Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1728: On Guardians

Episode Date: August 4, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mets not signing first-round pick Kumar Rocker, owner Steve Cohen’s comment about the decision, and the amateur draft as a salary-suppressing institution, then discuss how injuries have destabilized some of the major end-of-season awards races. After that (31:51), they talk to Cleveland native (and Baseball Prospectus writer) […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1728 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ring. Ben, how are you? I'm alright. How are you? I'm alright. I don't know what's going on in the world, but other than that, I'm fine. You've been doing a Twitter detox. How's that been for you? It's been fine so far. I mean, it has been less than 24 hours. I will say that it has made me realize how often I just reflexively navigate to Twitter

without any real, not in search of anything in particular, just as a thing that I do when I've closed one tab and I'm preparing to open another on my browser. So in that respect, it's been illuminating. It's certainly been a less feisty 24 hours than I typically experience. So in that respect, it's been really nice. It's like I came down from the deadline and I felt relaxed and not anxious. Watch Ted Lasso, write a book. I was like, oh, this feels great. You know what would ruin it? Twitter. So I decided to take a little break. oh, this feels great. You know what would ruin it? Twitter. So I decided to take a little break.

Yeah, that's nice. You had to be extremely on Twitter during the deadline, I guess. Unfortunately for you, it's not really a choice about whether to be on it or not be on it because you kind of have to be on it at least at certain times just as an assigning editor as someone who has to be aware of breaking news. And obviously a lot of baseball news is broken via Twitter. So it would be hard to walk away to do one of those celebrity moves and announce that you are quitting Twitter and then inevitably return in a week or two when you start craving attention.

But you have not done that. You are just merely stepping back briefly. Yeah. I'm taking a little rest. I'm taking a little rest. I'm taking a short rest. Although I will say, if folks out there are like, gosh, I would like to be on Twitter less even in moments of high news scoopage, I recommend setting alerts for the scoops guys.

Set up some scoops alerts. You know, get a little Twitter notification. And then you have to remember to turn it off because after that, you're like, you know, Ken and Jeff, you seem great, but I'm not that interested in your timelines. Right. So you got to take care of that. But that helps. My screen time report for last week actually showed a dip because I was so busy editing. And I didn't do as much sort of mindless scrolling.

And I didn't do as much sort of mindless scrolling. So it ended up being a net positive, although my times of usage, I think, had a greater intensity than is typical for me. So anyway, social media isn't poisoning our brains. Who's to say? Well, that's good because if you subscribe to Jeff Passon, then you do not subscribe to Jeff Passon. I was not fooled. I did not have the opportunity to be fooled by a fake scoops guy. You got to watch out for those fakes. Going to the Yankees. Yeah. So I guess that you stepped back from Twitter after Steve Cohen tweeted. And so you saw that one. So we were going to talk just

a bit about the Mets situation with Kumar Rocker, who may be known to many of you as one of the only players you had heard of prior to the MLB draft and had long been seen as a perspective number one and ultimately dropped to the 10th overall pick, went to the Mets. And we talked to Eric Langenhagen and Kevin Goldstein about why he fell that far. But as it turned out, he and the Mets did not come to an agreement and the signing deadline has passed. So he is now kind of in professional limbo for a while. He'll be eligible for the draft again next year. And the Mets, instead of having the 10th overall pick, will have the 11th overall pick next year, and they'll just do it over and they will not have Kumar Rocker. So we're still sort of waiting for some of the details to trickle out, I suppose, but it seems like the root of the disagreement was that the Mets saw something, said they saw something concerning in his medicals and wanted to offer him less, presumably. And Scott Boris, Kumar's agent, and Rocker himself did not want to go along with that and have a lower bonus than they had presumably reached a tentative agreement

on before he was even selected. And reportedly, they were planning to sign him to a $6 million deal, which was significantly above Slott, Slott's 4.7-something for the 10th overall pick. But, of course, that was pending a physical, a fateful physical, which seems to have scuttled the whole thing. I read one report that cited someone with knowledge of the matter, that whatever the Mets saw in the medicals was evidently so concerning to them that they didn't want to sign him for any amount of money, that they never made him a formal offer,

and that they just preferred to take their chances with next year's pick instead. So Scott Boris released a statement to say that Rocker is healthy, according to independent medical review by multiple prominent baseball orthopedic surgeons, and that immediately upon the conclusion of his collegiate season, he had an MRI on both his shoulder and his elbow. When compared with his 2018 MRIs, the medical experts found no significant change. Kumar requires no medical attention and will continue to pitch in the regular course as he prepares to begin his professional career. Really, as far as I've seen, they haven't exactly said what they saw or justified this other than to say that this wasn't the outcome we wanted or something vague like that. But we've seen sort of similar situations arise in the past, and we just are waiting to hear exactly what it was that led to this parting of ways. Yeah, there seem to have been a couple of different process failures here.

Rocker, as is his right and as is not unusual for guys who might get picked toward the top of the draft, did not elect to share disclosed medical information in advance of the draft, which some guys do, but a lot don't because the idea is generally that you don't want to give teams an excuse to sort of lowball you from a bonus perspective. So he, you know, did not submit pre-draft medicals. And I do wonder how much we will learn and from whom in terms of what the scans actually revealed. But, you know, even if you just take the Mets at their word that they got his MRIs back and were concerned about the health of his arm. Typically, what teams will do in a situation like this is have a backup, right? They aren't

drafting someone in later rounds who would be worth the full bonus amount that Rocker would have been entitled to, but whatever the sort of difference is between the slot values that the other guys in your draft are getting and your overages, you know, they'll have a, they'll have a million dollar guy in rounds like 12 through 20. So that if they aren't able to sign their first rounder, they at least have another talent they're excited about later. That doesn't seem to have happened here. You know, whether that's because they didn't really expect rocker to reach them at 10 i don't know but you know they're they're interesting to contrast with say the blue jays who signed a guy who literally needs tommy john

right like they know he needs tj um that was known to all the teams in baseball before the draft he signed underslot and the rest of the blue jays draft was built around that whereas the mets draft was built around signing rocker so this is a process failure on their part it super sucks for Rocker because you know in a system that if baseball's sort of employment system resembled any other industry he would just be able to go sign with one of the 29 other teams because maybe there's a team out there that sees his MRI and is like we're fine with this or says this isn't great and maybe and I say this not obviously not having seen his medical and not saying he needs this, but let's say that they look at it and they say, oh, you're

going to need Tommy John. Well, they might be willing to accommodate that. Right. But the way that the draft works, he now has to wait a year. So it's an unfortunate situation for him. I think it highlights systemic issues within the draft because while this is certainly not what the Mets would have wanted, and we look at this and say they blew up their draft, they are getting a first round pick next year, right? So the risk that they are carrying is significantly lessened by the fact that they get this compensatory pick next year. Whereas Rocker is just kind of, like you said, in professional limbo. He could go back to Vanderbilt, but that seems like it's already been ruled out. And so now he's going to have to spend the next year, either he can pitch an indie ball, he could go overseas, he could just do sort of more controlled manicured workouts. But his professional

trajectory has been significantly altered by this moment. So it's a real shame. I think that it's fun to dunk on the Mets and they gave us plenty to dunk on here. And I don't mean to suggest that we can only be mad at one thing at once, but I do think that it is worth keeping in mind sort of the structural issues that are at play here that perhaps highlight the ways in which the draft is not serving certainly the players and at times other teams as well as it might. So I know Brendan Golowski is going to write about this for us at FanGraphs. It should be out hopefully tomorrow when you're listening to this episode. But it's been quite the roller coaster from the triumphant day one.

Look at who we drafted tweet to this. Yeah, it's kind of curious because as you said, it's not uncommon for teams to draft players who are injured and they know that they're injured. And Tommy John is not year, right, with I think their third overall pick. So even they would not necessarily be averse to doing that. And so you wonder what they saw here to scare them off to this degree seemingly. And maybe it's just that they saw something that had they seen it prior to the draft, they wouldn't have spent the 10th overall pick on him. And so it's not necessarily that the Mets like didn't want him under any circumstances. It's that maybe they didn't want him at the price that they thought it was going to take or that they were ready to commit to him when they thought he was healthy.

And then for whatever reason, seemingly, they thought he wasn't healthy or might not be healthy at some point. healthy or might not be healthy at some point. And then, yeah, you wonder, like, was this something stranger than just the usual damaged UCL? Because that is hardly like, you know, we're not going to draft you if that's what's going on here. So it wouldn't be shocking, of course, if any pitcher were found to be pitching with some arm damage. And I know that Rocker reportedly lost some velocity during his last season, and there were concerns about his mechanics. He wasn't quite as effective. That's why he fell as far as he did.

But still, to cut ties entirely, to not even make an offer, unless they just didn't bother making an offer because they thought there was no way that they were going to negotiate him down, it's pretty surprising. There are some analogous situations in the past. Of course, like there's the famous R.A. Dickey example when the Rangers drafted him with a first round pick and then realized he didn't have a UCL. He didn't have one. Yeah. Forget about damage UCL. Just absent.

He didn't have one. Yeah. And in that case, they lowered the offer and Dickey went along with it, I guess, figuring that probably no other team was going to give him more because he had no UCL. And obviously, eventually, he turned into a good knuckleball pitcher years down the road. And then more recently, there's the Brady Aiken example with the Astros, of course, where they seemed to see something in his medical after drafting him and then didn't sign him and worked out all right for the Astros in the long run because they ended up getting a compensation pick that they used on Alex Bregman and Aiken,

who ended up signing with Cleveland, never made it above a ball. So there are some similar situations here. And it's just in this case, we haven't exactly gotten all of the details yet other than the Boris Rocker side of the story. But still, I think a lot of the condemnation was, hey, you know, Steve Cohen, you are a multi-multi-billionaire. Like, how bad could this be? Even if it is something that he might have to have Tommy John surgery for down the road, is it really worth not signing him when that's a drop in the bucket for you. Right. Which does, I mean, I don't want to give them credit where it's not due. Like you said, there are just parts of this that have not been reported yet, but

it does seem even for them unlikely that they were going to blow a first round pick over a million bucks. Like that seems, especially because like it's just wasted money. It's not like they can, you know, bank it and use it later that it's just money that they miss out on. It's an opportunity lost. So that part of it, I continue to find strange, but it's certainly possible. I think that Rocker, like Rocker's dad played in the NFL and has done well since then. He is in a position where on the one hand, I'm sure he wants to be paid what he's worth, but he's also in a secure enough financial spot where he can try to control his own destiny in a way that is not always true for draft picks. So that part of it, I'm sure, factors in as well.

And sometimes when stuff gets contentious like this, the relationship just frays to the point of being sort of irreconcilable. I don't say that knowing anything in particular, but you do wonder kind of what the back and forth might have been between the two sides over the last couple of weeks, to the point that it's being reported that it wasn't that they made him a $5 million offer, but that they elected not to make him one at all, right? They just walked away. So I think really unfortunate for the sport because it highlights what a bizarre and sort of unfair labor market you find yourselves in. And then, of course, Steve Cohen decided to do the thing that one should never do and tweet through it. Yes. Yes. And he did one of those quiet part out loud kind of tweets.

Really out loud. So on Sunday, he said, education time. Baseball draft picks are worth up to five times their slot value to clubs. I never shy away from investments that can make me that type of return. So his point in saying this was to say, no, I'm not cheaping out here. Those of you who think I'm splitting hairs here or I'm not signing him because of a million dollars or whatever, no, I realize how great the value of draft picks is. So that alone would not prevent me from doing this.

And so I guess his implication is, no, this is something actually really serious without substantiating that in any way. That's what he is attempting to get across here. But he has, in the process, I guess not really dissuaded people from the idea that he is cheaping out here, which was kind of

his goal. But beyond that, I think he has just highlighted the draft system and how it works, because this is true. I mean, he is saying what MLB probably does not want people to be thinking about and all of the other leagues that have draft systems set up. The rocker situation just highlights the fact that the draft, it's sort of an unjust exploitative system for everyone, even the players who do end up signing and getting a deal. It's just that it's even worse for him in this case. But just overall, the whole point of the draft, I mean, yes, there are obviously competitive balance considerations where you're worried about the Yankees or the Dodgers or other big market teams just signing every amateur talent. But also a lot of it is that this is a way to keep salaries down because if you

sign players via a draft instead of via free agency where they can choose their destinations and you have a bidding war, then you're going to end up paying them a lot less. So a lot of people said, oh, the MLBPA will be screenshotting this one or whatever. And of course, the MLBPA doesn't actually represent amateur baseball players, and this is not news to them that this situation is out there. But this is kind of like the Kevin Mather comments where it's just like one of those moments where they stray from the party line and just sort of tell it like it is. And, you know, Rob Manfred probably wishing he could delete other people's tweets or something because it doesn't look great, really. Yeah. And I never quite know what I would prefer in

moments like this, because on the one hand, what he's saying is obviously icky, even if it's true. It's yucky to refer to human beings as investments. That's a gross way to kind of look at other people in the world. And I do think that sometimes these moments where ownership is candid about how it both views and operates within the labor market are sort of illuminating for folks just because it can it's this constant conversation that we're having to have about you know what the state of labor is in baseball that these sort of moments where you can point to it and say no here's here's what owners think like direct from the owner's mouth are educational if nothing else i mean not for not for folks listening to this podcast who are pretty well you know appraised of the situation

but for casual fans i think that it probably would strike them as like oh that's a kind of a weird way to talk about a you know one of the few names in college baseball that anyone knows right so that part is i don't know at least it's good to have object lessons to point to but i'm sure that all of those folks would much rather have a kumar rocker so yeah and of course owners saying that well it's worth my while to do this doesn't preclude owners being cheap in other areas where it would be worth their while to spend in other ways, like on minor leaguers and nutrition and housing and all of those things, which a few teams have made some strides in this season, but a lot of teams seemingly have not at all. And June Lee recently reported the Angels minor league system conditions and a lot of the players there who are having an incredibly tough time making ends meet. And that's another situation where an owner could send a tweet and say, minor leaguers are worth up to X times the investment in them or something.

And yet they still don't spend in those areas where it seems like they should and that just the return on investment alone would be worth it. And that's a topic that our guest today, Russell Carlton, has written about many times, including recently, although that's not what we will be talking to him about today. But it really just seems to make sense just from a, hey, if you develop a player who is going to be good for you in his pre-arbitration years, then the surplus value will be off the charts, and it will pay for so many meal services and dorms that you could have instead of having minor leaguers sleeping five to a tiny apartment, etc. Yeah, I think that it just underscores that you need more of a competitive spirit in the game.

I think that part of what explains all of this, only part of it, right? I think that part of what explains all of this, only part of it, right? I think that there would be sort of given the hedge fund-y backgrounds of a lot of owners and front office folks, there would be this sort of strive toward cost minimization and optimization. But I think that if you had a lot more teams trying to win in any given year, the odds that an owner out there, I'm going to swear, that an owner out there i'm gonna swear that an owner out there would say it pay them all 50k a year just to see what happens when we give minor leaguers the peace of mind to know that they can pay rent and we make this a career that people who are not uh who do

not come from wealthier backgrounds can only those folks can afford to pursue. Like, let's just see what it does for our system to be able to assign those kinds of folks and to take care of the ones who are in our system now. You know, the fact that that particular dam has not yet been breached is due to a lot of different factors. But I think one of them is that the incentive to do it from a competitive perspective isn't always present for some folks. So this became a bigger story than it might have with some other combination of team and agent and player, just because people know who Kumar Rucker is and Steve Cohen tweets unlike most owners and Scott Boris makes statements, although no analogies in this statement. No, he played this one straight. Yeah. And, you know, then, of course, you have the Lowell Mets angle to it,

which everyone immediately was happy to pile on because it's the Mets. But I think even if it had been a smaller story, if some of the particulars had been different, it's, you know, emblematic of larger issues that a lot of players face. So it was worth discussing. And last thing I just wanted to say was, because there was another injury-related story in baseball, the rash of injuries, the epidemic of injuries that we have seen this season

has made me so grateful for the few superstars who have stayed totally healthy. But you're not going to name any of them, right? Just in case we're wrong about J jinxes. I think we're right. But just in case we are wrong, you're not going to name any of them. I am worried about invoking anyone lest I place some hex on someone. But let's say a certain two-way player, for instance, and a certain two-way player's primary competition for the AL MVP award might be a couple of those players who come to mind because as we are speaking here on Tuesday afternoon we're still waiting to see what will happen with Fernando Tatis Jr. whose season is hanging in the balance here with his whatever

it is third aggravation of what seems to be a chronic shoulder issue and he is on the IL now and his most recent dislocation was reportedly more serious than the preceding two and so if he does not respond as hoped then he may have to undergo season ending shoulder surgery and hopefully he will bounce back and get back on the field and be as good as he's been and maybe have off-season surgery but we're waiting and obviously even if he does come back he has missed time on multiple occasions with this injury. And then you have the other faces of baseball or signature seasons, guys like Mike Trout and Jacob deGrom and Ronald Acuna Jr., who are either out for the year or who have missed massive swaths of the year. Just like all those guys who were going to be

award competitors, as great as deGrom was to start the season, just like all those guys who were going to be award competitors, you know, as great as DeGrom was to start the season. I guess there's probably no way he wins the Cy Young Award now if he's not back until September, as good as his rate stats will be. And Acuna done for the year and Trout, whose calf injury just does not seem to want to heal. He is like perpetually on the verge of doing baseball activities and then pulling back again. We'll be talking about him more later this week. But

all those guys who were like best stories in baseball and faces of the sport have been robbed from us for months at a time. And so that makes me really appreciate the few who have actually managed to stay in the field amid elevated injury rates for both pitchers and hitters and concerns about workloads post-2020 and post-sticky stuff and all of that. It just makes me really want to protect the precious few who have not encountered any of those issues. Do we need to start talking about Zach Wheeler as a Cy Young front runner? Seems like it, right? Because who else would be? Like Woodruff and Burns, Bueller, DeGrom.

Even if he does have the one ERA or something at the end of the season, he's not going to qualify for the ERA title. No, he won't. He's not going to displace Bob Gibson. And there have certainly been pitchers like Chris Saylor, Clayton Kershaw, who have gotten Cy Young votes without qualifying for the ERA title, but he's going to be hard pressed to get much over a hundred innings at this point, really. And, you know, look, relievers have won the award with fewer innings than that. So

it's not as if there would be no precedent for that but there will be pitchers like wheeler who if you look at the sum total of the value probably will pretty easily eclipse to ground unfortunately yeah i mean if we drop our minimum innings down to 50 i continue to be fascinated that you guys did a whole minimum inning episode and said it did you say it right every time or did dylan help you out in post? Because let me tell you, that's hard to say, minimum inning. I must have flipped it a few times. It definitely, what is it called?

Oh, gosh. Oh, semantic satiation. Satiation, yeah, there you go. Anyway, watch Ted Lasso, it's great. So it was just the perfect post-deadline vibe, Ben. It was just exactly what I needed. It was so mellow and nice. I got to feel feelings, but I believed that things would be okay because God, is he endearing?

Anyway, that's not the point of this. And yet all the times that I told you to watch Stove League, my favorite Korean baseball drama, which gives you exactly the same vibes as Ted Lasso, and in my opinion, is actually better than Ted Lasso. I know that is blasphemy, but I said it. Anyway, you can enjoy both, but I do hope you get to hopefully get some points. Fair enough.

So, you know, we have Wheeler, who has a 245 ERA, a 240 FIP. I just don't think I've paid enough attention to Zach Wheeler this year. That's on me, friends. That's a Meg problem. This is not a we're not talking about him enough. It's an I'm not talking about him enough. Five wins by our version of war. And then you have DeGrom, who has accumulated almost five wins

in like 40 fewer innings. Amazing. And then we have have burns who has had his own injury stuff and then woodruff and bueller and i guess that that's really like the group that you're looking at but the difference between if you if you go back and want it to be among just qualified guys at least by fangrass war you're looking at at wheeler followed by woodruff more than a win back and then and then buehler's half a win behind him and you know it's not like zach wheeler's thrown a bunch more innings than those guys right they're all pretty uh comparable in their usage uh people might be enamored with with walker buehler's era a bit more but like this is not the cy young race

i expected which in most years would be exciting. I like it when we have some variety in the award races, in part because I'm just so invested in Mike Trout that I have to find my fun elsewhere, but not like this. I don't want it like this. Yeah. And what would happen in the NL MVP race if Tatis is not able to continue playing, NL MVP race if Tatis is not able to continue playing, which we hope will not be the case. But right now, Tatis Jr. and Acuna Jr. are still atop the NL war leaderboard for fan graphs among position players. And if those guys don't play again, and Acuna obviously won't, then who overtakes them? I don't know.

Is it Muncie? A bunch of Dodgers. Yeah, Trey Turner. It's a bunch of Dodgers. It is all Dodgers after that. Muncie, Turner, Taylor. And then, yeah, I don't know. Is it Muncie? A bunch of Dodgers. Yeah, Trey Turner. It's a bunch of Dodgers. It is all Dodgers after that. Muncie, Turner, Taylor. Then, yeah, I don't know. I guess Buster Posey is not far down. He'd be a fun one given the Giants' success. Maybe it ends up being a pitcher who is competitive for this award. Certainly, DeGrom, if he had stayed healthy and continued pitching like that, he probably could have swept, but that doesn't seem like it's going to happen. So you'd have someone who will end up winning these awards

who will kind of be overlooked compared to the first half front runner. What did you think the odds were that Jacob deGrom and Fernando Tatis Jr. or Ronald Acuna Jr. would not win the major NL awards at the all-star break or the halfway mark or whatever. Zero. Yeah. There's a very real chance that none of them will. So that's unfortunate, but at least it gives someone else a chance to do that. Yeah, because, you know, the Dodgers need a break.

So you want to give their fans something to be excited about. They're all Dodgers, Ben. They're all Dodgers. Muncy and Trey Turner and Chris Taylor. You know what I'm going to start rooting for, actually, just because, like I said, I like there to be some diversity in the names

that we get. And to be clear, I would have been absolutely thrilled for a Tatis or a Kunye MVP, and hopefully Tatis manages to find his way back, and then he can just be like you guys shut up but in the event that he can't Chris Taylor for MVP Joey Votto for MVP oh I'd be good with that too keeps dinging every day that'd be nice I'd be fine with that I also like the idea he's he's further down in terms of his war so this this seems unlikely. But I also like it. I like the idea of a guy who's been traded getting MVP consideration.

So maybe that tips the scales for Turner. And he's just having such a great year. Yeah, I guess the AL Cy Young race could be interesting too, because Carlos Rodon has had a couple rough outings in a row. He hasn't had this many innings pitched in a season in a long time. Maybe he's running out of gas. You still have his teammate, Lance Lynn. You've got Nathan Ivaldi.

The first half frontrunner who has a 4.68 ERA since the start of June was Garrett Cole, who unfortunately has contracted COVID now and also has a case of post-sticky stuff-itis. Yes, he does. What did that? See, I got off Twitter just in time.y stuff-itis. Yes, he does. When did that? See, I got off Twitter just in time. That happened. Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah, the Yankees, they've had a number of outbreaks despite having been one of the first teams to reach the vaccination threshold,

which I guess is maybe because they got the J&J, right? And I don't know if they haven't already. They should maybe look into getting- Get some boosters. Yeah, get some Pfizer, get some Moderna in there. Kudos to them on getting vaccinated, but it is... Get one of each. Don't listen to me.

I'm not a doctor. Get them all. What could go wrong? It's like Pokemon. Get Anthony Rizzo any of them while you're at it. Anyway, this is interesting because award winners sort of tell the story of the season, ideally, and they might not this season if some of the most prominent players get hurt. Although in a way they still will, because guys getting hurt is one of the

stories of the season, sadly. So if at the end of the year, the players who win those awards are not the ones we have the fondest memories of watching, perhaps that will be appropriate in some sense. But there's still two months for more players to make their case so we will bring on now russell carlton whom we teased earlier and russell of course is a writer for baseball prospectus and a frequent guest of effectively wild but we wanted to have him on to talk about the cleveland guardians because meg and i discussed the name change and the kind of new look when they were announced a couple weeks ago but as we said at at the time, we're not from Cleveland. So what do we know? And Russell is from Cleveland. He grew up there, rooted for the team, still does to some extent. And he wrote a nice article last week for Baseball Perspectives called Guardians of My Youth about the origins of the name and why it needed to change and what he

thinks of the new name and what the response has been and many other facets of that way. That's okay. It's just a friend change. All right. We are joined now by a friend of the show, friend of the hosts, baseball prospectus writer, Russell Carlton. Hello, Russell. Welcome back.

Hello. So you wrote an excellent article last week on the Cleveland baseball team's name change called Guardians of My Youth. And you are our Cleveland correspondent on this podcast. Although I guess we should divulge that you no longer live in Cleveland. You currently live in Atlanta, but you grew up in Cleveland. You rooted for the Cleveland team. You later consulted for the Cleveland team. So you have been tied to that

franchise in many ways over the years. So give us a little bit of background on your history as a Clevelander and as a fan of the team. Well, you know, I just happened to be born there and my area code on my cell phone, even 10 years after I left, still says 216. And I know what comes after Garfield one. And both of you have no idea what that means, but all the Clevelanders in the audience are already humming along to what comes next. And I know my parents still live there. Cleveland is always going to be a part of who I am. It's something that I guess everybody who grows up in wherever you grew up from, that's always something you take with you.

And then that for me was Cleveland. And so maybe that's just a chance. It's an accident, but it is a deep part of me. And I, you know, I went to my first game at municipal stadium before they knocked it over and shoved it into Lake Erie. And I went to like the fourth ever game at Jacobs field and I still call it Jacobs field because it's Jacobs Field. And it is, it's the sort of thing that even, even now, you know, I still kind of dream of going to

Progressive Field and just kind of hanging out for three hours and watching a baseball game. And that's, that's still, that still feels like it would be just the most home thing I could possibly do. So. Yeah. I was going to ask if in your current occupation and your new location, you would still consider yourself a fan because sometimes you grow up and you move away and you end up working for that team and writing about baseball professionally, very relatable experiences for most of our listeners, I know, and you lose a little bit of the fandom that you grew up with. So would you say that you still retain that? I'll put it to you this way. I have the MLB app and they have like, you can pick your favorite teams. And Cleveland is still on my list of favorite teams and I still check in on them.

And, you know, I mean, I, you mentioned, I mean, like I, I worked for them and you kind of have to take a different mindset when you work for a team. And as a writer, you know, I, and just as somebody who's gotten older, it's the sort of thing where being a fan comes with different connotations that I don't know if I want to claim or not, but they still hold a piece of my heart. And if, you know, they were to win a World Series

anytime soon, I would be happier than if just, you know, some random team out there, if you picked one of the other 29 at random did. So in that sense, yeah, I guess I still have a little torch that I carry for them. I wrestled with that MLB app question myself recently because in the past, they didn't used to make you choose a favorite team. They prompted you, but you could not choose one. And I don't consider myself a fan of a team and journalistic objectivity and all of that. But recently I downloaded the app for, I guess it was PS5 or something, and it made me consider myself a fan of a team and, you know, journalistic objectivity and all of that. But

recently I downloaded the app for, I guess it was PS5 or something, and it made me pick a team. I had to choose sides. So I just defaulted to the Angels because I'm usually watching Shohei Otani anyway. So now it shows me the Angels came on the front page. So the app considers me an Angels fan, although I do not. Well, one of the things that I appreciated about your piece, Russell, was that, you know, both in the research into the history of the franchise's name and how it has evolved. And then as you examined your own experience and emotional relationship to the team, you know, this is a situation that has been very much in flux in a lot of ways for a long time. And I'm curious as someone who, you know, perhaps was paying more attention to the subtle shifts in how the team was using iconography and imagery, if you can kind of remind our listeners what the last, you know, 10, 20 years has looked like in terms of the team sort of grappling with

removing a symbol that sadly became beloved by at least a portion of its fan base, because I think we have this idea that there was agitation from Native American groups, and then there was a change, and those things happened with a relatively short time in between them, even if it took far too long for the name change to actually happen. But this has been a subtle process for a while. So can you maybe lay that out for our listeners? Yeah. If you go back over the last, I'll, I mean, I'll say, you know, 12, 15 years, and you were really paying attention to what was going on in Cleveland. I mean, if it goes back to in, I want to say 2008,

2009, the team actually experimented with the script eye as a logo, kind of replacing that cartoon mascot that they had on their hats for a while. And so they would just kind of be out there and they had a little eye on their hat. And they did that for a little bit and they played around with the uniform colors and added like silver. And I did that for a little bit and they played around with the uniform colors and added like silver. And I think they were trying to gauge, you know, how well that would go over. And the script I never caught on.

But at some point you started seeing, you know, you go to the games and some of the signage would have, wouldn't say the team's name. It would just say Cleveland. The mascot was gone. They started de-emphasizing that. I think around, I want to say 2016, they started saying, oh, we're going to move the mascot

just to a patch on the jersey. And then eventually they got rid of it altogether and they just went with the block C as their primary logo. And so over time, you started seeing how the team was expressing itself, was changing in very small ways, I think incrementally, whether that was, you know, to kind of soften the blow when it eventually came time to get rid of Mr. Cartoon, then I think maybe that was some of it. But, you know, you also started seeing, and this was probably quietly done, you stopped seeing some of the bad pun and headlines about tomahawking and all that sort of stuff and would disappear from press outlets that had a good relationship with the team. And I'm guessing that was very purposeful around, hey, this just isn't a way that we want to do that. And I think that the team tried to

walk that line for a while. And then I guess that at some point they just said, we just don't want to do this anymore. So Joe Posnanski has written about the origins of the name a number of times, as you acknowledged in your piece, but you kind of picked up where he left off and dug into some of the details of the origin story a little bit more. And I think it's important how the name came to be just because you will have people sometimes saying, oh, well, the name was not racist. It's intended to honor or celebrate or whatever. And it helps, I think, to go back and figure out what the origins and the intentions actually were. Regardless, they could be different now from what they were a century ago. But even so, I think a lot of people aren't really fully aware of the history.

So can you lay out what happened or your best understanding of how that name came to be? Yeah. And I mean, we're going back 206 years worth of history. But, you know, when I was growing up, I was told that the team was named as an honor to Louis Sokalexis, who was a real player, who played in the late 1890s for what was then the Cleveland Spiders. And he was the first acknowledged Native American to play Major League Baseball. There's questions as to whether he was the first, but he was, you know, largely considered the first one at the time. And what happened was that, you know, Sokol Exis would go and he would play, and he, in 1897, he was something of a, he was a phenom. He had a great

rookie year, at least for a couple of months. Then he got hurt, and then in 1898 and 1899, he kind of became a bench player and then a fringe player, and then he was released by the 1899 Spiders, who went 20 and 134. No, that's not a misstatement. They were the worst team in Major League history, literally, and he was released by that team because he wasn't good enough to play for them, and the team promptly folded and then dropped out of the National League. Sock Alexis was a real person, and the story was that, oh, in 19, they needed a new name, and so it was supposed to be an honorific to Sock Alexis. Well, I mean, it turns out that that's not exactly true. Sock Alexis, being that, you know, what social norms were at the time, people would go out to the ballpark, and they would yell racist things at him. and I mean we kind of look at that now and go that's that's kind of gross but people would go out and do that and it was kind of a buzz thing and you would see that even out-of-town papers instead of you know while the team was formerly known as Spiders they would call them by the name

they eventually became called by because of the presence of Sock Alexis because you know that was that was the team that the Native American was on. And so that was, that's what they did. And so, you know, fast forward, you know, people kind of know the story of come 1915, the team was commonly called NAPS after Napoleon Lajoie, who was their star player and eventually went to the Hall of Fame and he was a big draw. His contract was sold to Philadelphia, and so the team needed a new name because you can't be calling yourself after a player who now plays for another team. And the nice, sanitized story was that they went, oh, well, let's honor the Native American who had played with us. And when you pull the Cleveland papers when they covered it, there was no mention of Sockalexis. There was nothing that was even talked about there. It was basically just racist cartoons and really, really awful imagery that was very stereotyping in the press coverage the next day. And you wonder, why would they do that? Well, the owner of the team at the time was a gentleman named Charles Summers. He would eventually sell the team the next year because business was going bad for him.

The team was terrible. He was trying to find something that would kind of bring some buzz to the team, it seems like. And so they were looking around, well, what can we call the team? And it seems as though he and some sports writers at the time picked the team name because, well, you remember like, you know, 18 years ago when people used to yell racist things at that guy, wasn't that a lot of fun? And so that was a way to pick some buzz. And you read the press clippings from the next day and they're like, oh, it's just a temporary thing. We're trying to find something else. And, you know, it stuck around for a hundred years. And so it's the sort of thing, be very careful what you joke about because sometimes things just get carried away in ways that you

do not expect. So that's the origin story of the actual name. What is the origin story of that origin story though? How did this idea that this was meant as something reverent and honorific start to permeate the Cleveland fan base's understanding of its own name? date it's their most recent world series win and there was a a book that was written and it was mostly written as kind of a quick turnaround cash-in sort of book and it it had the the story in there of oh the the name was an honorific to Sock Alexis and nobody I mean there's there was no there was no source in there there was nothing in there it just just kind of, somebody said it and it just kind of became part of what people thought. I mean, if there was a researcher who went into, at the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, they have the team's media guides and promotional materials and all that dating all the way back into this timeframe. The team didn't even mention Sock Alexis, I believe, until 1968 in

their own materials. And so I think somebody just kind of said, well, this is what it was. And everybody went, oh, okay, yeah, we'll go with that. And it just kind of got repeated enough until people just didn't ask whether it was true or not. And it took some digging to realize that, oh, this wasn't the story that we thought it was. And it took some digging to realize that, oh, this wasn't the story that we thought it was. And what was your own awakening when it came to the name of the franchise that you grew up rooting for? At what point did you realize this is wrong, this needs to change? And how did you feel about the fact that it took until whenever that was for you to come to that realization?

I had an uncle who was not of Native heritage himself, but he was very involved in issues around Native Americans. And he actually was the first one that brought it into my consciousness. And this was, I was 10 or 12 or something like that. And at the time, I just kind of went, well, why are you, you know, that's why, why, why are you arguing this way? Why should they change the name? Why should they do any of that? Because that's just kind of the way the name's always been. And in my mind, I justified it with, well, you know, there's no actual racism behind it. And, you know, I kind of look back at that and I get cringed because that was a stupid thing for me to think back then. I mean, I look back on the scoreboard graphics that were up there that kind of trafficked in really racist stereotypes, the logo, obviously, and the, you

know, the cheers and the chants and things like that. And I think that one of the best arguments actually for leaving the name behind is that I became very, very just inured to the fact that all of this was going on and that it was so pervasive that I just didn't think it was weird. And I didn't have the ability to take a look around and say, you know, how would this look to someone else? And especially somebody, you know, who was either very involved in the Native American community or was of Native heritage themselves. And once I had that moment where I said, you know, this is kind of gross, I started saying, well, you know, maybe I need to rethink my own position, even if this is something that

I grew up with. You know, sometimes when you grow up, you realize that not everything was what you thought it was at the time. And some of growing up is leaving things behind that you need to leave behind. And for me, that was one of them. You know the racist uncle stereotype? You just gave us the anti-racist uncle. I did. You took that in a different direction.

I didn't see that coming. No, he was, and, you know, looking back, I unfortunately haven't been able to speak to him for a number of years. But, you know, Uncle Bob, if you're out there and you're listening to this, I thank you. It was about 20-something years too late that I kind of finally picked up on it, but you did sow that seed. I'm curious what your reaction to, we'll get to your reaction to the new name itself in a moment, because we have to talk about that and take advantage of your Cleveland expertise. But I'm curious what you thought of the way that the team talked about the necessity for that change. When Ben and I initially discussed the announcement, you know, you get this video with dramatic music and Tom Hanks, and it's extolling the virtues of Cleveland as a place. And all of that is,

I think, quite nice and well done. But the place where it seemed to me to be really lacking was that it did not really grapple with why this change was necessary, right? You could have assumed watching that that they had been called the Cleveland guys, right? That they had had some innocuous name and innocuous history to go with it rather than the history that they had. And so I would like to hear what your reaction to sort of their messaging around that was,

because it seems as if an inexpert understanding of the historical record has been part of the problem here. And I worry we're doomed to repeat it given how it's being talked about now. Yeah, I mean, the team has very much tried to walk a line over the past 10 years or so. I think that what they wanted to try to do was to reclaim the name and to say, hey, we realize this has a very terrible origin story and that over the years over you know a number of years there's a lot of history that has gone with it that's just been awful and i think that one of the ways they they tried to do it was to to pull away at some of the iconography and and and try

to discourage some of the fan behavior that that went with. And I mean, even this, like it was literally at the beginning of this year that they banned red face costumes from the park and people showing up in headdresses and all that sort of stuff. And you're right. I mean, the team didn't really grapple with the history of it. You know, I think they tried to slow play it as much as they could, as much as they could to, you know, not rock the boat. Because, you know, some of that is they had merch sales to think about. And, you know, there was a

certain amount of their fan base that was heavily invested in the name. And I had all kinds of people on my Facebook timeline who are still in Cleveland and who were, you know, I'll never watch that team again. And, you know, they'll watch the team. That's fine. But I think that, you know, they're, yes, it's a good thing they changed the name. I really wish that they would have, I wish they would have either A, done so sooner or, you know, B, at least acknowledge that, hey, you know, this is, this is something that, you know, we, we kind of messed up on historically. of messed up on historically. And even in my own mind, I mean, I think I kind of wish I had done the same thing where I had, you know, I had talked, I thought more about how messed up this really was rather than just kind of, oh, well, you know, that's just kind of, that's where we are. Yeah. I wondered because you're no longer in Cleveland, but you are still friends and family member with a lot of people in Cleveland. And as you said, you've seen some of those reactions, probably not the worst things you've seen your acquaintances say on Facebook or the only things that you disagree with. And of course, arguing with people or

debating people or attempting to persuade people of something on Facebook doesn't work all that often. But I have seen you do it from time to time just because we are mutual Facebook friends. And occasionally I'll see you chime in on a thread and attempt to bring some information to the discussion. You're even a member of the Effectively Wild Facebook group. So I wonder whether you have waded into those waters with anyone you know or whether you've said, you know, this is not going to go well and hopefully they'll eventually get on board. The piece that I wrote at BP was actually, I had done a little bit of arguing with some high school acquaintances and, you know, all of us have those moments where you kind of write a five paragraph comment and I'm like, yeah, well, I got to write something next week. But it was something that I realized that was really itching to get out of me. And I, you know, I'm blessed to have that outlet of, hey, I write a weekly column at

a major baseball website. So I had that ability to do it. There is part of me that understands that, you know, people have a lot tied up in the name in terms of just their own personal stories. And that was a name that was always there for them. And it's just how they've always referred to the team and there have been times when i've kind of waded gently into those waters as well and and even the people who were posting the the old the cartoon logo and saying oh it'll always be this and i have had those moments they don't normally go well but i think that it's at least

important to have that out there and just say you you know, look, let's, let's look at this from another person's perspective. And you may, you may deeply feel connected to this, but at the same time, the thing that, that you really, I think really connected to was, you know, thinking back to the nineties, the part of the name that you were really connecting to was the word Cleveland. And, you know, I think back to those 90s teams and then the team went to the World Series twice and they were really good after being terrible for 40 years. And there was so much love for that team. And like even my mom, who knows nothing about baseball, was watching games with us because it was just such a, it was such a moment in the city's

history. And so I think back and I, I, I try and point out that, you know, the thing that, the thing that was really drawing you in, I think was, wasn't the, the, the team moniker, it was Cleveland. And that's, you know, the part that, that I'm, I'm still proud of as, you know, as a, as somebody who grew up there and who grew up there. And they kept that part. It's still going to be the Cleveland Guardians. And I'm happy about that. And they will still be part of my life in that way. When Meg and I discussed the name and the look when the news came out, we were pretty positive. And if anything, it's grown on me even more since then. I genuinely like the name, actually. But we weren't really familiar, or at least I wasn't really familiar, with that local connection to the Guardians of Traffic.

Now, once I learned about it, I thought, OK, that's cool. I like these statues, and they're right outside the ballpark. And so that's a nice connection, even if it's not nationally identified with Cleveland or associated with Cleveland. But how familiar were those statues to Clevelanders? I mean, did locals say, oh, guardians, of course, because of the statues or did they need to read the explainers too? I kind of needed the explainer. You know, there was, I remember, you know, and I, when they announced that the change was coming and this, this happened, I don't know how many months ago at this point, but last late last year, there were a bunch of, oh, here are some possible team names that are coming out. And I remember seeing one and somebody said, oh, the guardians. And, and

then they, they talked about, oh, the guardians of traffic, which for those who haven't yet heard this one, they're at the ends of the pylons of a bridge that's about a quarter mile from the stadium. And it's called the Hope Memorial Bridge or the Lorraine Carnegie Bridge. And they're called the Guardians of Traffic. And they are these art deco sculptures from the 1930s. And they're holding different modes of transportation or, you know, like little, I don't know, little trucks or something like that. My wife and I briefly lived in Cleveland for a couple of years before we moved down to

Atlanta, and we would occasionally go across that bridge, and my wife would look and say, oh, the Tonka truck bridge, and because she was convinced that the one statue was holding a Tonka truck. And I'm like, oh, well, okay, that's kind of cool. So I had never really used the bridge very much. If I had, it wasn't anything that was, you know, the statue stood out to me. It was just kind of, oh, there's some statues over there. It would not have made anybody's top 10 things you need to see in Cleveland list.

The bridge is, you know, it's a way into town. It's a way into downtown, but most people kind of come across the interstate and there are a couple of other bridges that'll take you across the Cuyahoga River that way. So it's kind of cool that they worked the local angle into it. But frankly, there were probably, I would say, about half of the people in Cleveland, had you shown them those statues, I don't know, three months ago, who would have been able to say, oh yeah, I know where those are. Those are downtown and told you where they were at. They might've said, I don't know, is that New York? Well, given more time to get used to it, what is your sense of the general excitement or disdain

for the selection among native Cleveland leaders? Because when Ben and I talked about this, we were both of the opinion that, like we liked it, but our opinion as folks who are not fans of the team is sort of irrelevant. It's really what resonates with people in Cleveland. I think that they're kind of retconning the guardians of traffic thing into a backstory.

You know, it's probably one of, I don't know, 200, 300 words that you can use as a sports team name in the United States. And it sounds cool. And, you know, if you're going to pick something, I guess it's cool that they worked the local angle into it. And those will kind of be those statues will become iconic in their association with the team through that. And so that's kind of cool.

When I heard the name, I kind of responded with a meh, just on a very personal level. I was kind of like, oh, okay. Yeah, I guess they could have gone with other stuff, but this isn't terrible. It's grown on me a little bit more. Maybe it's just, you know,

I'm settling for the fact that, you know, I'm going to cheer for the team. That's the name of the team. But it's, you know, it's infinitely better than what they had before. You know, just kind of taking the temperature of you know other clevelanders who i i see it's kind of been the you know people are kind of like oh well i mean if they're good if they're going to change the name

once you kind of get past that it's been kind of you know there's some people who like it and some people are kind of like yeah whatever sure that can be fine maybe you know by if you ask me this again in a couple of months i'll i'll be sitting there and I'll be going, yeah, that's, that's, that's cool. The logos were, I'm not a big fan of the ball with wings or with a G in front of it, but at the same time, it's okay. I can, I can live with that. Yeah. I, I kind of like the look and was it Patrick Dubuque who did the sketch of what the wings and the ball would look like head on instead of from the side? And it's sort of silly because it looks like the ball is very skinny from that direction. But I kind of like the art deco of that, less so the lack of art Deco in the lettering. But I like the name both for the local connection

and just because it's a little unusual, but it has positive connotations for the most part, I think, Guardians. And so I didn't really respond all that much to the other suggestions, whether it be spiders or blues or any of the other popular ones. Again, the name is not for me primarily,

but as a neutral non-Cleveland observer, I like it. And I think so much of it is just, you know, you have the instinctive, reflexive, this is different, and so it's scary, and so I don't like it response. And so it just takes some time for that to die down. And then also like once the team starts playing and you start seeing it on the chiron every day and on the espn bottom line or whatever it just seems like yeah that's the name it'll seem like that's always been the name almost like so many of the names are not good but we just accept them because there's so much history and tradition associated with them which is one reason why people were so attached to the old name for this franchise.

So eventually, I think people will be fine with it. And it'll be as if it never changed, at least for everyone except for some small segment of the fan base that's fighting some kind of culture war or even more people who aren't actually fans and didn't care at all until this became a little mini brush fire that you could stoke up some controversy over. I mean, we have, you know, we have teams named after socks. We have teams. We have the Philadelphia Philadelphians. That's how they got their name.

I mean, we have the, you know, the Dodgers are named after people dodging trolleys. And I mean, there are all of these. Guys, who do athletics? Baseball is one of the few sports where you have all these kind of goofy names with some interesting origin stories. And so, you know, in that sense, you know, why not have your team be named

after, you know, a bridge that happened to be nearby the stadium? And, you know, if that story were 100 years old, it would be kind of quaint and interesting and somebody would do a little human interest story on it. And, you know, so from that perspective, I remember seeing somebody say, what team name right now, if introduced today, you know, would pass the, you know, people don't make jokes out of it on Twitter test. You know, it's, you know, would, would pass the, the, you know, people don't make jokes out of it on Twitter test. Right. You know, it's, you know, if you think about the last team that, that changed their name was the Washington Nationals and everybody kind of went, oh yeah, sure. You know,

or people, you know, hated it or liked it or whatever. And now it's just kind of though, that's, you know, that's who they are. That's, you know, that's the team that Max Scherzer, oh, I'm sorry, the trade turn. Oh, wait wait does anybody play for them anymore oh wait they all got traded but anyway that's the you know that's just the team in washington and i yeah i think you're right in in 10 years it'll just be you know they're the guardians and they play in cleveland and that's just you know they'll whatever record they build up over the next 10 years that's what the fans will will associate with. And hopefully there'll be some good memories in Cleveland and that will become associated with that.

But at the same time, it is going to be a weird change and change is tough. Yeah. And as you noted in your article, once you accept that the name needed to change, almost any different name is better than what it was. So that's a low, low bar to clear, but they sailed over that one easily. But something Meg and I talked about in our initial discussion was the fact that it seemed like they didn't dramatically change the look. You know, the font of the team name is very similar, sort of the same as what it was before. And obviously you still have D-Ns at the end of each of the names. And, you know, I kind of thought, eh, this is fine. Like a little bit of continuity, take the offensive part out of it and just ease people into it a little. And you know about psychology and I wonder whether you think that was a bad idea or a good idea to kind of keep something similar so that it's maybe a little

less disruptive, but then as Meg was just saying, maybe it should have been more disruptive because you really want to distance yourself from that old legacy. Yeah, and I'm sure that that was, you know, that's a marketing decision as far as what they were going to do with the kind of overall visual branding of the team. But at the same time, I mean, you know, they were yet another team that kind of had the navy blue and red color scheme. And that's just kind of that, that i mean it's kind of the default color scheme in baseball and so if they were to break away from that they would have to go in some other way out of their color scheme or or look or or branding that they would they would do and i think that some of it may have just been you know well there there are there's a certain

visual language that that we use when with baseball, and we don't want to mess that up. Some of it is probably for the continuity's sake. Some of it's for, you know, the uniforms won't look all that different next year, and maybe that's purposeful. But yeah, I think that maybe it was also in part to just kind of soften the blow of, you know, we're not changing literally everything, and you can kind of look back at old highlights and kind of still see some continuity between our old look and our new look. And maybe that was just kind of a sop to the crowd that was going to hate it no matter what, that they weren't changing everything.

But if you got the folks at the stadium there in the front office and fed them some truth serum, it would probably be, you know, well, you know, there's merch to think about. And, you know, that's a reality be, well, there's merch to think about. And that's a reality in baseball is that there's merch to think about. Yeah. I mean, you would think just on a purely economic level, there may be some small subset of the fans who will say, no, I'm boycotting now because I don't like that they changed the name. But there's got to be a bigger group of fans who will say, I'm still going to watch it because it's my local baseball team and who cares about a name or maybe i even like this name and i'm gonna have to buy new merch now because there's new merch so you would think that just on that level it might have been worthwhile not that that was the most important consideration

so before we go you live in atlanta now as I noted. So you have had the experience of fruiting for multiple teams that have kind of appropriated this Native American imagery, etc. And so I wonder how you would compare and contrast those experiences. I don't know to what extent you've adopted Atlanta now that you're in that area. But I think once Cleveland changed its name, a lot of eyes turned to Atlanta and thought, will they be next? And do they need to? And when might that happen? So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that topic. Yeah, I sure know how to pick my baseball cities. I mean, my kids are Atlanta fans and we go up to Truist Park and we go to the games. And Atlanta has a very unfortunate ritual.

And I believe everybody out there knows which one I'm talking about during the game that happens. And, you know, it has had to spark a few conversations with my kids about, you know, look, this is something that I realize that people do, but I will not be involved in that. In terms of whether Atlanta needs to change their name, and I would say people do, but I will not be involved in that. In terms of whether Atlanta needs to change their name, and I would say yes, they do. And I mean, there are several things that are just kind of waiting there for it. I mean, you can turn it into the Atlanta Hammers, you can kind of take the logo and turn it into a Hammer, and it's all about Hammer and Hank Aaron, who of course played the majority of his career with the team.

You can focus on actual bravery. That'd be kind of cool. You could make it the Atlanta Kings in honor of Dr. King, who had most of his work came out of Atlanta. And so, I mean, there are several options that are there and just kind of there for the taking. And I kind of wonder if atlanta's at the front end of the same process that cleveland was where you know they're kind

of trying to to pull back from from some of those things but i i think that at this point there's going to become a moment where it just becomes untenable where you have to you say you know as a as a resident of the city, if I want to cheer for a baseball team, do I want that to be wrapped up in something that's really kind of cringeworthy and people in there, you know, whether it's the marketing department that has the final say, or if it's somebody who just kind of looks at it philosophically and says, no, I don't want to be associated with this either, to where people are going to say, you know, look, this is just something that is untenable, and there are other options, and there's no reason that we have to keep a name.

Names can change. It's just one of those things you do. You file a new trademark, and you draw a new logo, and that's it. And I think that there will come a day of reckoning where Atlantic will do the same thing. And I don't know if it's going to be tomorrow or if it'll be in 10 years, but I think that that will eventually have to happen. All right. Well, get used to it, everyone. The Cleveland Guardians are coming next year, although we're calling them that now. Assuming, of course, that Cleveland, the baseball team, gets the name from the roller derby team that has apparently been named the Guardians for a while. That was a weird one, but yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I don't know why people still talk about the curse of Rocky Calavito when talking about how Cleveland hasn't won a World Series in forever. And it seems like the curse of Chief Wahoo would be more prevalent. I mean,

I don't want to trivialize it by suggesting that the legacy of Wahoo is a team not winning the World Series because it's obviously bigger than that. But I don't see that as much as I see Calavito. Not that we need curses to explain why teams don't win World Series. But if you're going to have them. We would outfields for that. Yeah. Right. All right. Well, we would encourage everyone to read Russell's piece and I'll link to a few other reactions that have been published over the last couple of weeks on our show page. As usual, you can, of course, find Russell writing regularly about all manner of things at Baseball Perspectives and you can find him on Twitter at Pizza Cutter 4, as well as lurking in our Facebook group and sometimes doing some gory math in response to our listeners' questions.

Thank you, as always, Russell. Certainly. Thanks for having me on, guys. So here's a little fun fact for you if you haven't already heard it. It concerns that team in Atlanta we were just talking about. Here are the results in Atlanta's games beginning with the one right after the All-Star break against Tampa Bay on July 16th. All-Star break against Tampa Bay on July 16th. Loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win, loss, win. That last win coming on Tuesday against St. Louis. You probably picked up on the pattern there. That is 18 games in which Atlanta has alternated wins and losses. That is the longest streak of alternating wins and losses since at least 1901.

There had been three previous streaks tied at 16 before Atlanta broke the record. That was the 1974 Phillies, the 1981 Dodgers, and the 2010 Rockies. Credit to Jeremy Frank on Twitter for looking that up. So we're in uncharted territory here, 18 in a row with alternating wins and losses. And we got a question about this from Patreon supporter Darren, who, when the streak was up to 17 games, asked us this question. From a probability standpoint, is a 17-game streak of alternating wins and losses actually more impressive than simply winning or losing 17 in a row? Presumably a winning streak or losing streak is somewhat

more likely when you have an overwhelmingly good or bad team. Perfectly alternating wins and losses seems like it would take a special combination of mediocrity and luck. And there is, in fact, some truth to that. It's kind of an interesting probability question. I wouldn't say it's more impressive to alternate wins and losses for 17 or 18 games than to win 17 or 18 in a row, but it is more improbable,

and we could tell that just based on the results, really, the empirical evidence here. I think there have been 14 losing streaks of 18 games or longer since 1901. I think there have been 13 winning streaks of 17 games or longer since 1901, and there's only been just this one streak of 17 or more, now 18, games with alternating wins and losses since 1901. So clearly, this is more rare, this is unprecedented, but the question is, theoretically, why is that so? And I think Darren was onto something here, but just to make sure I articulated this correctly, I consulted Chris Long, who has worked for a lot of pro sports teams, including the Padres and the Tigers. And for those of you who've read The Only Rules It Has to Work, he was our statistical consultant with the Sonoma Stompers back in 2015.

So Chris says, yes, it is true that this alternating streak is more improbable if you're considering a streak of a certain length. And he points out that a good team generally has a probability of more than one half of winning, and a bad team generally has a probability of less than one half of losing. So for a good team, winning is typically the more likely outcome in any given game, and vice versa for a bad team. But if you're a mediocre team, if you're a 500 true talent team, your probability of winning is a half, 50%. So winning and losing in a predetermined pattern has the lower probability than a good team winning or a bad team losing%. So winning and losing in a predetermined pattern has the lower probability than a good team winning or a bad team losing the same number of games. Each event in the streak has a lower probability. Of course, a good team losing N games in a row or a bad team winning N games in

a row is even less likely, but if that happened, then they might not actually still be a good team or a bad team. So yes, each event in the good team winning streak is greater than 50%. Each event in the bad team losing streak is also greater than 50%. But not so if you're the team in the middle, then you've got a 50-50 shot of winning or losing each individual game. And Chris points out that the modern record of 22 wins in a row, the probability of that, you take a 600 winning percentage team, and then you raise that to the 22nd power. That's not so different from a 500 team,

raising that to the 17th power, pretty comparable. So he says a 22 game winning streak by a team with a probability of winning of 60% is about as likely as an alternating streak of 17 games. You have to double the probability, incidentally, as such a streak could start with either a win or a loss. So this is extremely improbable territory now with Atlanta up to 18 games. And who knows? Maybe if they had Ronald Acuna Jr., they'd be too good for this to happen. The last weird quirk here, as Jeremy Frank pointed out on Twitter,

is that despite Atlanta having this record now, they still have a game in the middle of the streak that they need to make up. And so regardless of whether they win or lose that game, it will retroactively break up the streak, which is annoying. But even though they will play that made-up game later, it goes in the books as being played on the originally scheduled date. That's why Juan Soto technically hit a home run five days before his debut. So this record, this fun fact, is retroactively going to be spoiled, I suppose, but from a probabilistic standpoint, it did happen. So it sort of still is the record, at least from a certain point of view. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to

patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Ken Kopin, Joel Watts, Will Hickman, Carol O, and Robert Milholland. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcastandfancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. I'm gonna make a few changes right away The way I leave and the way I fall The way I need somebody else's eyes to see me The way I need anyone at all I expect the real changes that start When I finally get my Cleveland heart