Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1616: MLB’s Other Cheating Problem

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Marlins hiring Kim Ng and the significance of Ng becoming MLB’s first woman GM, the Angels hiring Perry Minasian and the team’s ownership issues, Kyuji Fujikawa and an NPB unwritten rule, Ryan Tepera’s accidental MVP vote, and how FanGraphs readers feel about 2020’s new rules, plus a […]

The first is the best, and the blast is sour, but it's blessed, yes it's blessed. Hello and welcome to episode 1616 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? I'm doing pretty well. How are you? Doing pretty well. Yeah, well we've got some huge and heartening news today. Oh, yeah.

Fun to talk about. We haven't had a whole lot of that lately. No. But we woke up to, or at least became aware of, the news Friday morning that the Marlins had hired Kim Eng as their general manager. The first woman to be a general manager in the majors, or for a men's team, I guess, in any of the major American sports. And also the second GM of Asian descent in MLB. This is huge news. Yeah. It's, you know, it's just a very exciting thing to, how do I want to put this? It is very easy to know that a thing is like literally possible.

Yeah. That there are many, many qualified women who work in baseball perhaps none as qualified as as kim in terms of her longevity in the sport the roles that she's occupied both on the team side and with the league the sort of resolve and resiliency of her interest in being a general manager it is it is one thing to know that it is literally possible for a woman to be the general manager of a major league baseball team. And it is quite another to see it literally happen. And to know that that barrier has been broken, to know that a woman is going to sit in that seat, as you mentioned, an Asian American woman, someone who has had to deal with the dueling

challenges of being a woman in this industry and a person of color in this industry and having to navigate that and being so qualified for so long. I was messaging with Lindsay Adler this morning about it. She's a baseball lifer. I know that there was talk in the days leading up to this announcement that the Marlins were thinking out of the box when it came to their GM hire. And I understand sort of the sentiment of that from people who maybe aren't thinking about choosing their words too carefully because she will literally be the first woman to occupy that role. But in a lot of ways, a hire doesn't come more conventional than her. Yeah, her resume is like, this person should have gotten this job 15 years ago. Yeah, a long time ago.

So it's exciting in a lot of different ways. I hope that this will not sound snarky, but like everybody's going to have to learn some new names now. Right? Everyone's going to have to familiarize themselves with some new talent because

I feel like every time we've had this conversation about like, ooh, the first woman GMB, like Kim's name is so readily available because again, she has been working in the game for such a long time and she has been so close in the past, but not quite there. And we're all going to have to learn some new names. Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this many times on the podcast. I remember Jeff and I had Christina Carl on maybe two and a half years ago when she wrote about when this might happen. And just a week ago, we were talking to Jen Wolf and we brought up the prospect of when this might happen and what it would mean. And it could have

happened at any point during that time or long before, like Kim Ang was there and could have been hired by anyone. And yet until it actually happened, it just felt like you never knew when or if it would happen, like obviously someday, but it needed someone to just finally do it already. And you look at her experience in the game and, you know, she was in the White Sox front office for years in the 90s. She was a Yankees assistant GM back in

the late 90s, early 2000s, where I assume she probably got to know Derek Jeter a little bit. And then she was a Dodgers assistant GM for years. And then she's been working as a high ranking executive in the commissioner's office for almost a decade now. And she has interviewed for so many GM jobs over the years. And, you know, some of those interviews, I'm sure, were good faith interviews and legitimate. And she was genuinely considered. and legitimate and she was genuinely considered, but you have to think that some of them were not or she would have been hired by now because she was listed as a candidate for really, I mean, about 20 years now, I think is at least when people started talking about her as a very qualified candidate. And it wasn't clear whether she still wanted the job, you know,

whether she had been discouraged by all of those interviews that didn't lead to a hiring or whether she had decided she didn't want it or what. But it's great that this happened finally. And let's hope that it opens the doors for others. You know, as Jen was talking about last week there's still a pipeline problem here and so you know there aren't as many women as you would like who have the experience in baseball that kim ang does but maybe it just took one finally to kind of break down the door let's hope and you know now you can't describe it as out of the box, not that you should have anyway. But even if you were inclined to do that, even that now is erased because it has happened finally. part of that conversation for me, because on the one hand, I think that when you have the opportunity to sort of step forward, not that there's an obligation, but I think that people are aware of sort of who they can bring with them when they take on big, scary mantles that no one's

had before. But I was always a little uncomfortable because people would be like, well, it should be Kim. And it's like, well, does Kim want that job? Like, Kim has a pretty great job. Like she was a very senior person in the league office. And so, you know, not that it wasn't in the right place, but I'm like, you know, we want opportunity to be genuine and real and for our understanding of it to be broad and for a lot of different kinds of people, all the different kinds of people who like and play and care about baseball to have opportunities in all of the different roles that the league has to offer. And some of them are going to be big senior team side roles, and some of them are going to be in the league office. And so I'm so happy for her. And I'm happy we can put that part of it to rest and that we can just kind of, like you said, like this is this is our part of the box now.

and just kind of, like you said, like this is our part of the box now, right? And that's very exciting. The last couple days of vacation, when Twitter has sent me a notification that there is news for me, then it has always been bad. It has been bad every time. And this was not bad news.

And it is very exciting. And that team had, i think a weird 2020 is like a very charitable way of describing the the ups and downs of the marlins season but yeah that is a an exciting baseball team they're coming off of you know a postseason appearance that no one really had them pegged for they have exciting exciting young talent. And it just feels very ripe for possibility. And that's such a cool thing to be able to say about the first woman to occupy that role. This is just, it feels optimistic in a way that we,

it's kind of thin on the ground a lot of the time in the baseball news. So it's kind of thin on the ground a lot of the time in the baseball news so it's very cool and i you know i it made me made me feel emotional but it's just very exciting and it's really a treat in this hard year to have a piece of news like that that you can just feel unabashedly glad about and i'm so excited to see the direction that she steers that organization in and what she's able to do with that roster and the team that she builds and, you know, the opportunities that her hiring opens up for other women in the game and other underrepresented people in the game.

It's just, it's a good day, Ben. Yeah, it is. And, you know, the fact that it took this long to happen, I don't think you can really crow about it. Not that baseball should be slapping itself on the back and saying, you know, good job, we did it. It took so long. I guess, you know, I would have preferred that it had happened much sooner in any sport.

I guess I would have preferred that it had happened much sooner in any sport, but I guess I'm happy that baseball was the one to finally do it. It would have been nice if it had happened decades ago, but baseball has had such a shoddy track record when it comes to diversity in front office hiring, whether it's gender or racial or you name it. hiring you know whether it's gender or racial or you name it so it's kind of nice i suppose that you know when it finally happened it was a baseball team that did it even though it took far too long so as you said i i think it's a pretty enviable situation to walk into a team that just made it back to the playoffs under the strangest circumstances but still and had a winning record and has a good base of young talent you know there's something to build on there so i think it's a pretty good situation and yeah let's hope it's the the start of something rather than an isolated event but it's it's really nice it's just uh you know long overdue but yeah it happened yeah i think that you're right i don't think that baseball should

pat itself on the back too much but i think we all get to be just unabashedly jazzed for her and for what this means and you know i don't want to be like debbie downer i think it does we we have to remain vigilant right like one is not enough one is not enough but today we just get to be excited and then the next time there's a gm opening we can have new names and we can you know i think that there's a lot to be said for being able to, how do I want to put this? Like expect better, right? And it's a lot easier to expect better when the first one of a thing has been accomplished.

And now we get to expect better and we get to demand better. And that's really exciting too. There's optimism in that also. So cool. Hey, Ben. Yeah. All of the other news has been bad though. There's optimism in that also. So cool day, Ben. Yeah. All of the other news has been bad, though. They're like, news for you. I'm like, look, I'm on vacation.

And we still have to be engaged with the world. But also, I am tired. Please stop telling me this news for me. This news for me is a bummer. Well, speaking of that, we will do an interview today with Eno Saris from The Athletic and former Major League pitcher David Ardsma about the foreign substance problem in baseball, about pitchers cheating, using sticky stuff that they're not supposed to be using and this has been you know frequently in the news i think this year but also has been maybe more in the news this week because trevor bauer won the national league cy young award and he has been connected to some extremely suspicious spikes in his spin rate and of course he has been an outspoken critic of foreign substance use in the past who from all appearances has finally

embraced it himself to some effect so we will talk to you know and david about his experience with it personally and you know about how many people are using this stuff in baseball i wrote about this back in july you know just did a good follow-up on it so i think it's sort of a scandal waiting to happen potentially and it's something that now that we have good measurements of spin rates we can actually see what the impact of this is and it's so widespread that it's an interesting question and problem how does mlp address this so we will get to that very soon just a couple of other things I meant to mention. There was another GM hiring, far less notable, I suppose, than Kim Angs, but Perry

Manassian was hired as the Angels GM. He was formerly the Braves assistant GM. And, you know, this was mostly interesting to me, I think, because from everything I've heard, that is just not as desirable a GM job as most others, just because Artie Moreno is a big time meddler. He does what you don't want owners to do, which is come in and dictate baseball decisions. And so I don't know whether that affected the candidates that the Angels could attract here. I know in Ken Rosenthal's report about this, he mentioned that the Angels reached out to some of the game's top current executives only to be rebuffed. And Rosenthal mentioned Chris Antonetti with Cleveland and Rays GM Eric Neander and A's GM David Forst among the executives that

the Angels were interested in and did not reciprocate that interest. All of them seem to be in fine situations and maybe they're happy with the situation. So that may or may not have anything to do with the Angel situation specifically, but that is, I think, one of those challenging positions. Of course, we would like to see someone get Mike Trout back to the playoffs at some point. But I think that's one of those cases where everyone looks around at some of the cheapskate spending that the Angels have done with their minor leaguers and their scouts and then also the meddling. And I think that sort of scares people off. the meddling and I think that sort of scares people off but this is the fourth consecutive first time GM that Moreno has hired since he took over as owner not counting I guess Jerry DiPoto who had been an interim GM previously and maybe that is because Moreno wants to retain more

control and so you have to recruit people who have not had the GM job before and are happy to do it just for the title, or maybe will not expect to have as much authority or, you know, could be a coincidence. I don't know. But that seems like a concern that people probably had about that position. Which is not to say that Manassian is not qualified or a good candidate because he's been in the game for years and has been mentioned as a prospective GM plenty of times before. I know that it will be surprising that I'm about to say this because rich people are famous for their self-reflection. But if I were Artie Moreno, I'd be like, hey, my baseball team employs Mike Trout and not very many people want to work for me. What's that about?

And not very many people want to work for me. Right. What's that about? And, you know, the fact of the matter is the very wealthy people are often insulated from consequences. And so self-reflection, not always their strongest suit. Who's to say? But, yeah, it is, you know, we spent part of last week talking about the surprising lack of process in Chicago. I don't think that you could say the same for the Angels.

It looked very early like they were going to hire Dave Dombrowski. And then they seemed to talk to a great many people. I think what the candidate list was up to 15 at one point. Something like that. Yeah. So I guess good job having a process, you guys. But yeah, I think that there probably is something to the idea that newer GMs are going to be malleable in some way or at least less likely to push back. And it just, Mike Trout chose to stay there. So I don't want to be overly, you know, we don't have to parachute in and rescue the guy. Like he made a choice. He's an adult.

He was given a big contract and decided he wanted to stay in L and try to help that team win a World Series. But I hope that this regime has better success than the last one because the lack of Trout in October is bad for us. Yep. It's a bummer. It's bad for us. Also, we were informed of an unwritten rules controversy this week by listener Scott in Arkansas. I was not aware of this, but this is an interesting one. There is an unwritten rules hubbub in NPB in Japanese baseball. And Scott linked us to a story here on the website Sora News. So I'll read the headline. NPB player sparks controversy

by not letting a retiring pitcher strike him out. So that's the controversy here. A touching tribute to a player's career or insult to the sport. In Major League Baseball, pitchers often go out on a bittersweet note as a testament to having given it all they had.

Greats like CeCe Sabathia and Nolan Ryan both had extremely disappointing final starts. Even Cy Young himself gave up eight hits to his last eight batters. It's sad, but in a way good, because the pitcher can rest assured that they had contributed as much to their team as they possibly could before the end. Nippon professional baseball, though, sometimes does things a little differently. end. Nippon Professional Baseball, though, sometimes does things a little differently. When a pitcher is set to retire, there is an unwritten rule that their last batters will allow strikeouts so that the pitcher can go out on a high note. Since this usually happens at the end of a season and in cases where the outcome isn't critical, it usually doesn't spark much controversy. However, on November 10th, the Hanshin Tigers faced off against the Yomiuri Giants in what was to be Hanshin pitcher Kyuji Fujikawa's final appearance of his career.

At the top of the ninth inning, Fujikawa struck out the first two Giants batters. Shigenosuke Shigenobu, who, after letting one ball go by, went ahead and cranked the next pitch into right field, where it was easily and unceremoniously picked off for the last out of the inning. Although it was a fairly normal end to an inning, commentator and former Hanshin great Masayuki Kakefu lamented, Oh, he was so close, too. I guess Shigenobu didn't know, referring to the possibility that the batter didn't know that he was supposed to let Fujikawa strike him out. It's unclear why Shigenobu connected with the ball. Perhaps he just didn't care about the custom. He may have also attempted to fake a miss only to accidentally hit the ball. Sakamoto, who was Fujikawa's first strikeout of the inning,

is a star player for the Giants and was brought in as a pinch hitter. Some are presuming this is because he has the skills to appear to try and hit the ball while striking out. Regardless of his true intentions, this led to debate online over the sportsmanship of what Shigenobu did with people coming down on all sides of the issue. And the Giants were leading 4-0 late in that game, so there wasn't much chance of the Tigers' comeback, in case you were wondering. And this was the second-to-last game of the season for each team, and the Giants had already clinched the only Central League position in the Japan series. So this is an interesting one, I think, because there are some analogs, I think, in MLB. Sometimes you will see a pitcher will groove one for a batter in his last at-bat, or like the Cal Ripken All-Star Game example. Maybe this was more common in the past. I know Denny McLean grooved one for Mickey Mantle at the end of his career in 1968 as a tribute to Mantle because he had been one of McLean's favorite players. But in that case,

McLean was actually reprimanded. Commissioner Spike Eckert sent him a letter scolding him. But the intentional strikeout to end a great pitcher's career, I mean, there's probably precedent to that, but I don't think it's widespread. Like, just to give some context here, like, Fujikawa has pitched in NPP for 17 years he has a 2.08 career ERA there almost 250 saves like he's been a great reliever some may remember him from his brief time in the majors with the Cubs and the Rangers as well but I just I looked back to see like Mariano Rivera's final appearance and you know they were Both great relievers Both in their 40s at that point

And Rivera his Final outing went line out Ground out ground out Pop fly so no Strikeouts intentional or otherwise And I don't remember Anyone caring about that But this is a thing

That you're just supposed to sort of whiff on purpose and i asked a friend of the pod kazuto yamazaki of baseball prospectus about this and he said yes it's fairly common for pitchers when they are facing a retiring hitter they're required to pipe a fastball down the middle so that's the opposite and he sent me a video of Takashi Saito's last game. And in this case, he was facing Toru Hosokawa. And it's like the most obvious looking strikeout you've ever seen. Like it's just, I'll link to the video so everyone can see it. It's just totally transparent. Like he's just waving wildly. It doesn't look like he's even trying to hit the ball. wildly it doesn't look like he's even trying to hit the ball and as that article mentioned it's probably pretty tough to make a convincing attempt at looking like you're trying to make contact if you're really not but this is a tradition that we definitely don't have to the same extent in the states and so this has become a controversy in japan i'm trying to decide what i would want yeah because like there's the, you know,

the institutional expectation of what you do in that moment and the behavior and all that. But I'm trying to think about what I would want if I were in his shoes as the pitcher. I think I, I think that I really hate being like patronized. And so I would just want, you either need to really sell it.

Yeah. If you're gonna just strike out on purpose or I'd like to see, give it the old college try. Yeah. Like you've, especially if you have that long of a career, like you've had ups and downs.

Nothing about the final, you know, the final you know the final hitter you pitch to is gonna change your legacy in the game no right it doesn't diminish the accomplishment it's not like you're like i had 17 great years but now like i got a you know a little bloop single off of me so forget it i have to pitch 10 more so that i can overcome the the the slate that was done to me i don't know i think i'd want them to to try and like if that's gonna be the tradition then like have them take three pitches looking you know like i guess it could be more than that depending on how how uh how well you got it that day but it just seems that's

surprising to me but i also have never been a professional athlete so maybe my my preference for you know someone being deferential to me in that moment would be different than i'm anticipating that's very possible yeah and it's a different culture. You just respect for seniority and experience and your elders, and maybe that's a nice thing. If it's just showing deference, if it's a sign of appreciation for that player's career, I suppose that's perfectly fine. And Fujikawa at this point is no longer a very effective pitcher, I think. He's 40 years old and didn't have a great year. And yeah, I think if it were me, I would feel like either sell it so well that I don't realize that you're just, you know, rolling over for me in this final at that or, or try because yeah, like, you know, if I, i if i get the out if i get a strikeout

great like i mean you know presumably he's he's gonna finish the game one way or another so he's gonna get an out somehow and so it just seems to me like you know if you've been pitching for like 20 years at this point it's not like you know it's gonna taint the whole thing if like your your last guy doesn't strike out or gets a hit or something i think i would get over that just fine so well yeah presumably if you're retiring you have some understanding of where your skills lie relative to their peak right you've You've done that soul searching and decided, it's time for me to hang it up, you know, and there are any number of factors that can kind of complicate that, how much it's your decision versus not, but like, you're probably aware,

it's time to be done. So you're probably pretty honest, but yeah, I mean, I don't want to like judge the cultural practices of another place because this might seem very normal, but it is such a funny... I wonder how this would interact with some of the other unwritten rules that we have in the States were it to become the norm here because I think that, like you said,

there is some precedent for kind of letting someone go out on a high note. We've seen that before. And there's nothing, as an aside, like if you decide to do that, I would read it as patronizing if you didn't sell it, right? But like, that's a nice thought to say, hey, I, you know, how about one more for the record books as you walk out the door? You know, that's a nice thing. We all stand to be a little kinder. And if the stakes are so low, if it doesn't matter,

then why not? Maybe I've changed my mind, Ben. Yeah. I mean, players always have something at stake even if it's just their earning potential or their stats or something. But I don't know. For me, I feel like saying something, everyone coming to the top step and applauding or tipping their cap or whatever, you know, putting a nice message on the scoreboard, like all of that would be plenty for me, I think.

But, you know, if this is the tradition, then I guess it's nice in a sense, although I wouldn't want someone to be vilified for not going along with it, really. So I guess we have enough unwritten rules over here. I'm kind of happy we don't have to worry about this one, too. And then, like, you know, what if the person might retire, but you don't know for sure? What if he hasn't announced that he'll retire? Then do you have to do it just in case he retires? I don't know. It just seems

complicated see that seems that seems very fraught because what if you're like you should retire i'm gonna let you strike me out and then you might have you might have been very rude that's true you could give unintentional offense yeah there's a lot of there are some man such stakes it's really hard to do your job when other people are watching it turns out yeah all right and a couple quick things did you see the ryan tapera news i don't know if that came across your twitter notifications i just felt so i just felt so terrible yeah speaking of the respect or lack thereof i guess r Tappera was, I don't know if he was getting mocked, but maybe Rick Hummel, who was an ML MVP voter and voted for Ryan Tappera. He was maybe catching some flack on Twitter because Ryan Tappera got a vote.

He got a last place vote, which means that he has a point forever and ever. Ryan Tappera has, let's see, an 18th place tie for 18th place finish in NL MVP voting. And I think this is pretty harmless, but it's just sort of amusing to me. This happened because Hummel, evidently, when you vote, there's a drop downdown menu, and Tapera was pretty close to Trey Turner, and Hummel meant to vote for Trey Turner, who was a few spots down, and inadvertently voted for Ryan Tapera instead. So Ryan Tapera, the undistinguished Cubs reliever who has been fine. He had a perfectly fine year. Yeah, he was fine. He was fine. He threw 20 innings. He had a perfectly fine year. Yeah, he was fine. He was fine.

He threw 20 innings. He had a sub-4 ERA. He struck out a bunch of guys, you know. Yeah. Fine year. Fine. No one would have said anything negative about Ryan Tappara until he got an MVP vote. And so now forever and ever, whenever we get some question about, like, the strangest mvp vote anyone's ever gotten

or i mean this i wouldn't even be at the top of the list for like worst season to garner an mvp vote but definitely one of the the more yeah no but kind of uh unremarkable season out of nowhere name to end up there and future generations will probably wonder what the heck happened here with Ryan Taffer. It's like when we look back at votes from decades ago and we're like, what were they thinking? And we know what it was, but the future generations, unless they do a deep dive, they will not immediately understand what happened here. So I have two things to say. The first of which is, so I've only in my brief tenure in the BBWA have only had one vote.

My first year in the organization, I had an AL Rookie of the Year vote. That was the year that Jordan Alvarez won AL Rookie of the Year kind of unanimously. It was easy to vote. But you vote for fewer down ballot candidates when it's Rookie of the Year than when it's MVP. But my memory, and I hope that I'm not misremembering this, is that I had to type in the name. And you have to type in the last name. And the only time you include a first initial is if they're guys with the same name.

And that was a year where I had given, and I can't recall now where in my ballot I placed him, but gave Brandon Lau a down ballot vote and was very nervous to do it properly because Nate Lowe was also eligible and I was worried that would get mixed up. And then I would have voted for Nate Lowe for third place for AL Rookie of the Year. And people have been like, that's weird, Meg. Why'd you do that?

And really all you're ever wanting when you're voting for these things is for no one to remember what you did. You just don't want anyone to remember what you did at all. Because if you did, you probably did something funky. But I remember thinking, if I mess this this up i will make my peace with it and so i think that that ryan tapera should have been allowed to think that someone thought he was mvp worthy i feel so bad for him he is as an aside this is very funny the top three most searched players on fangrass right now are jose obreu ryanara, and then Freddie Freeman.

I was one of those people searching for Ryan Tappara. Yes, so I feel bad that like, because like you said, he's not the worst. He's not the worst guy to get a 10th place MVP vote. Hardly the worst guy to get that. And somebody was so embarrassed that they felt the need to clarify, no, I'm a goofus who messed up rather than thinking he was MVP worthy.

Yeah, you understand why they had to clarify because otherwise people will say, oh, it was this favoritism or something. I mean, Rick Cummel covers the Cardinals and this is a Cubs player, so it's not like a Homer vote or something, but people were still perplexed, understandably. But yeah, too bad for Tepera because maybe there was a moment where he saw his name there and he thought, wow, look at that. Yeah, his news for you was about himself and it was great. It was like, wow, Ryan Tepera was like the sixth trending topic where I am on Twitter.

And I was like, what happened? And then I got nervous and I thought something had happened to him. And then I saw what it was and I laughed very hard. And then I felt bad because, you know, he had that moment and then it faded. Yeah, pretty harmless mistake. I mean, I guess Trey Turner would have been happy to have an additional vote. But really, it's a pretty frivolous and sort of fun story. In fact, Tepera quote tweeted a link to an ESPN story with the headline,

Chicago Cubs Ryan Tepera lends MVP vote thanks to misclick. And Tepera said, one man's mistake is another man's claim to an NL MVP vote. Thanks, Rick. Honored by the vote with a cry laugh emoji. So clearly he was having fun with it. And lastly, I guess Jay Jaffe did a post that I will link to that I just wanted to point people toward. He surveyed the Fangraphs audience, Jeff Sullivan style, on how Fangraphs readers felt about the 2020 rules changes. And the votes are are in and they're not super surprising i guess

i don't know that they would reflect the majority of the baseball following populace but perhaps not surprising for fancraft's readers they are like three to one in favor of the universal dh which i'm pretty happy to see but like more than three to one against keeping the extra innings rule. So Sam's enthusiasm for that rule not mirrored in the rest of the fan crafts readership and also almost 70-30 against seven inning games in double headers. So in fact, people are more against the extra innings runner than seven inning double headers which uh surprised me a little bit and people are pretty split on the three batter minimum that's just such a nothing rule really that it seems like uh people don't

care a whole lot about that and expanded playoffs wise only five percent of people thought yes let's keep it the way it was in 2020 and uh then you know not many people wanted seven teams per league about one in four said okay let's expand it but to six teams per league and then like 23 percent thought leave it at five teams per league with the best of three wildcard series. And almost 40% said leave it at five teams with a wildcard game. So as it was before this year. And I guess the expanded playoffs is what the readers were most passionate about. So they care the most about that particular thing not staying.

So I think I am mostly in line with the readership here. I think I am too. Ben, I just had the strangest sensation. You told me about a thing that was on paragraphs and I didn't know. You didn't read or edit yet probably. I've been doing a very good job, Ben, of not working. And that has meant not really engaging with the site because you know once you do the one thing it's like give a mouse a cookie but it's like really messed up and I don't get a

cookie so that was cool yeah that's a good that's a good idea that Jay did that good job Jay that was smart yeah there was some good stuff this week more people should do polling projects I'm saying this now and I will say it to the to my colleagues like directly because that's more useful. But, you know, people don't poll enough. They should poll more because it's really easy. Easy content. Yes. Easy content.

Crowd sourced. Love it. Yeah. Yeah. So the site survived. You took a vacation and I'm sure your absence was felt, but you can take a vacation and the world will keep spinning. So that's good to know, I guess. Yeah, it is.

It is unsurprising because Dylan and John Taylor, who helped with editing too, do good work. And I work with smart people who write good stuff. But it is just always nice to see it confirmed. It's like, you know, you know the sun's up there, even if you don't see it rise. But sometimes you're like, hey, that was cool to confirm. Right. Yeah. All right.

And I have a closing stat blast for you here before we get to our guest. This is from Matt, who sent this question in September, and I finally got an answer to it this week, so I will share it here. Matt said, It occurred to me while watching last night's Giants game that this is the 10th season in which Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt have been the starting shortstop and first baseman respectively for the Giants. That means that they have recorded a lot of 6-3 putouts together. I assume they would be high on the list of most ever recorded as a pair, but I have no idea how to look that up. I also can't think off the top of my head of any famously long-lived shortstop first baseman couples to check Crawford and Belt against.

Do you have any ideas on how I could figure out how many put outs those two have recorded and where they rank on the all-time list? So yeah, the Brandons have been in that infield since 2011. They have racked up a lot of put outs. And I guessed Bill Russell to Steve Garvey from the Dodgers' longest running infield. I thought that might be above. And Sam guessed Tony Lazeri and Lou Gehrig, although Lazeri was RetroSheet database, who, by the way, is in the market for data-based research positions, especially in baseball. If you're looking for anyone, he's been very helpful with our stat blast. He's just finishing up his master's in statistics. And he was able to give me an answer here using all the play-by-play data that's available going back to 1918. an answer here using all the play-by-play data that's available going back to 1918. Not quite complete for those earlier years, so those players will be slightly undercounted.

And Sam and I were roughly on the money there. We came close, but we missed the very top combination, the most put-outs ever. In retrospect, I feel like I maybe should have thought of it. And if you want to pause the podcast for a second so you can brainstorm feel free but brandon belt and brandon crawford have completed 1580 put outs together six three put outs that's a lot that is the 34th most of all time and of course there are fewer balls in play fewer grounders now than there used to be although there are also more games and it is also the most by far of any active combo this is uh at any position you have to go all the way down to chris bryant and anthony rizzo they are the the

next highest and they were at like 802 entering this year. So they're like a little over half as many combined putouts as the Brandons, so no one even in the neighborhood. But if you look at the 6-3 putouts list only, the Brandons are at 13th most of all time. But the overall list, all combinations of positions number one craig biggio and jeff bagwell which in retrospect seems pretty obvious and yeah ben i can't believe you didn't get that i went oh to make you not feel bad because i was like clearly yeah tip of your tongue Yeah, they had 3,056 put outs together. That is a lot of put outs. They were four, three put outs, of course.

And then Lazeri and Gehrig were next at 2910. Russell and Garvey at 2782. And I'll read the rest of the top 10. Ryan Sandberg and Mark Grace. Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges, Dick McAuliffe and Norm Cash, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, Ron Say and Steve Garvey. So Garvey's on there twice. Ron Santo and Ernie Banks and Davey Lopes and Steve Garvey. So that Dodgers longest running in fields, like all of the numbers were on there.

But yeah, it's interesting. And some other recent ones, Brandon Phillips and Joey Votto were next. Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard, Brooks Robertson, Boog Powell, Cal Ripken, Eddie Murray, and on and on. So I will put the spreadsheet online so you can all look position by position and admire Adam's handiwork here. look position by position and admire Adam's handiwork here. So 6-3, the leader was Bill Russell, Steve Garvey. And 5-3, the leader was Ron Say and Steve Garvey. 4-3 was Biggio and Bagwell. 2-3, the leader is Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols. Oh, sure. Yeah. And 1-3 put out. So your pitcher to first base is Freddie Fitzsimmons to Bill Terry. And your 3-1 put out is Willie McCovey to Juan Marichal. So yeah, good data here.

I will put the whole thing online so you can peruse it at your leisure and remember some guys. After you had retired how many days do you think it would take you to go wow i haven't done that thing in a while yeah it must be second nature yeah brandon to brandon i wonder when that combo will end is uh is belt a free agent this winter let me just see uh signed through 2021 so no not yet so the brandons will ride again and uh they can keep climbing the leaderboards because they're both signed through 2021 all right so we will take a quick break and we'll be right back with enoceros and david artsma to talk about foreign substances. I really feel so much like my own. It's about time that I spoke my mind. It's about time that I spoke my mind.

It's about time. Well, official baseball rule 6.02 states that the pitcher may not apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball or have on his person or in his possession any foreign substance or attach anything to his hand, any finger, or either wrist. Most major league pitchers do not abide by that rule, which means that, as Eno Saris put it in a piece for The Athletic this week, your favorite pitcher is probably cheating. To talk about why and how they're cheating and what MLB can do about it, we are joined by Mr. Saris. Hello, Eno. Hey, thanks for having me on, Ben.

This piece was just another salvo in a long string that we've been reporting. I mean, you and I and other people. Right. I don't even know how much new stuff it had in it, but you've got to keep updating the story because I think it's a real story. Yeah, I think so too. And we are also joined by former Major League pitcher David Ardsma, who has a cold and maybe some foreign substances in his throat right now, but is joining us nonetheless.

Hello, David. Yeah, definitely have some foreign substances helping me out here a little bit. No, it's great to be on here. And I don't want to make sure everybody knows this right out of the gate. I never cheated, ever, once. Yeah, it's great to be on here and i don't want to make sure everybody knows this right out of the gate i never cheated ever once yeah it's uh it's very believable so uh you know you uh surveyed some people in the game when you were working on this piece players and coaches and what was the sense that you got of what percentage of pitchers are using something that they technically are not allowed

to be using? Yeah, it's funny when you survey someone, you're really just asking what's happening in their little sphere. So it's maybe not the greatest data point, you know, because you're just asking around you what's happening. And so there were a lot of people who said 100%, which told me something. But there was also, you know, a consensus that it was more than half. Nobody said less than half. And the median answer was over 75%. So it was one of those things, most, I think is the answer. And I guess I'll put this question to both of you for the folks who have not followed all of the reporting here. Let's just take a step back and talk about what the benefits of using a foreign substance are for a pitcher. Why would somebody elect to be part of that 50%? You know, I can speak from a sort of a research

standpoint. It adds about 300 RPM in terms of spin rates to your fastball, to your breaking ball. RPM in terms of spin rates to your fastball, to your breaking ball. And I don't know if the spin itself is inherently valuable, but that produces movement. So it produces more ride on a fastball, on a foreseeing fastball, and it produces more drop on a breaking ball, both things that have been shown by research to be beneficial. So David, I don't know what you want to disclose about your own experience with foreign substances, either personally or as a witness, but what can you tell us about, I guess, what you've seen and what you think the benefit is? Well, I'll say this right out of the gate is I will feel totally fine to talk about whatever I did, whatever everybody else did.

I won't necessarily say names or anything. I'll probably stay away from a little bit from an organizational standpoint on what they might be doing, what those guys might have been doing. I obviously had nothing to do with that. But from a player's standpoint, what's really neat is seeing the data now, seeing how the pitch is affected, how your fastball is affected, your slider, your curveball. Split, in my instance, that's what I really used it for. seeing how the pitch is affected how your fastball is affected your slide or your curveball split in my instance you know that's what i really used it for seeing how the data how it's influenced when back in the day i mean this stuff's been around forever we've been using pine tar since basically since the first moment they could start using pine tar and but you generally did it because

you just felt like you had a better grip of the ball you felt like you could manipulate the ball better and so it's really neat to see how the data basically backs up what you've always felt you just didn't know what the what necessarily the outcome was you you knew you made a better pitch you just didn't know what the data said behind it so it's really neat to see the data backing up what you've always kind of known. I think that's a really instructive thing also, because I think that the technology and the data together have led to a little bit of an explosion of this because now you're always throwing in front of a Rapsodo, you're always thrown in front of something. And, you know, now you can say, oh, you know, this works better than that. And there is actually even research that suggests that every finger type, every skin type has its own kind of ideal grip substance. And so

now everyone can find that. I mean, they're just always in front of the machine. So you say, oh, you know what? It works better if I use this instead of that. And so we're kind of optimizing this one little thing. Yeah. And so the league-wide spin rates just keep increasing year after year after year. And that could be because teams are just seeking spin and they're looking for pitchers who have high spin already. That's probably part of it. But do you think another part of it is just that pitchers are using this stuff more or if not more maybe more effectively because as david was saying pine tar goes back forever but as i think rob arthur pointed out in a piece for baseball prospectus recently it seems like maybe people have kind of cracked the code here when it comes

to what substances to use and what mixtures of substances to use and how and when to apply it. So would you attribute these skyrocketing spin rates largely to that, do you think? If I could speak on that is I think sometimes we're putting the cart ahead of the horse and we're saying like, I'm sorry, I've messed with all the stuff that's out right now, Pelican Grip you talked about in the article and a lot of other stuff, Gorilla Grip is another one, and those type of things were always around and i remember the first day i got to the big leagues i mean they opened up basically a toolkit and said get to use have fun here's firm grip here's pine tar here's guys would be bringing stuff from venezuela from the dominican and it's all this unique you know know, and it's, you know, shaving cream.

You're, you know, you basically look like you're shaving your face out there, but you're actually just trying to get better grip on the ball. I think the difference is it's a combination of what we're looking for from pitchers and the use of the substance. So a lot of times in the past, like, they were trying to throw down, throw sinkers. Rising four-seam fastballs were not the thing that pitchers used that was a rarity that was a commodity if you had that you didn't know what to do with it but it worked now it's we're trying to find those

pitchers with the high spins really with better vertical movements better approach angles of the plate and we're combining this stuff with it so it's always been there not that, like, guys are just figuring out what works for them. That's always been there. We've always been tinkering and playing with it. It's that perfect combination of that substances with the pitches. Where in the past guys weren't throwing the pitches I don't think that really needed it, but now we're seeing how useful it is. Yeah, that's really interesting.

One substance that was really funny that a pitcher told me about was he scraped his bong and used the bong resin for his grip substance. That's a first. I think maybe you're right. Maybe it's not about Rapsodo. Maybe it's about the bongs that are people using. Well, and you touch on this in the piece that you wrote. There's also the

complicating factor of the ball itself, right? That there are some characteristics to the ball that even if you set aside the search for spin are incentivizing pitchers to use substances just so they can truly get a better grip on a slick ball. In your reporting, have you seen there being any kind of real trend that might be related to changes in the ball that is incentivizing increased use? Or is it just that spin is sexy and this is sort of a coincidental bit of timing? Well, I mean, I did talk to a pitcher who went to Korea and he used grip substances in America, and he did not use them in Korea. And he said, partially it's because, you know, the they pat you down at the mound, partially because the ball is stickier. They have a tacky ball over there with with better seams.

And so, you know, all that. And also he said the rosin is different over there. He said the rosin dries better. It's some sort of we use rock resin here and not there. I like I'm not a rosin scientist. But, you know, there there are things that we can do on that level. And the one thing that's interesting to me, I think I don't want to jump too far ahead, but like, we could screw with the ball again. But there is, it seems like a very much risk that we don't do that much about strikeouts by screwing with the ball and the home runs go away. And then we've got a brand of baseball that no one really wants to watch. There's no homers and a bunch of strikeouts.

Yeah. And do you get the sense, David, that this is sort of past player to player more so than from above? I mean, there are certain teams that have maybe come in for more suspicion than others, but it seems like this is so widespread. And as you said, you know, it just kind of gets introduced to you on day one in the majors or maybe before. I mean, I talked to pitchers who were doing this in the minors or even in amateur ball. So is it just sort of this dark art that kind of, you know, is passed from generation to generation more so than, you know, it's coming from the team itself? I would say it used to be a lot more generational.

You know, it's coming from the team itself. I would say it used to be a lot more generational. It used to be like, hey, the old veteran shows the young punk, you know, exactly what stuff he should be using. And they usually blew him off back in the day. But now, because of all this stuff, because of what Dryline's done, because of how much, let's be honest, how much Trevor Bowers really talked about it and put it out in the open, you know, I think organizations now are seeing how useful this is and they're the ones promoting it they're the ones talking about it where all of this would have happened but the timeline would have been stretched out a little bit longer like they would have figured it out on their own eventually but now it's kind of like first day you're you're brought into camp you know you're brought into that that post camp where we already know everything about your pitches

already do. We know exactly how it moves. We've already highlighted the guys that can use more spin guys that you can use more vertical movement. And those guys are isolating those guys. You're saying, all right, what can we do more? How can we help you? And there don't get me wrong. There's a certain group of guys you don't even want to mess with. Just let them pitch, let them do their thing. And if they raise those questions, yeah, you help them out.

But I think it is pushed quicker. But at the same time, it's always been there. So there's really been no difference. It's just now it's – I think guys are learning. They've learned how to use it earlier so they're more comfortable with it to where in the past it would have been a little longer process. So you brought up Bauer. That was inevitable. So Bauer won the Cy Young Award this week, and clearly he had a great season. You could quibble with whether he was the most deserving

candidate just based on the quality of the opponents he faced. But regardless, he had a good year, and not suggesting that he had a good year purely because he was using foreign substances. He's obviously been a good pitcher in the past, but certainly seems as if he started using something that he hadn't been using before in September of 2019. And, you know, you wrote about his single inning experiment back in 2018 when his spin rate spiked for an inning and it seemed quite clear he sort of you know hinted that he had used something and the same thing happened very suddenly very dramatically late last season and continued into this year and it just seems pretty brazen I mean it's uh it stands out it's like the most dramatic sudden increase in spin rate that any pitcher has had in the sample of seasons that we've been able to measure these

things. And he just won the Cy Young Award, which, you know, whether or not it's because of that, it coincided with it, which seems like it could be some sort of scandal, perhaps. You know, it gets mentioned by some people. It doesn't get mentioned by other people. But what do you make of that apparent experiment? You know, man, I have so many thoughts. It's and they don't they don't go in the same directions. I mean, I in some ways I feel for him because he seemed to try to shine a light on it to say, you know, hey, this is happening and

you can do something about it, baseball. And then when they didn't, you know, he kind of seemed like, well, you can't beat him, join him. Yeah. Of course, that sounds a lot like what we said about Barry Bonds, which makes me uncomfortable. So I don't know. I don't know if I want to go down that too far. But I mean, he obviously tried to do something about it. And baseball, in your reporting, you showed a memo where baseball announced that they were going to do something about it. And they spent a year doing something about it, and they fired one clubhouse attendant. Right. And I think there's some sort of pending lawsuit there. It was the Angels clubhouse person who Right. And I think there's some sort of pending lawsuit there. It was the

Angels clubhouse person who was supposedly providing foreign substances to visiting pitchers, I think. And the guy sued and said it was defamation and that he never distributed an illegal substance and he was made a public scapegoat. And I think MLB and the Angels are trying to get that lawsuit dismissed. I did talk to a pitcher after the piece ran. He said, oh, yeah, Anaheim was where we always went to get the good stuff. Yikes. And I will also say that we could focus on Bauer, and I'm not going to name any names,

but I have to say the best pitchers in baseball, their hands are not clean. Oh, man, that was bad. But the best pitchers in baseball are often the ones that people are like, oh, I learned my mix from that one. And oh, I learned my proprietary grip mix from that guy. And he has those good stuff. So there's definitely, this is not like Bauer and a couple of relievers.

That's one of the things I was trying to get across in the story. Well, and I think that there's, and you know, David, you might be the right person to speak to this point, but it is curious. This is a performance enhancer. It seems to be obviously thought of in some ways, in a way that is very similar to the way steroid use was thought of, which is, well, everybody's doing it, so it's probably fine.

But it is categorically different than that in a way. I'm curious about the psychology of sort of reconciling yourself to what is technically a form of cheating, even if everyone or 50% of everyone or some vast preponderance of everyone is doing it. one or 50% of everyone or some vast preponderance of everyone is doing it, how are players sort of mentally differentiating these things from one another to the extent they are? I guess they might not be and might be thinking of them as sort of a piece, but they're comfortable with it anyhow. But if they're not, what's the wiggle room that they're granting themselves to be adding spin to the ball and enhancing their performance, but not ingesting a foreign substance.

And so able to go out on the mound every five days or, you know, every other day and allow this to enhance their performance. That's an interesting question because it raises a lot of weird, weird ideas because you can easily like make the same argument for steroids, make it for pine tar, all this stuff. I i don't i see them as two totally different things yes it's cheating because the rules say you can't do it at the same time i think it's almost like the rules were written to prevent guys from doing it because it kind of gave an unfair advantage where whereas honestly steroids i i i put that in a whole other bucket. I say I do not agree with the whole argument of, well, some guys do it, so we should all do it. I think it should be a natural game.

I completely believe that. Now, push that line as far as you can with science and everything. And testing everything needs to be on top of it, but push it. And testing everything needs to be on top of it, but push it. Now with the foreign substances, with pine tar, all that stuff, for me, I just see it as an enhancement of what you're already doing. So it does make you control the ball a little bit better, makes you spin it better, makes you move it a little bit better.

At the same time, guys are using it to hold a bat. Guys are using it in the field. Heck, let's be honest. I never had to use pine tar if I didn't need to. If I didn't want to. I would never have it on my body. My third baseman has it all on his glove. My catcher's got it all lined up in his glove.

I mean, cool. But it's totally legal for them. Right? It's totally legal for his glove to be just caked. And when the ball goes around the horn, he throws me the ball. And honestly, it's probably too much pine tar at that point. And I,

so there's a million different ways around it that are totally legal. That's the problem with me with all of this is, Oh my God, it's so bad. It's so legal. Now don't be pinata and put it on your neck like an idiot. Don't, you know,

don't have it all over slathered on the back of your glove. Like an idiot. I do. I love the game where you're trying to hide it. You're trying to not be so obvious with it. And I'll be honest. You can watch any video of me after every pitch. I put sunscreen all over my arms.

I mean, I played in Seattle. I mean, come on. Why would I need sunscreen? All over my arms. But I would only have it in the middle of my fingers, and then I'd get rosin. And I'd even tell the umpire I'm like look I'm gonna wipe it off and I'll wipe it off but come on my hand's so sticky come on like my shirt would stick with my hand and so it's but I've got no issue with it I love it I love that guys want to use it and to say almost 50 percent come

on 99 percent of guys are using it and the only ones that don't just don't feel like they need it they've tried it trust me they've every one of them have tried it and they've all tried it in a big league game it's just a matter of like hey man some guys like this some guys like that some guys like rosin just because it feels good honestly i didn't like that much pine tar on my fingertips but i loved it between my fingers because it made my split nasty and I liked it. Wow. Yeah.

David, it's interesting. You bring up the, the, the sunscreen thing. I had some pushback or a couple of pictures were like, I don't use anything. I was like nothing.

And they were like, just sunscreen and Ross. And I'm like, so there is a differentiation. I don't do drugs, just weed. So that's why I think if some people are like oh you know no 99 is too much i think they might be putting sunscreen and rosin in its own thing but but the sunscreen

rosin is why it's so unenforceable like you cannot tell a person who's outdoors that they can't have sunscreen on exactly and that's a it's an interesting point you brought up earlier about um about korea i believe you're talking about kore I went in 2008, we went with the Red Sox. We went to Tokyo and we played the Giants. We played the Tigers out there. And then we actually played a game against the A's. Their balls were amazing. I didn't need anything. I think like, you know, I normally have my sunscreen, my Ross and I'm ready to go. And they give me the ball. I'm like, dude, this is great. I threw my first split and I'm like, yeah, that's why all these guys come out of here with splits because it's nasty. The ball moves so well with that stuff. I love those balls. David, what do you make of the argument

that for safety reasons, you need to use something? And some hitters will even say, I want them to use it because I want them to have control. I don't want to get beamed. And pitchers will say it's so I don't hit someone in the head. Is that legitimate at all? When you're playing in Baltimore in August and it's like 95 with 95% immunity, I'm telling you honestly, every single hitter wants me to use pine tar,

wants me to use something because I don't. Your ball gets so slippery. But outside of that, I've used this argument before but it's such bs okay that was always my main argument oh it's for grip but come on dude i hit like eight guys my whole career and like three of them were on purpose so it's like come on oh spicy yeah come on like it's such a neat it's such an argument it's like the go-to argument like because you can't argue against it like oh well i mean just looking out for the hitter that's a nice guy like no come on well i hate to see what we do uh without all the pine tar because

hit by pitches are at an all-time high so it really if the pine tar uses is that high and the hit by pitches that high man you guys have no command. Yeah, right? We have no excuse for that. I think, honestly, hit-by-pitches are high because guys are throwing nasty pitches. Guys are trying to throw. The day and age of control and command and really going out there,

giving you seven strong, hard innings, they're over. You're trying to throw the hardest four innings you can in your life and when you go out that and that's one of the issues with the game we're promoting strikeouts so much that we're developing strikeout pitchers well strikeout pitchers tend to walk guys or hit guys no big deal because if you strike out to an inning who gives a crap if you walk one you know and then you're gonna get pop-ups so the inning's over So we're developing all these guys with these nasty pitches. Well, nasty pitches with that comes it batters, you know, it's like, get over it. If you don't want to get hit, get out, don't bat. So within that environment of incentives, right? You want guys with a lot of spin. You want guys who are going

to strike a bunch of guys out. What is the appropriate mechanism of enforcement? If despite those incentives, we decide we really want to cut down on this, which I don't know that, you know, I know that, you know, you've reported on this, Ben, you've reported on this. There is some desire on the league's part. I don't know how sincere or sort of heartfelt that desire is given the fact that they haven't done anything and that Trevor Bauer did just win the Cy Young, basically daring them to come and like search his locker every

night. So what are the potential enforcement mechanisms we have here, both the actual procedure that you think might be useful and who should be doing the enforcing? Because I think that there is a reasonable concern that if you aren't consistent with the enforcement, reasonable concern that if you aren't consistent with the enforcement, that there is the potential for bias against particular kinds of pitchers, particular kinds of people pitching. What are the mechanisms at our disposal here? And are any of them sort of equal to the task? I think it's terrible. I think that the way you do it is terrible. And that's why nobody wants to do it. Have you ever seen an MMA check-in? You know the answer that I have not.

Not a big MMA head over here. Before an MMA match, the umpire in this case, I don't even know what they're called. I'm not that much of a fan. But the referee, that must be what it's called. but the the uh the the referee that must be the breath he comes up and he puts his hands in the fighter's hair and he touches him all over the back of his neck and he basically just feels him up all over making sure that he's doesn't have i guess a weapon or something and i think it would have to be that intense on the mound in front. And I think it would have to be that intense on the mound in front of everybody.

I think it would make everybody in the stadium uncomfortable because you're talking about tucking it in in little parts of your glove. You're talking about your belt. You're talking about, you know, so many pitchers have long hair. I think you're talking about behind the neck. You're talking about touching behind the ears.

You're talking about all these little places you can hide stuff. I think it would be bad for the labor ownership discussion before the CBA. I think it would be terrible optics. And I think it would lead to more bad blood between owners and the player. I think that it just makes everyone feel really uncomfortable. That's the type of enforcement we'd have to do. Yeah, when I talked to people when I wrote about it in July, it sounded like, at least from some people, if they were really aggressive and vigilant about it and they empowered the umpires to come out and check all the time, that that would have some effect. Of course, if you just leave it to the managers, then a lot of the times they're

not going to challenge because they know their own pitchers are doing the same thing. So I thought that one way that you could do it, and it seemed like from talking to someone at MLB, it sounded like they were at least thinking about this, was looking at stat cast and spin rates and monitoring for sudden jumps, which wouldn't help if someone had been using this thing the whole time. But if there was a Trevor Bauer situation where suddenly, like all of a sudden from one game to the next, it's way, way up, then— Make sure you cheat right away. Yeah, right.

Establish your cheating baseline early. But the fact that Bauer, at least according to the data, seems about as blatant as it could possibly be. And seemingly they didn't do anything. You know, I don't know if he was warned behind the scenes or anything, but it doesn't seem like he stopped or that his spin rates fell. So that was kind of confounding because that seemed like the situation where you could go after someone. And, you know, I don't know if it's just that it would be such a pain to make Trevor Bauer the scapegoat and the poster boy or what, but they just didn't want the headache. Or maybe, I don't know, I could give them a pass, I guess, in that there was a pandemic.

So maybe foreign substances weren't the top priority. They had a lot of other things on their mind this year. So, you know, I think it's just difficult always to spot it. I mean, some guys are super obvious and they have it on the hat, but like, this is a question to David, like, you know, there are a lot of tricks, right? There's a lot of ways people get around it. I mean, you're talking about the infielders, like, you know, you could not even have any on yourself and just have your, you know, infielders have it on them. No, absolutely. There's a million different ways around it. and when you start there like you can hide it anywhere you can do anything though the biggest thing is when you start creating a routine with how you move your hands how you move your glove then it becomes easy because then you just put

it somewhere with the where that routine is looking at the spin rates with stat cast with with hawkeye with whatever you're going to use now, come on. How easy is the argument is, well, I was trying a new grip. Oh, I put my arm in a different position today. Yeah, man, I did something different. And to be honest, from an organizational standpoint, knowing that raw data we get from the stadiums, dude, those numbers are way off sometimes too.

Some stadiums are so blatantly bad that we had our own software basically where we changed basically the data because it was so bad from certain stadiums that you just knew it wasn't right. And so to look at that and trust that data and then to make a decision on somebody's career on it, dude, from an organizational standpoint, I would be losing my ass. You'd have to i'd be going to catch them in the act too yeah you'd have to catch them in the act doing it for me it's if somebody's obvious that's the problem like let's just be cool with this like if somebody's obviously using it and they're not being trying to hide it they're not being any coy at all come on just like do what we did used to do what they used to do in the 80s they'd

walk out there and be like dude come on stop you know i guess but that's i don't like selective enforcement man you know selective enforcement makes me feel bad then it makes me think that you could target a certain type of person or you know like one of the guys that got busted was brandon donnelly nobody liked him because he he was a strike buster yeah you know I mean it's totally it totally it works for me that he got busted you know I totally understand it nobody likes that guy go and bust him you know what I mean well I think about like we always I always tend to go back to the Pineda thing because I knew him when he first came up with the Mariners and I was with him with the Yankees and I remember was it Johnrell, basically told him not to do it the next game.

You know, he was managing the Red Sox. He basically said, if it's this obvious again, I'm going to call him out. And he made it more obvious. So it's like, come on, like for me, it's an understanding on the field. Let the managers and only the managers be the only ones that can ever call it out. For me, it's then be a good ball player. Be a man, like be somebody out there that the other teams respect so they let you do it or don't be and you're going to get called out and your career

is gonna be a lot shorter so i guess the question is well there are a lot of questions related to this but this one might just be an obvious one we need to address do we care like do we within the game do we care about this you want to know why we care because because there's cameras i think that like there's the difficulty of enforcement and that can be a just a powerful disincentive to trying to enforce it because to eno's point you don't want to enforce it selectively you want there to be some sort of consistency in the policy. But like, there's a lot of stuff that's hard and we figure out how to do it anyway. So should we read the lack of enforcement around this as Major League Baseball truly just not having yet figured out how to do it in a way that's consistent and fair? Or should we read it as them only caring so much as Trevor Bauer makes noise about it in public? And maybe

there's another option in between those that is the right answer. But I'm curious kind of where you guys land on that. I have to say from my readership numbers and stuff, some people care a little bit. But I wouldn't say that this is on the level of the Astro scandal or anything. The two reasons I care is I mentioned selective enforcement bugs me out. I don't say that this is on the level of the Astro scandal or anything. The two reasons I care is I mentioned selective enforcement bugs me out. I don't like that it's still on the books so that at some point in a World Series game, someone can decide the stakes are high enough that they're going to bust this guy. I don't like that sort of feeling that it could at any time become a big deal. And it just hasn't because there's some sort of gentleman's agreement or something.

I don't know. And the other thing I don't like is or that i find interesting about this is we're talking about ways to maybe reduce the impact of strikeouts on the game we're talking about ways generally uh it seems fandom and and people writing about sport are talking about do we have too many strikeouts in the game and this could be a place where we reduce strikeouts. I don't know if it's the best one. There's other ways to do it, but it could be. I don't know. Well, with a reduce in strikeouts, you're going to up, you know,

balls and play, right? Which what people want, you know, I mean, that's that's sort of a stated thing that people, I know as a pitcher, you don't want that. I don't know. I strike everybody out. Make the game as boring as possible. My job is to make it boring.

Exactly. But as a fan, you could see maybe some people wanting more balls. Balls and play are an all-time low. It could be a thing. I wanted to go back to my kids' eight-year-old baseball. It's all strikeouts. It's boring, though. I'll give you that. It's boring as heck.

Yeah, I think it matters for that reason. But also, I think because, and you mentioned this in your piece too, you know, but there's some potential for a scandal here. And it doesn't seem like there's a complete coincidence that this memo from Chris Young, MLB's like on-field operations and discipline person, was sent around in February. and disciplined person was sent around in February, it just seemed like maybe this was a response to the sign stealing scandal and MLB looking around and saying, well, who else is cheating and how, and can we- What else could blow up on us like that? Yeah. Let's try to get ahead of it this time. And I don't know if there's potential for the same sort of scandal because again, everyone's doing it. and so maybe that makes it a little less scandalous in a way because you know it's not just one team that'll get singled out or two teams or whatever for doing things a certain way like everyone's doing it but you know if a team won the world

series and it were proven that they were all doing it then maybe it would be a scandal even if every other team was doing it or whatever. Maybe someone wins an award. What if Trevor Bauer comes out and admits what he did after he won the Cy Young Award? That doesn't look great. So I would think that combined with the data that we have now on the spin rates, which tells us how effective this is and how big a difference it makes, it's just impossible to ignore now. And I looked in my article to try to figure out if I could see what the actual impact is, which is tough because there's no control group really

because everyone's cheating all the time. So how do you say, I mean, unless you have someone like Bauer or someone you spoke to for your piece, you know, who can demonstrate in a lab with and without these certain types of substances, then it's hard to say. But if you do just look at like individual pitchers and how they do when they throw their pitches that have the highest Bauer units, you can't even talk about this stuff without using the name Bauer because he has a stat named after him about spin rate.

So it controls for velocity basically because velocity and spin rate. So it controls for velocity, basically, because velocity and spin rate are correlated. So if you just look at the highest Bauer unit pitches for individual pitchers, they do get higher whiff rates and better results on those pitches. And so because we have that, and we have high-definition cameras and everything, you can't pretend that it doesn't make a difference. And so I think there is some potential for this to blow up in MLB's face if they just don't do anything about it. So I kind of hope that they figure out either the tacky grip baseball that everyone's okay with, or they just standardize a certain type of substance, which is what Bauer said

that he wanted all along, not to have it banned, but to have it legalized to a certain extent. So it's just out there like a rosin bag. So one of those things just seems to me to be better than everyone kind of, you know, winking and nodding and getting away with it and some people doing it and others not doing it and then the selective enforcement problem. Yeah, it's a recipe for disaster, it seems like you're i mean i think you're setting it up right um you know i i wonder like though if they give everyone a substance if some people are like well there's something out there but i like this stuff better so i'm gonna keep using my stuff oh yeah that's what's gonna happen it's just gonna become they're gonna be using it anyway it's exactly what they want to use and and the thing about it is if everybody's pretty

much doing it it hasn't just become standardized and that's what the pitches are yeah you know and eventually the hitters are going to adjust to it yeah i mean i think that's that's where we've settled in i don't think that baseball is in a rush to change the ball i mean that's that's that's one feeling i get from reporting and also just looking at how the different ball has led to a headache. I mean, I first asked Manfred about it like five years ago. So I feel like they don't want to open up that sort of situation again. Yeah, if that's the direction that the solution lies,

I think we could be waiting for a long time. All right. Well, before we let you go, David, could I ask you one more question on a different subject? You were with the Blue Jays the last couple seasons working in player development. You were the pitching over the game, in part because of COVID, in part because of the minor league contraction. What do you think is going to happen to player development across the game, I guess, between this year and no minor league season and the setbacks that came with that and the contraction of the minors and just some of the downsizing that we're seeing across the sport. What will the impact be on the players who are coming up now? I think the initial impact, I think where it's going to really be felt is a lot of those players that needed an opportunity,

guys that were sixth to 20th rounders, guys that just needed somewhere to play for a couple of years, and then they hit their maturity. Then they hit their, that's when they they become really good we're going to miss that in the game in five years six years when we don't have that crop of players it's going to be it's going to be tough because you're not going to see a lot of those guys that should have had opportunities at the same time guys will always fill their spot where i think it i think it's really tough losing two affiliates like the blue jays are losing two affiliates that The Blue Jays are losing two affiliates. That's amazing. Losing that many coaches, that much staff,

especially when Major League Baseball was growing. I mean, we were adding staff left and right. And so a lot of people were getting opportunities that never would have gotten chances. Getting hired out of college was a lot of these guys. So now you're cutting back even more. You're losing guys that had chances that are leaving the game. And so that's tough.

It's tough to see. But honestly, Major League Baseball was doing great until COVID hit. Major League Baseball is doing wonderful, and they're still going to do well. As long as things open up, as long as you allow fans, what we're going to see in a couple years, I wouldn't doubt we added an affiliate back. I think when you see the money coming back in the game, you're going to see growth again. You're going to see organizations bringing guys back in because at the end of the day, data is not going away. Technology is not going away. The amount of cameras we use, the

amount of information, like every day we're assessing our players, like from on the field to off the field in so many different ways, that stuff, not, we're not getting less of that. We're getting more and more and more. And so the manpower and the brainpower it takes to, to just go through that, you're going to need staff. You're going to need a lot of guys. So even though this year basically is going to be like a reset, sometimes you take two steps back to go three forward. And that's all I see is like, this is just a reset based on financially. And then it's going to, they're going to go full steam ahead. So if anybody is discouraged about opportunities in baseball, don't be because in two years, they're going to be full steam ahead again, hiring, looking for people, smart, bright people that are looking to try to figure their way through major league baseball. They're going to be because in two years they're going to be full steam ahead again hiring looking for

people smart bright people that are looking to try to figure their way through major league baseball they're going to be looking for them i hope that's the case that's uh i guess a an uplifting note that we can end on here so you can all find david on twitter at the da53 and you can find you know on twitter at youno Saracen of course can read him and listen to him at The Athletic thanks guys thank you alright that will do it for today and for this week

thanks as always for listening and please do check out the show page where we always put links to the videos and articles and research we discussed on the show we've gotten a bunch of responses to what Sam and I discussed on our previous episode about rules changes that one could make if one wanted to preserve a difference between the AL and the NL in the era of the universal DH. A lot of people suggested banning the shift in one league. Others suggested, for instance, keeping the runner on second in extra innings rule in one league and not the other. Some people suggested other variations on that, so one league has replay and another doesn't.

Or same thing with the three batter minimum, seven inning double headers, mound visit limits, etc. Then you would have sort of the traditionalist versus non-traditionalist debates that the DH used to engender, but just with all these other new rules. So thanks for all the suggestions, and maybe we will discuss some next week. In the meantime, you can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

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You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Megan Sam coming via email at podcastofmangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you early next week. We all think that we are nobody

But everybody is somebody else's somebody Don't ask me what I really mean I am just a reflection Of what you really want to see So take what you want from me