Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1610: Tony La WHOsa?

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the industry-shocking rehiring of Tony La Russa as the manager of the Chicago White Sox nine years after La Russa’s last managerial job and the Detroit Tigers’ hiring of A.J. Hinch immediately after the end of his sign-stealing suspension, then anticipate what could be an ominous offseason. Audio intro: Silver […]

Baby, won't you take this magnet, maybe put my picture back on the fridge I must have been crazy to let you get away like you did And like a brown bird nesting in a Texaco sun, I got a point of view Hello and welcome to episode 1610 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing all right. World Series season sort of segued into Mandalorian season for me. I'm sleep deprived, but that's okay. We might be a bit punchy today based on what we're planning to talk about, I think. Well, and I can't say that the general level of sleep that I have gotten has been especially stellar either, so we might both be

compromised. Yep. That's okay. Maybe we will do our best work without having slept in. Keep it loose. We do have some stuff to talk about. We've got managerial moves, which is not something that we typically talk about at length because how much can you say about most managerial hirings? Most of them are just, you know.

Seems fine, I guess. Seems like a qualified candidate. Makes sense. That person was on everyone's short list and was interviewing for lots of jobs. And sure, makes sense that that team would hire that person. But we have two managerial hirings here that are different degrees of divisive for different reasons.

So the one that we probably have less to say about, surprisingly, is A.J. Hinch getting hired by the Tigers because that was kind of overshadowed by the White Sox actually doing the thing. They did it. They did the thing. They sure did a thing. It happened. No one can believe that it happened.

It's great content. I will give them that. Is it? It could be completely terrible content. But for right now, there's sort of just like a delirium to it or a denial to it or a what were they thinking aspect to it that has kind of made it interesting to talk about at least. So let's get into it. So the White Sox have decided that Tony La Russa will be their next manager. Tony La Russa was their manager starting about seven years before we were both born and now'll be their manager again.

So La Russa is a legend, obviously. He's a Hall of Famer. He's won three World Series. There are a lot of high points on his resume. Can't really think of many managers who have been more influential, who have changed the game more than Tony La Russa. In some ways, he was ahead of his time, and he sort of shaped baseball to follow the trends that he started. And I wrote something a couple of years ago

about how he sort of anticipated the opener with the 1993 A's. And of course, his bullpen usage was so influential and playing matchups and having an established one inning closer and the way his 2011 team really rode their relievers so hard in the postseason, sort of anticipated how managers approach the postseason now. He really changed the game, but he has been out of the game, at least as a manager, for quite some time now. And the game has changed quite a bit in his absence both i think tactically and socially and the latter is probably a bigger concern in this case but yeah this was just almost out of nowhere except that there was a report a few weeks ago about it but i think even when that came out

we sort of poo-pooed it and said oh that, that won't happen. I think Rick Hahn said recently he was looking for someone with recent championship experience, right? And Tony La Russa did win a World Series in his previous last season as a manager with the 2011 Cardinals. So depending on how you define recent, this was a wild one there are a number of things that are i think concerning about this hire and we'll spend plenty of time talking about larusa himself but i think before we get to that i think that the part of this that i found to be almost more concerning than the specific conclusion that the white socks hiring process resulted in was that there doesn't appear to have been a particularly rigorous or open process at all. No. And that, you know, this is apparently a directive from ownership. And, you know, we have talked a lot on this podcast and much has been written about the sort of challenges that players of color and potential managerial candidates, coaches of color face in the hiring process. And the only way that we're going to short circuit that problem and hopefully make sure that every

managerial hiring process results in the most qualified candidate from a diverse pool of applicants who are all considered rigorously and fairly is if there's a process at all, right? And so I think that managing a baseball team is really hard. I think that the in-game tactics bit is, think a changing consideration it's dynamic it's very rarely just the manager making decisions on his own he's having to implement strategies devised by the front office and get a buy-in from players and he has to manage a coaching staff and he has to do all of this weird hr business right business with a very strange group of employees

in a very strange work environment. And all of that is to say that I don't think that there is an endless supply of qualified managerial candidates, but I reject strongly the idea that the well is so shallow. That's not really an expression. The pool is so shallow. That's not really an expression. The pool is so shallow.

The well could be dry. Yeah, that the only option is to forego a rigorous search and arrive at this conclusion. Yeah, right. I think it's a hard job, and I don't think just anyone can do it, but I think a lot more people can do it than require one of the most dynamic, young, engaging teams in baseball to end up with a guy who had been out of the game long enough to literally qualify to go to the Hall of Fame. Indication that he should not be in your candidate pool. And that isn't to say that there aren't a lot of very experienced, smart baseball people whose, you know, insight and value to organizations can out of the dugout he hasn't been out of the game so he was with the diamondbacks sort of overseeing their baseball ops department for a while and then he went to the red sox and then he was with the angels this past year so he's been in the game so he has not been in in the dugout and I think the dugout role has changed a lot

during that time. But at least he's aware of what's going on. It's not like he checked out in 2011 and hasn't paid any attention since. But everything you said, I think, is true. And it's not even like they only interviewed a few white guys or something. They didn't interview anyone. Anyone. They did not interview anyone. That has been reported. Yeah, they didn't even talk to Hinch, which I think a lot of people assumed they would be in the running for Hinch too. Including perhaps their social media team, which appears to have accidentally put his signature on their managerial announcement.

Yeah, right. To have accidentally put his signature on their managerial announcement. Yeah, right. Yeah. And this seems to be purely a case of, you know, 84-year-old owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who owned the team back when La Russa was managing it in the 70s and 80s, and has said that he regrets firing La Russa, who, of course, went on to great success with the A's and the Cardinals. This would appear to be the case of trying to rectify that mistake about 40 years later. And it's not even about the age. And a lot has been made about the age because Lerusa is 76. And the facts are that he will be the third oldest person to manage a mutually game after Connie Mack and Jack McKeon. But it's not that. It's not that you can't be 76 and be perfectly capable of performing your duties and have the necessary energy and motivation and mental acuity and all the rest of it. So it's not that. I mean, it's historically anomalous, but people live a lot longer. They're active a lot longer. It's not that so much that's a concern, although there is an aspect of it that is not about your faculties, but just about how you relate to the players. Because the players stay at the same age, roughly, and the managers get older and older. And Right. generation gap that may in some ways make things more difficult and particularly when you have a team that as you said is young and dynamic and has a lot of outspoken and expressive players and players who've been leading voices in sort of speaking up on social issues and about how players express themselves during games whether it's Luis Robert or Eloy Jimenez or Lucas Giolito or just-

Tim Anderson. Tim Anderson, of course, on and on. So you just have to wonder how well, if at all, La Russa can gel with that clubhouse based on his long track record of comments that would make you think that it wouldn't be the best fit. And not just a long track record, but also a recent track record. So it's concerning to say the least. I don't want to say walk back toe the line might be a better way of characterizing it. Some of his comments when he was at his introductory press conference, but he in the past doubted the sincerity of Colin

Kaepernick's anti-racism protests. He very recently chided Fernando Tatis Jr. in the brief window when people decided to be ornery about him hitting a grand slam on a 3-0 pitch. And so these are not unrelated notions, right? This is a generation, as you said, that is much more comfortable being expressive and that is asserting a place in a broader social discourse that suggests that they take their responsibility as public figures very seriously and view baseball as a platform to be advocates for communities of color and the Black community in particular, that they don't view the game as stodgy, that it should be fun and dynamic. And, you know, there are all of the public facing issues with someone who seems out of

step with that being the daily face of an organization. And then, like we said, there's, you know, there's all the behind the scenes HR stuff that a manager has to do. And you really wonder how sort of up to the task of respectfully and encouragingly engaging with someone like Tim Anderson, Tony La Russa is. And he said in his press conference that he has sort of learned new things and has a different opinion of those protests now. But when he was asked asked about say the the comments he made about tatis we saw that we saw that sincerity word work its way back in and and he still seems to be positioning himself as being in a in a place of of being sort of a moral arbiter and an aesthetic

arbiter and to some extent every manager does that? You are the face of the organization. You have to engage with beat writers every day. You have to keep peace among your players. But it is concerning to me that, you know, while we want people to learn and grow and change, that is best demonstrated, I think, over a long period of time and through one's actions. And so while he seems to know to say something that would indicate growth, right? Either because that is a sincerely held belief or because somebody kind of clued him in to be like, hey, Tony, everyone thinks you're old and stodgy and your statements here, especially when coupled with some of the bits of legislation that he has supported, would seem to suggest that you have what might charitably be described as a blind spot when it comes to these issues. And it could be, like I said, that he has done the work and is a different person now. But I don't think that we've seen that play out in any kind of a public or sustained way. And now we're going to be wondering about it the whole time. And all of these players, I would imagine, are going to be wondering about it as well. Tony La Russa introduced the word sincerity, so I'll use it too. I don't know how sincere those statements are on his part. I don't know how meaningful or deep or reflective that change

has been. And again, that isn't to say it hasn't happened, but I don't know that I wanted to spend the 2021 White Sox season like on the watch. And I think for the players in that clubhouse, I would imagine it's a disappointing dynamic. They had an opportunity as an organization to not only be at the forefront of sort of a young and fun and dynamic new wave of baseball, but also, you know, to take a real leadership role on very important questions of social justice. And now they have this weird in-house dynamic that they have to navigate while they're doing that. Right. Yeah. You mentioned a lot of the comments, and he supported the Arizona law, SB 1070, that even at the time, 10 years ago, a lot of people in baseball just generally spoke up about. And then there was his response to Adam Jones's comments about baseball being a white man's sport, and La Russa, a white man, said that Jones could not have been more wrong. And questioning the kneeling. And the

questioning the kneeling continued up until this year. In February, he made comments about that and said that he doesn't think it's the right way to go about it, etc. And, you know, a lot has changed even since February of this year, and people have changed their minds about things genuinely. So that could be the case. But when he has a years-long track record of speaking up about those things and, like, seemingly seeking out opportunities to talk about them, like doing multiple interviews about them, you know, it just seems like either he was looking for opportunities to talk about them, like doing multiple interviews about them. It just seems like either he was looking for opportunities to talk about it or people knew that he would want

to say something, so they kept going to him. It's like a repeated thing and continued right up until August when he's talking about Fernando Tatis., how much have you changed since August? That's very recent. And he said he's changed his opposition to kneeling during the anthem. He says, not only do I respect, but I applaud the awareness. And he says, there's not a racist bone in my body, which is probably not a great sign if you are saying that or called upon to say that. Probably not a great sign if you are saying that or called upon to say that. But, you know, maybe he's changed. But right when he brings up Anderson, asked about Anderson's celebrations, and he says, if I see that it's sincere and directed towards the game, that's displaying the kind of emotion you want. How do you even decide what's sincere?

He's just going to be sitting there in the dugout evaluating the sincerity he's like the the great pumpkin or something of demonstrating emotion in baseball like i don't that just seems like the kind of thing where he's going to be looking like a hawk for any sign of non-sincerity right and it's just like if you have to include that caveat or that qualifier it just seems like you still have some issues with this and that's fine but if you're with a team that has a lot of players who very much do not have issues with that it just seems like there's probably going to be some kind of conflict there. I guess I'm just skeptical, too, that someone who has been as outspoken on these questions in the past and appears to have a particular lens on the world that is often disbelieving of the motivations of players of color is going to look at someone like Tim Anderson and be like, sincere, yes, you've passed muster.

And again, I hope that I am wrong and people do change. But like you said, when your most recent comments on the record about that are from August and you have 76 years. I mean, he probably wasn't speaking about baseball issues when he was a toddler. So we we needn't, you know, peg him for quite that many years. But when you have a very long and well established and publicly demonstrative track record, I think that we are right to require just a lot more proof in the pudding. And I don't think that one press conference is going to satisfy baseball observers. And I'd be very surprised if it is sufficient to satisfy players.

I know when James Spiegel reported on this for The Athletic that he reached out to a number of folks and he said that the in his piece that the reaction really ranged and some of it was quite negative on the part of guys in that locker room you know he quite obviously didn't didn't name them but it's going to be a very strange situation for him to have to navigate and yeah and you know rick khan says that the ultimate decision was made by him and ken williams and jerry reinstorf and that it wasn't due to the relationship between Reinsdorf and La Russa. Yeah. He has to say that, I suppose, unless he wants to resign over this. But that's the thing that I can't imagine that it will go well just from an interpersonal standpoint, even when it comes to working with the front front office and manager, because when the owner just goes over everyone's head and says, I'm not even going to interview anyone.

And you're the GM or you're someone in that front office. Like, first of all, it sets up a dynamic where Larissa is just clearly Reinsdorf's guy. Right. So he doesn't have to feel accountable to anyone other than Reinsdorf. I mean, a, he's in the Hall of Fame. What does he have at stake? If the front office tells him to do something or suggests that he does something or wants to have a collaborative conversation about something and he doesn't want to, what incentive does he have really to bend? I mean, he has the backing of the owner, obviously, and he also has the resume where if he wanted to, he could just walk away from the game.

So that just seems like they're going to be ruffled feathers, I think was how Jeff Passon put it in his tweet, that there are ruffled feathers in the front office about how this happened. And it just seems like it would be difficult for all of those people to be anywhere close to on the same page. And it's interesting. I saw a tweet where La Russa said his heart was always in the dugout and that when the White Sox called him, he perked up. He said he told his friends it was torture being upstairs without being able to do anything about what was going on in the game,

which is interesting because he's been upstairs now for quite a few years. So does that mean that he has not had an opportunity? Does it mean that no one thought he was on the market? No one thought he was available because everyone assumed he was retired or done with managing at least? Or is it just that no one ever thought to call Tony La Russa this entire time? Like, why didn't the White Sox hire him instead of Rick Renteria, you know, four years ago? Right. If it was such torture for him to be upstairs at that time, I'm kind of curious. And I wonder

whether any of it is just that the White Sox were in a different situation at that time, and maybe La Russa is interested now because this is a good team. And when you're La Russa's age and you've done what he's done, you probably don't want to get in on the ground floor of a rebuild, but they just went back to the playoffs. So maybe that's more appealing to you. I don't know. But interesting that he was away from the dugout for so long if he didn't like to be away from it. Yeah, I don't really know how to account for that other than I think you're right that it is a very different project to manage a rebuilding team than it is to manage a contender. And I don't think that any other team in baseball was like, you know, I gotta get in that dugout. Right. Yeah.

Although I don't know maybe i'm not giving enough credit for retreads apparently the only other option that was really seriously considered that's not fair the one that we've heard about is aj hinge so we're all just about retreads these days i saw a tweet that the the second choice was bruce bocce i think oh my stars really i hadn't seen that. Good gravy. At least he has one more recently. I sound as old as they do in my exclamations. You do use some of the same expressions as Larissa's generation would. That's endearing, I think. I just, I don't remember what day it was, but there was a time this summer when the season was going and the white socks were were just so fun

to watch and luis robert this was before his slump and he was just hitting great right he was like it was him and kyle lewis for al rookie of the year which still ended up being kind of true but they were just going great guns and i was editing something and i turned on pti and kornheiser asked michaelbon, what are you going to watch tonight? And he's like, I'm going to watch the White Sox. And then I'm going to watch the Padres. And he was so excited to engage with baseball. And I remember sitting there watching that going, this is good for baseball. This is a good indicator for the game that like this is the thing that a national commentator that a lot of people watch and respect is saying that the thing he's jazzed about that day is getting to

watch the white socks and the pod race and now we're gonna have grumpy gus yeah and i really do you know i know that there is a part of this that we tend to fixate on as observers and we like to dissect tactical moves and we haven't even talked about the way that La Russa has talked about this before too, that we forget so often that a baseball team is a workplace. And I really wish that like Tim Anderson had a better manager as an employee of the White Sox, not just as a baseball player. And maybe we will be proven wrong. And I hope that that is true, but I am nervous because our track record of

things turning out better than we expected them to lately is pretty poor ben yeah the best you can say i guess is that while this could work out of course maybe larusa will surprise us maybe he won't get along that well with the team but the team will win anyway because it's a good team and maybe managers don't matter all that much. So it's not like guaranteed to be a total disaster or anything. But I think the odds of total disaster are higher than they are with pretty much any managerial hire that gets done these days. It's yeah, there's definitely Bobbyby valentine with the red socks potential here and it might not happen but it just seems like is the upside high enough that you you want to go in

such a volatile direction with this it's like you have this great fun exciting young collection of players that just made it back to the playoffs they broke through and could larusa conceivably make them a little bit better in certain ways i mean he he has a hall of fame resume like it stranger things have happened but just the odds that he won't click with these guys just seems to me to outweigh the potential benefits here it's like like, how much better could La Russa be than the next best available option who doesn't bring the same pretty clear and obvious downsides from an interpersonal perspective? So that's the thing that perplexes me, or I guess would perplex me if it weren't pretty clear that this was just about Jerry Reinsdorf wanting to bring his guy

back. And maybe Reinsdorf wants to stop his team from bat tossing or bat flipping or bat dropping so much. Right. And I think that it will be important for all of us as observers to, even if this works out really well, like let's imagine for a moment that we've gotten it wrong. And actually, Tony La Russa has learned a lot. And he has a different perspective on the world and on people. And the White Sox have a great season and everybody likes each other and they win the World Series.

It is still worth us talking about the process by which he was brought in because it's really important that that process change so that we guarantee that these kinds of opportunities are really accessible to the true pool of qualified candidates, which is much broader than just the same couple of guys who get cycled through these jobs as they come available. So we have to promise to be a bummer, even if the actual product on the field is exactly what we expect. And he makes great decisions, both tactically and as a manager of people. And we can't lose sight of the process that brought him in because this happens so frequently. And there was a very

sort of strange reaction to his hiring that I saw on Twitter, which was like, I can't believe that they didn't engage in a rigorous process that would have resulted in AJ Hinch. And I'm like, wait a minute, AJ Hinch, and we'll talk about his hiring in a second. I don't even mean this within the context of his suspension and the sign stealing scandal. What we want is a rigorous process by which really qualified candidates who, candidly, you and I probably don't know all the names of, are vetted and considered and given opportunities because that's the way that we're going to end up with a managerial class. Is that the right way to refer to them?

Cohort? I don't know. Coh cohort cohort what have you that is you know that reflects the people who play baseball and it's not just white people who play baseball so and particularly in this case when you're letting rick rentaria go right you know what did he do to deserve that exactly like there were some reports about how like maybe there was some friction with the front office or like you know they went back and forth on tactics a little bit certainly he was criticized as a tactician at times but boy if you thought there was friction then right get ready for how much friction there's about to be so if if you're Renteria and you've been let go for Joe Madden, who at the time was obviously a who's had a lot of success very recently and everyone wants him. This is someone who has not been doing this job for years and years

and most teams probably would not want. So I sort of felt for Renteria when he was let go, because it was like, you know, he took this team back to the playoffs. And whatever he did, he probably felt like he played some positive part in the turnaround of that team. And then he's let go. And, you know, maybe for some candidates, you'd say, well, okay, I guess that person earned it or deserved it or something. But with La Russa, it just very much feels like an old boys club. And in this case, a very old boys club. The oldest boys. They're such old boys, those boys.

They are very old boys. Yeah. Gosh, I was looking like the only managers who, manager, I don't even have to use the plural, the only manager who has had a longer span between his first and last year as a major league manager. And we don't even know now when La Russa's last year will be, but Connie Mack, of course, is the outlier who went 56 years between his first and last managerial years. And La Russa at 41 years in in 2021 that's going to be number two even Jack McKeon was 38 and then you know you had Rocher 34 and John McGraw 33 Joe Torre 33 like this is almost

unprecedented except for the one person in major league history who had the sort of longevity that Connie Mack did and La Russa he's going to I mean if he sticks in this job for any amount of time he's going to pass John McGraw for the second most managerial wins of all time like he's on all the leaderboards and now he has found his way onto leaderboards that I would not have even thought conceivable that someone could do anymore. So, you know, Jack McKeon, he won a World Series in that last year. So it could happen. Who knows? If we start playing, though, you'll never believe who he managed or played at the same, you know, was in the dugout at the same time as game. It's a bit of business, Ben, same time as game it's right it's a it's a bit of business ben and it's a game that can go on for a very long time yeah yeah and i think the managerial role has changed so much just in the past nine

years or so and like he was interested in information i think by the standards of his era or some of his eras he sort of spanned multiple eras, but he wanted to know platoon splits and he wanted data after a fashion compared to his contemporaries. But is he going to be as open and receptive to the things that most managers are taking into account now? I have my doubts. Who knows? Maybe he will embrace those things. But even if he did, even if he said, hey, this is great. Boy, I have projections of every batter pitcher matchup and I have an iPad and it tells me all these things. And boy, I sure would like to know these things in 1986. And isn't this great?

I still think that he would have some difficulty fitting in in this environment because the manager is not like the field general anymore. He was kind of known for that. There was an arrogance. It was like, I'm making the calls. I set the lineups. I make the pitching changes. I have control over this aspect of things. And that's not how most teams work now. And I think that's probably for the better. It has certainly led to a lot of controversial decisions, and maybe occasionally it does backfire. But I think on the whole, to have more people involved in that process and having a say and having an exchange of ideas and information, there's just too much information now for any one person, I think, to keep track of while they are also being a public spokesperson for the team and managing the personalities and all of that. They need help. They need those resources. And is La Russa going to accept that? Is he going to welcome or tolerate that type of input, especially because of the way he was hired. It just seems like it will be this sort of old

school island compared to all of the other teams. And I just, I don't know that that will be a competitive advantage. I guess in the sense that like when everyone's doing one thing, if you do something different, maybe you can find some advantage. But if the thing that you're doing different is the thing that everyone abandoned because it wasn't working so well like you know there were a lot of mistakes that managers made in those earlier eras when they had the final say over everything well they were sack bunting all the time and issuing intentional walks and doing all these things that seemingly don't make a lot of sense so i will be curious to see how that works out but i would be surprised if he just fit right into the system that is sort of the prevailing one in this period yeah sometimes

um there's benefit to to zagging when everyone else zigs but sometimes we abandon those zags for a reason yes right so i i have no conception of how long this will last. If you told me that he would stick around there for a few years, I could imagine it, obviously, with the backing of Reinsdorf and with a talented team. Maybe if he restrains his comments about sincerity, it'll work well enough. But it also would not shock me if all of this boiled over in spring training and he just resigned. I would not be surprised if he did not make it through next year. Not that he would be fired because it seems like he probably has pretty good job security, but he might just decide this is not working or i don't enjoy this anymore or

this is not reflecting well on me or whatever so i would not be at all shocked if this did not last very long at all but again hard to foresee the future the sincerity comments around yeah it's like to attribute that to preening and not to just see the urgency of that protest in the world around you and immediately understand why it would be important to, well, hopefully to everyone, but particularly to, you know, a black professional athlete in a position of authority to to use their platform is just insulting does not quite do it justice but that's the word i'll pick so i very much hope that i am proven wrong because yeesh ben yeah yeah another thing is that uh he did preside over one of the most notable steroid-using, PED-abusing clubhouses. And also during his tenure with the White Sox, it sure seems like they stole signs. That's right. And there have been a whole lot of cheating teams in the history of baseball and a lot of teams that used PEDs and a lot of teams that used peds and a lot of teams that stole signs so if you

want to condemn every manager who was on one of those teams you'd probably be kicking out of the club a whole lot of really successful managers but yeah but also in boy in this environment when we were all very concerned about cheating and science doing and such that is something that i think it's probably relevant to bring up too he he certainly turned his eyes the other way when that was all going on so if you want to talk about that with aj hinch you should probably also bring it up with tony larusa yeah yeah they use the center field camera, right? I think so. Yeah. They had a camera system. Jack McDowell talked about it recently, and I think it was reported at the time or sometime after that. Goodness. Yep, that happened. Anyway.

Well, should we use that as a segue to talk about A.J. Hinch? Yeah, I suppose we should. Man, Jim Leland was right there. Oh, goodness. So I struggle with this one mostly because I think that there have been, there seem to have been like two sort of threads of reaction. And I don't know if either of them quite hit on what I really want to think or feel about this. You know, I think there are some folks who have expressed that he suffered no consequences, which I think is inaccurate to say. I think that it is fair to either not think

that the suspension that Hinch had to serve was long enough on its own and perhaps especially given the nature of the 2020 season in particular. So there's that part. And then there seem to be people who are just like really keen to move on because while he did have an obvious and real role in what happened in Houston, it seems to be, I think, pretty well liked by baseball people

and is not met with the same sort of instinctive reaction that people have to Luno. Both in and out of the game, it just always bears mentioning. And I think, I don't know if I find either of those particularly satisfactory. Again, I think that he has proven himself to be a capable in-game tactician, and he seems to be well-liked. I continue to find it very puzzling that his seeming inability to stop a course of behavior that he has said he knew to be wrong has then put him in line to once again manage people. I think that that in some ways is a more damning mark against him than the cheating itself. And I don't say that to downplay the cheating.

Like everyone, we should all like give ourselves and each other a little bit of generosity. I don't think anybody likes the cheating. We all seem very keen to be like, you like the cheating. It's like no one likes the cheating. Right. Everybody calm down about the liking of the cheating. No one liked the cheating except the Astros. No one liked the cheating right everybody calm down about the liking of the cheating no one liked the cheating except the astros no one liked the cheating um it's really dangerous out there on twitter right now ben yeah a lot of a lot of friendly fire but anyway i think that it's it's pretty concerning

that he was not able to to stamp that out and and not only at all but very quickly right that that an element of the commissioner's report was him destroying that's the strangest thing the tv out of frustration repeatedly sabotaging the video monitors right and his own inability to control his players or his or his coaching staff for that matter yeah that to me i remember talking about that on the podcast at the time so you can all just go back and listen to what we said then it still applies but that is like the he gets a lot of credit i think for being remorseful yes and i understand why because like having some remorse and showing remorse is something that induces sympathy. And when a lot of the other Astros did not exhibit the same remorse, and certainly Jim Crane didn't, and some of the other players at certain times at least seemed reluctant to really own up to it or didn't seem as affected by it some did i think they they get tarred with a broad brush because of crane and some other comments but i think because it seems to bother hinge

people say oh well he's a good guy and maybe that's true but like then shouldn't he have been even more active in preventing it that's the thing and the fact that it bothered him so much that he like took a step to stop it but like the most ineffectual step it's just like if it bothered you so much that you're smashing equipment like do something more more forceful not not physically forceful less physically forceful but more effectual. And I get why it's tough, but like that's why you have a manager to lay down the law and sort of, you know, exert some control and some standard of behavior. And if he really felt like that was wrong, well, it was happening on his watch. So that to me just that doesn't make me feel better about it. Like maybe he wouldn't make that exact same mistake again if he were presented with

another sign stealing scandal that was going on. But what if some other thing was happening? Like, if that's how he responded to that challenge that he felt was wrong, but just didn't really take any effective steps to stop it, that gives me some pause about how he would handle a future situation. So yeah, he doesn't come with the concerns La Russa does about relating to his players or saying the right thing or using modern tactics or being a partner for the front office. And he was a successful manager, but I have mixed feelings about the remorse. The remorse is good in some ways, but concerning in other ways. about the remorse. The remorse is good in some ways, but concerning in other ways. Well, and here we are about to talk about sincerity again. I mean, I think what distinguished his reaction to the scandal and to the repercussions he faced compared to the folks who are still with the team who've spoken publicly about it or Lu now is that I think that people watched him say what he did and did judge him to be sincere and he appeared regretful and so i get all of that and i don't think that the answer needs to be that you you know i was okay with him not

getting a lifetime ban from baseball and i think that we knew as soon as that didn't happen that it was pretty likely that he would find his way back into the game again because he doesn't seem to have inspired the same kind of acrimony that Luno has in baseball people. But there are a lot of roles that he could have assumed. And again, I think that there are only 30 manager jobs in the game. And if that's going to be the case, I think it's okay to say, we're going to give someone else a shot

and you can be a bench coach or whatever and work your way back in and then we can kind of revisit things when other managerial jobs come open. But when the options are so limited, the number of roles are so limited to prioritize bringing him back good tactician that he was well liked though he was when it was an opportunity to give a shot to

someone else to one of the many many you know qualified bench coaches sitting out there just seems it just seems kind of odd and you know i i don't know that it was any more complicated for the tigers than he was well liked he has experience with a team coming out of a period where they weren't contending into one where they are which the tigers certainly see themselves as as being in the near future, right? They're on that trajectory. And so there are a lot of ways in which from a fit perspective, it makes sense. But I don't know that we want it to be, we want teams to kind of complicate it for themselves a little bit and look wider.

Like, you know, for instance, the White Sox had hired Tony La Russa. So like, were you really you know absent hinge going to boston like what was what was the big fussy rush yeah right i think that's what rubbed people the wrong way is that this happened like two seconds after the suspensions ended they weren't allowed to interview right until their suspensions were up because Hinch interviewed on Thursday, didn't he? And then he was hired on Friday. I think they had pretty much made up their minds. It seems like the season just ended because it did for some teams, but the Tigers season ended quite a while ago.

So I don't know exactly what the timeline was there. I don't know exactly what the timeline was there, but I think the fact that the suspension expires and then the next day they're welcoming him back in to the same job without any kind of like, okay, you have to earn your way back into our good graces and you have to show that you've atoned. It's just, all right, here's your old job back. I think that's what bothered people And I don't know whether Cora will get the same treatment I think in Cora's case The difference, I suppose, is that He was seemingly part of crafting the banging scheme In Houston

And he was with the Red Sox too So he's connected to it in two places And because he wasn he's connected to it in two places. And because he wasn't objecting to it, I guess, in the way that Hinch was, not that Hinch did anything more to stop it, really, but he, I guess, wasn't endorsing it or actively planning it. So maybe Cora has to wait a little longer because of that, because he's, you know, named in the report in such a prominent way. But we will see. Yeah, I just I get wanting to to move forward with your staff and to sort of strike out. And if you have to if you want the manager to be involved in subsequent hires within the organization, maybe. But like we all know that this offseason is going to be involved in subsequent hires within the organization maybe but like we

all know that this offseason is going to be slow we don't know that spring training will start on time i just think that it's more important for these processes to be rigorous than it is for them to be quick and so for avila to say that he called hinge 30 minutes after the conclusion at the world series and told him to get there the next morning. It's like, relax. Let people put in a resume. What are we doing? And this, I think, underscores the importance of the league taking a much bigger role and being much clearer about what it is going to require of clubs when it comes to their hiring processes, because left to their own devices this is what they do yeah if if the last couple years have shown us anything it's that like if you want

someone to have to do a thing you need to write it down you can't just count on them doing it just because even if there are incentives that you think are going to be sufficiently strong and pull them with enough weight to make choices that kind of line up with what you hope a process to be. If you want a process to be a certain way, you need to force them to make it that way with rules because if you don't, they won't do it. That applies to, I don't know, any number of things, Ben.

It might not just be baseball. It could be other stuff too. Write it down. Yeah. I fear for the discourse this off season. I fear for the news that we will be encountering and talking about. And I just wrote something about this that has not been published yet as we speak, but I was chit-chatting a bit about it with you, and it just seems like there's not going to be a lot of good news about baseball this offseason. And some of the negative news has started already and started really before the postseason ended. And when the season was going on and games were happening and you can watch the broadcasts and read the box scores and as long as things were proceeding more or less smoothly and people were abiding by protocols it seemed like we could enjoy the game to maybe even a greater

extent than we had hoped would realistically be the case but now that it's over suddenly you have this always jarring I think transition from the most exciting games of the season to just the most mundane news it's like you go from you know game four of the world series and clayton kershaw and mookie bets and all these high stakes games to like options getting declined or you know qualifying offers or whatever and there did used to be a little bit of a break between those two things a couple CBAs ago, and now there's not. And it's always sort of a strange transition to go from not only baseball to no baseball, but great baseball to just the most boring transactions typically.

But this year, that's against the backdrop of, of course, the whole Turner conversation and just the larger COVID concerns about how things will go by next spring and whether baseball will be able to start on time and whether there will be fans in the stands and all of the things that we are worried about as a country right now. But I think also just the many reports about really sweeping layoffs. Several teams have laid off dozens or hundreds of people, both on the baseball operations side and on the business side. operations side and on the business side and in baseball ops it's largely people in scouting and player development and player development cuts are driven partly by the contraction of the minor leagues and losing a lot of affiliated clubs there and you had like rob manfred talking about

debt and losses like between games five and six of the world series with his uh unerring sense of timing and uh and pr so he couldn't even wait for the offseason to start before he started talking about how owners have incurred record debts and you know record operating losses etc etc like we get it you're you're lowering expectations for spending this offseason already. And you're already starting to see it with to pay the buyout that they would have to pay if they've declined his option. Which is a special kind of cheap. Yeah. That is a special kind of cheap. Yeah.

And the Rays, who, you know, like a couple of weeks ago had Charlie Morton starting game seven of the ALCS for them. They've declined his $15 million option. And Braves with Darren O'Day. There are a bunch of these, and we haven't even gotten the news about qualifying offers and all of that yet. And unrestricted free agency hasn't even started. But it just seems like all indications, like you're hearing it over and over, teams are planning to slash payroll, and it's just going to be slow and sad. And whether you assign some responsibility for that to the owners and say that perhaps they are exaggerating and misrepresenting the extent

to which they are suffering financially, or whether you want to chalk some of it up to just 2020, because certainly some of it, like I would expect that teams would take on some amount of debt and have some amount of losses in a year where they only played 60 games and fans weren't able to attend. Like it's a tough time, clearly. And yet the track record of owners being open and honest about their finances is not the best. So hard to take them at their word there. And obviously, baseball has been

an incredibly profitable industry for all of them in terms of not only operating profits, but also franchise values for just years and years and years and that never comes up and if anything they seem to deny that so there's that but also you know regardless of why it's happening or whether it's anyone's fault it just seems like it's going to be a really slow off season for spending and with the cba expiring in about a year and with the tensions between those two sides being what they are and what they have been, the outlook just is not great for like healthy labor relations and avoiding a work stoppage. I just I would have an easier time if they would just open the books, which they will never do, if they weren't so slippery about it. You know, Rob Mainz wrote a really good thing at Baseball Perspectives on debt as a sort of question and I think was right to point out

that not all debt is created equal and that the commissioner in his statements did not really distinguish between debt that was taken out to cover operating costs like payroll or lease payments on stadiums and what was sort of existing financing in place to do things like expand real estate developments and you just never feel like you're getting the full story when it comes to the way that the league talks about its finances and we aren't getting the full story given all of the way that the league talks about its finances. And we aren't getting the full story given all of the things that the commissioner sort of always purposely excludes

from baseball revenue like real estate. I don't want to have to think about real estate, Ben. Yeah, right. So we have a long track record, and the league has very obvious incentives to make it sound like everything is terrible and that's the environment in which like steve cohen saying he's going to restore mets team personnel's salaries and it's going to cost him seven million dollars gets him you know excited fawning press but most

of them can't even muster up the the PR sense to do that. Yeah, right. And it's not like there's ever a time when they say like, things are going well. We're making money. The industry is healthy. You never really hear that. It's always the opposite. So if there weren't this just incredibly long track record of, you know, kind of crying wolf about finances constantly. If they came and said, hey, 2020 has been tough and we don't have attendance revenue and we're going to have to tighten our belts a little here, even if our belts are extremely big because we're

all billionaires. But still, like even if they just said, hey, it's been a hard year, and obviously it has been a hard year for so many industries and lots of layoffs across the board, and I would understand or be more understanding if it were that, and if they didn't just always exaggerate things, if you didn't have Ricketts saying biblical losses and do it saying like it's uh terrible to own baseball teams and no one makes any money or whatever like we can see the sale prices like you know if it were ever even closer to the opposite end of things if if they ever acknowledge that yeah it has been a pretty remunerative for them at times, then I would be more inclined to accept the arguments now. But that's not the case. Well, in this year, when Craig did our top 50 free

agent post-it paragraphs and he was sort of helping to lay out what the landscape is going to be, he was quick to note that this was always going to be a year where we probably saw a reduction in payroll. That's very common going into a CBA negotiation for owners to sort of hem in their spending a little bit. And given the particular class that was coming up and some of the bigger contracts that are rolling off of team payrolls that are likely to be replaced by much smaller deals, either with cheaper veterans or with young talent still on the league minimum or an arbitration like this was always going to be a winter like this and then you add the pandemic on it and i don't think that

anyone thinks that baseball was especially profitable at least compared to what it normally is this year but then you also have the commissioner claiming that they were going to lose money if the season had been a normal one. And we had two big announcements on post-season TV deals this year in the midst of a pandemic. So on the one hand, I guess that it is useful that the way they talk about this stuff is always so obviously wanting

because it's easy to kind of dismiss it out of hand. But I don't think that, you know, I don't know that most fans are necessarily trained to like critically engage with the comments of the commissioner. And so it is it does end up, I think, being frustratingly useful to them as a PR tactic, because I don't think that most fans really want to think about like they don't want to think about ownership at all and I can't say that I blame them but they're just like yeah of course like there was a pandemic I lost my job and had or I had to take a pay cut so of course they lost money too right like that makes an intuitive amount of sense certain amount of intuitive sense anyhow but it it requires pressing and now this is gonna be all we talk about I know it's to be just a constant drumbeat. And probably the people who will be suffering most are neither the owners or the established big leaguers, but just the team personnel who are out of work.

And, you know, no one's going to be hiring. It's not like you can lose your job with one team and all the others will welcome you with open arms because a lot of them are doing this. And, you know, minor leaguers who won't be able to get jobs because there are fewer jobs to go around. And it's not just that, but it's also like, you know, there's just going to be constant sign stealing conversations about. We've already seen it with Hinch and with, you and with Cora and with Lunau if he pops up, and maybe even with George Springer, who's probably the top position player available, and he's had his best offensive season since the signs doing time,

but he was a participant in those teams and could come up, and then the top free agent pitcher available is Trevor Bauer so that's gonna be a bit exhausting I think between his Twitter behavior and his foreign substance use or suspected foreign substance use and of course he is going to to milk the Bauer sweepstakes for all they're worth publicity wise. So there's that. And gosh, I forgot. I mean, there's an Astros documentary out right now. I think we were spared a second documentary, at least for now, because of Quibi and its demise.

Oh, right. That was where that was supposed to live. Right. So maybe it'll show up somewhere else. I don't know. There are also like multiple books about the signed stealing scandal due out next year. So that's never going to end. And then the other thing is that the response to not having the revenues that teams are accustomed to is that they're going to be pushing to make the expanded playoffs permanent, which I certainly don't want, but it seems like that's going to be an inevitability.

Maybe not 16 teams, but maybe 14 or something, so that will get codified at some point probably. So there's just a lot that will be in the news this offseason that will not be news that I'm excited to read about and I don't know that there's going to be a whole lot on the opposite end of the spectrum and there will probably be a lot of like really good

players getting traded potentially too like Francisco Endor you know Nolan Arnauto and I guess depending on whether you're rooting for a team that has those players now or could potentially have those players in the future, that could be a bad thing or a good thing for certain fans. But it's not a great thing if it's that teams feel like they can't or won't keep good franchise players. So even if it benefits the team that gets them, it's generally not the best thing.

Yeah, when you're at the point as a franchise that you're not only trying to get out of a reasonable one-year deal for a good reliever, but also the buyout of declining his option, I think the odds that you sign the guy who should be your franchise cornerstone to a long-term extension are small. Yeah. So that sucks for fans of Cleveland.

What can we tell people that's good though, Ben? I know, I'm trying to think. Because we want people to listen to our dumb podcast. Yeah, well we find ways to have fun, I think. We've certainly had plenty of practice talking about baseball at times when

baseball wasn't the most fun subject this year. Yeah. I think we find a way. Often in the offseason, we get weird. Yeah. And so it's not even really that tied to the news. And we'll talk to fun people and answer emails and do all sorts of strange stuff that won't even be all that related to what we're reading on MLB Trade Rumors on any given day. So I think we can still make the podcast engaging for us and for people.

But just generally speaking, it just seems like it's not going to be the most uplifting of off seasons. No. off seasons no when the final moments or i should say the moments immediately following the conclusion of the world series are marked yeah by a surprise covet announcement right and then that player taking the field yeah you know that you're you're in for a weird one you're in for a doozy yeah no we do appreciate everybody uh still listening along because i think that well i don't want to speak for you ben but i'll just speak for myself although i doubt you disagree um you know knowing that the the podcast was a welcome uh intrusion in people's day despite the the year we had was it made it made doing it a lot more gratifying for me yeah oh yeah

so i i'm glad that people tuned in and we always find ways to have fun in the off season, although I guess it will not involve Jeff being disrobed to podcast with us, although maybe we can persuade him to come on in a fully clothed form, which is probably better for everyone.

Yeah, I hope we can have him on sometime soon. I did bring that up with him and seemed like he did point out that, as we said, we would not necessarily be able to tell what his state of clothedness was during an interview. But also, I think someone tweeted at him to say, at least you don't have to do the naked podcast now. And he said, have to or get to. Yeah, Jeff is a good sport, and our listeners are great people to a person, and we'll find a way to have fun. But the first couple days of the offseason have been rocky.

Yes. Let's put it that way. They have been rocky. Mm. Let's put it that way. They have been rocky. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, I hope this wasn't too big a bummer for everyone, but we'll have fun. I promise.

It'll be fun. Stick with us. We'll make it interesting. What can we recommend to people? What can we recommend? Ben, are you doing anything for halloween not really are you a spooky movie person uh no not really i get spooked you get spooked yeah i mean they can be very spooky the spooky movies are you a charlie brown yes halloween person yes

yes so everyone should watch charlie brown ha Brown Halloween because when you want to be lifted up and made to feel happy, Charlie Brown's really the one to do it for you. You know what I can plug? I feel okay guilting you about this now because the playoffs are over and maybe you'll have a little bit more time. I need to watch Hot Stove, right? Yes. Okay. Stove League. Stove League. Stove League. Okay. Everyone find it. It's the best. The actual American Stove League may not be so great this offseason. So everyone, please go check out this wonderful Korean baseball drama or dramedy called Stove League. We talked about it a couple months ago when I watched it with my wife and we loved it. And I think you will too. So hopefully you will have an opportunity to watch it.

And if you do, then maybe we can talk about it. We'll talk about it for sure. Yeah. Okay, that sounds good. Deal. There's a happy thing. We found an interesting happy thing. Yes.

I will link, as I have before, to where you can find it on the show page. It's on the streaming service Viki, V-I-K-I. You can watch it online. You can get the's on the streaming service Viki, V-I-K-I. You can watch it online. You can get the app. Easy to stream, even free to stream. So no excuses. Well, after Meg and I spoke, I saw an article by Evan Drellick at The Athletic that touches

on all of the things we were just talking about, why this could be a difficult winter for baseball and how labor relations are already strained. And Evan writes, this winter then could introduce kerosene to an already combustible environment. The owners might try to delay these CPA talks that players might not want to. There might be more public back and forth. Some club executive quoted in the piece says you're going to have a record number of non-tenders. Teams aren't going to want to give out long-term deals because of the uncertainty, etc., etc. But there was one high point in this piece,

and maybe one positive that we can look forward to this offseason, and that is Scott Boris quotes. So here's what Boris had to say about why this winter doesn't have to be so bad. Quote, because there's waves in the ocean doesn't mean we don't have an ocean, Boris said, and we have an ocean of success in this game. We have an ever-growing economic base that's going to continue to spiral up. So there's a nautical analogy from Scott. It's a weird one, but it makes sense. Sometimes the waves get choppy, but eventually the weather calms. Let's hope that happens soon. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast Thank you. Review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms.

Please 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. We do rely on your emails more in the off-season. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, despite all the downer news that we were just discussing, and despite what's in store for next week.

And we will be back to talk to you then. All I want is one more chance To be young and wild and free All I want is one more chance To show you, you were right for me Bye.