Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1520: Rough Draft

Episode Date: March 28, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the benefits, uncertainties, and downsides of the deal between MLB and the MLBPA to sort out salary and service time in the event of a shortened or canceled season, whether and how a social distancing-approved version of baseball could be played while maintaining a six-foot minimum distance between […]

Don't you dare surrender, don't bother keeping score The battle lines get blurry when you're world at war Just move to the horizon, the sun is in your eyes It's one retired captain, we're parted words so wise Still every now and then I'm reminded that you Could wave goodbye and then Vanish from view

Essential services Are counting on you Hello and welcome to episode 1520 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Mae Growley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm unchanged from last time, which is about the best that I could ask for, I guess. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to talk to another human person.

Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to talk to another human person. Yeah. Yeah, it is nice. That's, I mean, that's something that I joke about, but not really joke about during regular circumstances is that much of my human interaction and speaking comes from podcasting, which is something that Jeff always used to joke about too, because his wife didn't work from home and he did work from home. And so he would never see a person during the day and I rarely see a person too. So if anything, my human interaction has increased with my wife working from home now, but that is the opposite of the case for most people. Yeah. Continues to just be a weird time and baseball is trying to plan for the prolonged continuation of our weird time.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I guess that's what we're going to devote much of this episode to because the Players Association and the league reached a tentative agreement as we speak. I don't know if it's been officially ratified, but they have agreed to what would happen in a shortened season or in a canceled season even. in a shortened season or in a canceled season even, and what happens for service time and salary and various other considerations, including the amateur draft and international signing period and many very sweeping implications for amateurs

and minor league players in the short-term and in the long-term future of the sport. And so we're going to devote a whole segment to that and have Fangraph's Eric Long and Higginon to break that down for us because there are a lot of considerations there because the union essentially to get a deal kind of threw the amateur players to the wolves,

which is what tends to happen in these negotiations because amateur players and even minor leaguers are not part of the Players Association. And so they are not obligated to look out for their interests, unfortunately. And therefore, when they have to make concessions to get something that serves their members' interests, often it is by kind of throwing other future, perhaps, members of the union under the bus, but not current union members. perhaps members of the union under the bus, but not current union members. And so that's kind of why we were talking to Garrett Brocious last week about the need for a minor league union, and then amateur players would still be on the outside looking in. So that is unfortunate and

lots of ramifications there that we can get into with Eric. Yeah. Ken Rosenthal has reported that the owners have approved the deal. It is officially official. Okay. part of this is the preview that it potentially gives us into what the next round of CBA negotiations will be like, where the stakes of minor leaguers and amateur players were clearly less important to the members of the union. And this is like in a week where we did see some nice solidarity from actual union members. Adam Wainwright and his wife donated a significant chunk of change to try to defray some of the burden that this has placed on minor league players. But they appear to be a bargaining chip and one that the union is willing to give away in service of maintaining both service time and salaries. And you're sympathetic to that concern, right? Mookie

Betts being delayed in his free agency by a year is catastrophic. But I think that a point that has been made in much of the commentary surrounding this deal, including the piece that Jay Jaffe wrote for Fangraphs is maintaining a right to free agency while very important also assumes that there's going to be something of an active free agent market next year. And that may well prove to be true for the Mookie Betts of the world. I think even in a period of austerity, teams are going to look around and say, you know, we should probably like sign a Mookie Betts of the world. I think even in a period of austerity, teams are going to look around and say, you know, we should probably sign a Mookie Betts to a long-term deal because he's a very valuable player to have around. But I would imagine that the lost revenue

from this season, assuming there even is one, is going to have a profound effect either in terms of its real impact to the bottom lines of teams or as a very convenient excuse for diminished free agent signing. And so I really think we should wonder what kind of free agent market major leaguers are even going to see on the other end of 2020. We're not going to know the answer to that question for a little while, but it's very concerning that amateur players and minor leaguers continue to be the sort of giveaway that the union is willing to concede on. And of course, stuff that affects them doesn't just affect them. We'll talk about this with Eric, but if you have scout friends right now, I think we should be worried

about them. A shorter draft means less of a need for scouts. So it's an understandable agreement given some of the uncertainties and the extreme downside risk that major leaguers face in the face of a canceled season, as a lump sum that they get to keep if the season is canceled. If the season is not canceled and they play a shortened version of the season, then players will get their salaries prorated and they can't ask for their full salaries. So players are agreeing not to get paid what they would normally get paid here, but they are guaranteeing themselves something. And most important from the player's perspective, they are getting service time. So players who got service time in 2019 will get the same service time in 2020. Basically, if you were on track to be a free agent, you will still be a free agent. Correct.

If you already were signed long-term to a deal, you will not have another year tacked on to the end of that deal. So everything sort of stays the same there. And it's just like a percentage of the normal length of the season. You get the service time based on that. Correct. So Mookie Betts, still a free agent at the end of this season, regardless of how many days he suits up in a Dodgers uniform. Garrett Cole is not a Yankee for a year longer. He's still just, you know, this is a lost year in terms of his playing time, but is not a lost year in terms of his service time. Teams still have the right to put a qualifying offer on players.

So the Dodgers could issue a qualifying offer to Mookie Betts. And it looks like that is going to be based on not prorated salaries, but actual salaries. So they will not be able to give Mookie Betts like a $5 million qualifying offer, which I'm sure was important. So that remains consistent. There was, let's see, what are some of the other things that came out today as a result of sort of the full deal getting agreed to? One thing that I think a number of people will be interested in, and we are only getting clarification on this as far as I know so far on drug suspensions, not on other suspensions, but drug suspensions will be served in 2020. But if there's no season, they won't carry over into 2021. That's per Jeff Passan. So if you have, you know, this isn't going to mean that the twins get less Pineda next year as a result of his PED suspension carrying into the 2020 season. There are some provisions for the season being extended too so they've agreed that they can play the regular

season into october or throughout october and then the playoffs could continue in november and potentially could be played at neutral sites and transactions are frozen and the players also get approval over the schedule so when mlb is able come back, if it's able to come back safely, MLB can't just say, this is what we're doing. Here's how many games we're playing. Go here and play. The players have to approve of that as well. Yeah. I want to read from a pass and tweet, and then I want to read the asterisk because the first pass and tweet makes it sound like we will see no baseball in 2020. And then the asterisk makes it seem like there's still a chance. So the players in league agreed the 2020 MLB season won't begin

until there are no bans on mass gatherings that limit the ability to play in front of fans. Asterisk. I won't come back to that, but everyone who's listening should calm down for a second. There are no travel restrictions and medical experts determine games will not pose a risk to health of teams and fans here's what the asterisk says caveat agreed to by the players in the league is that they will consider playing games at neutral sites instead of home ballparks and will consider the feasibility of playing in empty stadiums and just how proper a solution it may be for both sides and especially fans. So they are leaving, it seems, room for themselves to decide that they will play either not in a team's home ballpark, say if things continue to worsen in New York or Seattle, or if other spots become hotspots.

I think we can raise a skeptical brow at the idea that there will not be hotspots anywhere. Right. Yeah, that caveat kind not be hot spots anywhere. Right. But yeah, that caveat kind of just undoes the bullet point because it seems like it's saying they won't play until they can play in front of fans unless they decide to play without fans. So I don't know what to make of that. But yes, the first tweet sounded like, oh man, there's definitely not going to be a season.

And then the caveat was like, actually, that might mean nothing. And also, I would imagine, get input on the idea of a greater number of double headers. Or I don't know how serious the report was that they might consider seven inning games for more double headers. It's unclear how real that is, but that has been floated. I think we should return to the transaction moratorium for a moment because I think a number of people probably noticed a flurry of minor league assignments yesterday. And moving guys off of the 40-man and reassigning them. Kind of a bummer when one considers how closely tied being on the 40-man is to some of the benefits, both from the league and the union, associated with the delay. So those assignments are not trivial. They never are. I don't mean to suggest that, but they have particular importance now and were clearly being done in advance of this deal being struck and

teams no longer being able to option guys. So that's another bit of bummer in this deal. Yeah. So I read in the Ken Rosenthal report that some people on the player's side project one year of service to be worth $800 million in player salaries, which sounds like a lot, but when you consider that that's free agents, guys getting to free agency a year younger, and then, of course, arbitration that determines how much players make, what you make one year, and how close you are to free agency, all of that is really important and has sort of ripple effects that really do decrease or increase salaries depending. And so you can see why they put such a priority on that. It's sort of scary in the long run because we're like one winter removed from talking about

how free agency is dead, which I don't know, it bounced back this past winter, but it certainly does seem as if teams have tried more and more to bring up players who are young and are making the Major League minimum and don't have a lot of service time. And potentially it will be even cheaper to acquire amateur talent now, as we will discuss with Eric. And so there may be some players who will see teams trying to go younger and get rid of them. On the other hand, as we will also talk to Eric about, there will just be maybe fewer minor leaguers and fewer guys getting drafted. And so they may get to hold on to their jobs a little longer because teams might not have players to replace them just yet. So the thing with the draft is that instead of the normal 40 rounds, baseball now has the right to shorten it to five rounds and bonuses will be deferred. And also undrafted players can't get more than $20,000 as opposed to the previous bonus limit of $125,000.

So we'll get into all of that. But basically, MLB reserves the right here to draft fewer players and pay the undrafted players less and also pay the drafted players less because the bonus amounts are not increasing. So they get to freeze the signing slot bonuses for the next two years. And typically, they have like a cost of living increase every year. And so now that doesn't happen. So Scott Boris is upset, although I did not see him use any metaphors when he was talking about it. I tend to, I don't know if we've talked about this.

I feel like he drops that pretense when it's really serious. Yeah, this is too serious this is too yeah this is too serious for a goofy aquatic plant-based boat analogy the stakes are too high so he seems to have approached it with the uh appropriate degree of seriousness which is a very serious degree how does one phrase that we? We're not going to dwell on that. We're not going to rumble around in Meg's brain today. But yeah, it are going, there's no telling when the federal ban might be dropped regardless of whether it should be or not. And then does that affect certain teams disproportionately? Because if there's still an outbreak in their area and they have to play in neutral sites,

does that mean that everyone has to play in neutral sites? Or do some teams get to play local games because their area is relatively unaffected. So there's a lot that still is sort of up in the air there. And obviously so much of it depends on the pandemic. And right now things are looking sort of scary in that area. So there's no way to really project when baseball could be back. But I guess the good news for baseball fans is that if it is safe to come back, baseball will be back. And maybe it bodes well for the upcoming CBA negotiation that the two sides were able to hammer something out here in fairly short order. Obviously

unusual circumstances, but at least they're on speaking terms and maybe they will keep talking and they've laid some sort of groundwork here for future discussions. And I guess, you know, baseball fans have a lot of the same incentives that the Players Association and the owners do, frankly, which is just like, I want to see baseball. And yes, amateur players, it's sad for them, but I still really want to watch baseball right now. And if that's what had to be sacrificed for that to happen, I think a lot of fans would probably make the same calculation that the Players Association did and the owners did. And you're right, you alluded to it earlier, the idea that free agency might be suppressed because of this, because, of course, it does seem like sort of an opportunistic thing for the owners to use this as an excuse to slash amateur spending, which has been a pretty small percentage of overall revenue or spending in baseball period, which is not to say that the owners and the teams are not going to lose something financially here. Like you can understand why they didn't want to pay players their full salaries and also give them service time and

everything because their income perhaps will not be as affected as the players because they may have some sources of revenue that pay them out regardless. But if they're not having any games and they're not drawing fans and selling tickets and merchandise and concessions and all of that on top of whatever they might lose on TV revenue. I don't know how much of that is locked in, but clearly they have something to lose here too. Yeah. I don't want to frame it in terms of sympathy, actually. I'm not indifferent to that concern, but I think that they're still getting off pretty cheap. And it will be – I'm just going to be really curious to see what the messaging ends up being like come November, December, January. I think that on the one hand, if they are able to play – even if they're able to play empty stadium games, they won't have gate revenues.

But Craig Edwards, this piece hasn't come out at Fangraphs yet. It'll be coming next week. It actually took a stab at estimating some of the losses associated with the TV deals. And there will be some, obviously, but if there is baseball played on the TV side, you know, it's all going to depend on how many games we end up playing, whether there are people in attendance beyond the teams and support staff or not. And, you know, gosh, we might, it's like, is baseball going to end up competing with week 10 of the NFL season? Is the World Series going to be butting up against Fox, broadcasts, you know, there's going to be a bunch of... What will Joe Buck do? Right. Where does Joe go?

So... Yeah. That's the big question here. Yeah. He seems very keen to do sports based on his social media feed. So he seems very keen to be engaged in sports again. Yes. Did you watch any of the opening day at home yesterday? I had some

on in the background. I'm on a weird sleep schedule right now. And so I was not as usual as if I had to say right now. So I was not awake for some of the festivities. And then I was working in a way that precludes me from actually paying close attention. So I did sort of just have stuff on in the background, but I wasn't really locked into anything. Were you paying closer attention to anything? I didn't have it on for much of the day. And at one point I turned on game seven of last year's world series when that was the offering on YouTube. And, uh, I felt away, Ben, I'm, I'm miss it. I miss it pretty badly. They played a all-horns version of Baby Shark, and I got a little teary and then felt're expecting. And I hope that I am not at all indifferent, but I am sympathetic to the desire to have baseball back

because the Nationals did their little weird bus truck, whatever the celebration was. I miss those goofballs. Cranky had no expression at all when that game started going against him, but I miss that weird expressionless man. Me too. Yeah, I wonder if he misses us or baseball. Oh, yeah, someone should ask him that.

I would love to know what Guzak Cranky is up to right now. Yeah. Yeah, he showed up the last possible day for spring training, and I guess he could have just not showed up at all. Yeah. Would have been just fine. Would have saved himself some wasted time getting ready for the season. You know, when he parked his truck on the berm because the player lot was full, maybe he was telegraphing early social distancing.

Yeah, could be. Yeah, parked far away. Yeah, could be. Yeah, parked far away. The other thing related to what you're talking about is that I think both sides in this negotiation had some incentive to get some sort of deal done and not be b health and wanting baseball to be back as a distraction. If they were millionaires and billionaires bickering over revenue, no matter how justified they are in bickering over it, I think that would not have played particularly well for either side. I'm not sure who it would have played worse for, but I think some portion of people already think, oh, the players make too much money. So if they were trying to scrape and cough for every cent of their salary at a time when many

people are filing for unemployment at record levels, that might not have gone over so well. So that may have been something that was sort of quietly pushing these negotiations forward. Yeah, I think that that is, gosh, how do I even want to say this? It's interesting when and how both sides in that negotiation choose to be sensitive to that concern, let's put it that way. It's not a universal or always concurrent concern. Right. But yeah.

All right. So we did want to answer a listener email, or actually two listener emails on the same topic right now, which couple of our listeners are wondering, MLB came back and tried to play baseball while conforming to social distancing guidelines. So John says, I have had plenty of time to let my mind wander, and today I was wondering what the sport of baseball may look like if the social distancing rules, staying more than six feet from one another, were enforced on the field. No person could get within that distance in the dugout, in the batter's box, during mound visits, or during play. There would be no tag plays. All outs would have to be force outs and decisively spaced force outs at that. Not sure if the runner or the fielder would have the right of way in this

instance. Possibly it could rotate back and forth like the possession arrow in basketball. And then Isaac, one of our Patreon supporters, says, if games were played under current social distance standards, how would it change catcher farther back? No holding runners on, etc. So if two of our listeners emailed us about this, I would assume that more of our listeners have at least had this thought cross their minds. So baseball in the social distancing era. What could this look like? Well, the first thing I thought of when I read these emails was the holding runners on thing. We just wouldn't have pickoff moves anymore.

I wonder if one approach to this would be a bit like the solution that has been proposed to some of the more irritating bits of replay review where a guy is called out for sliding off the bag ever so slightly where there is like a zone that is determined and if the and the player has to stay within a certain you know six foot distance parameter of the bag somehow so that they are either i don't know i don't like what what problem am i trying to solve so that you don't have to have a first baseman and a runner and a first base coach all mooshed together on the bag right they can be properly distanced but you don't give the base runner the opportunity to just completely run amok you'd have to have some rule about how far they could go and Maybe you just do away with base stealing? Yeah, I think you'd have to have a rule.

Because you can't have tag plays at second, and you also seemingly couldn't have pickoffs and couldn't really have the runner standing near the first baseman while taking a lead. So maybe you just have to have the runner stay on the bag while the first baseman plays off the bag or something. Like on the one hand, it seems like baseball could be more feasible under these guidelines than some other sports. Like, you know, you can't play football.

Football is over. When you line up at the line of scrimmage, you're already violating the rules. So that's that. And basketball, obviously, you have people guarding each other and everyone's making close contact. So baseball, in the sense that there is a lot less physical contact in the sport than in other sports, and even in baseball's own past, is better suited to staying far away from one another, but still not that great. There are moments of contact, yeah. And so, you know, do you do away in order to create just more room to maneuver? Do you do away with one of your infielders or perhaps require them to be shifted slightly into the outfield? Does this finally get rid of shifts? Are we going to see the end of shifts and just no mound visits at all right because you can't get that close so now you have no mound visits and no shifting so you have the ball in play a lot more potentially uh the outfielders can just you know i think you'd have to mark it

out on the field to say here you cannot get closer than this yeah i mean usually they'd be fine you'd have to worry about like guys uh getting close while going for a ball right calling it you'd have to call it early and actually stay out of the guy's way but that might be that might be easier because you wouldn't have any fans so you'd be able to hear very easily true true yes i think well so on the dugout end you can just sort of have maybe a manager and a couple coaches can be in there spaced out very widely and the rest of the team can be somewhere else. And maybe you have the catcher and the pitcher on the bench and you have like the on-deck batter. He's safe in his on-deck circle.

Right. And then maybe the guy who's in the hole, maybe you can find some space for him. So most of the team would have to be back in the clubhouse or in the tunnel or spread out somewhere else. So you wouldn't have the whole team like sitting there spitting sunflower seeds or standing on the top step or anything. So it would look kind of lonely there, but you could do it. That'd be fine. The other problem is umpires and catchers. So I think maybe you'd have to go to robot umps because I know, but I think you might have to. Otherwise, you'd have to have the catcher like six feet behind the batter and then the umpire six feet behind the catcher. So he's like back at the backstop at this point. I don't know how accurate he'd be. So you might have to have robot umps and you might have to have maybe like a fully remote replay review system too, where instead feed because otherwise the umpire is not going to be able to make a call on the play at the plate or something. I mean, you can't even have plays at the plate because then the catcher and the runner, that's the big obstacle here is obviously the runners and the force outs.

I don't know how you handle just like a ground ball and a guy going to first. Is it like if it's a close play, you can't have any tags. So do you just have everything be a force play and then determine it based on like distance or something? Where like once you get within a certain distance of the bag, then you just, I don't know, because like a large portion of plays are decided by inches or feet, fewer than six feet. So that's an issue. Maybe you just have ghost runners. Can we just do ghost runners? The entire season is just a sim league.

They might have to rethink, you know, they'd have to revise the rulebook potentially for their diagrams about how far away stuff has to be from other stuff, right? Because there's like a whole diagram in the back of the playing field, in the back of the official rulebook. Although, guys, if you do that, if we institute this plan, can you update next batter's box to circle? Because it is a circle, but it is described as a box here. And that has driven me crazy for years. And no one will ever explain to me why it is that way. That is neither here nor there. That is not the point. But hey, here we are.

We're doing weird stuff. So let's fix this weird thing. Yeah, I think you would have to have, it is not a modified infield fly rule in terms of how it functions. But you would need to have a rule like that that assumes a base out or safe state in order to have guys advance. And you'd have to do something like that because otherwise, I don't know how you get rid of the possibility of having contact between one of the infielders and a base runner. Like, does the third baseman have to start jogging backwards when the runner advances right who has the right of way yeah that's tough maybe what you could do is just have instead of ghost runners you just have like everyone record their stat cast sprint speed and then it's just based entirely on like your your average run to first or something so

you don't actually run but the fielder has to get the ball over to first or something. So you don't actually run, but the fielder has to get the ball over to first before the time that you would typically run to first on a close play. And if he beats that time, then you're out. And if not, then you're safe and you're not actually on the base and you just like use speed or your previous rates of advancing on batted balls or something and you you just sort of simulate the base running or yeah we could get like holographic projections or something just so the the fielders would have a target to aim for and keep track of because otherwise it might be

tough to motivate yourself to get the ball over there as quickly as you would when you see the runner bearing down on the base so if we can if we can install hawkeye or drackman and if tupac can tour i feel like we have solutions yeah right no one would like this sport as an aside everyone would hate this but is it better than nothing? With almost nothing else, I might watch that. That might be entertaining. You could still have catchers back there to block the ball. It wouldn't matter if they're six feet farther back if runners aren't allowed to go because they won't have to make the throw to second anyway. backstop or something and that's that but this is a version of the sport that would not be as good but it would be better than the social distancing versions of most sports i think yeah or we would just like collapse into a fit of depression over the lack of actual baseball i think you'd have to really i mean the infield is really where the problems are. And I think you would just have to have rules about assumed out and safe base states and then mostly move the infield out close into the outfield. Because otherwise you just get them all bunched up on top of each other. Yeah.

You couldn't have two pitchers warming up in the bullpen at the same time. No. pin at the same time no and when you made a pitching change you just have to have the pitcher drop the ball on the mound and walk off i guess and maybe replace the ball also just to be safe so yeah you'd have to that's another thing you'd probably have to like replace the ball after every pitch and every play just uh in case it was contaminated or something. Yeah. A lot of considerations here. Man. I think people would hate it.

I think people would really hate it. I mean, it's definitely inferior. I like the thought experiment. They'd have to lean into the ridiculousness of it, right? They'd have to just be very candid about what they're doing. They're like, we're taking the holodeck and we are basically trying to make it baseball you know I don't really have a

holodeck well this is our best approximation and you're gonna like it because what else are you gonna watch they'd have to just be very upfront about it yeah what are your alternatives here yeah last thought that just occurred to me by the way because if this

deal, now that it's gone through, and if the season is shortened, then I've seen a lot of people saying, oh, the Dodgers, they made this deal. They gave up all the future years of Jeter Downs and Alex Verdugo, and they're not going to get as much Mookie Betts as they thought. And that is true, potentially. I guess they really lose if the season is canceled. Then they got nothing. They got no Mookie bets, and he's still a free agent, and they still have to give up all of those other players. But if the season is shortened, they would get less Mookie bets,

and yet the amount of Mookie that they got might be disproportionately important because, as you and I were talking about last week, the shortened season makes the favorites less favored and injects more randomness into the game and makes it easier for underdogs to unseat the leading teams, the best teams. And so in that sense, having Mookie for the regular season would actually really matter for the Dodgers now, whereas in the past it was almost solely a postseason benefit because the Dodgers seemed like locks to make the playoffs and win that division even without Mookie, whereas now there'd be a little more randomness in the process and they might actually need Mookie to hold off some fluky run by the Diamondbacks or

the Padres or whoever. So that would be the silver lining, I guess. Maybe less Mookie, but more important Mookie. Yeah, they get a potentially more impactful Mookie and they still get to enjoy the services of David Price. Yes. And they get a couple good years of Brewstar Gratterall. So they don't get nothing, but it isn't optimal. We don't want – it would feel very sort of cosmically strange for the Red Sox to come out on the good end of that bargain just by virtue of a global pandemic, although, and I do not mean to make light of the situation in which we find ourselves, but gosh, you know, it's a not great deal when it takes a global pandemic to make it look good. That's not, that's overly harsh. That's not generous of me. And we should all be generous to one another in this moment. But that joke is there for the

telling, even though I don't know that it's a very nice one. All right. So we have considered that scenario. I guess it's time to talk to Eric, unless you want to briefly bring up John Bench and share that with the world. I got to do it. Okay. So I don't know if people, you know, this commercial appeared for the first time, at least as far as I saw it during spring training. And then I was re-acquainted with it yesterday during opening day at home. Johnny Bench is a spokesperson for a product called Blue Emu, which I think is sort of like Tiger Balm, right? Yeah. I will say that I couldn't tell exactly what it was from this ad, which doesn't speak so well of the ad.

But in subsequent research and other ads that I watch for this company, it seems to be primarily a pain relief gel that you put on your hands or your arms. A topical analgesic. Yeah. I'm not sure if you can put it anywhere, but you put it somewhere and it makes you hurt less is my understanding. Although it also seems like in that ad, they show one vial of the stuff that says like anti-itch something. So it's maybe itch relief too. Maybe they have multiple products. And what I've also gleaned is that it doesn't smell or so they say. So maybe that is a problem with other topical pain relievers that they smell. Yeah. So it is the official editorial stance of Effectively Wild that you read the label very carefully before you apply this, especially to sensitive areas. We, in this moment of time

in particular, are endorsing the careful consideration of the effects of medical treatments. Setting aside whatever this is for, this commercial features Johnny Bench. Now, conjure in your mind, if you will, Johnny Bench. Do you have an image of Johnny Bench in your head, Ben? Do you have like a, you're like, ah, Johnny Bench. I do, because I just watched this ad.

Our listeners are like, Excuse me. Aren't you Johnny Bench? Is it true that you can hold seven baseballs in one hand? I don't do that anymore. Johnny Bench keeps his legend alive with the help of blue emu products. Stay legendary. In this ad, Johnny Bench is sitting at a bar,

and a fan presumably walks up to him and says, hey, are you Johnny Bench? So here's the first thing about this commercial. This will never, never, it would never, ever happen. Johnny Bench looks like an old man, a normal, completely nondescript, forgettable old man. And even if he were very distinctive looking, either as a young person or as an older man, he played his entire career with a mask over his face half the time. And so I refuse to believe that any human being who does not personally know Johnny Bench will recognize Johnny Bench.

I just don't think it's a real thing. I do not think it is a real thing. I don't know. No. That seems harsh. He's a baseball legend. He's a baseball – no, no. I do not mean to diminish the career of Johnny Bench.

I just mean to say – Just the face recognition. Very low. The Q score, very, very low. So there's that. True, although he was quite famous. He was sort of a heartthrob. He wouldn't necessarily know it now. But among people of the age who are buying Blue Emu products, I would suggest that perhaps the Q score is still fairly that he can hold seven baseballs in his hand. And he basically says he doesn't do that anymore. And then he proceeds to hold up seven burgers.

Yes. Okay, so here's my next set of questions. Did he order seven burgers from this bar to just hold in his hand while he had a drink? It's a really good question is there a comfort to be derived why would you pick a burger that's a messy thing why wouldn't you like pick apples or oranges which don't you know get your hands all greasy or are contained they're self-contained food unlike a burger which has a bunch of pieces that might just flop all over the place so there's that again there are seven of them and he is not eating any of them. He's just holding them in his

hand. Right. Yeah. So the bench seven baseballs thing is something that I think he was fairly famous for. So if you Google Johnny Bench and seven baseballs, you will see many images, different images of him holding seven baseballs in his hand and even him holding seven baseballs, you will see many images, different images of him holding seven baseballs in his hand and even him holding seven baseballs on Letterman. So I guess this is impressive. I don't know. It looks pretty impressive that he's able to do this. He's got big hands. He's got mitts. He's a catcher. One would maybe expect him to have big hands, but this is something that he's known for and so i guess if one of your signatures especially if you are contending that his face is not very very recognizable which i dispute to some

extent but i will allow that it was often covered by a mask and it has been decades since he played so perhaps it is not the most recognizable but if you are known for holding seven things in your hand, I guess the idea is that he just goes around holding seven things in his hand wherever he is in case anyone asks him if he can still do it or if he wants to just maintain that ability. So he just does it in a bar with burgers because that's what he has on hand, literally. I don't know why you would want to hold seven burgers in your hand, but then hand literally i don't know why you would want to hold seven burgers in your hand but then again i don't know why you would necessarily want to hold seven baseballs in your hand at one time okay i have two things to say about this and then we will be done because i have already spent more time than i care to admit thinking about this and i recognize that

our listeners might be taxed but so two things one i think can the idea that he just grabs seven of the same thing anywhere he goes in case someone asks indicates to me that johnny bench also agrees that people are unlikely likely to recognize him otherwise because he has to do that thing he's like here i and people be like why do you have seven things in your hand any things whatever the things are why do you have seven of them and uh and and then johnny bench would say well because i'm johnny bench and i used to do this with baseballs but now but now there are burgers here also wouldn't you if the idea behind this product is that it alleviates pain probably from you know like when uh when you're advancing in age, your joints are a little achy.

And so holding seven things because you're a person who just goes around and picks up seven of a thing because you want people to know you're Johnny Bench. Doesn't it suggest that this is perhaps not the most effective means of combating the pain associated with aging because he picked pliant things. He picked squishy things. He picked squishy things. He picked things that squish. He should be like holding bowling balls or cue balls or oranges or – I mean – Yeah, that crossed my mind too. It's sort of performance enhancing to be able to grab such pliable objects as burgers and buns, which I guess in terms of size, it really depends on the burger.

There are some huge burgers that even if you compress them, they'd still be bigger than a baseball. But these are not huge burgers. These are like, I don't know, bar burgers. They're like mini burgers. And so it's hard to tell how impressive it is. It looks like it's him. They didn't bring in a stunt double to do the seven burgers thing.

So he has at least enough mobility still to do that. But you're right. I'm not exactly sure if this is as impressive as the baseballs thing, but it is more appropriate for the context, I suppose. Although I'd be more impressed by like seven drinks or something. Maybe that would just make him look like an alcoholic or something if he's like, that might be the wrong image to send. But it is like our our burgers at bars even good would you want seven of them really even right two hands or at different times i don't know yeah they do occupy a strange size between slider and like something that yeah a ballpark chef for the rangers would come up with or like in a you know they're like it's like the size of a real burger.

It's like human food as opposed to something that we probably shouldn't joke about something that kills you. We're going to have to think about humor really differently then. I was just about to make a joke that was not especially sensitive, would cause intestinal distress. It was in between burger size of slider and like gut bomb. There we go. That's better. Yeah, right. Like when Nolan Ryan used to do the commercials for pain relief,

they would still show him throwing a baseball, and he wasn't necessarily throwing it as hard as he used to, but they didn't show him like throwing burgers or anything. So you'd think that maybe they'd want to still have him do the baseball thing, especially because if you are contending that Johnny Bench is not the most recognizable spokesman at this point, then it would help to have the baseballs because anyone could be grabbing burgers. Right.

Any normal human man could be at the bar holding burgers, but only Johnny Bench could be at the bar holding baseballs is what I'm saying. Right. Yeah. I will say that as potential spokesman for a topical pain relief gel go, a former catcher is pretty high on the list. Yeah, very. That's a pretty good selection.

Yeah. In fact, I wanted to get a closer up look at his hands because you always hear that old catchers just have these gnarled hands and their joints are swollen and they've broken all their fingers so all their fingers are sticking out in different directions and i feel like this ad would be more effective if they gave me a close-up of johnny benches hideously misshapen hands from decades of catching and then they were like see even this guy with these weird looking hands he can still grab seven burgers if he uses this gel. Then I would believe it even more.

Whereas I can't really tell from this angle whether Johnny Bench's hands are actually scarred from his years of catching or not. I assume that they are. So if he's telling me that this works, and I think there's also a Mike Ditka version where it's johnny mentioned mike ditka so i i will buy that he's a good spokesman in theory for this that a former catcher would be someone who would indeed use this gel and might really need it yeah this reminds me and then we will go and talk about baseball things there was like a contestant on a jeopardy one of the jeopardies that's on netflix you know how nothing means anything anymore. So anyway, I was watching the old Jeopardy and apparently he is missing his middle finger. There was some accident when he was young and he's telling this story as like his, you know, quippy anecdote as it's intro.

And then they never showed his hand. And so I spent the entire episode, you know, like, show me your hand. And then I was like, wow, we're in like week two. It's real early for this. Real very early. One more thing I meant to mention related to the pandemic and baseball's response to it. I assume you saw the story about Fanatics, the official MLB jersey manufacturer, converting their jersey manufacturing into gown and mask manufacturing, which is very nice, obviously. And MLB and Fanatics are footing the bill. They don't

actually need to make jerseys for a while. So they're making something useful. And from what I understand, obviously, baseball jerseys are not designed to prevent the transmission of a highly communicable virus. So it's not that you could just put your jersey over your face and you'll be fine. But it seems like it will be of some use to doctors and medical people who are having to reuse their equipment over and over. And they can use this gown to protect their scrubs or put it over their mask to protect their mask, and maybe they wouldn't have to change those things out as often. So it is handy to have.

But it's also very amusing to me that they still look like baseball jerseys, at least in the pictures I saw. There's a picture from Michael Rubin, who I think is the head of the company and or one of the people at Fanatics. And it's just him, I assume, wearing a gown that is just like a Phillies jersey. Yeah. Has a gown. And I also saw some like Yankees pinstripes as a mask. And I don't know how I'd feel if I like went to the hospital and the people treating me were wearing baseball jerseys.

Like maybe I'd appreciate it. Like, well, there's no actual baseball, but at least I'm getting a little bit of baseball in my life. Or maybe I'd have a harder time trusting them. They look like people who just cut up their baseball jerseys and now they're trying to treat my disease. Yeah. I wonder if there have to be conversations with patients about that to say, like, no, no, there's a real N95 mask on underneath this. This is just meant to try to, you know, increase the longevity of, you know, the equipment they have. I'm sure some quippy fan would be like, isn't this supposed to be a breathable fabric? Isn't that the whole idea behind this?

But no, it was, you know, good news has been thin on the ground. So it was nice to have some. It was pretty cool. Yeah. I also wonder if they're like medical professional hardcore fans of baseball who are like getting issued the jersey for the team that's the rival of their team. And they're like, you know what? I want to save lives and save equipment. But also I don't really want to rep like a Red Sox jersey on my

face if I'm a Yankees fan. Hopefully that would not stop them from doing the thing that helps the most people. But you would think that there may be a few people who just like, I assume you don't get to choose your jersey of choice. So you just got to have to take what you got. Yeah, I imagine it's the kind of detail that, you know, years from now when New Yorker articles are written about this period of time and we're looking back, it'll definitely be a detail that finds its way into a lead paragraph. Yes. All right. Let's take a quick break. I'll link to the ad if anyone wants to check out the burgers and the bluey meat themselves. And we will be right back with Eric Longenhagen. I want to see you, cause I know the dreams that you keep

Is where we meet, when you come and don't think of me I got no distance left to run Welcome back, as we alluded to in the intro, one of the centerpieces of the deal between the league and the players association are some fairly sweeping changes to both the draft and the international free agent market and to discuss those changes we have fan graphs lead prospect analyst eric longenhagen eric how are you you caught me mid-sip um it was a poorly timed sip i should be i should be professional about this i'm i'm fine. Clearly thirsty, but otherwise okay. A little bit tired. It was late news last night that these changes were being made. So it was

up late thinking and talking and reacting to them. But I'm social distancing for most people and doing my part to like, you know, our patriotic and civic duty at this point, I think. And just sort of in off-season mode thinking about the lists I have left and the baseball that I'm hoping to watch at some point during the summer. Well, maybe for readers, because this was a very sweeping deal and one that had implications not only for minor leaguers and amateurs, but also for major leaguers, which might have directed people's attention away from the draft, but maybe we can just start by you running through what the basic changes are for this year's draft. And then we can talk about the J2 signing implications and maybe next year's draft a little bit later. Sure. So primary change is the reduction of the draft from 40 rounds to five this year and from 40 rounds to 20 rounds next year.

to 20 rounds next year. MLB has the right to alter how many rounds there are, but no one I spoke with has any real idea. Other than some folks on the scouting side who think that they'll just have to have a few more rounds for minor league roster purposes, everyone just thinks it'll be five and then 20 rounds subsequently. So that's a big change. The draft is going to move probably. The timeline is probably going to shift. Ken Rosenthal's initial report on that end was that it was going to occur by late July. So whether or not there's amateur baseball between now and whenever the draft is seems pretty unlikely, but in the event that the pandemic subsides sooner than I anticipate and seems sooner than most health professionals anticipate. And the event that there might be some sort of combine type thing or amateur baseball of some kind, you know, they might push the draft so that it occurs after all that stuff can be seen by teams. Those are like the major changes, I think, that I hit everything. There's so many repercussions to the decision that was made

yesterday that being able to concisely talk about all of them seems kind of impossible. I have a follow-up and maybe that can lead us into some of the other changes that we saw. So I think it would be useful for our listeners to get a sense of just how prepared in a normal year with no pandemic and amateur baseball still going on, where are teams in terms of their draft prep? Because I think that when some fans hear five rounds or at least five rounds with the potential for more, but likely five, they might be viewing that as an indication of sort of general preparedness to draft at this moment? Is that a factor here? Where are teams in terms of constructing their boards? So obviously throughout March, April, and May, there are players who were

going to change, get hurt, players who were going to begin varsity play in high school settings that are cold weather, like Northeast high schoolers hadn't started playing baseball yet. And so some of those players are going to look different. So there is an element of unknown that the three months between now and the draft would have like brought clarity to. But for the most part, like teams have been scouting these guys for a long time. Most of these players have been seen and known about since they were underclassmen. The college players have been scouted for almost a half decade at this point. So teams have a good information base on all of these players. No one I spoke with would have any discomfort drafting

tomorrow. They'd be more comfortable if they could draft three months from now with three months worth of games to see. But at this point, we're at a point where we would have started to refine teams' mixes in the first round. At this point, in February especially, most of the big college programs were seen by decision-making personnel at tournaments in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, California, Texas. There were a lot of early season tournaments with a lot of first, second round type guys who general managers and scouting directors and national cross checkers were seeing. At this point in the calendar now, it's more targeted. Those people's efforts, their travel is more specific to who they think is going to be around, you know,

the mix of players that they are realistically considering at their pick, that was going to start to come into focus around this time. And then like at the lower level, the area scout and regional cross checker level, you know, it is still like most of your areas would probably be covered at this point. Again, like these players have all been scouted over multiple years. And you're getting your cross-checkers in to see pop-up guys, junior college players who have had upticks in velocity that area scouts have just started to uncover. These are the types of players who regional cross-checkers

would start to be coming in to see. It makes it pretty unlikely that that type of player gets drafted at this point because now only the area scout has had eyes on the pop-up player whereas you know organizations are just going to be much more comfortable drafting players who multiple people in the org have seen and know about from the last couple years so what does this do to players who don't get drafted in the first five rounds or however many rounds there end up being, it seems like there's more incentive to go to college if you're an undrafted player who now is limited to at most a $20,000 bonus, if you're still eligible to go back. And I don't know whether players will get more

eligibility if they weren't able to play this year. And then there are high school players who might decide to go to college instead of going to the draft because they're just not selected. But then there are only so many college scholarships, baseball scholarships to go around to begin with. So what happens to all these guys? Do they go to the indie leagues? Are there indie leagues? Are there just a bunch of people who normally would be playing baseball who now just won't be? playing baseball, who now just won't be?

So one of the big variables that still needs to be determined that will influence how this question is ultimately answered is that on Monday, the NCAA is having a committee meeting that decides what happens with player eligibility for spring athletes. So if everyone is granted an extra year of eligibility, then yes, we could have a situation where an abnormal number of players is destined for Division I college baseball in 2021. And unless the NCAA gives baseball programs some sort of scholarship override, there are only about 12 scholarships to go around for a roster of 35 players. And several programs will just have more than that to try to deal with because they expected a bunch of juniors and seniors to leave either via the draft or graduation. And they have appropriately sized incoming freshman classes,

like as many as 10 kids coming in. So the makeup of those players that are probably going to overflow Division I programs, we still don't know. I tend to think most of the high-end high school players are just going to sign. You still, when you're 18 years old, the best chance you have of hitting free agency at a young age is signing out of high school, getting to the big leagues fairly quickly because you're good, and then hitting free agency in your mid to late 20s if you're lucky, except for the players who would be draft eligible sophomores in two years, who now have the bonus deferment to consider as part of this calculus, you know, it still just makes more sense if you're an elite high schooler to sign right now. The types of high schoolers who I do think end up going to college are the day three high school types, the players whose signability was properly assessed in the 400 to 600K range,

guys who go in round 11 of the draft, guys who the Braves took en masse last year's draft and signed when they more or less punted on early round picks and took a bunch of underslot guys. punted on early round picks and took a bunch of underslot guys. There's going to be less room for creativity for teams to move bonus pool money around. Like there's just not 40 rounds over which to try to do that type of thing. And so it is more likely that teams stick to chalk on their boards to some extent. Certainly you can't have any strategic initiative that casts a wide net. You can't sign a bunch of six-figure high schoolers anymore. That type of strategy is probably done. And so maybe the 2023 draft is loaded. Maybe some of these players spill over into junior colleges. Maybe there's a scholarship

program that is instilled that enables more of them to stay on Division I campuses than is normal. And also, maybe a couple months from now, $20,000 would look really, really good to any one of us up front. So this is one of those situations where unfortunately everyone's financial instability is maybe being exploited and we'll have kids signing for $20,000 who ordinarily wouldn't but need to because their family situation dictates that they do. I'm curious about one of the other effects of deferring more guys to college that you talked about in the piece that you wrote for Fangraphs, which is that data is much more readily available for college players in Division I programs and doesn't necessarily require the presence of a scout or as heavy a scouting sort of presence as you might otherwise

see. One of the groups that is likely to feel the effects of this away from the player pool are going to be actual scouts. What does the move toward more guys being in the college pool mean in terms of scouting staffs? Right. So several of the things that have occurred over the last couple of months, not just this decision, continues to point to MLB trying to outsource player development and limit the budgets of their scouting departments, right? So in addition to like, you guys know this, and Ben, especially you, you know, having hung around the Astros during a time when they were culling scouts and changing the way that they were evaluating players, that if you know, having hung around the Astros during a time when they were culling scouts and changing the way that they were evaluating players, that if you can, the bigger piece

of the player evaluation pie is made up of data. The more good data you have at the various locations of amateur talent evaluation, the less a role scouts play in that specific realm. And so obviously most Division I teams, like well over 70 of them, now have track man units. Hawkeye units are beginning to be installed at Division I colleges as well. So you'd rather allocate your scouts to high school and junior college games where that technology does not exist.

And then we had the implementation of mandatory data sharing at the junior college level. So what teams were doing is they were buying TrackMan units for junior colleges in exchange for having exclusive access to that junior college's TrackMan data. And then they were like trading that data for other stuff to other teams. Like they were using that data as a resource

more than just for player evaluation. But again, now that that is, legislation ratified, that makes it mandatory for teams to share all of that data. Now there is just less incentive to send scouts to junior colleges because you have access to more data on that level. And like, this is the type of thing that has been slowly occurring to scouts for a long time, and this is just another step. So bracket that for a second. Agen I spoke with last night, and this is just a general incentive-driven analysis. Teams have incentive to drive players to college, as I said, it outsources development for those players between ages 18 and 21.

development for those players between ages 18 and 21. And then the 21-year-old who's just entering pro ball is highly unlikely to be the type of player like a Bryce Harper or like a Manny Machado who hits free agency at 26, 27, 28 years old, because theoretically they're going to go through the minor league process for a couple of years. And so that's a cost-saving measure as well. That is just sort of an ancillary benefit of pushing more amateur players to college. And then yes, additionally, the scouts just have less to do. The data is the most reliable for college players. TrackMan is pervasive. They have three years of performing or not performing. And this does seem like another precursor to teams at a scale starting to reduce their scouting departments in some way to eliminate costs. Scouts cost money. They travel, they eat food, they put gas in their cars,

they fly, they stay in hotels. And teams are just looking for a way not to do that as often. Started with Houston has spread now to Milwaukee. There's been less PR outrage over that because Milwaukee has learned from Houston how to deal with it and hide it. So I just think there are some teams who are old school and want to keep scouts around, but the owners are just cost-conscious in a way that I think makes that increasingly difficult. Right. So the owners were already trying to shrink the minors. It seems like the minors might shrink regardless because of this pandemic, if there are minor league teams that are not on great financial footing and are not able to continue operating if there are no games or

fewer games this year. And if there are fewer players drafted, then that just sort of feeds into smaller minors, fewer minor league teams. And I think there are a lot of potential costs when it comes to local communities, obviously, and just the availability of baseball across the country in places where you can't go see a big league game, but there might be a minor league game. To me, that's frankly more important than whether this saves teams money to pay fewer minor leaguers or coaches or affiliates. I don't really care if they are able to save that money or not. I care more if fans are able to have access to baseball and maybe fall in love with baseball because they have a local team, whereas they wouldn't

in the future. But in terms of the impact on player development, do you think teams are essentially right when they assert that they just don't need as many minor league teams anymore, that a lot of those players don't make it anyway, that we have data now that allows us to evaluate players in smaller samples, and that if this were to come to pass, we basically wouldn't see much of a difference in terms of the talent coming to the big league level? So yeah, a lot to unpack there. I think I wrote recently that not only the presence of data, but the changes and improvements that are being made on the player dev side make it so that I'd argue you should be investing more in collecting amateur players and trying to groom them. More data, more prospects. You did a post about that.

Yeah. There are more reasons to be interested in individual players now, whether your fastball has a high spin rate or there's something about pitch tunneling that we can quantify or we know that you hit the ball hard. There are just a lot more reasons now to be excited about individual players from my perspective than there used to be. You could argue, you sort of alluded to it, that these forms of measurement make it so that we have a binary yes or no answer

to whether or not a lot of players can make it or not. And that answer is easier to come to now than it used to be. You know, like, I agree with you that big league owners could pay a swath of minor leaguers a livable wage without reducing roster sizes. It would be better for people to watch baseball. I think that minor league franchises have gotten a little bit of a pass. Minor league baseball teams are owned by very rich people too. They don't treat their employees very well. They exploit labor too.

Walmart provides a cheap product for people as well, and no one would be upset if Walmart stores were contracted. So there is something nice and romantic about baseball, but it's not as if minor league organizations are these pure chaste businesses. They're corrupt as well. So I have mixed feelings about minor league contraction, but in general, I think it would be bad for baseball, period. MLB just doesn't seem interested in doing things that grow the game or give people incentive to play the game. It's a game for economically advantaged people.

We talked about the scholarship situation earlier. If you have 12 scholarships to split among a 35-player roster, If you have 12 scholarships to split among a 35-player roster, it's going to be hard for any kid who can't afford half of their tuition to play baseball. Football has a full scholarship for you. You're just going to go play football. So, yeah, it's a long-term problem for a lot of people. This is the type of short-sighted thing that both the owners and the players union have executed time and time again since I've been working in baseball. This wasn't surprising to me. I know that there were other more important considerations given the crisis that we're all dealing with.

But yeah, this is bad for amateur players and there are repercussions that go beyond that. We talked about scouts and there are other people who will feel the effects of this, whose fates are sort of hanging in the balance of the amateur talent acquisition process. Can you give listeners just a sense of what the total cost of all of this is? Assuming a normal draft, a draft like last year's and one of the provisions in this deal is that slots are going to, signing bonuses are going to remain the same this year and presumably next year. Those are normally tied to inflation because of revenue, but there's going to be less revenue. So slots are going to stay the same. But does it – what is the expense to major league organizations for doing the draft? Well, I guess just beyond the bonuses, right? So the bonuses probably total, let's see, like $270 million worth of total bonuses, I think it was on the draft side. And then I think about 150 on the international amateur side. So those are your bonus costs. I mean, the fact that travel has been shut down for teams is saving them money in the interim. So, you know, there are all sorts of weird things that this particular year is presenting us with from like a debits and credit situation on the expenditure side. about what it is, probably about 400, between 400 and 450 million just on bonuses. And then gosh,

who knows how much on the changes to travel and the other expenses that teams have in acquiring data and installing tech and all sorts of different other things. So it's a pretty significant cost but ultimately for as far as MLB's revenues are concerned, it's not very much compared to what they're making. So it sounds like a lot of money to you and I, but as far as the type of revenues that they pull in, it is like a drop in the bucket, especially considering what the players that they're drafting are actually worth, right? And there's clear evidence of this, especially on the international side, the way the rules have changed over there over the years. The top of the market was what Yohan Mankata commanded, right? So it was like a 30-some million dollar bonus with dollar for dollar tax on the overage to the pool amounts at the time were soft capped. And I think it was about $70 million that the Red Sox were willing to pay between the bonus and the tax for Yohan Moncada.

And then a few years later, the rules change and the top of the market is Shohei Otani, who gets about $3 million. So these are the measures that are being put in place. The MLB Players Association is agreeing to them. And these are the repercussions. You can kind of quantify them and where things are headed and why. One of those changes that you alluded to is going to have a further effect by delaying the J2 signing period. What does that delay telegraph to you and the folks who you've talked to in the industry in terms of the likelihood of an international draft? Yeah, the international draft is coming. It has been

a goal of MLBs for quite a while. There are a number of reasons. Some of them are good. There's a lot of bonus skimming that goes on internationally. There are a lot of people who come back to the United States with the maximum amount of cash you can carry through customs because they're taking kickbacks from owners whose players, they're taking kickbacks from agents whose players they've overpaid intentionally. That does occur. And so there are reasons for wanting to implement an international draft. It is ultimately harmful for the labor force to just not be able to pick their employer. Lots of players, especially now, and an agent I talked to yesterday confirmed this to me, like people know who they want to play for.

People know what teams develop big leaders and more than ever, the disparity in player development makes it so that amateur players would like to pick who they play for. And an international draft takes that away. The timeline for that is set up, in my opinion, to have an international draft in 2023. The CBA negotiations after the 2021 season make it so that a 2022 international draft is just like too short of a timeline to have that logistically. Teams already have verbal deals with 2022s in some cases. And so I think, yeah, 2023 sounds like the time that an international draft will start. The ability for baseball to play with the calendar internationally lets them set up to have, you know, a January international draft is a pretty opportune time to have it, right? It's during the off season,

nothing's really going on. It inserts baseball into a part of the calendar that they weren't ordinarily part of, especially if free agency continues to be less of a splashy financial thing as it has been in recent years. It's not as great a marketing time for baseball as it has been. It's a time when we kind of gnash our teeth over the fact that people haven't signed. So a January international draft and then a June domestic draft is like a pretty convenient way to space out interest in your sport. And based on the six-month push to this year's timeline, the ability to push the 2021-22 period back to just encompass the 2022 calendar. It's kind of setting you up to have a 2023 January international draft, just the way it looks to me. And as I said, some of the reasons

for doing that I think are good. There is corruption in that market, but ultimately, it is just another way of suppressing and controlling what amateur players make when they first enter pro ball. And for players who are weighing potential professional futures in more than one sport, does this further tilt the needle towards sports other than baseball, at least for some guys? Because already baseball had the hurdle of maybe having to spend lots of time on minor league buses and play for years before you get to the big leagues. And then, of course, you don't cash in immediately when you make the majors until you have a lot of service time.

And so you're looking at potentially maybe if everything works out perfectly for you, more money in baseball or more safety or more longevity, but a much more delayed windfall. And now if bonus amounts are being frozen for a couple years, and players who are undrafted aren't getting big bonuses, are there many players who might decide to go to another sport instead of baseball? Are there enough players like that, that this would affect that that's actually a problem in terms of wanting the most high-level athletes to enter baseball as possible? Yeah, I think the things that-level athletes to enter baseball as possible? Yeah, I think the things that drive amateur athletes to any given sport are – it's pretty varied.

Money is probably one of them. What the space in our culture that the sport occupies is probably another important consideration to many young people. I think that baseball as a sport, Major League Baseball as a business entity, the NCAA, there are several instances throughout a young athlete's career where they have choices to make. And I think at most of those decision points that baseball has provided the young athlete with disincentive to choose baseball, whether it is monetary or the long-term cultural repercussions of some of this decision-making, right? Like if Kyler Murray were playing professional baseball, even as a minor leaguer, he'd be a huge, huge deal. He might be more famous and recognizable than a lot of the really excellent big leaguers who have been good for a long time. Like double-A Kyler Murray is probably more recognizable than Nolan Arenado to the average American sports fan. So I don't know how to talk and think about that stuff.

You know, if you love baseball, you're probably going to end up playing it the way Kyler Murray loved football and wanted to end up playing it. But yeah, this certainly isn't easy. It's not an easy decision for people. It's not compelling for Kyler Murray to really choose baseball or really think about choosing baseball after that final year he had at Oklahoma. So yeah, it's a problem. Ideally, you'd like the two sport guys who are often hyper-famous to choose baseball, right? It's just probably better for your sports. And yeah, decisions like this are what make it less likely. Well, we will probably be having you back on the show sometime soon because you've got a book coming out before we let you go. Want to get a plug in before the book interview? No, that's okay. Just once? No, no, no. Yeah, I should. I should.

I just wanted to see if I could hear Meg die on the other end. Yeah. So the book is Future Value. I wrote it with babyface turncoat kylie mcdaniel uh who's now of espn and yeah it's about it talks about a lot of this stuff frankly like where player evaluation is going it peels back the curtain on what kylie and i have done with our process of evaluating players and has a lot of scouting anecdotes from our contacts in there too. Some stuff that people are going to be pissed at us when they see that it's in there. So go pick one up.

I mean, don't, not physically, but via the interweb. Yeah, from your doorstep. Pick it up from your doorstep after you've ordered it. If you have one of those, those like, what are they? Old people claws. You know what I'm talking about? Like you reach the cereal box on the high shelf, but you small you can take one of those to like a borders or whatever if those exist i have one of those grabbing claw because my dog gets her toys stuck under the

couch sometimes so we use it to get it out from under there so yeah i can use that use that all right well we'll talk to you more about it sometime soon, I'm sure. And in the meantime, people can follow Eric on Twitter at Longenhagen and read him very regularly at Fangraphs, which you are still churning out the prospect list. Has it become easier or more difficult to do the reporting or to remain focused on ranking prospects at a time when no baseball is being played. It was, it's been an interesting several weeks. Kylie's departure combined with the, like the depth that I require to satisfy myself with our work meant that I had a lot of extra stuff to do. The pause on action has been beneficial from like a, yes, now I can sort of wrap my arms around this a little bit more easily than I, than I could if I were say going to college and minor league spring training games constantly, which is the other thing I'd be doing at this time of year.

And like, I miss being at the field, but there is something a little less nerve-wracking about sitting down and contemplating 110 Raze players that I'm cutting down to 56, and about the same amount of Padres players that I'm cutting down to TBD amount in the coming days.

It is easier now that there's less to do, and it is nice to have about 10 orgs left to cover at the depth that I like to cover them at without anything else going on. I have a hermit streak in me, and so this has been fine. But that doesn't mean I'm horrified by what's about to happen, clearly. But yeah, as far as me, I'm doing okay. And yeah, I'll be cranking out more of these lists and other content. There will be a webpage that pairs with the book that will have like a visual appendix

of sorts. So if you're curious what like a knuckle curveball looks like coming out of someone's hand or the, you know, the various other pitch grips or curious what 50 bat speed looks like versus what 60 and 70 and 80 bat speed looks like, there will be video and all sorts of things on the site that can be digested with the book. So I'll be devoting time to that over the next several weeks until the mid-April release. Yeah, plenty to do, plenty to do here at the Fangraphs Desert Vista Compound. All right. Well, we will talk to you again soon. Thanks, guys.

All right. Thank you for listening today and this week. I wanted to make one reading recommendation. My colleagues at The Ringer, Michael Bauman and Zach Cram, and I did a draft of our favorite baseball reference pages in an article at The Ringer. We went five deep each, so 15 total baseball reference pages. Some of them strange, some quirky, weird, funny. Some have been discussed previously on this podcast, but many of them have not. I will link to that. I think you'll enjoy it. It's very Effectively Wild-esque content. The only page that I regret now not mentioning is one that I've actually written about and talked about before, Shaq Thompson's page. If you're not familiar, Shaq Thompson played for the Red Sox Rookie League affiliate, which in the future, given everything we just discussed, might not exist. He was 18 in 2012 when he was drafted by the Red Sox in the 18th round and played those 13 games. And in those games, he had 39 at-bats, he went 0 for 39, and he struck out 37 times. And he quickly decided, you know what? Baseball's not for me. He was a multi-sport star. And he then went on to become a first-round NFL draft pick, and he's been in the NFL for the Carolina Panthers for the past five years.

So clearly an ultra-talented athlete, but not a very experienced baseball player. And it showed 37 strikeouts and 39 at-bats, which I think just goes to show you how hard professional sports are. That's essentially the lowest level of affiliated baseball, and he's an ultra-athletic guy who would go on to be a successful football player, and yet he could just not make contact at all. So that's a helpful reminder of how most of us would fare if we were in that situation. And it's also a reminder that a lot of baseball success is dependent on experience and repetition and seeing many thousands of pitches, which he had not had the opportunity to do at that point. One other good page that I've talked about on the podcast before, episode 1397, I think,

is Ruben Rivera's page. That's the former Yankee Ruben Rivera, who was a top prospect and who's been playing professionally since he was 18 in 1992, and at least as of some point in 2019, was still playing in the Mexican League at age 45. And he's played for so many teams in so many places that his page is just gigantic. And you can just scroll and scroll and scroll and marvel at the fact that this guy who made his Major League debut in 1995 is or recently was still going. Stealing and selling Derek Jeter's glove in spring training did not end his career. He was just getting started. I also wanted to give a brief salute to the late Jim Wynn, who died on Thursday, the former Astros and Dodgers and other teams outfielder,

with the great nickname of the Toy Cannon. He was a great player, great power hitter, despite not having a prototypical power hitter's build. He was listed at 5'10", 160, and he seems to have been a very good guy. I can't speak insightfully about Jim Wynn as a person, but I can tell you about him as a player statistically speaking. As Craig Wright noted in a recent edition of Pages from Baseball's Past, the newsletter I plug from time to time, Jim Wynn is the best player not to have received a single Hall of Fame vote. So he was on the ballot in 1983, didn't get a single vote, not just that he fell off the ballot, didn't get the 5% eligibility, not a single person of the 374 who cast ballots that year voted for

him, which is really incredible considering that some not very good players get at least a single vote, and Wynn was a great player. So highest war ever for a player to have received zero support on a Hall of Fame ballot. And as Craig in his newsletter continues, it hurt Wynn's case that in his best seasons he labored in obscurity for the Astros in their early years when they were essentially never in contention. He got to play in one postseason with the 1974 Dodgers and did not help his case by playing well. It was also easy to lose sight of how great Wynn's power was given that he played in the Astrodome

when the original fence distances and poor hitting background made it tough to hit home runs. A home run crown would have helped Jim's resume a lot and he really did deserve one in 1967 when his 37 homers were a phenomenal achievement in that era of the expanded strike zone and playing his home games in the Astrodome. You could have added up together the home runs from the next four best Astros that year, and it would have still totaled four homers fewer than Wynn hit by himself. On the road, Jim easily hit the most homers in the league,

and a half dozen more than the road homers of Hank Aaron, the overall league leader with 39 homers that year. So speaking of baseball reference pages, why not pay tribute to Jim Wynn by navigating over to his and appreciating what a great player he was. Walked a ton too, twice led the majors in walks. So between the low batting average and the high on base percentage and the park effects and the bad teams with low RBI totals. He really was almost perfectly constructed to be underrated in that time of traditional stats, but I think he is much more appreciated now. We greatly appreciate those of you who are still supporting Effectively Wild through these difficult times. If you would like to become such a person, you can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign 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 done so. Nate Potter, David Kim, Tom Evans, Tom Dwyer, and Matt Muzia. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

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. I also have a book coming out soon that you can purchase now if you are so inclined. The paperback edition of The MVP Machine, which includes a new lengthy afterword, comes out April 7th, so get your pre-orders in if you haven't read it, or

if you want the expanded edition. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back next week. Hope you stay safe until then. Talk to you soon. professional help it always makes me cry I know I'm just an amateur but I've gotta try

I've gotta try