Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1488: Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Little Star

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller review a wild, rumor-filled Thursday in baseball, touching on Jessica Mendoza’s comments about Mike Fiers, the end of Carlos Beltrán’s brief tenure as Mets manager, the Mets’ handling of his exit, the saga of not-Beltrán’s-niece, Twitter detectives following alleged leads about buzzers, Alex Bregman, and José Altuve, how efforts to […]

Only in the light, buzzing in the light of this world Buzzing in the light, buzzing in the light of this world I'm not alone in the mystery, I'm not alone in the mystery I'm not alone in the mystery I'm not alone I'm at home in the mystery Hello and welcome to episode 1488 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Sam Miller of ESPN. Hello, Sam. Hey, Ben.

We're going to do some emails today, but before we do, I want to do a bit of banter, and I think this will be good because you missed everything that happened on Thursday. You're on vacation, and you were not online on probably the busiest, saltiest, most rumor-filled baseball Twitter day I can recall. And some of our less extremely online listeners may have missed most of that intrigue, which frankly may not have been a bad thing. But because you were away from your computer, this will be largely new to you too. So I can explain it to you as if I were an explorer recently returned from some strange land and you can stop me at any point if you have questions

about what happened. Okay. It'll be like that time when you didn't see the playoff games and you asked me about the playoff games and you were surprised when I told you who won. This time, I think the winners were people who were bored at work on a weekday. All right, hit me. Okay, here we go. So the day began with a debate about Mike Fiers and his role in all of this. So Jessica Mendoza said she disapproved of the public way he went about blowing the whistle on the Astros, which she later walked back a bit in response to a big backlash.

I saw people calling Fires a hero. And while I'm not sure I would go that far, to me it depends a bit on what his motivations were. I do think that regardless of his motivations, he performed a very valuable service and the public approach proved important. And to criticize him for ratting out teammates who were cheating just encourages other people to keep quiet about unethical behavior that's going on. So that was how the day began, and that was what got Twitter fired up. And somewhat amusingly, Mets GM Brody Van Wagenen said that Mendoza was speaking as an ESPN analyst and not as a member of the Mets organization when she said what she said, which seems like an impossible distinction to draw. But anyway, the Mendoza story

was soon overshadowed by a bigger Mets-related story. The Mets and Carlos Beltran parted ways, much like the Red Sox and Alex Cora had previously parted ways, which basically means that the teams asked them to leave and they complied. So just to sum this up, I remember November 13th was the day when Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellick wrote that three major league managers are connected to the Astros sign stealing, and now all three are former major league managers. So major league managers have been literally decimated by this sign stealing scandal. That's interesting because the other two faced suspensions, and so you might have thought that part of the reason that you might let them go is uh well why go through the year of uncertainty

any value that this manager has uh as as a manager is certainly going to be reduced by his absence over the next year and the uncertainty that introduces into into the situation but with beltron there was apparently no suspension looming no and so it's a sort of a different calculus and it makes you wonder whether since beltron was not formally punished by the league it makes you wonder whether teams would hold a similar standard to Astros coaches, for instance, who were aware, presumably aware of the plot, but also not sanctioned by the league. And then it makes you wonder then whether that same standard would apply to Red Sox coaches who were aware of the sign stealing in 2018, and whether other managers and coaches would be held to the same standard

if they are implicated in future controversies. So I would just say that it does increase your chances of managing a baseball team significantly because it could be that they all get wiped out. Well, of course, this became a very Mets-y story, both because the Mets managed to become embroiled in the sign stealing scandal, even though the team, managed to become embroiled in this sign-stealing scandal, even though the team, as far as we know, was not stealing signs, and then also because of the way they handled this, which, because it's the Mets, would not be smooth and flawless. So the Mets claimed that they hadn't even asked Beltran about his involvement in the sign-stealing scandal, not only before he was hired when this news hadn't really broken, but not even in the two months between the athletic reporting

that he was involved in the sign stealing and the MLB report coming out. So Brody Van Wagenen said, certainly I did not see, nor did anyone else in the organization have any knowledge that this situation happened in 2017 or that there was the potential for this information becoming public. We simply had no knowledge, which is odd because, I mean, we had this knowledge months ago. And Jeff Wilpon said that they decided to let him go because of what was in the report. He said the change was when the report did come out, how prominent he was in it, which he was not really prominent at all. He was mentioned one time, and all it said was that he was at a meeting with a group of other players. So

he was prominent in the sense that he was the only player named, but not really prominent in the sense that he was only named once. There were no real specifics, and this had already been previously publicly reported. So there were really no new revelations about Carlos Beltran in that report. Well, hadn't he denied it publicly? Yes, he had. And so the fact that he was named in the report, I guess, confirmed that he had lied to the team and the media about it, which could be part of why he was let go. I mean, that reflects poorly on him, too.

Well, yeah. And I mean, there were no games played in the last two months. So from the Mets perspective, even if all the reporting comes out in November and you're quite suspicious that Beltran's not going to come out of this looking innocent, there's no real cost to waiting until the report comes out. True. Yes, it's true that they didn't have to do that, but I guess they didn't have to not ask him about it or tell everyone that they didn't ask him about it. I don't know. It was pretty metsy for them to become a center of this story, even though they got no benefit from it. It doesn't sound that wild so far, Ben.

No, it's not that wild so far. So this is where the wildness started because you'd think that that would have been the big news of the day, but things were really just heating up. So there was a Twitter account that ostensibly belonged to Carlos Beltran's niece, which had claimed to have knowledge of Beltran's hiring and resignation before those things were widely reported. Okay, wait, hang on. Ostensibly because like Ashley Feinberg at Slate figured it out, or ostensibly because the Twitter was claiming this yes because the Twitter bio was on Carlos Beltran's niece and this account had as we all put in our bio we all put our aunt or uncle in our bio sure and this account had tweeted that

Beltran would be hired by the M mets before he was hired by the mets and also that he would step down a day before he stepped down granted neither of those things was impossible for someone to just guess but because it had tweeted those things it had some credibility so the same account tweeted on thursday that alex bregman and jose altuve had worn buzzers on their right shoulders under their jerseys that relayed signals from someone in the video room during the game. It also claimed to have pictures of the devices that it was saving for a rainy day. And then it cited as evidence of this Altuve's reluctance to have his shirt torn off after he hit the walk-off homer in game six to end the 2019

ALCS. Just like me in the locker room in eighth grade. It was the buzzers. Exactly. So Marley Rivera reported that the Beltran family denied that this was Beltran's niece. And I don't know why Beltran's niece would be blowing up her uncle anyway, but anyway, that exposed that this is just someone posing as Beltran's niece. Then Gary Sheffield Jr., of all people, tweeted that this supposed Beltran's niece was actually an MLB player's burner account, and others disputed that, but the idea caught on, and suddenly it was understood that this was an MLB player's burner. I've got some questions. Okay. Okay. So first of all.

I probably can't answer them. First of all, Gary Sheffield is a major league player agent now. Is his son. I don't know what his son does. Involved in this sport. Okay. Secondly. Okay.

So we don't know that. This was disputed, you say? Yes. That implies that someone, some of these people are in position to know the true nature. Because obviously no one could prove, no one is like, ah, no, I know all 1,000 major league players' current burner statuses. I can confirm with each of them that they are not using a burner. So the only way that you would be able to deny that about it would be if you knew who it was and what the nature of it is. So is anyone asking that follow-up question of these sources? Well, so all right,

first of all, Gary Sheffield Jr., according to his Twitter bio, is a Twitch streamer. Do you think Gary Sheffield Jr.'s Twitter bio says Dwight Gooden's great nephew? It doesn't even say son of Gary Sheffield. Okay. on the carlos beltran's niece accounts previous activity that this was actually a burner account of this guy incarcerated bob who is uh this oh my gosh no yeah incarcerated bob is back yeah so he was one of the people who was claiming that mlb wait he's sheffield's son or he's Beltran's niece? Yes. I'm following this? Yes. Incarcerated Bob.

Wow. Yeah. Remember some guys, Ben. Right. So Incarcerated Bob was one of the people tweeting that MLB had tipped off its gambling partners before the playoffs started, that the ball was going to be different and never offering any backup of this claim. So I'm not on gambling Twitter, but from what I understand, this guy is just sort of is known for making outlandish claims. And like maybe sometimes he knows things, but usually he's exaggerating things. So Incarcerated Bob, for people who don't know, Incarcerated Bob had a moment a few years ago where he was tweeting a lot of these rumors and what people were talking about it. Yeah.

So he's back at it. So, all right. So after that, the Beltran's niece tweet was deleted. The account was locked, but not before people like Trevor Bauer and John Boy screenshotted it and amplified it and said that they had heard similar rumors. So then Twitter was really off to the races. So wait, hang on, pause. Okay. They had heard similar rumors. Yes. About buzzers. About buzzers. Okay. Yes. Okay. Wait. Okay. So this, I think this is a question. They had heard

similar rumors. Had they, had anybody reported similar rumors was is it possible that beltron's was amplifying an already existent rumor well so there were there was some buzz like last year didn't buzz oh gosh yeah someone found a a tweet from the astros like last august saying there's some buzz in the air or something and showing a gif of Carlos Correa, I think, hitting his big homer. And so that was getting retweeted a ton on Thursday. But no, it didn't. I think Joel Sherman had reported that there were rumors going around about like the Astros wearing buzzing bandages.

Band-aids, right? Right, band-aids or bandages. So that was out there. Because Hinge had to. Didn't Hinge address the band-Aids in the postseason? I feel like I remember Hinch having to say something about how outlandish it was. There were these rumors about Band-Aids, and he was, like, laughing about them. Yeah, so there were definitely rumors about that.

I don't remember whether it was before or after the sign-stealing scandal broke, but obviously there were rumors about Astra's sign-stealing before this latest scandal broke. So it is possible that the Peltron's niece account was just kind of picking up on things. And also, so people took this tweet and started running with it and examining the footage of Altuve

rounding third and scoring after hitting that walk-off homer. And so there were people lip-reading, and Altuve seemingly shouted to his teammates, La camisa, no, so don't take my shirt off, basically. And he was trying to hold his shirt on, which I think that Michael Kay on his radio show had been talking about on Wednesday, even before the Beltran's niece stuff started. So people, of course, were suspicious that Altuve didn't want his shirt removed. And Ken Rosenthal asked him about it at the time and quoted him in an athletic story. And Altuve said, I don't know.

I'm too shy. Last time they did that, I got in trouble with my wife. So that was his explanation of why he didn't want his teammates to remove his shirt. He stuck to that excuse on Thursday via Scott Boris Of course Scott Boris got involved So Boris told Joel Sherman that is the shyness of Jose Altuve And Boris continued Jose Altuve called me and said he wants it known that he has never ever worn an electronic device in a major league game ever

He has never received any form of a trigger or any information via an electronic product that was on his body or in his uniform Wow. Yeah, that's a bold claim. He's like the brother in Better Call Saul. Yeah, exactly. And, of course, because he's Boris, he also used an analogy to explain the situation Saying fans need to keep in mind That there are a lot of players who are in the spider web But they are not the Black Widow

Just because they are a member of the team or the league So that was a very Boris way of explaining the situation So then there was also an image circulating of altuve's jersey with a supposedly suspicious wrinkle no or crease in it and this was everywhere although to me it looked like a regular wrinkle or crease that didn't really seem any stranger than other wrinkles or creases on the same jersey that weren't circled send me this one i want this one all right i'll find it of course it became a meme where people were circling creases in every jersey and joking about them being smoking guns so you know this was everywhere everyone was tweeting about the

atuvet jersey all right i just sent you one of the many examples of tweets. Oh, come on. Yeah. This is everywhere. People are taking this extremely seriously. Oh, this is from Tommy Pham. Yes, Tommy Pham tweeted the Atuve jersey. Some people were tweeting it jokingly, but other people were tweeting it very seriously.

There was also another image circulating of Josh Reddick in a post-game interview after that same series with his jersey off and what possibly appeared in that image to be a wire taped to his chest. So, like, that was at least a little more suspicious than the Altuve one but his wife Jet Reddick tweeted hey you idiots this is confetti from the celebration I like starting a tweet with hey you idiots I might borrow that and in other images and videos that I saw like higher quality image it was clear to me at least that this alleged wire was just his necklace and the

alleged tape tape probably was confetti or something else stuck to his chest with sweat or champagne or whatever plus like not all baseball players are highly intelligent but if Altuve was trying to keep his jersey on to hide this device it'd be pretty weird if Redick took his jersey off and then kept wearing the device in the clubhouse with media members all around and also in a post-game interview. This image was from a post-game interview, so you'd have to believe that he kept wearing it on national TV.

I want to ask a quick question, and maybe this is a simple answer that was already addressed, but they were banging a trash can. Why do they need buzzers? And why are we trying to establish that they were relaying signs? We know that. That's baked in. I'll send you the Josh Reddick image also. I have the Josh Reddick image. I'm looking at hashtag you all are idiots. at your disposal now. So players were helping to fuel this fire. So after all this, I won't say buzz again, but after all these rumors were just taking over Twitter, MLB put out a statement and said, MLB explored wearable devices during the investigation, but found no evidence to

substantiate it. They specified that they also included 2019 in their investigation and they didn't find anything. But at the same time that MLB was trying to defuse this, players were doing the opposite of that. So, you know, there was Bauer, there was Mike Clevenger who— Wait, wait, about the Astros cheating because he's been saying that they cheated for a while now. And then there was Mike Clevenger, who seemingly threatened to throw at Astros batters. Can I interrupt? Did you just call them Bowinger? Did I?

I think you did. I think you called them Bowinger. I think we've got a thing. Well, they seem pretty inseparable. So Clevenger is doing what now? He seemingly threatened to throw at Astros batters in a tweet. And he also sort of put down Astros fans for defending the Astros. And then, you know, Chris Archer tweeted about how this was making him sad.

And Cody Bellinger tweeted tweeted for the sake of the game I hope this isn't true if true there needs to be major consequences to the players that completely ruins the integrity of the game Alex Woods what isn't true there we already know it's it's the buzzer is all the people are now mad about the buzzer are people we already know about that's the thing I know banging trash cans it's true yes well so if all these buzzer are people. We already know about the thing. They're banging trash cans. It's true. Yes. Well, so if all these buzzer things were true, it would mean that they were doing it in 2019, which was not proved in the MLB report.

I was okay with them doing it for two years, but that third year tipped it. And I guess there's like a different level of culpability that you can actually pin it on individual players. Like that's the thing. Maybe these players weren't listening to the trash can bang and just didn't want to say knock it off. But when you tape a wire on, you are. Exactly right. So part of Manfred's rationale for not suspending players was that it would be difficult to assess blame and to say this person was relaying the signs or listening to the signs.

And so, you know, it'd be hard to figure out the different levels of culpability. Whereas if you had players actually wearing buzzers, that would obviously show that they were completely willing participants in this. It would also show, I guess, that they had obstructed the investigation, right? Because the investigation found no buzzers. So if there were buzzers, then MLB could suspend them on the grounds that they had lied to MLB about that. So, you know, it would be significant and it would allow you to pin the blame on these particular players. But again, no evidence other than Altuve not wanting to take his shirt off

and unsourced rumors and wrinkles and jerseys. Alex Wood tweeted, I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming. And Tommy Pham, as we covered, tweeted that image of Altuve's jersey. I think my favorite was Jose Ramirez, who tweeted, first time I log in since April, what did I miss? It was his first tweet since April. So this was just roiling throughout the day. Wait, what did the Royals do?

If MLB expected that this would quiet down a little bit after the suspensions and the punishments, the opposite has happened. And I think people are willing to believe anything about the Astros. People don't really trust that MLB found or disclosed everything that was going on here. So basically, putting the report out did more or less nothing to quash rumors about even more nefarious behavior or speculation. And this was just a wild day. It was a very wild day. Very little concrete information other than Beltran leaving, but that was really just the beginning of a memorable day in baseball Twitter. Anything happen today? Is today quiet? Today is pretty quiet. I think so. So yeah might be done. Maybe this was just a balloon boy day. Maybe this was just the aftershock and it will settle down. I don't know. But anyway, I mean, a few takeaways from this whole thing. First of all, I think that the way that past comments are getting unearthed,

that's another thing that is sort of fueling the story here is that people are looking back at what people said a year or two ago. Such as? Well, for instance, Justin Verlander, two months before he was traded to the Astros, made some pretty strong statements about how he thinks sign stealing is getting out of hand and it's on a new level and he wants MLB to crack down on sign stealing. That was when he was still a tiger. And obviously we have not heard anything on the subject from Justin Verlander since. So clearly it would seem that he was not overly bothered by the sign stealing that he must have been exposed to when he got to the Astros and was kind of okay with winning that World Series via those methods.

So there was that. And then there are also a couple of stories that I had kind of okay with winning that World Series via those methods. So there was that. And then there are also a couple stories that I had kind of forgotten about that now you read them in new light about Carlos Beltran and his time with the Yankees. So he was with the Yankees in 2018 as a senior advisor or something. And so I've been recalling or coming across these stories like Rustin Dodd wrote for The Athletic in November, just before this story broke, November 1st of 2019. Alex Bregman said, I think Carlos Beltran helped out the Yankees this year a lot. Bregman said, like a lot, a lot. The statement came accompanied by a wry smile and a lack of specifics. follow-up inquiry was unsuccessful he helps a lot behind the scenes bregman said holding his expression so obviously you uh read that now as an allusion to

science doing whereas yeah back then it might have been just i don't know veteran wiles or or whatever and uh there's also there's also by the way the fact that the initial report from Evan and Ken said that the player who instigated this was struggling in April and said that they had done this at a previous team. And so that implicates at least one of Carlos Beltran's probably close to immediate previous teams. Yes, good point. Yes. Previous teams I'm not saying you know devices and all that stuff just stuff that the game will dictate and will scream at people and he's right there Cora said speaking of Beltran throughout the evening I was looking and I saw it and Cora said their attention to detail is phenomenal I was joking with somebody that the biggest free agent acquisition is Carlos Beltran Cora said with a wink he I know how it

works you know he's helping a lot. They're paying attention to details, and we have to clean our details. Man, the guts to say that when you're literally Alex Cora. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, I don't know that they knew that Beltran was doing anything with the Yankees, but they knew what Beltran had done with them, with the Astros. And so they were extrapolating from that. So it's highly possible that Beltran was helping introduce these things to the Yankees or already had when he played for them, who knows. But yeah, so Preckman and Cora just coming out and just almost openly alluding to it,

although we didn't read it in quite the same light that we do now. In the London series, they were banging on the rubbish bin. Right. I thought that'd get more laugh. Well, it was no Royals joke. Unfortunate byproduct of all of this, I think, is that this scandal has now taken out two of the three managers from Puerto Rico and a third of the managers of color in the game pending who gets hired to replace them, which isn't to say that they shouldn't have lost their jobs, but just that it's sort of unfortunate that, you know, diversity being an issue historically there, that this has impacted that in a negative way. issue historically there that this has impacted that in a negative way. And I think also there's this idea now, I think, that kind of came from the banging scheme that Twitter people, citizen journalists can kind of uncover this and solve this, right? Because we saw that with the banging scheme where people like John Boy and our pal Lucas Pasteleros and everyone else were digging up instances of the

Astros banging on the garbage can and then, you know, that being very clear on the broadcast. And this was such a public scandal that you could actually see the evidence yourself. And so I think now maybe that's getting extended to the supposed buzzers, except that you can't see the buzzers. And so we are convincing ourselves that we can see the buzzers when really we can't. And, you know, I don't know why Jose Altuve didn't want to take his shirt off. I guess it's semi-suspicious, but I don't think that wrinkles or creases in jerseys are the smoking guns here. So I think maybe that initial scandal that was so easy to see from afar maybe, I guess, inflated our own sense of how much we can actually unravel out here on the internet.

And if you do have a large platform, I think you should be a bit mindful of that and of the value of providing some context when you're tweeting things, because a lot of people will just believe it and not distinguish between things that are proved and things that are rumored but not substantiated and i think you know i saw suggestions that maybe sign stealing was so prevalent that it caused the home run spike people were talking about that which i think is is pretty ridiculous because i think i think at this point there's not I don't think the evidence supports that but you'll remember a couple years ago before the juiced ball was fully explained there was some research that was presented at Sabre Seminar that suggested that the home run

spike at that point might have been if not entirely significantly affected by the strike zone because batters were able to swing more confidently when they were in more hitters counts. Do you remember this? Yeah. Yeah. So that it was, it was suggested that part of it, that at that point, I think only part of it was explained by physics and some of it seemed like it might've been explained by more favorable hitting conditions. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's possible that someone hit more home runs because he was stealing signs, but we know that the ball was behaving differently. We know it was traveling farther once it left the bat, which has nothing to do with whether the hitter knew what pitch was coming. And then you would think that if there were just a totally widespread sign stealing epidemic

and it was highly effective it wouldn't just affect home runs you'd think it would also affect strikeouts and walks and right those things are dramatically different plus we know that the triple a home run rate spiked hugely by like the same degree as soon as they introduced the new ball in triple a which suggests also that it's more about the ball. Yeah, and also we know that this affected almost every hitter in the league, that this raised the floor of home run hitters, that this is not like the steroids era where it seems like a small portion of hitters are experiencing massive spikes.

Rather, every hitter is getting a few percent more home runs. is getting a few percent more home runs. And so unless you believe that every hitter in baseball is benefiting from this, which one might, but then you would think that there would not have been the Twitter back and forth between players if that were the case. And so, yeah, I think you're right. I was bringing that thing up from earlier, but I think you're right. It is not a particularly plausible explanation or hypothesis for what's going to happen now. So the question that was going through my head throughout all this is, is this good or bad for baseball? And if it's bad, how bad is it? Because there were people suggesting that like, hey, this is good for baseball because we're all talking about baseball in the middle of January.

Normally we wouldn't be talking about baseball at all. This is like getting fans engaged. There is an element of it that's kind of fun, which I'll admit, like, you know, it was fun to follow this. Like even without believing most of it, I found it fun to follow. And I think people who are trying to uncover this evidence were having fun doing that. And it's like our pal Will Leach wrote a couple months ago for New York Magazine. He said that he was like relieved to have this sort of scandal that like this very public scandal, this sort of semi ridiculous scandal that involved banging on a garbage can, that he was enjoying this, that this was a fun sort of sports scandal. And I think there's some truth to that. On the other hand, the league clearly can't control the narrative here, not completely. And if this really does erode people's confidence that the game is on the level, that can't be good, right?

I mean, the idea that these guys were wearing buzzers like if you showed me actual evidence that they were i'd believe it it's not so far-fetched that i can't conceive that it's true it's just that i haven't actually seen any really convincing evidence yet but if fans and players think that not only that this is, but that it does really dramatically affect the outcome of games, which is maybe the disconnect with me. I don't think that sign stealing makes a bad team good or a good team great, and I think a lot of people do think that. And if you do think that, then that is going to reduce your enjoyment of the game, right? So it can't be good if you have stars like Cody Bellinger coming out and saying that this is ruining the integrity of the game, right? So it can't be good if you have stars like Cody Bellinger coming out and saying that this is ruining the integrity of the game. I mean, that's not a good message for

MLB to send. So I don't know where the line between entertainment that is good because baseball is an entertainment product and entertainment that is bad because at some point you need some confidence in the actual game on the field in order to enjoy it. I don't know where that line is or whether we've crossed it or how far we've left it behind. Well, a lot of this is new to me, so I'm still processing. I'm not going to give an opinion. All right. Yeah, I mean, just the sign stealing scandal in general, like the PD scandal, the steroid scandal, that was bad for baseball.

And there are a lot of parallels here. I mean, you could argue that if steroid use did help boost offensive levels, which I'm not that convinced of that that was a huge effect, that maybe that helped in a sense. And obviously like the 98 home run race was very fun for everyone at the time. And then there's a disillusionment that sets in afterwards. So if you're a fan and you think, well, the Astros won the World Series in 2017 because they were cheating and the Red Sox won the World Series in 2018 because they were cheating, then obviously that is going to sort of retroactively reduce your enjoyment in the sport, right? Or even prospectively reduce it. Because I obviously acknowledge that they were cheating, but for me, it's a little bit of a leap to say that they won the World Series because they were cheating. I think they were great teams regardless, and we'll never know whether it actually made the difference or not. But, you know, the point is they were great great and the Astros were great in 2019

when, as far as we know, they weren't cheating, although it's possible and much of Twitter suspects that they were. So that's just the whole question. It's like, this is fun. Like, the rumor mongering is kind of fun. Like, no one's getting physically hurt. Like, you know, we worry about steroids adversely affecting people's health and, you know, kids feeling pressure to take them and hurting their health. And that's another dimension that sign stealing doesn't really have, except that, you know, maybe it influences sportsmanship, if not health. the fallout will last a really long time whether people will question this whole era whether it will just reduce their faith in the game or whether this will just be sort of a one-off season scandal and then we'll all move on and we'll forever remember that these teams are associated with science dealing but it won't affect our enjoyment like i'm not gonna watch less baseball or believe less in the results that i see in 2020, but some people might. And if they do,

that would be a bad thing. All right. I think we've covered it. I don't know if it's a positive or a negative that you miss that in real time. Maybe it's good to get the digest version the next day. All right. So we've got some questions to answer. We've got a lot of questions about sign stealing, as one might imagine. So Patreon supporter Open Flywheel Project says, How does the effectiveness of sign stealing change how we view it? If the Astros next year run a team-wide 100 WRC+, does this become a significantly bigger deal in the public discourse? And we've talked a lot about the possible effectiveness of science doing, but I am pretty interested in how this story will stay on at them all year long. It'll be like a sideshow when they go on the road.

They'll be greeted everywhere as the heels that they are. And if they were to, say, win the World Series or something, what would that do? Would it make people even more angry because the Astros, who cheated at some point, are still winning? Would it make them less angry because, well, if the Astros are still great, then that means maybe they were great regardless of the signs doing. Maybe the signs doing didn't matter all that much. And my response to this email was to say that, well, A, I'm not sure it could become a significantly bigger deal in the public discourse. It's already a huge deal. B, if the players who are known to have cheated suddenly stop hitting this year, that obviously would be pretty suspicious. I mean, if Altuve is terrible and Bregman is terrible and

all the people who were on these 2017 and 2018 teams can't hit anymore, yes, that would make me question what was going on and what the effectiveness of signs doing was. Although then I would have even more questions about 2019 because the astros offense was better than ever in 2019 and thus far we have no confirmed evidence that they were cheating then so i would be more suspicious that they were cheating in 2019 i guess and that we hadn't detected it if they all suddenly stopped hitting all of a sudden so i don don't know. What do you think? Well, it's a complicated question because there's a lot of different fans, a lot of different levels of fandom. And I think that there's a difference between people who are genuinely curious to see some of these variables isolated, perhaps,

and they're curious to know how much it affected. And it makes a big difference to them how much it's affected and they want to see the good studies and all that. And then people who, to them, it's a sort of a simpler experience that you check in on every once in a while and you're still a baseball fan, but you don't feel quite so much pressure to be rigorous. So like I have a friend, for instance, who I was talking to about this at a Christmas party and I was explaining like the this at a Christmas party. And I was explaining like the, the weirdness of the home road splits, not being different and how baffling that is and how it's, you know, from a analytic perspective, it's mysterious and, and almost frustrating. And,

and I don't really know what to make of that. And then a couple of days ago, he sends me a text message showing the Astros home road splits in the World Series. So it's like four games and three games, or I don't even know if it was a seven. Yeah, I guess it was a seven game series. And he's like, see? And then I said, I don't even know. We don't even really have established what they were doing in the World Series. There's conflicting reports. He goes, well, obviously they were, see? And so for you know, for him, for him, I think that this is, this falls under, you know, good narrative and whether, I just, I don't think that he cares that much about what happens next year. If the Astros are good next year, it's proof they're still cheating. And if the Astros are bad next year, it's proof that the

cheating changed everything. And so that is just to say that he is living a good life and I can't really speak to what it'll mean to him. But yeah, I think as to, from, from my perspective, it's, it's a bigger deal if the Astros are all noticeably worse next year. I think there's three, there's sort of three main factors that we use to determine how seriously to take these things. And none of them is, because there's three, none of them is the only one. So you can, even if it turns out that this didn't help them at all, even if it turns out it hurt them, that they were actively hurting themselves through some complicated process of advanced cognition that we have speculated on. It doesn't matter because the other two factors are at play. But the three factors are, I think, that we use to rate the

controversy is one, maybe there's four. One is how much effort you put into the cheating. Are you plotting a heist or are you simply picking up what is there for you? So like, for instance, Derek Jeter saying that he got hit by that pitch that one time when he wasn't hit by that pitch, that was also cheating, but it was, he was just picking up a, picking up a coin, right? He just, it, the opportunity presented itself. He took it. It's not like, it's not like he was spending a large part of his time plotting out ways to take hit by pitches. So one, how much effort you go to. Two is how effective it is. If it really distorts the process, I think that we have more of a reaction to it. We want to, you know, kind of have some faith in what we're

seeing. And there's never going to be full faith in those seasons, those Astro seasons, and anymore because of this. But the more distorted it gets, I think the more offended we are by the changes to the record and by the effect it had on the opponents that they were facing. And then the others are how much the behavior violates either broad norms of behavior. So if you were, for instance, instance to if it were a violent form of cheating for instance i think that like the new orleans saints bounty gate is not just a form of cheating but it is it involves behavior that we also consider to be against good behavior and

against social norms steroids is a bit like that as well, because it is putting pressure on your opponents to match you in a dangerous, physically dangerous behavior. It's really a kind of a rotten thing to do to your opponents, because if they want to compete against you, now they have to shorten their lives or potentially. And so that's a monstrous behavior. And so that's the third thing. And then the fourth is just how widespread it is and whether you're engaged in the culture of the sport that you're in or whether this is really anomalous. And so that's a monstrous behavior. And so that's the third thing. And then the fourth is just how widespread it is and whether you're engaged in the culture of the sport that you're in or whether this is really anomalous. And so one of those four things I said is effectiveness. And I think that we will, to some degree, if Alex Bregman turns out to be bad next year

and for the rest of his career, and so do the other Astros, the stats on his page, when we look back at it, will look even more anomalous, more asterisk worthy, if not actually asterisked, and more kind of offensive, unreal, fake, pretend. And so yeah, I do think it'll have a significant difference. I'm not exact, I'm not, you know, if I, if I were forced to put money on the Astros next year, I don't think that I would bet that they're going to decline. Uh, but if they do, I mean, I'll certainly be like the two big stories of the first month of the season are going to be the Astros offensive performance, particularly on quick to stabilize stats and the liveliness of the baseball.

So those are the things I'm going to be watching right away. So I would be lying if I said that it's not a significant thing that I care about. Yeah, sure. Me too. All right. By the way, I want to mention there was one, I think, very significant and excellent story that surfaced on Thursday amid all of this Twitter craziness that I wish it had come out some other day so that it would have gotten more attention.

But the Giants hired Alyssa Nacken as an assistant coach on their major league staff. This is the first woman who will be part of a major league coaching staff, which is a huge thing. And she'll be in uniform during batting practice. She's been with the team, I think, since 2014. And she's worked in high performance, sports science, that sort of thing. And she'll be continuing to assist with that. But she'll be traveling with the team all the time. She'll be a constant presence and that's like a huge barrier that has been broken that was kind of quietly broken on the day that everyone was trying to find wrinkles in jerseys so that's a really nice thing that came out of this strange day fantastic not in the dugout no because the the giants have like a 13-person coaching staff right now,

and I think you're only allowed to have seven uniformed coaches in the dugout. So she won't be one of the ones in the dugout. Well, that is too bad, and I hope that next year that she has a job that she is in the dugout because I think that it is annoying to turn on your television and see only men. Right. All right. I will link to a longer story that was written only men. Right. All right. I will link to a longer story that was written about her by Andrew Baggerly. If you're curious about her background and her role, maybe we can talk to her sometime.

Do you have a stat blast? Yes, I do. All right. Take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day-stab-lust. This one was asked by a reader named Nat, who says this question is inspired by Tyler Kepner's article in the New York Times about Garrett Cole. He refers to Cole as a strapping right-hander who strikes everyone out.

Obviously, we've never seen a 20-strikeout game, but what about striking everyone out at least once how common is it for a starting pitcher to record at least one strikeout against every player on the other team has cole ever done it and this turns out to be a somewhat interesting question to answer because well all right so it's easy for me to look up games in which every batter on the other team struck out, particularly every starting batter struck out. It's harder to find one where the pitcher struck out every batter

because that's not a query term. So you can find out if the pitcher struck out X number of batters, and you can find out how many batters who started the game struck out in the game. And if the answer is nine on a team, then you know that all the starters struck out, but it's hard to go the other way. So I kind of answer this in the reverse way, which is to say how many games were there when all nine starters struck out. And the answer is that last year there were 60 games where every batter on the home team struck out and 57 where every batter on the visiting team struck out, which includes against the starting pitcher or the relief pitcher. So that is not to say that Garrett Cole struck all

of those batters out. However, I looked up the very first game I looked up of these was by coincidence started by Garrett Cole. And the reason that it was the last the first one I checked is because it was the last one of these games that happened last year. It was September 24th against the Mariners. And I just checked by hand. And in fact, Garrett Cole in that game did strike out every Mariners batter. So to answer the question, yes, Garrett Cole has done it. He is, in fact, the last person to have done it for now. And he probably did it multiple times last year. The second game that I checked was not, but the third game I checked was started by Hugh Darvish,

and he also struck every batter out. So I looked up three and twice the starter struck out every batter. So I don't think it's super duper rare. It does happen. And it did happen last year. Now, a more interesting question. No, it's not your answer. Your question was very interesting. Mine is not more interesting. A different answer though, is what about games where all 18 batters struck out all 18 starters. So the nine on the home team and the nine on the road team, every single one of them took a punch out. And there were three of those last year, which might seem like a lot or might seem like a little, but here's something to make it seem like a lot. Before last year, there had only been four in history. So there were four of these games in history before in the first 150 years of major league baseball and there were

three last year one of them was in fact the darvish game but unfortunately sunny gray his opponent did not strike out everybody so that was not both starters oh whatever i'll look at the i'll look at the other two right now dylan can edit out the pauses but i'll look at the other two and see whether i can well one was a bullpen game and so that's not going to be either. So I've eliminated two of the three. And let's see, Blake Snell and Carlos Rodon, not looking good because Rodon only struck out nine, only went four and two thirds. So in none of these three games did both starting pitchers strike everyone out. However, given the way things are going, you have to assume there will be three or four or five of these next year and six or seven or eight of them the year after that. And

it will not be long if it hasn't happened already until every pitcher, until both pitchers in a game have struck out every batter. All right, cool. All right. Well, even that question was slightly Astros related. So continuing here, do a couple more. Ezra says, imagine a universe in which the Astros are ruled out of the 2020 postseason, but still play regular season games as usual. How many games would they win? Would they still be favorites to lead the division by season's end? The players would still have a financial incentive to play well,

and I'd imagine they'd have a bit of us-against-the-world motivation. Would exclusion from the playoffs really affect them that much? Huh. Well, the real answer is whether the club would decide to use the season as a way of rebuilding parts of the team. If you figure there's no upside, then do you trade a bunch of your players away? Do you do a little bit of a flash rebuild for part of your team? And it's tough to say because we don't know who the GM is

or what the GM will feel like their role is in the team. I think if you just threw him out there and had him play, my guess is that, well, you know, I don't think it would affect much if you had the same roster playing. Yeah. Let's say that they're banned from getting a head start and they're rebuilt too, so they can't trade anyone either. That's part of the punishment.

Yeah, I think there'd be a little— Mainly asking about the psychological effect. Yeah, I think there'd be more rest involved for the players but not much more rest they still want their numbers they still want to play but i do think there'd be a little bit more rest and maybe maybe by september you'd find a bunch of players who were just like shut me down i don't need my stats my stats for the year kind of locked in already and I'm bored. And so I think you probably would have a lot of a fair number of players shut down in September. So for that reason, I might say, what are the Astros project for next year?

Do you think like 98, 99? Yeah, probably something close to that. They have the highest projected winning percentage in baseball. So, yeah, like low 90s Seems about right to me Yeah I mean if anything they'd be More motivated to play well to show That they're not products of the banging Scheme the banging scheme the Vibrating banging scheme whatever they were

Doing so there's that And then there's the usual financial Incentive and the desire to Avoid public embarrassment and failure so yeah i don't think it would be a huge effect didn't we once answer a question about like what if the the most hated team in the world was playing would would that cause their performance to suffer if everyone in every ballpark was mercilessly booing them or something like that. So that's basically what the Astros are going to be in 2020. So we will see, I guess.

I mean, it might get to them. Like they're traveling around. They're getting booed constantly. People are bringing signs. People are banging cardboard, garbage cans. Who knows what they'll be doing in the stands all season. So does that bring them together in an us against the world mentality or does it just get on them because they were guilty? They did do it. It's not like everyone is unfairly holding them responsible for something. Nope, they did it. They were guilty. Not everyone on the 2020 team, obviously, but a lot of them knew about it or did it. So maybe that does start to wear you down at a certain point. Yeah, it's obviously totally speculative.

But I would imagine that if I don't think that I don't think it would matter that much. But if we're measuring motivation here, I think that there would be a lot of motivation in April and then it would to prove everybody wrong. And then it would kind of just fade pretty quickly. I think that not feeling the stakes would cause kind of a lack of passion after that. You'd go out and you'd prove everybody wrong for a few weeks, but how long can stakes-less grievance carry a team if they know that no matter how well they play, they're not going to make the playoffs? I would think there'd be a certain amount of feeling like winning 110 games would be

a waste if you can't even go to the playoffs. Why even waste our good season? Obviously, you don't get to hoard your talent. You can't push those wins to next year. But I would still feel like, well, this is kind of a waste. Why are we winning so many games? And so if they could, if they started to sniff greatest record in baseball history, then that might motivate them to prove everybody wrong. But I think that they'd be June and they'd be on a 97 win pace

and they'd see that they hadn't really proved anyone wrong. No one really cared. Most people were like my friend who were like, well, now they're just cheating more. People are not going to come over to them and go, okay, we concede, you win. It's hard to change people's narrative. And so they would probably find that it was sort of frustrating

that it wasn't making them feel better and it wasn't making other people feel worse. And then they would get into the banal slog toward the end of the season. Right, yeah. Okay, question from Joe K. in Herndon, Virginia. In the classic 1991 college football farce Necessary Roughness, Texas State University facing the death penalty hires Ed Straight Arrow Gennaro to take over as the fightin armadillos head coach assuming jim crane had the same motivations as texas state both ensuring compliance and reassuring the public that they were serious about cleaning up the program who could be houston's straight arrow

genero oh man when i was covering education that this was all anytime you had a school district where they were there was some controversy or whatever that i i don't know if this was just a blip if this was just in the mid-2000s that this was a trend but everybody would want to hire a general they always wanted to hire like somebody like a general or like a navy admiral or something it was always like, we're going to bring in a general. So I think you'd bring in a general. Yeah, so Joe suggests Cal Ripken. So he wanted us to try to think of someone who would be better than Cal Ripken. I mean, I'm assuming it's a baseball person.

So you're not just going to go out and hire someone who has a spotless reputation but knows nothing about baseball you still want them to run your baseball team so is there anyone who is more placed on a pedestal as soon as we answer this question that person is going to be revealed to have been you know doing some cheating somewhere we can't we can't we're, we're gonna milkshake duck a person just by saying their name. That's probably true.

Who is a person who is, Greg Maddox. No, not Greg Maddox. Greg Maddox seems like he. Yeah, he's a prankster. He's a prankster. It might, yeah, okay. I actually thought, this is how distorted baseball morality has been.

I actually thought David Ortiz. And then I remembered that he failed a drug test. Supposedly. Supposedly, according to reports. And so I thought David Ortiz. And David Ortiz is universally respected and is universally beloved. Yeah. And so it's very, we're an inconsistent group here.

I mean, I swear a year ago I would have said Carlos Beltran. Yeah, it's true. People with just squeaky clean reputations don't necessarily stay that way. Let me think, let me think. Like is there anyone like Mike Fiers? No. Mike Fiers threw, remember the Marlins were so mad at Mike Fires because they thought that he threw up and in too much.

Yeah, not Mike Fires. But is there anyone who has whistleblown, who has come out strongly against... I mean, someone like Verlander has been very anti-PED in the past and anti-other stuff too, but then he goes to the Astros and suddenly he's teammates with Osuna and science dealers and he doesn't say much. Well, Frank Thomas testified against steroid use.

Even though he was a big power hitter, he was so unsuspicious that he could be called into Congress to testify about clean living. Yeah, okay. Now he does testosterone ads. For testosterone, so that's, yeah. By the way, those ads are filmed in my old newspaper building, which is now vacant. And it just, like, they're ads that they have, like, B-roll. He doesn't work in that building.

That building is vacant it is not a testosterone supplement company but they film the b-roll of him like walking into a meeting in in my old lobby huh it's weird yeah uh how about that guy who the a's drafted desmond something oh yeah and then he went to a priest now he became not a priest he became a monk he went to a monastery okay well that's that's something grant desme grant desme right yeah how about him well all right sure if he's available i feel like the answer i mean i don't know again it's hard to know and you forget what you forget what controversies people were involved in throughout the stage of their career but i feel

like the answer would have been frank robinson rest in yes uh frank robinson felt to me like the you know in a lot of ways the great moral authority of baseball for a long period of time. Yes. So he would have been a great one. Yes. And, you know, had the skills, had the variety of experience to take on any role in an organization and to be the general, you know? Is there anyone else who's like come out and spoken about greeny use or steroid use or something like that? There are probably people who have alluded to that,

but if they did it themselves, then they wouldn't qualify for this probably even so. So, well, we'll keep thinking about it, and people can suggest anyone who comes to mind. All right, last one. This is from Ethan. With all the different angles on the Astro sign stealing scheme, one I haven't seen brought up, although it has been brought up now, is whether this may affect Carlos Beltran's Hall of Fame chances.

With his candidacy pending in three years, I could see voters holding this against him in a similar way to how some voters won't vote for steroids, guys. Is it not the same thing, or is cheating cheating? Jay Jaffe did write about this for Fangraphs on thursday although he didn't really have a firm answer either way it's impossible to to know but i will be voting three years from now so i will have to decide and i had anticipated voting for carl speltron i have not re-evaluated that yet i have some time to do that. So no one who was suspended for PD use has gotten into the hall thus far, I think. So some voters will draw a distinction between guys who did it before MLB really cracked down on it, even though it was against the rules of baseball and the U.S. at the time. the rules of baseball and the U.S. at the time, but they'll draw a distinction there saying, well, if you were being tested and there were penalties and yet you still did it, then that's different from someone doing it before that when it was sort of, you know, everyone would look the other way, which I think is a fair distinction to draw. Now, with the sign stealing, I guess anyone who is implicated in this scandal would

be basically like a post-testing steroid positive tester, right? Because MLB was warned about this in September 2017 when the Red Sox were doing it. All the teams were supposedly put on notice. Maybe Jeff Luno didn't relay that message as he was supposed to, but still, it was out there. It was publicly reported. And so anyone who did that, which includes the Astros, who kept doing it that year, according to MLB's findings, and also the next year, they knew it was wrong. They knew it was against the rules. They kept doing it. We don't know whether sign stealing is more or less effective than steroids, PD use. In many ways, there's so many parallels between these situations.

That's another one. We never really knew exactly how effective steroids or PD use was. It seemed to be in certain cases, but it was hard to tell if it was league-wide. And of course, we never knew how many people were doing it, which is also true in sign stealing. So morally speaking, I wouldn't say that there's a tremendous difference here. They're both cheating. They're both doing something against the rules to try to get an advantage in a baseball game.

So I don't know, other than the harming your health aspect to it, whether there's any great ethical distinction to be drawn. there's any great ethical distinction to be drawn. So you would think that for consistency's sake, voters who have not voted for PED guys would not vote for sign stealing guys either, right? Except that I guess the history of sign stealing goes back to the beginning of baseball and using whatever technology at the time was available to steal signs.

That's always sort of been going on, although it wasn't policed the way that it is now for all baseball history. So I would think that because Beltran was not a slam dunk first ballot type guy, I think he would have gotten in. I think there's enough appreciation of his advanced stats and also like his playoff record and all that that could sort of satisfy old school and new school voters i i think he would have gotten in but i'd say at the very least

he'll have to wait longer so i don't know whether ultimately he will be forgiven yeah i'm still processing but i think andre dawson could be the uh be the be the whatever the question was. Yeah. Your straight arrow general. Yeah. He runs a funeral home now. Is that a qualification? No, but I read a profile of him, and it was a very convincing profile of a person living a good life.

Uh-huh. Okay. He was a victim of collusion, so he knows what it's like when people are colluding to do bad things yeah all right so i guess we'll end there okay okay all right well i'm glad that we preserved the madness of thursday for posterity in podcast form one thing that happened on thursday that i didn't mention is that jack mcdowell turned 54 happy 54th jack on fr, he jumped into the sign-stealing story himself. He went on the radio show Mac Attack on WFNZ in Charlotte, and he said, We had a system in the old Comiskey Park in the late 1980s.

Gatorade sign out in center had a light. There was a toggle switch in the manager's office, and a camera zoomed in on the catcher. I'm gonna whistleblow this now, because I'm getting tired of this crap. Tony La Russa is the one who put it in. He was also the head of the first team where everyone was doing steroids, yet he's still in the game making half a million, you know? No one is going to go after that. It's just, this stuff is getting old where they target certain guys and let other people off the hook. Of course, the White Sox weren't very

good in the late 80s, but it's not surprising to hear that. If you go and read The Hidden Language of Baseball by Paul Dixon, whom we had on the podcast not too long ago, he documents many such cases of TV cameras being used, telescopes being used, buzzers buried under the third base coach's box, binoculars, whatever teams had at their disposal at the time. Obviously doesn't excuse anything that the Astros and the Red Sox did, but does put it in some historical context, and I wonder whether we will hear even more of these stories surfacing now that it's just open season on sign stealing. And in another development on Friday,

Bobby Rush, a congressman from Illinois, sent a letter calling for a congressional oversight hearing on the MLB sign stealing scandal. Congress always loves to get involved in baseball business. Good PR, good grandstanding opportunities. Unlike the steroid scandal, though, there are no laws being broken here, so I don't know exactly how they would justify it. The letter seems to be a won't-anyone-think-of-the-children appeal, sending the wrong

message about sportsmanship and ethics, etc. Granted, I wouldn't say I have a ton of confidence in MLB or Rob Manfred to root out every last bit of sign-stealing, but I would think that this is something that can be solved with some achievable technological changes. Not sure we need Congress on the case. Also wanted to mention in the non-sign stealing department, I saw that Angels GM Billy Epler said that the new rule change for designating two-way players in 2020 will allow the team a unique strategy for Shohei Otani's Tommy John recovery. Epler said, We will be able to send Shohei on an actual rehab assignment as a pitcher, and then the very next day, if we so choose, we can use him in a major league game as a hitter.

So Ohtani can be on a rehab assignment as a pitcher while continuing to play games in the big leagues as a hitter, which could be relevant if they slow down Ohtani's comeback in order to keep his workload down. I can't wait for Otani 2020. No matter how many bad stories about baseball we get, there's still that one to look forward to. And there is still this podcast to look forward to, thanks to the support of listeners like you. If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and sign up to pledge some small monthly amount. Not only help keep the podcast going but also get yourself access to some perks as have the following five

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