet out a message from Boris about Marvin Miller's election into the Hall of Fame this past week. He has come up with new ways to get players paid, contract structures and loopholes and such. He has certainly been one of the defining figures under the past few decades in baseball, and his legacy, of course, is his player advocacy and his many giant deals that he has engineered.

But it's not only that. It's also MLB teams are like birds. Never forget that. If he somehow did end up with a Hall of Fame plaque, it should not just be a list of his biggest contracts, his most giant commissions. It should be his most outlandish quotes. He's clearly a linguistic pioneer. I can only hope that Jeff didn't hear the press conference. Hopefully he has better things to do at the winter meetings. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount, help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. James Newberg, Eric Duda, Maxwell Rowe, Rob Phibbs, and Gary Jacobs. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can contact us via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are already a supporter. Editor Dylan Higgins is also at the winter meeting, so I handled this one myself.

We will be back with our regularly scheduled next couple of episodes a little later this week, so we will talk to you then. Hunting in the evening And floating in the heat of the day You might, might acquire some predatory instincts Do the wolf pack crawl Don't stay forever in your limbo fly Before you fall Little sparrow on the schoolyard wall Little sparrow on the wall