Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1644: Block and Report

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss ESPN’s report about Mets GM Jared Porter’s harassment of a female reporter when Porter worked for the Cubs in 2016, Porter’s subsequent firing by the Mets, Mets president Sandy Alderson’s comments about Porter’s hiring, the limitations of assessing character, the obstacles media members who aren’t cis men encounter in […]

All I wanna know is why's he such a prick? Please tell me so I'll know What makes guys like him tick? He's such a dick Hello and welcome to episode 1644 of Effectively Wild, He's such a dick Not stove stuff later in the episode, but we want to begin with the big news in baseball as we record this on Tuesday, which is the firing of Mets GM Jared Porter and the scandal surrounding him that necessitated that firing. So all of this came out really on Monday night, quickly developed into Tuesday and is still sort of developing as we speak. into Tuesday and is still sort of developing as we speak. But essentially, there was a report by ESPN's Mina Kimes and Jeff Passan fairly late on Monday night that revealed that Jared Porter,

in 2016, when he was with the Cubs, harassed a female reporter who was working as a foreign correspondent covering baseball and sent her a string of 60-plus text messages, which included unsolicited lewd images up to and including a picture of a penis, presumably his, although he said it wasn't, not that it makes any difference. This was something that came to ESPN's attention back in 2017. that came to ESPN's attention back in 2017. At the time, the woman did not want to go ahead with the story, and that wasn't published. Now it was. It came to light. The woman was willing to cooperate with the reporters and tell her story. Porter was fairly swiftly dismissed by the Mets early on Tuesday morning. Steve Cohen tweeted that he had been let go.

And then throughout the day, there were some further developments and some comments by Mets president and head of baseball operations, Sandy Alderson, that we will want to get into too. But this is the latest incident of an MLB executive, a high-ranking executive, behaving unconscionably when it comes to women and female reporters. This is not an unfamiliar story in baseball, unfortunately, but we want to talk a little bit about all of the nuances to this one and why it is a sign of an ongoing problem and how the Mets could have handled this differently and better as well in their comments after this came to light. And Porter, for those who don't know, has been portrayed as a future GM for quite some time now. He's someone who started with the Red Sox as an intern under Theo Epstein.

He rose to director of pro scouting while he was with the Red Sox. He then followed Epstein to Chicago, served in that same role with them, and then had been with the Diamondbacks for the past few years as an assistant GM before he was hired by the Mets just a little more than a month ago. So his tenure did not last long, but lasted longer than it should have now that we know what we know. Yeah, I think, you know, we'll say a couple of things off the bat. The first of which is that, you know, this is a story about a woman being harassed in her capacity as a reporter. We would be remiss if we lent the impression that this kind of harassment is limited to women in sports. kind of harassment is limited to women in sports. I think that it is not uncommon for women, for gender non-binary folks to experience various forms of harassment. So I think we're going to

focus on this woman and the treatment that she endured. But I want to take sort of a cue from a number of people in this space, including Jen Ramos, who writes a baseball prospectus. And just, it is a useful reminder that it is a hard road to walk if you were pretty much anything but a white cis dude. And so I think we would be well served to be as a community,

just appropriately expansive in our understanding of that. Even if I wish that this was a treatment that no one was suffering, I want to make sure that we're not minimizing those experiences. And also just that we will join the chorus of voices that implores people to not cast this as sort of a low Mets moment, right? This is not a fifth starter having a bad outing. This isn't even an improperly managed injury on the part of the Mets. This is very serious. And as we will discuss, had a lasting impact on this woman's life and career.

And so just will invite people to be mindful of that as they're getting their funnies in, you know, people who aren't dudes are watching your Twitter. And that kind of reaction tends to signal that you're not someone who can necessarily be trusted with this kind of confidence. So just like a good thing to keep in mind. There are a lot of people who've had to deal with circumstances like this and will unfortunately deal with them in the future. So just, you know, put yourself in a position where you're someone who can be obviously trusted, I think is a good kind of course of action here. It seems like we deal with a lot of these and they come in different forms and the kind of behavior can vary and its severity can vary. And every time we do, I feel obligated to say a thing about it.

obligated to say a thing about it. Which is just, I guess, another unfortunate aspect of all of this. Right. That you would feel moved to comment or like obligated to weigh in on this just as a woman in baseball, you know? Yeah. And I don't want to assert that my experience is universal. You know, I think that as I was reading Mina and Jeff's story last night, I, you know, I was struck by some of the similarities to my own experience. I've been, I've been on the

receiving end of some yucky stuff in this business, but I was also mostly just struck and moved by the differences. You know, as I said, I've, I've gotten some gnarly things, but I've point out several times in the story that not totally comfortable with English and conversing in English. And so, you know, an existing sort of void in terms of the just power they had walking in the door to a place was exacerbated by those differences. And so I can only imagine how scary that would be, because I can imagine how scary it would be in a situation where I had all my people, and I felt comfortable navigating not only that professional circumstance, but the broader culture and country that I was being thrust into. And so that adds like a particularly icky patina to an already terrible

set of circumstances. But it's just, it's really discouraging how often folks who are just trying to do their job are confronted with this crap. You know, it is someone like Porter, like that's an important source to cultivate having a relationship with with the team's pro scouting director is not unusual for for folks who are reporting either on a beat or just day to day and i can imagine what it would be like to to realize that you were sort of you were suddenly in a different you were in a different circumstance than you that you were suddenly in a different circumstance than you thought you were and trying to navigate out of that and how relentless and uncomfortable and scary it would feel

to just get text after text after text with no response from you. For days and days, just an extended period. Yeah, for weeks. Days and days, just an extended period. Yeah, for weeks. And then for it to escalate in the way that it did, and then to be left trying to figure out how to get out of it and how to preserve yourself and how to preserve your career. At one point in this story, note that you know she is she has

received this this photo and a series of texts subsequent to that are you there question mark mad at me frowny thing yeah and then and here i'm quoting from mina and jeff's story being alone in a different country made it tougher she told espn I didn't know who to trust and rely on. She had shown the sexually explicit image to a player from her home country and an interpreter who helped craft the response she sent to Porter. This is extremely inappropriate, very offensive, and getting out of line. Could you please stop sending offensive photos or messages? Porter responded in a series of messages. Oh, I'm sorry.

I will stop. I really apologize. Please let me know if you need anything work-wise and so to have to deal with that when you're sort of already on your back foot both in terms of the situation and your sort of ability to draw on the resources you might otherwise makes what followed really unsurprising you know this is cited at the end of this piece as a reason that she left the industry. She doesn't work in journalism anymore. She works in finance now. And she goes on to say that it would be a lie to say similar occurrences hadn't happened to me in my home country. It's a male-dominated industry, but it was a tipping point for me. I started to ask myself,

why do I have to put myself through these situations to earn a living? And we're all just trying to do our work and do it with people who treat us with an appropriate amount of professionalism and courtesy and as people. And she was denied that. And the consequence is that her voice isn't part of this industry anymore and so whenever you're grappling with this stuff you're dealing with the situation in front of you and how distressing it is on its face and then it's really hard to not have a sense of loss for all the other people who went through something terrible and perhaps didn't have the the requisite proof to be taken seriously you know and decided to quietly exit or do a different kind of journalism or start doing journalism

altogether and so it you know there is a cost here. We lose people and voices and perspectives that would be valuable. And even if they were thoroughly mediocre, there's no excuse for this. But we just, we have a less interesting and colorful and bright and thoroughgoing baseball media when people are making choices like this. And so it's really, it's really distressing. And you don't want to make it you know this didn't happen to me right so that's the other thing it's like it's hard not to take it personally but you don't want to make it overly about yourself because i was not on the receiving end of this harassment but it's just very hard to not feel deflated even when consequences are

levied against someone that you know do seem seem sort of proportional to what you would expect, because I guess this is where we should maybe talk about the Mets' subsequent comments. about the lack of women in many positions in baseball. And often we talk about how maybe just men are more likely to hire other men and the issue of representation. And maybe if you just don't see women working in certain positions, you're less likely to aspire to work in those positions and less likely to get hired. It's also this, though. It's that even if you do get in the door, there are these forces that actively repel you at times. And it's not

as if every male baseball executive is acting the way that Jared Porter did, but this kind of story is common enough that it's not an isolated event. And it's in media also, and really in a lot of businesses, it's not exclusive to baseball, but baseball obviously is one that is very heavily skewed toward men historically and also presently. And even if you don't face this directly, I imagine this sort of thing must be on your mind when you have interactions and you wonder where they're going or what the motivations are like this began with this woman and porter just in an elevator they met briefly at yankee stadium that was it they never spoke in person other than that they had no pre-existing relationship like there's nothing that possibly could have given him some idea that like she was interested in some different sort of relationship or something i mean not that even if she had like the response that he had and just taking it as far as he did still would have been inappropriate but it's just a totally innocent brief professional interaction

and they exchanged business cards and then he started texting her and suggested they get drinks and that sort of thing. And she thought, well, I'm covering baseball and here's a high ranking baseball executive and probably just wants to be a source or something. This could be a useful source, a useful person for me to know. And so just as a reporter, you would be inclined to pursue that. And yet that was not at all what he had in mind. And so if there are other interactions that begin this way, like you just have to be conscious of the fact that on the other end of that phone, there could be someone who is not thinking of this as a purely professional relationship. And at what point does it cross the line? Clearly he crossed the line

very, very quickly and kept going, but there are interactions that start like this all the time. And so if there's a history of this sort of thing that just goes completely too far and in a direction that she had no interest in taking it and no warning that he would take it that way, then whenever you have these future interactions, you just have to wonder. It would be in the back of your mind in a way that, for me, it just wouldn't, frankly. Nothing like this has ever happened where I would question, where is this going? I mean, you always have to wonder, why does a source want to talk to you? What's their motivation? Are they trying to spin some sort of story or something? But in terms of this sort of thing, it's just not even something that

would cross my mind, really. And I'm totally privileged in the sense that that's not something that I've really had to consider. And I was reading a story in the Daily News by Disha Thosar. Yeah, that was really good. a story in the Daily News by Disha Thosar. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah, and she was responding to this specific incident, but also discussing some analogous incidents in her own past that

are really pretty disturbing and creepy too. And it's just really a situation where the job is challenging enough as it is, and there are plenty of times that I've been anxious about something when it comes to writing or reporting or intimidated by some situation. of the job itself. Walking into a clubhouse, talking to major leaguers when you're a young person, that's going to be something that will take some getting used to for most people.

And just, am I going to find a source who can tell me about this? And will the source speak to me? All these things are just constant sources of stress, but they're just all related to the job itself and baseball and just the mechanics of writing and reporting. And there's not this whole additional layer where, you know, even more disturbing than just those sort of standard professional anxieties is this whole, this person is harassing me. This person is stalking me. This person won't leave me alone. And having to worry about that on top of everything else, it's just terrible. Like I felt so bad reading about this woman's story and the situation that she was in and just, you know, being away from home, being away from her native language, all of that,

trying to do a new job in a new place, and then having to deal with this. In addition to all of that, it's just a situation that no one should be placed in. Yeah, and I think one of the parts of this that was so heartbreaking was that, as you mentioned, ESPN was tipped to this in 2017 and decided not to publish at the time because she was concerned about what the ramifications would be for her professionally, even though she is not at fault for any of this.

And then when she saw that Porter had been hired as a GM and was going to be in a position of even greater power and authority within the industry, she felt compelled to speak up so that this couldn't happen to someone else, right? Especially when he was going to be clearly not above any repercussions or reproach, but just in a position where he could push that power differential even further. You know, she says in this piece, my number one motivation is I want to prevent this from happening to someone else, she told ESPN through an interpreter. Obviously,

he's in a much greater position of power. I want to prevent that from happening again. The other thing is I never really got the notion that he was truly sorry. And I think one of the other parts of this that is so frustrating is that we talk a lot about sort of perseverance as a virtue. And in baseball generally, right? We talk about perseverance when we're talking about minor leaguers kind of getting through the slog of having to climb the ladder. And we talk about the perseverance of, you know, holding out until you get a full-time writing job. And there's all kinds of perseverance that we laud. And then there's this stuff, right?

There's having to work through circumstances like this. There's having to keep track of men who have behaved badly toward you and then gauging like well when when do i have to say something so that i can spare someone else from this and it shouldn't be her responsibility to hold porter accountable right she was victimized by this man she shouldn't have to be the one that you know keeps tabs on him so that he doesn't get to a point where she's like i gotta i gotta speak up because he's gonna be a gm and he might he might try this again with someone else when he's even more powerful you know it's just so often the responsibility for monitoring this stuff and saying something about it and holding people to account falls to the people who are most vulnerable.

And some of that is going to be unavoidable because we want to hear the sort of story and testimony of people's lived experience. And I understand that part. And I also understand that people who do this are adept at kind of concealing their capacity from it from from the people they don't want to know and so if you're you know another man working with porter maybe you have no idea that he was capable of this because he wasn't sending you dick pics right right? Yeah. But the problem with that is that it puts people who are on the receiving end of harassment

in the position where they have to be advocates for themselves and other people. And I think when I talk to other women or non-binary folks in the industry, that responsibility to try to protect one another is one that I think a lot of people take really seriously, and I think that that's a good thing, but it shouldn't be, it shouldn't really be on us, at least not by ourselves to, to warn people off and, and make sure that people are, are held to account.

Like this is an institutional problem and it demands an institutional solution, not an individual one. So I think that's the part that's the other part of this that was just like this poor gal decides that she has to leave a career that she presumably worked really hard for and then she's having to keep tabs on this loser to make sure that you know someone somewhere finally is like enough enough with jared porter so it's not just the interaction itself but it clearly went beyond that one interaction, you know, as unpleasant as that was. And as much as it may have colored or made her wary of other interactions that she had with other people in baseball, as she says in the story, she turned down opportunities to travel certain places when Porter was with the Diamondbacks.

You know, she was understandably reluctant to go to Arizona to cover them. She runs into him at a batting cage or sees him at a batting cage at some point and left the area because she felt uncomfortable there. And she says, while I was hiding, I was frustrated. Why do I have to hide? You know, so it's, he's the one who's committing the transgression, but then she's the one who has to absent herself because of what he did. And that just reverberates beyond, you know, this initial text chain. Then it's just, well, this is impairing my ability to do my job effectively and comfortably as well. Yeah. And so, you know, we see that part and it drives home the very real jeopardy that you can feel both sort of professionally and physically when this kind of stuff happens. And then you fast forward to trying to hold Porter to account.

And, you know, this story broke so late, like, you late, it's possible that you might have woken up to him being fired and not even have heard the incidents that precipitated that firing. And I have questions about exactly where in this process, the scrutiny and the rigor of the Mets hiring process sort of fell down. And I don't say that as if there's an easy answer there because, you know, he worked for another team before this. And I think the Cubs have some questions that they need to answer about the institutional culture that they cultivated and why this kind of behavior wasn't something that ever really escalated to them and that they weren't cognizant of. Yeah. Should we say what happened with the other Cubs employee?

Yeah, I guess this is the time for that. That's the other thing. It's like there are so many different threads at this. It's hard to keep it straight. But after she had sent this message with the help of an interpreter to say, you know, you got to stop this. This is inappropriate. but said she was concerned about possible repercussions. That summer, she said she had developed a serious sleeping problem and was wracked with anxiety about whether she had made the wrong decision in coming to the U.S. Eventually, the woman said she told her bosses, who referred her to a lawyer and connected her with a Cubs employee from her home country. The woman and the employee met during the 2016 postseason in Chicago. The woman did not want to identify the employee publicly because she feared retribution. The employee, she said, told her Porter wanted to apologize in person. She said she did not want to identify the employee publicly because she feared retribution. The employee, she said, told her Porter wanted to apologize in person.

She said she did not want to see him. And as an aside, like, look, there's going to be a variety of preferences when it comes to this. But like the theme that some of these stories have where the guy doing the harassing is like, but let me see you in person so I can apologize. It's like she'd already seen much more of him than she wanted to don't understand what's going on here yeah she doesn't want to engage with you she said she did not want to see him the employee she said encouraged her to use the situation to her advantage she said he pressed her numerous times on whether she planned to file a lawsuit against porter in an interview on monday the employee confirmed he knows porter and the woman and that he had discussed the situation with both.

When asked by ESPN if he told the woman to use the situation to her advantage, the employee said, I was just listening to both. I didn't want to ruin anything. I didn't want to be on one side. Following the Cubs' victory over Cleveland for their first World Series championship in 108 years, Porter left the organization to join the Diamondbacks as an assistant GM. The woman said she remained in touch with the C cubs employee and saw him at spring training in 2017 when she said she was still considering filing a lawsuit the employee became angry she said and they haven't spoken since the employee denied getting angry adding that whenever i was talking to her i was basically listening to her the woman declined to pursue legal action and told the espn she has no

plans to do so and the cubs released a statement saying that they didn't know about any of this so flash forwards this happens she leaves the u.s she leaves journalism porter is hired she re-engages with espn the story breaks porter is fired and then earlier this afternoon the mets specifically sandy alderson held a press conference to discuss his firing and this incident. And then things got even more frustrating. And I think at several points, I sent several people text messages saying, I am on fire. Yeah. I am on fire.

Yeah. The first issue here is that Alderson, and we will not repeat his mistake, named the country that this woman is from, which I'm sure some keen little detective is trying to sort out who this woman is. We would encourage you to not do it because she specifically said she didn't want to. She's credible enough for ESPN,

so she should be credible enough for you. And then when pressed about the hiring process that the Mets engaged in, Sandy Alderson said, and here I'm quoting from a tweet from Yahoo's Hannah Kaiser. Sandy Alderson said, they got all glowing reviews of character in the interview process with Porter. So I asked if they consulted any women and he said no. And there's more to this quote. This is from our pal Bradford William Davis

of the New York Daily News, who was kind enough to check the transcript for me. Here is Alderson's full response. No, that's one of the unfortunate circumstances that exists in the game today. There aren't women in those positions with whom one can have a conversation and develop information or check references.

So here's the thing. That's bullshit. And Alderson, whether he realizes or not, is revealing some really fundamental and serious issues with both their hiring process and the industry. They're just not the issues that he thinks that he's highlighting. I think we have talked a great deal on this podcast

how there aren't enough senior women in the game, but there are some. Porter worked with one of them. With the Red Sox? Yeah, so Porter was with the Red Sox for a long time, and I will not say that I've gone back through and sort of cross-referenced their exact timelines and whose title was what when, but Raquel Ferreira is an assistant GM with the Red Sox. And while she wasn't, while Porter was with the team, she is now and presumably worked with him. So

that's like one reference that he could have called. And in situations like this, it's valuable not only to talk to senior people, but to talk to more junior people, because you're going to get a better sense of what someone is like day to day, how they treat the people around them, what their culture is. If you talk to people who were more junior than that person. And I don't know, you know, the full roster of baseball ops for the Cubs or the Diamondbacks while Porter was there. But I find it very hard to believe that he didn't overlap with at least one woman in the course of working there. And those are the people who you want to try to get some background on. And if you're not in a position to be able to reach out to any of them, I think you need to think really carefully about your hiring process because people are really good at managing up, right?

Harassers are really good at hiding their harassment from more senior people who are in a position to either give them things they want or deny them those things. So those aren't the people you need to talk to. You need to talk to, you know, like the person who's having to sit there after hours seeing him at work every day. Like that's, that's the perspective that is obviously wanting here. And while I would be the very first person to say that there are not enough women in senior positions to suggest that there was no one for them to reach out to is ludicrous. It's just ludicrous on its face. And if you can't satisfy that part of due diligence then you've got much bigger problems and you need to think really carefully about

what kind of department you're running and what kind of environment you're providing for the people who work for you like i can't imagine what it would feel like to be a woman who works for the mets and here's that quote it's like well who the hell did you talk to then? Ah, I have tried to be like calm about this because again, it didn't happen to me. And I know that there are gonna be people who look at this and are like, well, she's just being hysterical, but it's just so fucking disheartening

because we feel like we're getting somewhere, anywhere at all. And then stuff like this happens. And it's not as if he didn't face consequences. And in that respect, I think we have made a lot of progress. But this suggests that one, that Alderson doesn't have women in his network he can reach out to and say, hey, maybe you don't know this guy, but you know other women probably, can you do some background work on this for me? So that's a problem. So there's the problem of him not having a sufficiently robust network to tap someone who isn't a man to do background

on a person who he is counting on to help steer the organizational culture of his team. So there's that part. And then there's like the implication here that, again, it is the responsibility of women to check behavior like this. And I don't have a satisfactory answer about how you necessarily course correct that. But I think that you have to go in asking hard questions about people because it's really easy to think someone's nice when you're not the target of their harassment. Of course you do. Again, he wasn't sending Sandy dick pics. Right.

So you got to do a little more work. This is one of the most important hires your organization is going to make. And you hopefully don't have to do it very often. Although, as we've noted, there has been weird turnover there where the Mets are concerned. You want it to you want it to be a person who is going to help to move your organization forward into like a new era. And you're starting it off on this stuff, which suggests to me that you aren't asking all the right questions and you're certainly not asking the hard ones.

So I think that that needs to be prioritized and i don't think we can just leave it up to the good chance that teams do it like this needs to be something again this is another place where it's just very clear that there needs to be a firmer hand applied to the way that teams and the league do their hiring because left to their own devices, they leave really important gaps that result in having to fire a guy after a month because he harassed someone a couple years ago. Like, what are we doing?

Yeah. And a couple of things, I guess. First, Alderson letting slip the woman's nationality. That just highlights, I think, again, why women are reluctant to come forward with this sort of story because, A, they might face active, you know, malicious retaliation. I hope that that's not what this was, that this one of the reasons she cited for not having spoken up about this sooner because she was concerned about the blowback. And now even having left that industry, she said in the story, you know, in the culture of her country that there is still a tendency for women who become embroiled in something like this to be blamed for it. And she just didn't want that. She didn't want to deal with that. And so this maybe makes it more likely that she will. Clearly, she considered it very important that she be anonymous. The ESPN story was careful about not providing that

information. And so for Alderson to just let it slip on a conference call with seemingly no awareness of what that meant or why he shouldn't have done that, that just sort of speaks to the larger cultural issue, I guess, where you just might not be as sensitive to this sort of thing as you should be. That's one thing. Another thing I think is that, yes, I agree with everything you said about the failure to talk to a woman or women at some point in the hiring process. There's also, I guess, you know, the question of, well, would it have made a difference? You know, would a woman have known that there was this aspect of Porter's personality? And possibly not, right? And it's hard to say what was known about him and what wasn't. And that's something that has also come up in the aftermath of this because a lot of people are re-examining the things that people said and wrote about Porter just last month when he was hired. And he largely got glowing reviews from media members, from people in baseball who were cited by media members. You know, the overwhelming drumbeat was sort of, this is a great guy, or people in baseball think that this is a great guy. And I would imagine that most of those people, perhaps all of those people who said that

he's a great guy, really thought that was the case and didn't know about this incident. I mean, it's hard to believe, I think, that this was a totally isolated, unique incident because it just went so far beyond the pale that it's really kind of far-fetched to think that this was the single time that he ever transgressed in this way. And so it would not be shocking if other incidents come to light like this. But that just kind of makes me question the way that we talk about people in the game. How should we portray this sort of thing? Because part of Porter's hiring, you know, the implication was that he was going to be this person who was going to help change the Mets culture after years of dysfunction. And so it wasn't just whatever baseball acumen he has that led to his hiring. It was at least in part his personality and the fact that all of these prominent people presumably were willing to vouch for him or say what a great guy he was. And based on their experience, I'm sure to them, he was a great guy in whatever ways people are great to them. And so it's something that I've been thinking about because you hear all the time, oh, this is one of the good guys in baseball or just a great guy.

And depending on the source, like your level of knowledge of how great the guy actually is might vary. Like, you know, someone might be great in their interactions with you, but you're only seeing one side of their personality. And if you're in a certain class of people, you might these things come out and various people say, what a great guy he is. I how he was arrested and charged with domestic violence and multiple counts and all of that. I don't know how much awareness of that there was, but certainly there was some line crossing behavior that was not widely known, at least among certain people, you know, and maybe was widely known among others. And there is a clear divide between the people who might not know about that and the people who might, and it would probably be better if there were no divide and everyone was aware of these things. And it can be difficult because in this business, like sometimes you work remotely, you're kind of cut off from people. You know them in a limited sense.

You know them in the sense that they're in the same sort of professional sphere and you have some sort of surface level interactions with them. You know, Kerry, he wrote for Fangraphs like he wrote for Grantland when I was writing for Grantland. Like we had interactions. You know, I was on his podcast, he was on my podcast. It didn't go beyond that. You know, I didn't know him on a personal level. I met him a few times at industry events and there were just very superficial interactions other than that. And, you know, there were no red flags in that, but you wouldn't expect there to be. And so you just kind of have to be conscious

of what you know or don't know about a person. I haven't worked in an office for so long. I don't cover a team. I'm not at the ballpark every day. I don't go to the winter meetings anymore. There are lots of people I've worked with whom I've never met and people I talk to on Gchat all the time who I've never met or I rarely see. And you'd think of them as contacts or acquaintances or internet friends or even friends. But you still don't entirely know what they're like in quote-unquote real life or behind closed doors. And someone in a front office who answers a question once in a while or answers my emails might be friendly, might be helpful. It's just hard to

say much more than that. And so when you're hiring someone for this sort of position, I guess it is incumbent upon you to talk to as many people from as wide a cross section as you can to try to get an informed perspective. And you still might not know everything. Some people are just good at hiding the parts of themselves that they don't want people to see. And if that's the case, then you say, well, this was a mistake, but perhaps not an avoidable one. Not every mistake is someone's fault. But in this case, it seems like there was a failure to talk to people who, again, might not necessarily have known that this sort of thing was going on, but at least a handful of people knew based on the ESPN story. And did the awareness go beyond that? I don't know, but you would expect that there was more to know than just this single story. And what the Mets did or didn't do here is I'm sure not unique to the Mets. This is probably

pretty common in hiring even for these high-level positions. And as we said, this was the fourth team that employed Porter in a prominent role. So the Mets may not have gone about this in a way that other teams wouldn't have. But when something like this happens, maybe it can be kind of a wake up call for the industry as a whole. Yeah. And I really want to be clear that I'm not suggesting any individual person had specific knowledge of this and didn't say anything about it. But I think the quandary you raise is a good one. And just practically, and I think that this is something that is useful for folks to think about regardless of the industry that they're in. You know, we only know our co-workers so well.

And we know them in a very specific context. And we know them in a very specific context. And harassers are adept at manipulating people so that they conceal their harassment. You know, abusers are good at picking their spots and putting on a face that can be very charming and friendly and positive. And so I don't want anyone's takeaway to be that you have to assume that everyone you encounter is a monster until proven otherwise. I think that what's useful for people to internalize

is the possibility that they might be wrong and that that realization can be a painful one, but that how and where you process that realization can be really important to be mindful of, right? So when the news broke of Jonah's abuse, there were a lot of people who I respect and like and have had beers with who were very surprised by what had happened. And they, I think, in a way that is very human, but was still irritating, chose to process that surprise sort of on Twitter.

Yeah. And you're right that not everyone's going to know everything. And I think that women and non-binary folks who are trying to protect one another have whisper networks for a reason, right? And they're trying to strike this balance between protecting each other and making sure no one gets in a bad spot while also navigating a really difficult

power dynamic. But I think that it's useful to just remember because you don't necessarily know everyone who you're a work acquaintance with or who's a media personality, the possibility exists for them to be different than what you assume and so you should you should uh feel free to process that surprise but just do it somewhere else right do it do it in private not because it isn't a valid reaction but because a lot of other people are gonna look at that and sort of wonder um how how trustworthy you are when it comes to potentially sharing a different uncomfortable story. And maybe trustworthy is not the right word, but sort of how centered and focused on the experience and the abuse or harassment that you're describing that person is going to be if

they're, you know, sort of bound up in processing their shock and surprise. And so I just think it's good for us to all remember that harassers are canny and abusers are canny. And it's not surprising when you don't know that if you haven't been on the receiving end of it. But we've done this enough times now where we can probably be a little less shocked. we can probably be a little less shocked. And so just be mindful of that because unfortunately, you never know who is going to have to deal with this kind of debilitating nonsense next. And you just want to be a person

who can be a safe port of call. So yeah, I think that that's my answer about that and you know it's okay for it to be disappointed this is wildly disappointing yeah right you know and that can be part of your that can be part of your reaction but just be mindful of whose sort of perspective and experience you're prioritizing when you're broadcasting that reaction is all you know yeah we all need a group chat yeah i mean you you have to just like to go through life i think you have to assume the best of people like until you learn otherwise like you just generally assume that the people you meet are not monsters, because it would be tough to go through life looking at everyone that way. And most people are not that way, right? And so most people who are

supposed to be good people, probably generally they are, although we're all imperfect in various ways. But you can't just assume that everyone is hiding something like this or it would be difficult to trust anyone or really have any meaningful relationships with anyone. And so, yeah, I guess, you know, it just makes sense to examine why you didn't know something perhaps at times like, you know, that might tell you something. You know, like when all of the revelations about Jonah Carey came out, you know, I sort of wondered, like, well, what does it mean that I was not aware of this? You know, I didn't know the man on that level and, like, you know, never saw him with his family or anything. So I wouldn't have necessarily known about that. But the fact that some people knew about some things and I didn't, I felt bad about it. I wondered, you know, should I have known about this?

Should I have helped in some way if I had been more aware or more sensitive to that somehow? You know, I never had any interaction with Jared Porter, but I'm sure that if I had talked to him, I probably would have come away with the same impression that it seems like just about everyone who talked to him in a professional capacity came away with. So it's not as if, you know, I feel like some sort of super judge of character who could detect this dark side in people. I know that's not the case. And so if it's someone that I feel like I do know on some level, I guess I would just want to not deny that I was missing something when more information comes out. And just to be conscious of the fact that there might be things that I don't know and that, you know, processing, as you said, the fact that I didn't know that or that it was surprising to me is probably not the most important day one response to that. So yeah, I think that if you are, if you're conscious of not being defensive about it, and you're thoughtful about how you work through what you did or didn't know, you're a lot of the way there. So I think that it's a hard thing

to do well. But that doesn't mean that we aren't more practiced with it than we ought to be. So we should think about that because all of this, our objection to Porter's behavior, our frustration with the way that the Mets handled this conversation as it progressed, our kind of critical engagement with the discourse around it. What we're trying to do is make work safer for people. That's what this is about. It's about making work safe for people because this is people's jobs, right? It's, you know, it's a cool job. It's a job a lot of people want. I think it's a job that a lot of people think they would bear a lot of discomfort for, and I think that's true, but it's still a job and it needs to be safe and it needs to be respectful

and it needs to be a place where you don't see anyone's dick you don't want to see. Yes, exactly. Just to call this specific one like I see it. Don't want to see it. No, thank you. Don't send people unsolicited pictures of your body. Don't do that.

The fact that that was Porter's initial defense when ESPN reached him, he first said he hadn't sent any images, which is just not true according to the images that were shown. And then he said that the more explicit ones were like joke stock images or something, which like A indistinguishable from the real thing to the intended recipient and therefore no less disturbing or inappropriate. So the fact that he somehow thought that was, you know, that that would make him look less bad or something. Just goes to show, I guess,

just how deep-rooted this sort of thing is. So there's going to be an MLB investigation into this as well. So they're going to be digging into Porter. Perhaps other things will come to light, or maybe they will just be sort of solidifying the timeline of this isolated incident. But either way, one would imagine that there may be a suspension forthcoming after that, after which he would then have to apply for reinstatement, similar to the Brendan Taubman incident with the Astros. And, you know, after that, maybe he would one day be eligible to work in baseball again, but I would think that people will not be lining up to hire him again anytime soon. So it's good that he was swiftly dismissed and will face some consequences for this and that that at least was not dragged out because the Mets did put out a statement shortly after the report was published just on short notice,

or I guess it was even part of the report that they responded to the ESPN reporters. And initially Alderson in that statement said something about how he's taken responsibility and he feels remorse and he apologized. And that initially led you to believe, well, maybe they're not going to fire him because ultimately that's almost irrelevant, whether he feels remorse or something. And that can sometimes be a prelude to keeping a person in that job. But maybe that was just, you know, something you say to say something while you are moving toward a firing. Steve Cohen did get rid of him early on Tuesday. And Steve Cohen, of course, as we've discussed, not the white knight here, not the person with a spotless record either when it comes to interactions with women or workplace harassment. him or his company for that sort of thing too. But it's a positive at least that Porter was let go and that there's one less person inclined to do this sort of thing in baseball right now. But again, to treat it as a Porter problem or a Taubman problem really discounts the fact that it does go beyond that. And there are certainly people with other incidents like that in their

past who are still working in baseball and it's a difficult thing to root out. But, you know, I guess one Jared Porter dismissal at a time, you slowly lurch toward some sort of progress here. But it's dismaying that this has to keep coming up. Yeah, it is. Keep your dicks to yourself, guys. Just keep them to yourself also 60 text messages yeah that's i think that we would all be well served to just be more mindful of one another's boundaries because i think that you know in our personal communication and living

with each other as humans like that that is challenging and it is open to misinterpretation but it's also sometimes really clear and we don't need to over complicate the moments when it's really clear and you know if someone's not responding to you after 10 text messages that's clear that's a boundary so yeah we just need to, you know, it is a very important thing that we all be mindful of one another's boundaries. And like, this isn't just about, this is like blatant workplace harassment. This is not, this is a, this isn't a hard one to diagnose. Right.

In general, it's just a good thing to all be mindful of, of that and to be, to be attuned to it because sometimes it's hard to suss out but i think a lot of the time it's pretty simple and if we're on the look for it we're gonna we're gonna find it and then we're gonna go no problem be well yep yeah and you just have to wonder whether in this case he did what he did because he felt like the person that he was harassing was especially vulnerable to that and would not have people to talk to about it. Maybe he did this to other people too, and maybe that will come to light. But also maybe he managed to restrain himself when he felt like he was more likely to get caught or that it was more likely to get reported.

That makes it, you know, sort of all the more despicable that he sort of targeted this person who maybe would not be as able to to call him on it or get him in trouble for it. Yeah, I don't know it, but I suspect it. And as Lindsay Adler tweeted, Jared Porter's actions were extreme, a clear situation that required obvious action. Most of these incidents are not as cut and dry, do not lend themselves to easy solutions. action. Most of these incidents are not as cut and dry, do not lend themselves to easy solutions. So we will banish Jared Porters from the rest of this podcast as he has been banished from the Mets and from baseball for right now. There is no really smooth segue from something like this to just talking about transactions. There have been some trades and some signings that we wanted to touch on. One of them did actually involve the Mets. And so I guess we can start there. This was the last act of Jared Porter's brief and extremely undistinguished career as a general manager.

What a weird 24 hours the Mets comm staff has had. Right. We'll leave it at that and move on to deals. There were deals. There were trades. There were signings. Padres got Joe Musgrove. Yeah.

The Padres now, as you said, they just won't stop adding. Last time we talked about them was because Dan dan simborski had rerun the projections and they were neck and neck with the dodgers so i suppose that means that if he were to rerun the projections again i don't know perhaps they would be a tip of a nose ahead at this point if you if you believe in the playing time apportionments there but anyway The point is they got another Solid starter and Joe Musgrove Was I suppose the ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates and

The ace of the Pittsburgh Pirates that Translates to maybe like a fourth Starter with the Padres right now who Just have this stacked rotation They now have the Number one war projection of Any rotation in baseball And we were like marveling at it after they got Darvish and Snell. Now it's Darvish and Snell and Nelson Lumet, who hopefully for their sake will be healthy, and Joe Musgrove and Chris Paddock and top prospects like Mackenzie Gore and Adrian Morajon waiting in the wings, and then Mike Clevenger, perhaps, in 2022.

I mean, this is just quite a group. And yet again, they did it while holding on to their inner circle of prospects. So this was a three-team trade with the Padres and the Mets and the Pirates. The Padres got Musgrove. The Mets got Joey Lucchese. The Pirates got five prospects And I guess All you know not Top of the line blue chip type

Prospects and that's like one of the impressive Things is that Padres keep Making deals they keep digging into their farm System to get these good or great Players and yet It seems like they still have a really strong farm system remaining. And like a lot of their top prospects that someone might have deemed untouchable were untouched.

I mean, they've traded some pretty promising players like Luis Patino, but in a lot of cases, they have managed to extract these talented players from other teams while holding on to the players that they consider essential and that will help ensure that this is not just a you know one or two or three year run at contention but that they can maybe hope to sort of sustain this in a dodgers-esque fashion yeah it's i think that given this struck me as like a fair, this struck me as a fair return for Joe Musgrove. Like Joe Musgrove is a good pitcher. As you said, he was the best pitcher on the pirates slot in somewhere toward the middle

or the back of the Padres rotation. I don't think that he rates like a, you know, one of their top guys, but yeah, it is sort of a remarkable thing that they haven't been able to piece together moves that directly address issues that they have been able to piece together moves that directly address issues that they have particularly when it comes to starting pitching depth and have done that

while still maintaining their top guys including their top pitching prospect right and so it is a it is a really it is a really dodgers-esque way of kind of building this. I think that for a long time, we have lauded Los Angeles for knowing which prospects to sort of hold on to and which ones to let go of. Sometimes they have done that and at the time have met criticism that they aren't sort of targeting the right guys and they always seem to manage to come out ahead on that score.

And so, yeah, it's a formidable group and it'll continue to deepen as some of these guys get closer to the majors or make their debuts. I mean, you know, at some point, they do bump up against both their active roster and their 40-man constraints, but they've even managed to do the necessary consolidation

that we knew they would have to do as they bump up against that 40-man while holding on to the we knew they would have to do as they bump up against that 40 man while holding on to the guys who they really want to keep and don't want to expose but getting much more than they would if all they were doing were sort of 40 man consolidation trades so yeah it's a pretty impressive bit of business and i think that you know if we were going to say anything about the depth that they had assembled was that they still needed to account for the fact that some of their guys are hurt or have seemed injury prone. But at a certain point, there's just enough depth there that you just don't worry about it quite as much. I say that and then darkness will befall them.

But yeah, I think that this is a very savvy move on their part. It's also, as Ben Clemens noted when he wrote it up for Fangraphs, you know, it's one of those trades that sort of lines up nicely for everyone involved. Like the Mets need depth at the starting position also, right? Because they're not going to get Cindergard back until midway through the year, and they still have other injury stuff. So the two clubs that are trying to do something this year

got what they needed. The Pirates are getting prospects who are further away from the majors but that's what they want to given where they are in their competitive window so a weird trade that sort of works out well for everyone and has to leave the dodgers feeling a little nervous do you think they're nervous yet if we were to take the internal temperature of the dodgers front office and they had a they'd taken true sermon they had to answer us honestly do you think that they would admit to being a little bit nervous yeah i would think so they they probably should be at this point they might express that in terms of like probabilities and percentile outcomes of projections sure that they would i don't doubt that they would but but yes i would

think so i guess it depends sort of like what the playoff format for this season is which we still don't know right that might matter in terms of like you know whether it's actually significant whether they win the nl west or not you know it it might not matter all that much if they go with the giant expanded post season again it might be a sort of a fun race but like a fairly low stakes race if they're both going to get in and and one's not going to have a way easier path to a pennant or a title yeah although i had this thought when the news came through also. It's like, you know what all that starting depth is good for? The gauntlet of a compressed. True.

I was about to say a compressed schedule, and by that I mean fewer days off, but an expanded playoff format. format that also necessitates fewer days off than in the past or even no days off like we had last year that you won't find the Padres sitting there saying they don't have the depth to run through that gauntlet. So I think you're right. But also the moves they have made kind of reinforce them in important ways for the postseason also, although I guess your fifth starters utility is not as significant if you do have days off, but then they'll probably just put Joe Musgrove in the bullpen. Yeah, I feel like I sort of slept on Musgrove and how effective he's been, maybe partly because he was pitching for the Pirates, partly because his FIPS have outpaced his ERAs, so his peripherals have been more impressive than the runs allowed. And, you know, I don't know, maybe just because the stuff isn't

like jaw dropping, but he's been very effective and was more effective in 2020. And, you know, it's eight starts. So I don't know whether that represents a real change in ability or not, but his strikeout rate really spiked and he had a very impressive strikeout minus walk ratio and all of those things that you want to see. And I guess it's like the rare instance of a player who came to the Pirates and improved in recent seasons because there's been so much focus on like Garrett Kohler, Tyler Glasnow, you know, players that the Pirates have traded who have then gone on to better things with their new organizations.

This is an example of a player who came over from the astros and has pitched better with the pirates and so i guess a rare bright spot but now he's gone and yeah like as you said it makes sense at this point i suppose that the pirates would just continue to tear down because it's not like Joe Musgrove was going to make much of a difference for them in 2021. But you're really left with not a whole lot to watch or get excited for on that team now. I mean, there's Cabrian Hayes, you know, there are maybe some other promising players or prospects, but just not a lot of eye-catching talent on that roster and

now i think after this trade they have the lowest team war projection of any team on the fancraft depth charts not surprising and you know it's a whole new regime there and it's ben sharrington and it's john baker and it's like people who have some Track record of building contending Teams and stockpiling Talent and all that and so That's encouraging I guess like to Give those people prospects That they can start to develop

But in the long run it's Also still sort of depressing because Bob Nutting continues to own the team And as long as he does There's no real reason to expect them To ever invest in this roster or to surround those homegrown players with great imported players. So you just, I guess, have to hope that you get lucky for a few years as they did last decade and and were able to put some contending teams together it just seems like as long as they have that ownership group there the ceiling and and the duration in which the window remains open will probably be limited they still have

slightly higher projected payroll than cleveland does so that's something that's something ben do you have any players i wonder if this is an experience that you have also had do you have any players who's where your impression of that player was shaped by one particularly good or bad performance and then by virtue of either just not paying attention or where they pitched or hit, you find yourself very surprised when you have to go and update your priors and realize that you thought them to be much worse than they were for much longer. Do you have any players who are like that? I'm trying to think of examples. I'm sure there's some like from my younger years when I was evaluating players differently and would have taken certain things at face value and then look back years later and you're looking at the advanced stats and it's like oh maybe that

player was not so good or maybe that player was better than I ever gave him credit for but yeah and you see that like signature performance where someone has like a 10 strikeout game or something and you think oh boy this person is going to be great and then that never really happens and and you're continually surprised every time you see that it still hasn't happened i i had a an impression of joe musgrove as being one of the worst starters in baseball and it was entirely the result of me having seen him pitch while he was still with the Astros. He pitched a game against the Mariners on my birthday. And the Mariners won that game. This was in 2017, and they won that game 13 to 3.

And Musgrove gave up, he gave up just a bushel of runs. But he had a particularly bad bottom of the third when the Mariners entered the frame, tied with Houston 1-1 and left the frame up 7-1. He gave up home runs to Mike Zanino and Kyle Seeger, and this was still when my fandom was still relatively strong. And so it felt like he was giving me a little present on my birthday because he let the Mariners win and went decisively.

And several of the guys who I liked, some of whom were objectively good and some of whom were not, do fun stuff. And my impression of Musgrove remained fixed in amber. And then he got traded. And I was like, I have had a bad impression of Joe Musgrove, an incomplete understanding for years. And then it made me worry that I had had to talk about him on a podcast

at any point in between my birthday in 2017 and Sunday and had done him a disservice and had incorrectly assessed his talents. And so he just made me think about, you see one guy have a really bad night, and sometimes that's your understanding of him for years, years and years. Very unfair to him as a player because he is not that guy anymore, even if he is not a true ace, though he was the Pirates ace. But anyway, yeah. Yeah, I underrated him too.

And yeah, I guess that can happen maybe when a player is on the Pirates and sort of disappears into obscurity. It's like, you know, not that their accomplishments are not worthy of being recognized, but it's just your eye is drawn to that player's performances and that team's performances a little less often whereas if he's you know making a playoff run with some team then you would have cause to reevaluate him much sooner than he gets traded to a contending team and it's

like oh i didn't really realize just how effective joe musgrove has been yeah and i think part of it too is that he had been you know he he didn't throw he only had eight starts in 2020 and you know no one had a ton of starts but he had even fewer than I think most starters did and so it was just the 2020 sample didn't jump out at you it was like less than 40 innings and then you know and then he just was even when even when his FIP fortune started to diverge from his ERA, like you said, he was with the Pirates in 2018. Like, nobody's, right? And so he was worth almost three and a half wins in 2019. I don't know if I remember seeing a single frame of the 170 innings that he threw that year.

I don't think I saw a single one. Maybe. It's possible I didn't see a single one. So anyway, I owe Joe Musgrove an apology for having just a terrible understanding of his career. But I guess we will see much more of him. And then we will have to see if the 2020 version is the true Joe or not. So we'll get a chance. Yeah.

If you go by Fangraph's War, he's been worth about six and a half wins over the past three seasons. If you go by Baseball Reference War, he's been worth about, I don't know, three. So there is a 3.6, I guess. So there's quite a big Difference there like almost twice As valuable according to one war As the other and that's because

As I was saying he's got good FIPS And fancrafts war is based on FIP And baseball reference is based on Actual runs allowed and So if you're looking at that retrospectively Opinions differ on How you should credit that but If you're looking at that retrospectively, opinions differ on how you should credit that. But if you're looking at it prospectively and projecting what he might do for the Padres,

then you should probably pay more attention to the FIPS because that tends to be a better predictor, even though he's had a few years now of underperforming his FIPS ERA-wise. But he has like a not a Hugely elevated BABIP I guess he's had a bit of a tendency To give up home runs on Fly balls and so Maybe that's something that will be persistent

I don't know maybe going To San Diego will help slightly Although that's hardly the pitcher's park that it Used to be but yeah Everyone can now appreciate Joe Musgrove for what he is, a serviceable or more than serviceable mid-rotation major league starter on what will be a contending team. And I'll just mention that there was also a report

that the Padres are considering a six-man rotation, which is perhaps not shocking given that they have six men or more who all seem like they can be capable pitchers here. And this is not an isolated thing. It seems like this might be a bit of a trend for 2021 because you have pitchers who are coming off of 2020 and the light workloads and all the injuries that we saw from pitchers who tried to ramp up too soon, perhaps. And we talked about this last year, I think, whether there would be any long-term effect from that. And one might be that teams will just take a more cautious approach when it comes to pitcher usage. And Ben Clemens wrote about this for Fangraphs last week, quite timely,

and he broke down the math. And when he did this it seemed like the Padres had the most to lose of any team just because using the depth charts at the time like the drop off I guess from their projected fifth to sixth starters maybe was greater than most teams but that has changed now that they have added Musgrove and really for most teams it was just a very small just like single digit run total anyway. And that's presuming that the pitchers who are on more rest won't just pitch better, which is possible that that could happen on an imprinting basis. So it's hard to say like exactly what the effect of giving guys more rest is, but I think it makes sense. It's not surprising.

It seems that other teams are considering this the tigers the mariners maybe some other teams and it's not like the tigers and mariners rotations are so stacked i don't know in their case maybe it's just like they have so few good starters that it just like almost doesn't matter how many are in the rotation at any one time you think like the teams with more good pitchers and depth would be more inclined to do this, but maybe you get to a level of like interchangeability where it's just like, yeah, I don't know, who cares? Just like throw all these guys out there.

It won't be that big a difference between them. But yeah, this is something we might see with the Padres and across baseball in general. And I wonder whether that's something that will stick. Like if you do have back-to-back seasons where starter workloads are even more light than they have been lately, and that's coming on the heels of just the general downturn in pitcher workloads, like it might be kind of unlikely that everyone bounces back to even where it was in like 2019 or something because after a couple years of lighter

workloads maybe that just becomes the norm and we go even further toward this like you know future model where it's all just pitchers and hardly even have the the you know distinction between starters and relievers anymore for most non-elite guys yeah i think you know with them it's a combination of the baseline layoff that everyone is dealing with and some of the individual pitcher injuries that they have or trying to navigate and you know this is i think that you're right that generally they were thought to be a team that wasn't going to be necessarily the best equipped for this but now they're their secondary options are just more robust than they were even a week ago. So why not try to keep everybody healthy,

especially if the drop-off isn't that significant and you have a bullpen you believe in and that you think can bolster the rotation if they go a little short. So I don't know. They're just going to be really good. It's going to be great. I don't know why I'm whispering, but I am. And I saw Baseball America tweet, and I

don't know how this will compare to Eric's list for fan graphs, but according to Baseball America, the Padres still have the most top 100 prospects of any team with seven, which is pretty impressive after all the prospects they've shipped out. In terms of raw number in the top 100, In terms of raw number in the top 100, that's probably true. I'm doing that voice you do when you don't want anyone to hold you to it later. You know, it's, let's see, because, yeah, BA released their top 100 on Monday, so they can actually look at it from a firm numbers perspective. It'll be, you know, it be the the usual cast of characters when you contemplate it it'll be them or or tampa probably in terms of raw number

yeah yeah yeah ben we're we're shopping that we're shopping that top 100 right now getting we're getting ready yeah looking forward to that baseball america has the rays and the mariners and the orioles and the diamondbacks and the Tigers tied with five on the top 100 list and the Marlins and the Blue Jays with six apiece. And speaking of the Blue Jays, which we did multiple times last week, when we talked about them before, it was about how they had whiffed on several free agents or trade targets. It's funny, in the wake of the Corey Kluber signing by the Yankees, I read another report, a carbon copy of all the previous reports about the Blue Jays that said that, well, actually, he didn't sign with the Blue Jays, but the Blue Jays had been one of the

most aggressive bidders for Corey Kluber. And it was just like a Groundhog Day thing where every single time someone signs anywhere, you read that the Blue Jays were so close and they didn't quite get him. And they probably were. I don't have a reason to doubt that. And in fact, those reports about their rumored interest in other players are even more credible now because it appears that the tide is turning and in fact may be turning quite quickly. So when we talked last week, we were kind of commiserating with Blue Jays fans who had been on the verge of big splashes several times. And as we said, it seemed likely that the Blue Jays would eventually break through and get one of the players that they had set their sights on.

And as we speak, it appears that they are closing in on George Springer. There is not yet an agreement as we are recording, so we can't call it official. We can't talk terms. But all signs are pointing toward that right now, in which case we may discuss a Springer signing next time. And even before that was final, the Blue Jays had been busier. We no longer have to talk about the Blue Jays doing nothing. They have done something. They have, in fact, done multiple somethings.

We can talk for now briefly about Chatwood and yates and tyler chatwood and kirby yates are pitchers who you know in chatwood's case he's had kind of an up and down track record over the past several years he is someone sort of like robbie ray who has great stuff and impressive spin rates and has put it together at times but also has not at other times and has had a lot of control issues. I think they're right up there at the top in walk rate among guys who've pitched out of the rotation. Chatwood at this point is sort of a swing man, as are some other Blue Jays pitchers, like Tanner Roark and Ross Stripling. They've pitched out of the bullpen. They've pitched in the rotation. And Chatwood has had injury issues throughout his career.

He missed much of the 2020 season. But there's a decent group of guys there starting with Hyunjin Ryu. Obviously, they hope that Nate Pearson puts things together in his first full season. Then you've got Ray and Roark and Stripling, and they're still in the market for perhaps another top of the rotation arm, but Chatwood will be part of that mix. It's hard to say what they will get exactly from him, but he has shown a lot of promise at various times. So they're hoping to harness that again. of his health. And he had elbow issues and surgery for bone chips and missed most of 2020. That's just one of those cases where if he's healthy, maybe he will bounce back to being what he was the previous two seasons, which was a really impressive late inning arm and closer for the Padres. And that's just entirely contingent on the state of his elbow which is

pretty opaque to us but for one year and reportedly five and a half million with a few more million in incentives it's not a ton to risk it's strange when the roto news that appears on a on a player's player page at fangraphs includes both a signing and a reminder of their injury designation so the way it reads right now is yates elbow signed with the blue jays on tuesday ken rosenthal of the athletic reports yeah i think that if he is healthy this is terrific this is a great thing like they didn't really have a force like this at the back of their bullpen last year and i imagine as you said that this will not be their last really serious attempt at a free agent.

And I hope it's not the last one that they sign. But he seems like the kind of guy who you want to bring in when you're thinking, hey, I might care about the outcome of Blue Jays games late. I might want some leads to be held on to. So assuming that he's healthy, I think that this is a terrific signing he he was one of those guys who in 60 innings managed oh a 119 era and a 130 fifth in 2019 i mean like he when you're when there's a one there you're doing you're doing some some good stuff and especially when there's a one in the fifth column because like it's it's one thing to have the one era i

mean right that's pretty impressive too But usually when you see that It's like well okay maybe this person got a little lucky Or you know outperformed their peripherals It's really really difficult To have like a deserved One something ERA You know where it's like he had a 1.19 ERA And you look at it and it's like

Oh well that's what he should have had It wasn't like he had some you know Tiny BABIP or like low home run per fly ball rate or something. It's like, no, that's just like pretty much what he deserved to have based on all of his peripherals. Yeah, he in 2019 struck out.

He had a 41.6% K rate. Like, come on, come on, that's wild. This is the sort of thing where you're like, yeah, walk guys, whatever. Come on, that's wild. This is the sort of thing where you're like, yeah, walk guys, whatever. So I think that it's always hard to know what a guy's going to look like when he's coming back from injury. Bone chips is one of those things that isn't great,

but is better than some other elbow-related injuries. It sounds gross. And I imagine both in terms of it conceptually and also in a – it's probably crunchy, right? It's probably, well, you got some crunchy sound there. Yeah. But yeah, Kirby Yates, Nulia Bluejay. Yeah.

I'm just looking up just how extraordinary that is on the Fangraphs leaderboards. If you look for the lowest FIPS in any season in the lively ball era of at least 60 innings, season in the lively ball era of at least 60 innings that is the fourth best FIP on record after 2012 Craig Kimbrell 2003 Eric Gagne and 2014 Wade Davis so yeah that's one of those really elite late inning reliever seasons and with the Blue Jays I think yeah people are still waiting for the big move to come. But they had to put some players on the board. Like, it had to be quantity and quality, given the expectations that they gave their fan base about how it was going to be multiple elite players or, like, four good players. Like, they had to acquire more than just one person or two people.

So it's good that they finally landed someone and i have a feeling that they will be back in the news again quite soon so i guess before we close maybe the only other really notable signing was the nationals adding john lester so this is sort of the they did do that continued breakup of the cubs, or at least people who have been big parts of the Cubs' recent run of success being scattered to the winds. And some of those are executives, some of those are players, some of those are broadcasters. Anyway, John Lester is the latest. He signed a deal with the Nationals for $5 million that has a mutual option for 2022. Lester, of course, also seems to be someone who is firmly in the decline phase at this point, and he's had quite a career. like one of those ones that you put out there as an example of how a free agent signing can really pay off and be worth every penny and change the trajectory of your franchise.

In fact, Fangrass David Lorela had a fun fact where he pointed out that John Lester had a 636 winning percentage and a 364 ERA with the Red Sox, and he also had a 636 winning percentage and a 364 ERA with the Cubs, identical numbers. Now, as Sam Miller says, all fun facts lie, and this one lies a little bit. Yes, if you drill down a bit, Lester did have better numbers with the Red Sox, lower FIP, higher ERA+, but the fact that it was close enough in those two stints for those surface stats to be the same tells you that there really wasn't much of a drop off. And when you're signing a guy who's been successful in his 20s for his 30s, you're pretty

pleased if you get anything in the neighborhood of the production he has under his belt to that point. And after that signing, the kind of signing that the Cubs just don't seem to make anymore, he was really excellent for them on the whole, which was crucial considering their difficulties developing pitching. He had a couple of years with top 10 Cy Young finishes, one year with a runner-up Cy Young finish, you know, had huge postseason starts for them, was largely great for them in October, which is a big part of the John Lester story and really Has had quite a career on the Whole so you know now he is 37 years old and

He's lost some stuff and He's coming off kind of a Rough partial year you know 12 Starts for him 61 innings But the Nationals don't need Him to be a top of the rotation guy Because they have an impressive Top of the rotation already

They hope that Steven Strasburg Will be back and Will be his old self not his Old injured self but his Old ace like self and Then of course you have Max Scherzer Who also they would hope will be Healthy and Patrick Corbin so

If they have those three guys As regulars in the rotation, which, you know, given their collective ages and injury histories, there's obviously some question about that, but they've had issues with rotation depth in recent seasons. And so Lester helps with that if they can slot him in as a fourth starter and get decent work out of him and, you know, get whatever he brings as kind of a veteran mentor type yeah i think that you know he's not a guy who you want in the two spot anymore but that's not how they're going to deploy him and despite his age he has remained incredibly

he's been prolific if nothing else right even as he has sometimes swung from sort of more to less effective and, and what have you, you know, he, he threw 171 innings in 2019. He threw 180, at least 180 the two years before that he can. Yeah. I think that he is someone who will just end up sort of taking his turn every five days. And that kind of stability given the injury concerns to the rest of the rotation is going to be valuable and he's serviceable he's

not you know he's not completely it's not like you you don't want to roster him so i think that it makes a good deal of sense for them given some of their other concerns and yeah so yeah i'm fine with it quite a collection of ex-cubs they're amassing there with Lester and Kyle Schwarber and Starwin Castro. And I guess even Dave Martinez used to be the Cubs bench coach. So nice little ex-Cubs contingent with the Washington Nationals. We never talked about the Schwarber signing. What did you make of that, if anything? I thought it was fine, Ben.

I thought it made a good deal of sense for both sides i think that it's uh i think that it makes sense for schwarber to try to have a year where he is more obviously productive his sort of underlying stats were not all that different in 2020 than they were in any of his prior years it just didn't seem to really come together for him quite as well as it had historically so i think him going out and trying to have a good season makes good sense. I think that the Nationals are in need of another productive bat given some of the folks who have moved on or retired. I think Schwarber remains an outfield adventure in a way that is probably not the best, but I think he's playable out there.

He has versatility in other spots. If we end up with a National League DH, I think that Washington will be quite pleased that they retained his services. So yeah, I thought it was fine. I thought it was fine, Ben. Bold take. I thought it was fine.

Frankly, that's my reaction to most transactions. I mean, most of them are fine. Most of them you look at and it seems sensible and you understand why Team X would want Player Y and why Player I would want to play for Team X. And there's not always that much mystery to it really but yeah with a player like Schwarber who's coming off at least superficially a rough year slash line wise then you can dig in a little deeper and see that maybe there's some encouraging underlying numbers and he's been like kind of a player like I think people have been waiting to have some sort of monster year and he hasn't really had that like 2019 was a pretty big year you know know, 38 dingers.

But in a year when you had a record high home run rate and he's still sort of a low average slugger and not a high OPP slugger particularly and with the defensive limitations and all of that, you know, maybe the name value outpaces the production just because of the high hopes that people had for him and some of his notable moments and his postseason heroics and just being part of those Cubs teams and everything. But, you know, has still been a productive player and not every player needs to be a superstar. Sometimes you just need a bat. need a bat sometimes you just need an old-fashioned slugger to just like stick in left field or dh or wherever and give you decent production for that position and the nationals were the kind of team that needed one of those or more than one and i guess they got two because they traded for josh bell also yeah i wonder how much of the perception of schwarber and the the relative disappointment that well i don't know if cubs fans feel disappointment in kyle schwarber and the the relative disappointment that well i don't know if cubs fans feel disappointment in kyle schwarber but like the the general disappointment um that he didn't seem to hit as well after that that rookie campaign and the the world series year is just a result of

how insistent they were that they would not trade him right like he was just this untradeable guy at times when his fit on the roster was a little funky, given the lack of a DH in the NL at the time. So, yeah. And they weren't unwilling to trade other prospects. It was like they really seemed to think Schwarber was going to be the big prize. So, yeah. Yeah. one of those times where when an organization is so obviously attached to a guy and then he doesn't quite produce at the level that you think warrants that that degree of attachment you're always kind

of left thinking he's a disappointment and you know i think he's i think he's fine it's fine oh lord all right i think we've hit it all at least all the major MLB news which is Sort of our mandate here so There will probably be more later in the week And there will as always be More from us so we will talk to you All again soon Well you just heard me say that we had hit All the major news and at the time we

Had but Tuesday was one of those days When no matter when we recorded We would have missed something and indeed After we spoke some exciting news broke, some sad news broke. Late on Tuesday night, the George Springer deal did get done pending a physical. The Blue Jays and Springer are reportedly in agreement on a six-year $150 million deal. So the Blue Jays got their guy. They may not be done yet, but they did finally land one of the best players available to a franchise record contract

and another contract that exceeds the consensus expectations at the start of the offseason. So Meg and I will be recording again soon, and we will discuss that deal and Springer and the implications for the Blue Jays. The Angels also signed Jose Quintana to a one-year $8 million deal. Another departure from the Cubs, going to a team that's been hard up for pitching in recent years. And the sad news was about a pitcher. Last week, we talked a little bit about the death of Tommy Lasorda and how we hoped that there would not be another string of Hall of Famer deaths as there was in 2020. Well, unfortunately, there's been another one already, and it's a pitcher who played for Lasorda, Don Sutton, the Dodgers great who was 75.

And Sutton wasn't quite the pitcher that Phil Necro was. We talked about Necro when he died last month, but there were some similarities. They were roughly contemporaries. Necro's career ran from 64 to 87. Sutton's ran from 66 to 88. So he started in that Koufax-Drysdale rotation and was with the Dodgers through 1980, then went to a few other teams before he wound up his career in 1988 with the Dodgers again. And like Necro, he was incredibly prolific, just a total workhorse. In fact, I mentioned that Necro was the most prolific pitcher in terms of innings pitched in the

live ball era. Well, Sutton was fourth on that list after Nolan Ryan and Gaylord Perry. Like Negro, he pitched well into his 40s, remained productive in his 40s, and was just incredibly consistent, always took the ball, literally did not miss a start until his final season when he had his first stint on the IL or the DL as it was called then, and he was 43 at that point. Up until then, just no injuries. You could always count on him to take the ball, give you innings. And there was some question during his career and even after his career about whether he was a Hall of Famer

because he didn't really have a Hall of Fame peak. He had a nice string of five seasons from 72 through 76 when he finished in the top five in NL Cy Young voting each season, but he never finished in the top two. Outside of a six-season span, he didn't make an all-star team or end up at the top in award voting, and he retired with a 108 ERA+, which is not much better than average. Of course, that was with many seasons later in his career that brought down the average a bit, but he pitched for so long, was great at his best, and really not bad at his worst up until the very end, and he ended up close to the top of a lot of career leaderboards, so it took him five times on the ballot to get into the Hall of Fame, but he

was and is deserving of a spot. He was not a flamethrower. He was known for his curveball. He was also known for doctoring the ball, and he is one of the players with a fairly large gap between his fan graphs war and his baseball reference war. We have a listener, Daniel Bannon, who emailed us last year a spreadsheet of the players with the biggest differentials between their two war totals. I'll link to it on the show page.

And Sutton ranks 21st on that list with a gap of about 19 wins between the two. And that's largely just defensive adjustments, ballpark adjustments. He pitched for so long that, you know, it's 19 wins, but that's over 23 seasons with almost 5,300 innings. So it's maybe not quite as huge as it sounds. The biggest war differences come from really long tenured pitchers like Cy Young is number one, Nolan Ryan, Warren Spahn, Pete Alexander,

others like that, Jim Cott, Brian McCann, because he has a framing in one model and not in the other. But whichever war you use, Sutton was great and just a constant. So many of these Hall of Famers who've been lost over the last year were just such a big part of baseball history because they played for so long. And so it's a loss felt by a lot of fans who watched those players for decades. And of course, in Sutton's case, listened to him on broadcast for years. He's in the Braves Hall of Fame as a broadcaster. And Sutton and Lasorda didn't always get along great, but I always enjoyed the anecdote from 1978 when Sutton got in a fight with his then teammate Steve Garvey. And Sutton said something about how Garvey was regarded as the All-American boy, but that the best player on the Dodgers for the past couple years was Reggie Smith, but that Reggie didn't publicize himself so much, so he didn't get as much attention. And boy,

that was true. Reggie Smith, underrated player, almost twice the player that Garvey was, war-wise, and he had been the best player on the Dodgers in those seasons. And Sutton regretted saying what he'd said, and he regretted provoking the fight, and Dodgers fans booed him because Garvey was so popular. But Sutton had his facts straight, and Garvey was not nearly as squeaky clean as his image at the time. Sutton, of course, also famous for his perm. He got it in 1975, and he was the only Dodger to have a perm that season.

At least as of August, I just read an article by the AP from that month that says that baseball had 100 or so permed players at that point. There are only 24 teams. That's 600 players. So that's a sizable percentage of the league was permed players. But Sutton was the lone Dodger, he says in this article. His only regret was that he got the perm on a Friday afternoon. He said every woman in Glendale between 38 and 72 was there. This article says,

The perm doesn't seem to be a fad. Most baseball players say they like the look so much they intend to keep it. Well, not all of them did, but Sutton stuck with it. Anyway, sometime this week, Jay Jaffe will spring into action again and write an obituary for Fangraphs, but just wanted to note the passing of another great, and really it feels like baseball has been hard hit when it comes to losing legends over the past year, and it has, but that's something the entire country has gone through, right? The excess mortality over the past year, particularly in the age group of these Hall of Famers, has led to a lot of people losing lives, and in the age group of these Hall of Famers,

has led to a lot of people losing lives. And I know that most of these Hall of Famers' deaths were not connected to COVID as far as we know, but these lives lost have still coincided with a greater loss of life. And that's led to a lot of mourning, even when the deceased is not a baseball great. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. We will likely do some emails next time so send us some at podcast at fancrafts.com. You can also message

us through the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Speaking of which maybe you could consider becoming a supporter if you haven't already. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up

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You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back a little later this week. Talk to you then. You are a top-shop tyrant Even your hair cuts violent You look like you're from Love Island

He stood in the room in silence. Never fight a man with a plan.