Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1491: The Baseball Ombudsperson

Episode Date: January 24, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mitch Haniger’s excruciating-sounding injuries, how Mariners fans may feel about the Braves signing Félix Hernández, the winter of Nolan Arenado’s discontent, where the Rockies went wrong, the oddness of being a baseball player, why Scott Boras believes Astros players shouldn’t apologize for stealing signs (and why he’s wrong), […]

🎵 You put a hold in my heart 🎵 🎵 You put a hold in my heart 🎵 🎵 You put a hold in my heart 🎵 🎵 Rupture the hold in my heart 🎵 I, I Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing all right. How are you? I'm doing okay. I think we're both doing better than Mitch Hanegar. Oh, gosh. We were just talking about that before we started recording. It's just reading the injury history just causes great pain. Yep. Probably more to you than to me. I guess from personal experience, but I haven't actually ruptured a testicle in my life, which

of personal experience but i i haven't actually ruptured a testicle in my life which i'm pretty happy to be able to say and mitch henniger cannot say the same i'm not laughing because it is funny either that he has or that you hypothetically could but what a sentence i know it's uh yeah we were just talking about it on Slack at The Ringer, and Bauman actually put it very indelicately. He just posted the news that Henniger was hurt again, and the way he described it was, Which, it's just, I'll never forget that sentence. I don't know if that's medically accurate for what actually happened to him. But I know there is a ruptured testicle. I know there was another groin injury, which I guess is separate from the ruptured testicle. I guess anywhere painful the groin injury that comes after that. But now he has apparently hurt his abdomen rehabbing and gaining strength again from the other injuries. And so now he will probably have a delayed start to the season. So I hope for a happier and healthier and less painful next six months than Michanikers had in the last six months or so. six months than Mitch Henniker's had in the last six months or so. Yes.

As I said to you before we started recording, on average, y'all are stronger than I am. But boy, the places you're vulnerable sure are vulnerable and all on the outside. Anyhow. It is a crippling weak point. It absolutely is. Anyhow. So on happier topics, or I don't know if this is i guess it has to be a happier topic but i have been waiting all week to ask you about the felix hernandez signing because we knew this was coming or that if he was going to be signed by someone it would almost

certainly not be the mariners and so you had a lot of time to prepare emotionally for this. But when you actually saw the news that Felix Hernandez was signed to a minor league deal by the Atlanta Braves, what, if anything, did you feel? So I found myself identifying a new stage of grief when it comes to Felix, which is dread. I am experiencing dread. And my dread is- I'm surprised you hadn't gotten there before well i mean this is like a different kind of dread right so i had thought i had worried after the conclusion of the season that like he might not get any offers at all right right he might just be done and that felt terrible and just felt terrible for a player who means so much to my experience of this sport and my ultimate professional life.

And it's just that dread was very upsetting. And now I have a lesser dread, which is that he will go to spring and he will not end up making the eventual roster. I hope he does, though. You know, Atlanta's a good team. That Braves team is a good team, and they are a much better team than the caliber of team, at least in terms of their outlook for this season that I expected him to get a chance with.

I really thought he'd end up in Miami, just because why the hell not, right? And so I have dread, but the source of my dread is that there is like a real thing to lose now, which is the possibility of Felix, you know, figuring something out and maybe Atlanta helps him figure a thing out. And it's a fresh start with an organization that doesn't have the same baggage, both on the player side and the org side. that doesn't have the same baggage, both on the player side and the org side.

And so, you know, maybe Felix gets to do a thing, you know? Maybe he gets to go do a thing. So I am not angry. I am not sad yet. I do have dread. I have great dread in my heart. But that dread is a combination of hope and potential sadness of him just being like,

you know, like the guys who get cut when they're a non-roster invitee to spring. Like those guys, they're at the end. It's done, right? And I don't want that for him. So I have dread motivated by hope and the anticipation of sadness. And so it's kind of a normal day. Learning things about Meg.

Pretty much far for the course. Yeah. So there's no part of you that I guess because I could imagine that if he suddenly had a bounce back season and was like great again, which is quite far fetched. But if that somehow happened, there might be some Mariners fans who were looking at that and would be sort of sad to see him excelling in another uniform, I guess. Except that because it's Felix, probably everyone's wishing him well, right? Because it's not like he wanted to leave. He was the one guy who stayed and really wanted to stay and then ultimately i guess the mariners didn't really want him to stay and

maybe they both needed a new change of scenery or something there so it's not as if he forsook seattle or something so i guess you'd just be happy to see someone who meant a lot to you it's like you know an ex seeing an ex or something. It's like, I don't know, it wasn't a bad, bitter breakup, really, or they had a nice moment at the end of the season, and he got to take his curtain calls and ovations and everything. And I guess there was maybe some bad blood going on at some point behind the scenes, because otherwise, you would think like, who needs pitching more than the Mariners? Right. I mean, you would think like who needs pitching more than the mariners right i mean and who cares less about the quality of that pitching yeah yeah only the orioles right now have fewer projected war from

their starting pitchers than the mariners so from afar you would think well this team needs pitching more than any other team and it's gonna be a bad team you'd think that they'd at least want to have one franchise legend who people have some fondness for, at least. Maybe you'll sell some tickets or something. So in that sense, you would think that the Mariners would be the perfect place for Felix to be. But I guess it's just when you go from one of the best pitchers in baseball to one of the worst, then maybe if you're still in the same city in the same uniform, it's kind of hard to adjust to that new role and and i guess it would be hard to cut the guy based on performance if there's that kind of emotional tie to that person yeah i think that it is probably for the best for everyone to be able to move on

you know there were moments based on how his second half trended where i think that if it had been a different pitcher, he very well may have been DFA, but they, they at least knew they couldn't do that. Right. And so I think that we will, we will look on and, you know, I'm sure there will be a couple of, of Mariners fans who are grumpy about it because humans are fallible, but I think in general, people will be happy when I wrote about Felix after that last start, you know, kind of the way that I came to understand how I was feeling about that evening and his career with Seattle was that, you know, I had accumulated all of these debts to him that I will never be able to repay because

I don't know Felix, right? We're not pals. We don't exchange Christmas cards. And he had his career and his pitching had this profound impact on my life in a way that feels sort of silly to talk about in public, but is really true. And so I think most Mariners fans will look at it and say, you know, like we owe some debt and, you know, being happy for him in Atlanta. If he makes that roster and is able to bounce back a little bit, that's a good way to start repaying that debt. So I think that's the way I'm going to look at it. Atlanta comes to Seattle this year. They have a series in late May, I think. And so I would just love him to have a homecoming as part of a winning Braves team. I think that could be really fun. So I hope that things work out for him and he is able to regain some form and figure stuff out and get another shot at october because it remains just

like one of the great sad baseball crimes crime has a new meaning in baseball lately um uh misfortunes that he never got to pitch a postseason game so even if it's out of the bullpen that'd be fine yeah felix comes in throws a couple innings of bull of bullpen that's fine good with that that'd be even more bittersweet for mariner's fans if he actually finally gets that playoff appearance but it's somewhere else but yeah there's potential for it to be one of those weird things where it's like a legendary player who you associate very closely with one team and then you forget that he had like one very short chapter with some other team at the tail end of his career like sam mentioned just in passing on the last episode that tim raines played for the orioles

for four games at the age of 41 in 2001 and i cannot say i remembered the tim raines orioles era and that's just one of those things where it's like, oh, Tim Raines, he's an expo, or maybe you remember him as a White Sox, or I saw him as a Yankee, but don't really remember the 58 games with the A's or the four games with the Orioles. And then there were some games with the Marlins. So that happens sometimes when a great player declines and then goes from being with one team for most or all of his career to just bouncing around from a few teams and then if you see pictures of him in that uniform or like baseball cards from the end of his career it's like wow that just looks weird and and

somehow wrong but i do hope that felix manages to stick and pitches well well enough to have a roster spot and yeah if so, then yeah, he would have a legitimate chance at least being on a playoff team, if not necessarily pitching in the playoffs. So that'd be nice. Yeah, it would be good to see. It's sort of like every time I go to a Seahawks game, there's always one dude in a Jerry Rice Seahawks jersey. I know this is a comparison that doesn't mean a whole lot to you, but with me I promise it is it is apt he played one season in Seattle he's obviously a famous 49er right running up and down on the sidelines at the NFC championship game so excited they're going back to the Super Bowl but there's always one dude the Seahawks game who's like yeah

number 80 he was ours and I'm like hmm no one remembers that so anyhow yeah it's just like that yep alright well should we stick with the theme of weird relationships between teams and somewhat bitter breakups and talk about the Nolan Arenado drama

which Sam and I have not discussed this week but has been one of the big stories so this has been One of the big stories so This has been an active off season We've seen a lot of free agent activity And record contracts and all the sign Stealing stuff but one thing that Has not come to fruition is

All the rumors about good Young stars getting traded Which we've been hearing about since the beginning Of the off season that Francisco Endor is on the market and Mookie Betts is on The market and Chris Bryan is on the market and Nolan Aranato is on the market. And thus far, they may have been on the market officially, according to comments by the Rockies GM Jeff Breidich. That was the moment when he decided to air his grievances with the Rockies, which go

beyond just being dangled on the trade market, according to him, but speak to some deeper seated behind the scenes issues, which, according to other reports and sources, mostly have to do with just being disgruntled about the direction of the team because Rocky's not so good. They won 71 games last year. And instead of trying to get better this offseason, they've essentially done nothing. I think they have signed one player to a major league contract. And it was my first round pick in our minor league free agent draft, Jose Mujica, who has not played in the majors yet. So that's kind of the extent

of it. I guess they claimed Tyler Kinney off waivers, but it's about it. They haven't made a trade. They haven't really signed a free agent who has been in the big leagues to a major league contract. It's been an extremely quiet offseason, and Nolan Arenado seems frustrated. Yeah. If you go to our roster resource offseason tracker at Fangraphs, it feels very stark because you see there's a column for team change, and you get ads, and you're like, oh, look, there's a plus there.

They've done something. They signed Kelby Tomlinson to a minor league deal and Chris Owings, Mike Gerber. Who even, you know? And so I am sympathetic to, I think that often when people are assessing the moves of an organization, especially around free agent signings, there is an appropriate amount of skepticism about teams being unwilling to spend money. But I think that fans would be well served that like a negotiation like that has two parties and a free agent has to agree to go there. And it is not a normal place to play baseball, right? It's like they play baseball on the moon.

play baseball right it's like they play baseball on the moon and so you can appreciate how you know maybe it might be a hard place to attract free agents whatever anthony rendon wants to be in southern california what have you except you you need to try and even if you can't do that hard part making the guy who is the best player on your team feel appreciated, that just seems like bad people management. You should always, you know, if you have a Nolan Arenado, you should be like, hey, Nolan, are you happy? How can we make you happier? Do you enjoy your time here? Are you making friends?

Is there a particular kind of food you like in the ballpark? He is such a good player for an organization like theirs where they're sort of indecisive about what direction they want to go, whether they want to win or lose. They keep making weird bullpen signings. on, it is maybe especially important to keep your franchise player happy and engaged because Nolan Arenado is why people are going to go see Rockies games next year. You know, there are other guys on that team that are who are interesting. He's not the only one who is good. But in terms of like dudes where you're like, yeah, I really want to see that guy like he's

easily at the top of that list for that franchise. And so it seems to speak to some broader institutional dysfunction within the front office that they have allowed that relationship to fray so dramatically, you know, going from giving him this massive extension in one year to being in this place in another. You know, players like that want to win baseball games. And I think that franchises often underestimate the degree to which that really matters to players. Even if it has become a secondary goal for a lot of ownership groups, they really would like to win a World Series. Ask Felix how he feels about never having appeared in the postseason.

That is a thing that he will give you a very honest and critical opinion about. So I just can't believe that they got here yeah it's been less than 11 months since he signed a long-term seven-year extension or an eight-year extension that added seven years onto his existing deal and things have gone south in that year not just in in the Rockies record, but also in this relationship. And the thing that made this so sensational was that he spoke fairly frankly about it. And he named names or named a name.

He said, Jeff, that's Jeff Breidich. The GM is very disrespectful. I never talk trash or anything. I play hard, keep my mouth shut, but I can only get crossed so many times. And it was kind of cryptic because I think people initially assumed that he was just upset about all the trade rumors. But it seems like that's not it, that I guess he was maybe okay with being traded if the Rockies weren't actually going to try to add around him and maybe this bubbled over once he realized that he was stuck there at least he has an opt-out after the 2021 season so he can get out then if he wants to but he wants to win in the meantime and it doesn't look like the Rockies are going to do that and he also said there's a lot of disrespect from people there that I don't want to be a part of you can quote that you ask what I thought of Jeff's quotes and I say I don't care what be a part of. You can quote that. You ask what I thought of Jeff's quotes, and I say, I don't care what people say around there. There's a lot of disrespect. I'm not mad

at the trade rumors. There's more to it. I think there's some precedent in that. I think Troy Tulewiczki's time with the team ended in somewhat similar fashion, that there was some bad blood there also with Breidich. And so I think people are saying, suggesting that Breidich may be the common element here. Maybe he's not doing a good job of getting along with his stars, which is fairly important. And then Arenado put out a statement via the Notes app, which is how one issues an official statement these days. And he basically didn't give any additional details. these days and he basically didn't give any additional details and he just said that there are a number of things that the Rockies and he and his agent have been discussing this offseason and he's not going to talk about it anymore and usually he's not outspoken and now he's just

going to focus on baseball so that kind of put an end to this I guess now but it definitely doesn't make Breidich look good and And I don't know if his seat is hot or his chair is wobbly or whatever because of this, but between that and the way that he's been burned anytime he has signed free agents, I guess the charitable interpretation of this would just be that he's been conditioned not to sign free agents anymore because every time he has, it's just backfired horribly. So Rockies have done a pretty decent job of developing players, and every time they dip into the free agent market lately, it's just been a total disaster.

So I don't know. That's not a strength of the organization, but also doesn't mean that you can completely quit and give up and not keep trying and expect your stars to be happy. So somewhat unusual that he went public in this way, almost like John Carl Stanton did when he was frustrated and trying to force his way out of Miami. So I don't know if this kind of erodes some of the leverage that the Rockies might have if they were to continue Arenado trade talks now that everyone knows that he's so unhappy there. But maybe this will not continue to boil over in so public a fashion. Am I correct in remembering that Breitich is also the GM who was critical of

baseball beat writers as not knowing how to run organizations? I don't recall. I wouldn't say, I mean, that wouldn't surprise me at all because the Rockies organization, I wouldn't say it's been one of the better run organizations recently and even from a PR perspective at times. So don't recall those specific statements, but maybe you don't hear a whole lot from him or about him except when he's at the center of some controversy or at least i don't maybe rocky's fans do oh boy some of these quotes ben did a little googling some of these quotes from him not the best read them it'd be like if i went to a hospital every day and wrote a blog about the job done by one of the surgeons and the things he screwed up that's

crazy i know nothing about brain surgery nor have i ever even worked on the path to become a brain surgeon that's what goes on in this industry and other sports industries is it though i don't know if it is i don't mean he has brain surgery no i imagine there are a fair number of brain surgeons who would be like is that ian Desmond deal a good one? I think not. So yeah, they're an odd organization. I think that their relationship to media has been odd at times. Some of the organizational decisions around not only free agent signings, but also trades have been kind of confounding from time to time. So it seems like an organization that could use some improvement. And I don't say that like there aren't smart folks who work for the Rockies.

That's not what I mean. But whether it's, you know, coming from the top or not, it doesn't seem to be advancing the goal of winning baseball games. And a grumpy star with an opt-out, that seems like a very bad spot for the org to be in. Yep, it does. Because I think I know a lot of baseball teams who would be in the market for Nolan Arenado's services in that year, being in his 30s, be damned. So it does seem like they are kind of on a collision course to end up with. You know, they still have some interesting pieces on that team there are still some very talented players but none of them have sort of penetrated the consciousness of baseball fans in quite the same way that that nolan has so i think it's

probably a mistake to discount that and that they'd be well served to try to repair that relationship which again, like 11 months ago was good enough that you're like, yeah, I'll stay here for seven years. Right. All right. Well, moving along in our summary of controversial things that have been said this week brings us to one of our frequent topics of conversation And a frequent emitter of quotes That we scrutinize on this show Scott Boris Is back in the public eye

He is commenting on the Astros Sign stealing scandal And I suppose he is doing this Because he represents a couple of Astros Most prominently Jose Altuve Also Lance McCullers And he came out And talked to Ken Rosenthal about this. And earlier in the week, Jim Crane had said that the Astros planned to apologize in spring training just as a group or individually that they would take some responsibility for what they did and try to move on because they had a fan fest last weekend where Alex Bregman sort of stonewalled everyone and didn't really say much. And Jose Altuve was a little more forthcoming, but neither of them came out and said sorry or anything like that.

So Crane seemed to suggest that he would apply some pressure on the players to do that in spring training. And then Boris came out on Wednesday and essentially said that he doesn't think that the Astros should apologize or that they have anything to apologize for. And he said, I'm doing what my organization is telling me to do. He's describing the mindset of an Astros player here. You installed this. You put this in front of us. Coaches and managers encourage you to use the information. It is not coming from the player individually. It is coming from the team in my stadium, installed with authority. Then, of course, he used an analogy because he's Boris, but it was not one of his more colorful ones, and it was not quoted. So Ken just summarized it as

someone driving 55 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone. You only know that you're speeding if the speed limit is posted. And so Astros players should only apologize if they were informed that they were breaking the rules. And it is true that the Astros, according to Rob Manfred's report, were not informed or were not reminded, as they should have been by Jeff Luneau and A.J. Hinch, of the stricter regulations that were put in place, that Luneau, one of the reasons for his suspension is that he just sort of sat on that memo, didn't forward it, didn't make any attempt to enforce it. So in that sense, it's probably true or seems to be true based on what we know, that no one was holding a seminar or an all-hands

behind closed doors meeting or anything and saying hey don't steal signs but I think it is also quite true that players know that they're not supposed to be doing that it was a news story it was a public story that the Red Sox were fined and rebuked for their sign stealing and I think it's just generally understood that you're not supposed to use electronic equipment to do that. And there was plenty of evidence in Manfred's report that they knew that they were doing something wrong, despite the fact that it was sort of sanctioned by Alex Cora, for one,

and that Hinch didn't really tell them not to do it. So I think the idea that they didn't know that they were doing something that was against the rules, I mean, they may have talked themselves into saying that it wasn't really wrong, that they were just trying to keep up with other teams that were doing it, that sort of thing. But I think they knew that it was certainly against the letter of the law. And so I don't think they can claim innocence here. I don't think they can claim innocence here. I don't either. I mean, I understand the practicality of not punishing players from Manfred's perspective. And I don't actually have a problem with sort of locating and

concentrating his frustration and then ultimately punishment on people in positions of authority. Because I do think that like a part of what Boris is getting at that is believable to me is that you might feel institutional pressure in the face of rule breaking to conform to that rule breaking if it is sanctioned by leadership. And so I don't disbelieve that. And I think that, you know, we don't know exactly who availed themselves of that system more than others, apart from the public reporting that's been done on it. But I think I could imagine, especially if you're a young player, and you see veterans, you see Carlos Beltran

telling you to steal signs this way, that you're going to feel either profound pressure to do that that might override your sort of native sense of right and wrong, or that you might think, well, maybe this isn't that different than the kind of sign-stealing sort of wily cleverness that is already basically allowed by having a guy at second who just figures out what the signs mean. Maybe this isn't that different than that. This is just the modern version of it. I can understand and believe both of those sets of rationale and pressure

being present, but they're not a jury. They weren't sequestered, right? They knew what was going on in baseball. They were an org that was right up against some of the prior violations of this. And so I find it very hard to believe that they didn't have an understanding that it was wrong. You're absolutely right that Manfred points to multiple points in this season where they got nervous that they were going to get caught. You don't get nervous if you think you're doing the right thing. And so I think that there is a sort of fundamental misunderstanding here,

which is that the league has decided that the effective way of deterring this sort of behavior in the future is to lay the blame and the penalty at senior levels. And we can debate how much we buy that and whether we think that that is appropriate, but that is the posture that the league has decided to take, that does not mean that they think that what these players did advance the game was in the spirit of competition, was in compliance with the rules. They clearly don't think that. And I wonder if these guys are maybe misunderstanding the audience that they have to speak to because what's important for them, I would imagine, right now isn't communicating with the league.

That communication's been done. They have to go play 162 games against other players, many of whom are publicly pissed. Yeah. And they have to go be in front of fans, both their own fans who are now going to have to, you know, every time their cousin from another state who roots for a different team hears that they are excited about an Astros win is going to throw this back at them so they're they're going to feel bristly and defensive and they're going to have to feel that way because their favorite baseball players banged on a trash

can and they're going to have to go play in front of other fans who are gonna make as we discussed like the signs we're gonna get such signs ben we're gonna get such signs such faces there are gonna be so many great music cues i would like to encourage ballpark djs across the country to revisit nancy sinatra's classic that features the words bang bang you're gonna under look it because you don't think about nancy as being a ballpark kind of gal but you are wrong she is you should get in on that I think my cold meds are kicking in um you get a you get boots are made for walking if I guess that's true knocked out of the game yes but don't forget but yeah yeah don't forget bang bang my baby shot me down yeah it's a a little tip from me to them. So they need to understand what their audience for the apology is. It's not the league, or it's not the league office, I should say.

It's the other players who they have made angry and disappointed and cheated against, and it's fans. And I think that the argument that, like, look, we got into something and it got away from us and it was wrong. You know, there are going to be people who will never forgive the Astros for what they did. And that's, you know, I think a defensible posture. But there are people who are going to be inclined to say, look, we understand the culture that's present in baseball right now. We understand that your bench coach was saying, hey, this is fine.

ball right now we understand that your bench coach was saying hey this is fine we understand that you aren't getting the showing versus telling message with the destroyed monitors could happen to anyone if they just came out and and were contrite they're not going to satisfy everyone but they could satisfy a couple more people than they have and i get why scott boris would say hey they shouldn't have to apologize because he has a stake in this. And I think that for all the grief he gets, he does have a good sense of like his prime objective as an agent advocating on behalf of players

is to not give away more responsibility or take on more responsibility for players that ought to be sitting with senior leadership than he has to. And so as an organizing principle for his approach to negotiating and public advocacy, I understand that. I think he's missing the mark here a little bit,

but I get what's motivating Boris, I think. But I don't know, like we all like Jose Altuve. And if Jose Altuve came out and said like, hey, I screwed up and I'm really sorry. I think a lot of people will be like, that's cool, man. Or maybe they wouldn't, but like they might not, they might put Bregman on their signs instead of Jose. Yeah.

The signs. Right. Yeah. The report mentioned that the Astros dugout panicked after Daniel Farquhar seemed to notice the trash can sound. And then there was the players taking the monitor down and hiding it after each game. And it also mentioned that some players acknowledged that they knew that what they were doing was wrong and crossed the line.

And so when Boris says that players need to apologize for what they had notice of, their perception of this process is that when an organization sets up a system and directs them to use the information, then coaches and managers are directing them to use this information. So he's saying, well, it's not their fault because they thought that the organization approved of this and the organization wouldn't tell them to do something that was wrong. But then in the next sentence, he says, there are many players who rejected it outright. I'm not going to speak specifically. They did not use it. They were uncomfortable with it. Some players prefer not to receive such information. So if there were some players who decided not to use this information because they thought it was wrong, maybe didn't want to break that clubhouse code and speak publicly or inform someone about it, but they personally objected to it, then that just goes to show that you could have reached that conclusion, even inside that culture that was maybe kind of saying it was okay to do this. So I don't know.

I think just in terms of messaging and getting people to move on and forgive you, it's probably best to apologize or sound somewhat contrite. And Carl Speltron did say, I'm very sorry in his statement when he stepped down from the Mets. And I think that always helps. Not everyone's going to forgive you and they might make jokes about it for the rest of your career. And you kind of brought that upon yourself.

But I think asking for forgiveness or acknowledging blame is sort of the first step to getting beyond this and not having it be the scarlet letter for the rest of your career. Yeah. And I think the part of it that I find sort of surprising, and granted, like the professional stakes that they experience perhaps are different than mine. So the pressure and how they respond to it is probably also different. But I think that often when people are issuing public apologies and I'm doing scare quotes that don't satisfy us as an audience as being sufficiently contrite or actually taking responsibility, the thing that they are trying to avoid in those moments is often consequence, right? They don't want to admit what they've done because if they do that, then they're going to suffer consequences. And I don't say that to excuse the behavior of not wanting to accept consequences for your actions, right? There

are going to be people no matter what they say who never forgive the Astros and there are going to be people who put an asterisk next to that World Series forever, but they already know they're not going to suffer consequences or not additional ones beyond the public ridicule and the organizational fine, right? They might in a couple of years play for a less good baseball team because they've lost draft picks, but they're not getting suspended. And so that part, I think, is probably both the most surprising and the most disappointing part because we'd all be better off civilization if we all said, hey, like I had I had incentives and I faced pressure, but I'm still really sorry. Like that explains why I did it.

But it doesn't mean that what I did didn't stink. And so I'm sorry about that. And I wish I could undo it. Right. We'd all just we'd all just be better off if we did that. And I think people would be surprised by other human beings' capacity for forgiveness in the face of genuine contrition. So it's disappointing because now whatever they say, it doesn't really – they should still apologize. Like, I think they should still do it.

But in some ways, it doesn't really matter now because it's just going to seem like they're only doing it because we all said, hey, you really goofed up FanFest. Yeah. Probably should have been ready for that question in a more sincere way. Yeah. I don't understand why people think they're not going to be asked about the most obvious things about themselves. themselves like if you were to walk into fan fest wearing like a i don't know like a left shark costume and then you're like i can't believe you're asking about this shark costume i'm wearing how dare you it's like well it's right there on your person in some ways the ineptness of the astros public response to every scandal they've been involved in over the past few months is the

most surprising part of all of it to me like as shocking when we learned about it as all the other stuff was like the way that they've handled the public response has just been so i mean it's it's made it worse at every step of the way and you'd think that they would have figured that out that whatever their messaging strategy was was not working so well and that they should try something different but they haven't seemed to master that yet yeah but you also get the sense that like if they were able to sort of arrest that hubris response that hubris impulse that some of the other scandals wouldn't have happened true yes right they this is a symptom of an organizational problem that you know and like i don't say this like he shouldn't have

been fired but like aj hinch was like the only person who works for that team who talks publicly a lot who seemed to be able to offer an apology and he got fired who's's he going to be now? I don't know. One more thing about Arenado, by the way, that I meant to mention. There was an article at The Athletic in September that was about how the Rockies were just sputtering for most of the second half of the season, and it was ending on a down note, and Arenado was talking about how some of the young guys have a good opportunity to show what they can do and they should take every game seriously and he has to lead by example. And then he said, but it sucks that that's what it feels like. It feels like a rebuild.

when the Rockies were bad. And then he was great and the Rockies kind of pulled out of that and they got good again. And he probably thought, great, everything is going to be good from now on, smooth sailing. And then they kind of plunged back into their old ways. And baseball is weird in so many ways

to be a baseball player. You, in some ways, have it great. I mean, you make a lot of money if you're in the majors and it's a high status thing and you're famous and people look up to you. And there are a lot of ways in which it's really great, but the one way in which it's not, or one of the ways in which it's not, is that in some ways we have it better than baseball players do, is that they don't typically have a ton of control over their work environment and where they're going to work just from the draft on.

They can't even choose where they want to work. And then he did choose where he wanted to work. He chose that he wanted to stay in Colorado. But how many of us sign like eight year commitments to work for the place where we're working? It's very rare in normal industries and careers. And so thoroughly unheard of in media. Yeah. I mean, it might be nice but

but i think if something is not as you expected when you signed a contract then you can walk away after a year or two years or three years let's say whereas in baseball you can't and look granted nolan aronauta is gonna be to be fine. He's got a pretty good life in a lot of respects. But he still has to go to work, and he wants to have a nice work experience. And unlike most of us, he can't just say, well, I don't like this job anymore. I don't like what this company has become. I don't like the culture. I'm just going to go somewhere else.

You know, he gave up that right. He could have signed as a free agent somewhere, but even if he had signed as a free agent, then it would have been a long-term deal. And then he could have gotten locked in on another team that didn't go the way that he wanted it to. And that's, I guess, one of the things that you give up in exchange for the many perks of being a professional athlete. And granted, I guess you have the option to go year to year. Any player could do that if they wanted to bet on themselves or retain that freedom instead of going for the long-term security. So you sacrifice something there, but it's just a weird job. And if you can put yourself in his place in some ways, it's an enviable place in a lot of ways,

but there's at least that one way in which it would be really weird. And it would be strange for most of us to be in that situation of just, well, I'm in this place for the next however many years, and I have no real control over the direction of this company, except that I can go public about it. So that's, I guess, what has led to his frustration and his public comments yeah it's just i say this a lot and i feel silly every time i do it because it is both very obvious and a thing i've said frequently but we just should the only thing any of us should ever think about is how weird it is to be a professional baseball player just how profoundly strange and i don't say that like like you said like nolan arenado has a good life uh and even like a bad baseball team in denver like denver's

cool right i like denver fan of denver good food good beer but i think that it is like a very strange it's just a profoundly strange profession the lack of control you have, what control you end up having, and when is so bizarre. And these guys, it is a population that self-selects for being hyper-competitive. It's the only way that any of them are able to do what they do because it is such a grind, and it is so much work, and it is so hard. And so I think that it has to be, especially if you're a guy who's really, really good, a perennial all-star like Nolan Arenado, you're not just happy to be hanging on

on the back of the 25, now 26-man roster. You want to be doing stuff that people remember about baseball, not just the Rockies. want to be doing stuff that people remember about baseball not just the Rockies right so I can only imagine the kind of frustration that you have there it is one of the only industries where like we sit around and are like yeah just don't be good for a while with your product that you're selling to people right like we want everything that runs atangraphs to be good that's important to us like every day every season so it's just it's so it's so strange and like i can't imagine what it would feel like to litigate it like every job has its like picky own little funny things that you wish were different even

when you really like where you work and you really like the people you work with and i can't imagine like litigating edits with my writers on twitter like in a specific way i can't imagine doing that but like that is one of the methods of accountability that is available to these guys and it's one of the only ones that like has an impact it's so strange yep all right well we sort of had a topic you had a topic for this podcast and we were going to work our way into it via an article that came out at sports illustrated via tom verducci where he spoke to rob manfred sort of a state of the game kind of conversation because rob manfred is entering his second term as commissioner having gotten through the first five-year one so he sort of held forth on many things about baseball and that would tie into something that you wanted to bring up separately so how should we go about

this so I won well maybe one way we can do it is I'll introduce like the thesis I'm interested in exploring. And I think I ultimately agree with and then we can kind of talk it through. So I have been wondering for a while if baseball wouldn't be well served to have, but a person or a group of people who are not employed explicitly by ownership the way the commissioner is to safeguard the game and have some set of responsibilities that might include discipline to a certain degree and thinking deeply and profoundly about some of the aesthetic questions that the game is preoccupied with right now because clearly the commissioner is starting his second term he seems to be well liked by baseball's owners but it does feel like over the last year in particular there have been a number of points where we have been confronted with some of the limitations of a person who is employed by the league's owners having authority over things like team discipline, because there's just an inherent tension there that is about preserving not the game as an activity or a pastime or even entirely as an entertainment product, but in making sure that the league is generating revenue for the owners, right?

So whether it's some of the limitations that are present in MLB's constitution around maximum fines that can go to organizations. He had no idea that there was gambling going on in this establishment approach to Jim Crane. had no idea that there was gambling going on in this establishment approach to Jim Crane. And some of the tensions around labor questions, particularly when it comes to minor leaguers and the upcoming CBA negotiations, where the thing that is maybe the best for baseball is the thing that we want to spend a day at the ballpark enjoying and spending money on is perhaps pretty different from what's going to make the owners the most money and like his mandate is to do the other thing and i don't say that like i

know that rob manfred in his heart doesn't care about baseball or anything like that and i think that the sort of at times tinkering approach that he has shown a willingness for has been i think unfairly maligned because I think that instinct isn't actually a terrible one. But I just wonder if the game doesn't need someone who sits outside and says, you guys, you need a neutral arbiter here because you're hopelessly conflicted around a really important question. And we need to think about the long-term viability and sort of emotional weight of this sport rather than the short-term profit motivations of its owners. And so I just wonder if we shouldn't have a person who can come in and say, you know, hold on. Jim Crane's accountable here. He should

pay more than $5 million because he has 2.5 billion of them. And so the 5 million doesn't mean very much, right? Like if there shouldn't be a person who is charged not with profit, but with the good of baseball more generally. Yeah, I like the idea because I think some people misunderstand the role of the commissioner because there is that best interest of baseball clause. People think of the commissioner and I think some commissioners have tried to portray themselves as this sort of neutral arbiter who's looking out for the best interest of the game and the fan. It's like the ombudselig, I guess. And that is not what the commissioner is.

The commissioner, yes, in some ways, obviously, is looking out for the best interests of baseball, but is hired by and serves at the pleasure of and works for the owners. And the owners want to make lots of money. owners and the owners want to make lots of money. And yes, generally, you would think that the owners making a lot of money would be aligned with baseball being a popular product that people like, but it's not always. And so I do like the idea of there just being a voice of the fan. Now, I know that there are a lot of media organizations that have dispensed with their ombuds people because they've essentially said, well, that's what Twitter is. Like Twitter will hold us accountable. People can get mad at us on social media if we do something wrong.

And so that's sort of what you see with like the New York Times. If they put out some headline that everyone objects to. There will be a big furor around that. And then sometimes they will change it or something. And that, I guess, is their alternative to having an ombudsperson or a public editor. And other companies have done away with that too, and ESPN and others. And I think, I don't know how often the ombuds people are great and good at it and really affect change in a positive way and understand both sides of the issue and the business and everything and have sort of realistic expectations of all that. I don't know how often that happens, but I do think it can be a useful role. And especially in baseball, because it does seem like there's a lot less trust in the league right now i don't know that there's ever been great trust in my memory but i think just

with all the stuff that's going on with the baseball itself and the kind of cryptic way that the league has handled that and the inconsistent way that it has spoken about that and sometimes seemingly disingenuous way. And then all of the sign stealing stuff and all of the other issues that are going on in the game with non-competitiveness and all of that. You could see why it would be nice to have someone who is sort of employed by baseball who could kind of speak truth to power, I guess, I mean, or at least represent the fans' complaints in a way. And granted, like, I guess that's the role that the media serves in large part. And if the media objects to something, then baseball is forced to respond ultimately. So when people on the internet do research about the way that the baseball is forced to respond ultimately. So when people on the internet do research about the way

that the baseball is behaving, that's what puts pressure on the league to respond. And I guess in that sense, it's functioning in a way, but we don't get great answers. Now, I don't know if we got an ombudsperson, would that actually change anything? Like, A, does the league have motivation to do this? Absolutely not, as an aside. Absolutely not. That's the thing. I mean, I guess you could say that, like, to restore faith in the league and the product

and baseball and all of that, that there would be some value to saying, we're going to appoint this person to bring your complaints to us and we will really listen to it. And maybe that would restore some people's faith. But the downside is probably pretty big too, in that you would have this person who is inside the house, who is kind of pointing out all the ways that you are maybe acting in not the best interest of the fan. And so obviously like Rob Manfred's not going to want to have someone at the MLB office whose job is to point out all the ways that he's not doing his job well. So I don't think this could happen realistically, but I do think it would be beneficial in some ways. So I like the idea. is a good, I think, an example of why this is necessary. Because you're right, like their whole thing when they got rid of their public editor was, well, Twitter will hold us accountable. And sometimes it does lead to corrections or, you know, change in headlines. But more often than not,

it just gives fodder to their op-ed columnists to be mad about what they're being told on Twitter. It's not a method of accountability. It's a content mill. So I think that what we have learned from the sign stealing stuff in particular is that the league would be well positioned to sort of well served, I should say, to adopt a much more skeptical and dare I say paranoid approach to how law abiding its corporate citizens are. And I think that fans might also be well served by having an advocate who has a bit of teeth to really say, no, you can't do that, right? Like you have incentives, you have stakes, you're trying to constantly innovate, but like, hold on. Well, you can't do that, right? Like you have incentives, you have stakes, you're trying to constantly innovate, but like, hold on. Well, you can't do that, right? We want, this is what our understanding of what baseball should be is here are the ways that we are, you know, being found wanting in pursuit of that goal. Hold on. Whoa. It's got some teeth, right? Like what we often see in

political science, for instance, is that like regulators without the ability to penalize don't do very much because you have to be able to back it up with some kind of action that provides disincentive and actual punishment and so you know will the league do this absolutely not they absolutely won't like because any kind of change like this would require buy-in from ownership and ownership's doing great yeah you think owners are going to want someone who is uh questioning their claims about not being able to spend on players or something like that of course not they would hate absolutely not and so there's no way that this will ever happen but i wish that it would because like i read through the the piece that the interview that verducci published and i think it's pretty illuminating

when it comes to sort of where their priorities are you know like they they want an automated zone they want us to just be okay with variability in the ball they're clearly thinking about gambling and i just continue to not want to have to learn about it, Ben. Yeah. I don't want to have to learn about it and I'm going to have to so that I can do my job well and I want them to know that I resent it. And also it seems like they maybe need to clean house on people following the rules better before they introduce another set of financial incentives. Yes. That is going to be pretty dangerous here. but i just think that we talk so much about what is limiting fans ability to engage with baseball and feel committed to baseball in the same way that they do about basketball or football and i think a lot of things get bandied around

and when those explanations are coming from a perspective that has, you know, not an ax to grind, but a position to advance in ownership, we're well served to be skeptical of what is the preferred aesthetic of baseball? Do we really want to close down minor league teams? Do we care about gambling? And all of those conversations are being directed by a skeptical media, which is good, and a commissioner's office that clearly has a direction that they want to pursue. And yes, sometimes the skepticism of the media intervenes on that path in a way that is profound and meaningful. Like we just saw the incredible impact that good detailed reporting can have

on the future of baseball, but it doesn't always. And I think that we want to do some course correcting along the way without needing to like question the validity of two world series wins to get there. So I like this idea that'll never happen but i think it should and i'll do it remote from seattle it's fine if he doesn't want me in the building so that he has to walk by my office and be like that meg she's such a bummer i'll sit here it's fine yeah i just it seems like the role probably would have no real power. And then is it actually any different from just a writer saying these things? I guess it would be somewhat different if it's someone who's kind of part of baseball, most of the complaints that people have about baseball.

He's either trying to address them and not doing a good job of it, or it's difficult because it's collectively bargained, or he's not really trying because it's beneficial to the owners in some way. And I don't know that a public editor would actually change anything or an unbird baseball ombuds person, but it would be something different. And I don't know, was there anything in his comments here and his sort of roadmap for the game for the next few years that stood out to you especially? Well, speaking of people who seem to struggle with the PR implications of their statements from time to time, I guess I'm glad that the commissioner still struggles to talk about in a way that doesn't make everyone a little bit grumpy

or at least raise an eyebrow at the minor league stuff. There was a moment in this interview when discussing revamping the minor league system and the proposal to trim the minors where Rob Manfred says, and I'm quoting, I don't think they should blame me for wanting to have decent working conditions for our employees, he said. So Rob, here's the thing, man. When you've introduced, when you've advocated for legislation to exempt your employees from

minimum wage laws, you can't say this and not expect us to make fun of you on Twitter and be very grumpy and think that you might be engaged in some dissembling. So I didn't care for that, that little bit. And again, the gambling thing, some of the language around the gambling stuff is interesting to me, not because I find it problematic, although I think that we all need to be much more concerned about the gambling stuff than we seem to be right now, just because I guess it's not happening in an active way. But he says, you may see parlors in the ballpark, but I don't think you're going to see betting windows.

Maybe this is Rob Manfred entering his second term naive, but I do believe that the atmosphere at our ballparks would change with parimutuel windows. I had to look up that word we can i can see a separate feed he was asked if there would be betting information on broadcast i can see a separate feed being much more aggressive in terms of what you see on the screen for those who are really interested but that would be a supplement to our core family product and i just found that little bit of phrasing to be very interesting to me because it seems to indicate that he is aware of the potential degeneracy. And I don't mean to say that all gamblers are degenerate.

I just mean to say that he seems to think that you all are, and so you should all be very upset about that. But also it's just an interesting way of phrasing that. I don't want to know about gambling, Ben. Yeah, it seems like even though sports leagues are all in on this because they know there's a lot of money to be made that there's still this little just a air of unsavoriness to it that he's distinguishing it from the family product something like that like a separate broadcast like we have the stat cast broadcasts

now what if you had a gambling broadcast where it was just showing the odds of everything happening in real time like i don't think i would choose to watch that one or to wager myself but i can see how that would be of interest and analytically interesting and that it might bring more people to baseball, even if it's just for gambling-related reasons. It would kind of increase the appeal of the sport, and that might be a good thing in some ways. So not necessarily against that. It's not something that appeals to me personally, but I understand why it appeals to some people, and I want baseball to do well and it's a difficult environment and a

lot of things are changing and there's so much competition among entertainment products that if gambling is something that can kind of bolster baseball's place in the culture there are ways in which that might be a good thing and it's probably just an inevitable thing regardless of whether it's a good thing but yeah I mean I mean, he should be thinking about that, obviously. That is something that should be in his job description, trying to figure out how to make that work in baseball's best interest. So certainly don't begrudge him that. There are things that he says in here I know you were probably not pleased to see that the automated strike zone could be coming as soon as 2022. Very upset.

Yes. Very upset. We're transitioning into our old cranky phase where we're mad about new technology. I don't know. First it was Snapchat. Now it's this. Don't understand the appeal of either, candidly. I'm going to have to keep reevaluating how I feel about this because there was a time when I was in favor and then there was a time when I was strongly against and I'm still semi against, but I also see why people are for.

And so I don't know, I'm going to have to keep thinking about this and there's something in here about needing to redefine the strike zone to deal with the automated tracking. So that might make it a little more palatable, but basically we're just sad that framing will be going away. And I don't know that that is something that enough people care about, but I think there's an advantage to maybe having something to argue about, except that- It's going to be so much of it though, Ben. But can I honestly defend that position that like something we should be in favor of less accuracy and calls being incorrect because it causes a controversy that can be kind of a source of debate and intrigue like i don't know if i can intellectually consistently defend that position because like i'm in favor of replay i like getting the calls right

and so i like that but there is something that's a little different to me about it because a blown call by an umpire usually isn't really the result of a player being skilled in some way and deceiving the umpire i guess it could be if you're talking about like an outfielder trapping a ball or maybe a fielder, an infielder blocking the umpire's view and applying a tag or something like that. It could be, but usually it's just human fallibility. Whereas with balls and strikes, there really is a skill there, whether it is command on the pitcher's part

and being able to expand the strike zone by your placement of the pitch or the catcher being able to expand the zone by the way that he receives the pitch. Those things really haven't appealed to me, although I also acknowledge that it's pretty unfair to the hitters who just can't really do much about what's going on behind them. So I sort of feel for them, too. I feel for them, too, although it's not as if they will be exempt from an adjustment period right there have been pitches they have been trained to take that they should swing at that they're not going to I think that look there are very few things that we seem to

enjoy more in modern life than being aggrieved and we're about to enter a brave new world of that because it's gonna be like I don well, I actually don't know what this experience is quite like because I am fortunate in that I do not have to wear glasses. So if this is wrong, then people will tell me and I apologize for not understanding your plate better, but it's going to be like we all got contacts for the first time and we're like, that's the strike zone. Yeah. Right. So adjusting to that is going to take time and in periods of change and adjustment what we all often do as human beings is yell so we're gonna do that we're gonna make them sweep up so i continue to be opposed i don't think that my position is an intractable one

but i want to hear more from the commissioner about what their plan for fan and player education is because fans have grown up watching a particular version of the strike zone and having their expectations of balls and strikes predicated on that framing aside and players have developed as hitters and pitchers based on that understanding as well and now it's all gonna change yeah and he talks a lot about pace of game and the aesthetics of the game here and generally i'm pretty aligned with him on that stuff like i think that games should be shorter and faster paced i think that's good on the. I don't think it's great that the game just keeps getting longer and longer for the same amount of action or even less action. And so I

don't mind when he brings that up. I do think that maybe he hasn't always figured out the best way to fix those things, but I acknowledge that he is working under some constraints. He can't just unilaterally impose exactly what he wants to do. But I always think like instead of messing around with just sort of things that might affect things on the margins or barely, like if you really want to take it seriously, then you could just change the dimensions of the strike zone or something or move the mound back. Just try those things, experiment with those things, and you could really have one change that would actually address these things and have a significant difference. So I think there's more that could be done there. When he talks about the baseball here, the baseball itself and the variability in the ball,

he says that the baseball has to be hand-sewn, that it can't be machine-made, which just doesn't seem right to me. I think a machine could make a baseball and we'd be okay with it. It would be different, I know. But he says that the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced of two things. We should understand as much as we can, but at the end of the day, we have to accept the reality there's going to be some variability in the performance of the baseball, which is fine. There's always been some variability, and some variability is okay. And yes, maybe we're more aware of the variability now, and it bothers us more, but I don't think that is really what has caused this whole controversy over the past several years. It's not the ball-to-ball inconsistency

so much as it is the league-wide extremes that we've seen. I mean, this is just behaving in a way that has never behaved before, and it's the season-to-season variability and the giant changes in home run rate and the way that the ball behaves, and that is something that we didn't have before. So I don't see why it has to be worse than it was or more extreme in its fluctuations. And he said, I know people think I have an app here on my phone and decide how it's going to perform in a particular year.

If you have a machine made baseball, literally somebody needs to decide every year how it is going to play, which is is fine like that seems okay i'm okay with that that seems better than no one deciding how it's going to play and we'll all just find out when it happens yeah i don't see the problem here i'm glad that you remembered to bring that up because i read that and i was like yeah dude we we know we're good with that it would be nice to know that someone can actually do that instead of us being perpetually bum-fuzzled by what the offensive environment in the game is going to be.

Yeah, because we're already deciding how we want it to play, right? There are specifications. It's just that they seem to not be very good at enforcing them or anticipating how it will actually behave. But we already have a situation where we are attempting to decide what we want the ball to behave like. And so if we could do that just more accurately, that seems totally fine to me. So this is a very I used to be a political scientist way of thinking about this. But I wonder if the league just needs more committees.

political scientist's way of thinking about this, but I wonder if the League just needs more committees. Like, you need a group of folks to give long, considered, expert study to these questions, I guess, because these answers make me think, like, apart from the special committees that get convened to issue reports that then don't get talked about accurately in public by the commissioner reports that then don't get talked about accurately in public by the commissioner that that doesn't happen yeah i mean there is i think there's a

committee that talks about on-field issues and i don't know how often it meets or how good it is at its job but yeah someone's supposed to be on that another thing is that even though i share some of manfred's concerns about the appearance of the game or the pace of the game and all that, Raducci states here, after talking about the strikeouts and the pitching changes and the time between balls in play, he writes, the formula of less action over a longer period turned off fans from 2015 to 19, attendance dropped by 5.2 million or 2151 fans per game i don't know that you can state it so matter-of-factly yeah that is why that fans are turned off and that

that is why attendance dropped certainly some fans are turned off but we don't have a great idea at least publicly about how all fans feel and even if fans in general are against some of these changes, I don't think we can draw a direct line and say that the attendance drop is entirely attributable to that because I think there's been good research that it may be less competitive teams and fewer competitive games. And then it could just be greater competition and increasing prices. There's also research that shows that that's a big part of it. And then the fact that just watching a ball game at home is a pretty great experience now. And so even apart from the price, you might just stay home more often. So there are a lot of factors

here. So I don't think we can just say that that's why, which is at least strongly implied here. So not saying that we shouldn't pay attention to these things and maybe try to correct them, but also don't think we can lay the entire attendance drop at the door of strikeouts. No, this is a guess on my part in terms of how much. So I'm guessing, but I have taken a fair amount of cold medicine, so I feel comfortable guessing.

And I'm going to guess that if you kept everything exactly the way it is in terms of the duration of games, the amount of action on the field, and ticket prices were 25% lower than they are on average right now, you would see attendance go up pretty dramatically. I think that the economic impact of taking a family of four to a baseball game is pretty dramatically. I think that the economic impact of taking a family of four to a baseball game is pretty profound. And then when you couple that with a lot of teams deciding not to compete in that season, that the combination of those things is just, it makes it not tenable for a

lot of people. And so, yeah think that we would we should interrogate the assumption in that sentence pretty intensely because i think that it's i think the price probably makes a much bigger difference than any other individual factor i mean like i've looked at you know a lot of teams have these ballpark passes now so you can go to games in a less expensive way but the average like get in price for mariners games when i looked last year was like still like 40 bucks to sit in the bleachers and uh that was a bad baseball team so i think we need to do a little bit of work now granted someone from the team is gonna be like that's not's not what the average was. That was what it was when I looked. Just when I looked, you guys, relax. I have a cold.

I agree with you, though, that I don't know if I'd say he gets a bad rap because he deserves a bad rap sometimes. But when he brings up ways that baseball could be better, I think often there's this refrain, Rob Manfred hates baseball, which I don't know if that's true. Yeah, I mean, it would surprise me if someone who hated baseball became the commissioner of baseball. It would be a strange way to spend your life and to excel at something enough that people make you commissioner of something you hate. That seems somewhat unlikely to me. But regardless, it is his job to think about ways that it could be better. And I guess he is also sort of the public job of advocating for baseball and praising all the things that are good about it as opposed to pointing out the negatives. But he should point

out the negatives or at least think about them and try to fix them. We wouldn't want him just to say everything's great and fine and we don't need to do anything different. So part of that process is bringing up issues and thinking of ways to fix them and having kind of a public conversation about that. So I don't mind when he says that there's too much time between pitches and we need a pitch clock. I agree with him. So there's data backing up the fact that there's more and more time between pitches and there's no great reason for that that makes baseball more entertaining. So I think he's right to try to do something about that. Yeah, I agree.

I think the tinkering impulse gets a bad rap. I also think that the impulse still needs to be coupled with like successful tinkering. Yes. So that part's important too. Yeah, I think there's a lot of between pitch business that we could trim out. You know, we were like, hey hey stop messing with your batting gloves and we were also like hey stop stealing signs electronically so that the catcher has to cycle through a bunch that would help i was gonna say like i don't miss mound visits but now i'm like

oh man we might have we might have called that one wrong yeah yeah all right well i'll link to the article if anyone wants to read the comments. There's nothing else very shocking. He brings up expansion, says that owners want two new teams, but he doesn't want to do that until the A's and the Rays have their ballpark situations figured out. Yeah. And I don't know, nothing else too shocking in there. It's stuff that we talk about ad nauseum.

But really, baseball tinkers less with the sport and the rules than the other sports do. So if you think that Rob Manfred tinkers too much or is too dissatisfied, I don't know. Do you follow other sports? Because it seems like they're more willing to change. So I think that tends to be a good thing. they're more willing to change. So I think that tends to be a good thing. Yeah. My perspective on some of the rule stuff and uncertainty and silliness is I think affected by the fact that I am also a football fan and like, this is, I'm going to acknowledge this is a simplistic way of putting this and I don't mean it in a like my sport way. I've just said,

I am a football fan, but like we still haven't quite figured out what it catches in football. Like we don't know what we are like catches say more about that say more about these catches So we don't have that really Yeah, like occasionally you'll have a controversial play stuff, but yeah home run call But like we generally know if the ball went over the wall or not Uh, so, you know, we know about catches we got that going for us yeah tags can be kind of confusing at times but it's it's not as bad as the catch thing oh man the cat because it's just like such a profound although we don't know what the baseball is so that's the that's the flip side

of it yeah it's like what is this baseball you know the most important piece of equipment on the field who's to say what it this baseball? You know, the most important piece of equipment on the field? Who's to say what it should be? Apparently not the commissioner every season. What do you want? Someone to actually say what the ball should behave like every year? Come on. Yeah, I'm sitting there.

I'm like, Rob, you're so close. Just take one more step and you'll be there. You'll be where we want to be. I only coughed the one time during this podcast. I can't believe it. Yeah, that was good. All right, so there's no baseball on Bud's person. So until there is, I guess we'll just have to keep podcasting. Okay, sounds good.

That will do it for today and for this week. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already signed up. Mark Black, Jeff Johnson, John Neeson, Matthew Neer, and Angus Kellett. Thanks to all of you. 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.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. I am The Old Batchman I am The Old Batchman I am