Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1732: Wanna Bet?

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about an Alek Manoah semi-fun fact, a day without any starters going deep into games, economical outings by Adam Wainwright and Corbin Burnes, Cody Bellinger’s bat, a legal decision involving the Phillie Phanatic that may have implications beyond baseball, Joey Gallo feeling small, and the cost of Ray’s lost […]

Out in the field when the first has been born Folks sing a song, song of the corn Late in the day when the secrets are sworn Folks tell a tale, tale of the corn Hello and welcome to episode 1732 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We've got an end to a fun fact that I have

been tracking and hearing about for a while this week, and I'm kind of relieved because I was very conflicted about this fun fact. I couldn't decide if it was fun or not, or whether it was lying. I knew it was lying to some extent, as all fun facts do, but there was also some truth to it. It was a fun fact about Blue Jays rookie starter Alec Manoa, and he had a number of starts to begin his career in which he allowed four or fewer hits. And so I kept seeing this fun fact circulate every time he would start. He got up to his first 10 career starts in which he allowed four hits or fewer, and it's the longest streak of that kind to start a career in MLB history. And on the one hand, Alec Manoa has been very good, very effective. He's been

part of this resurgent Blue Jays pitching staff. So it is true that he has been good, but also in some of those starts where he allowed four or fewer hits, he did so because he just didn't last long in the game. And so it's one of those things where, yeah, of course, this didn't happen in an earlier era of baseball history because pitchers would go deeper into games, and thus they would allow more hits in some of those starts, and it would break the streak,

and yet you would rather have them going deeper into games even if it meant that they were allowing fewer hits. So, for instance, in his second career start on June 2nd, he allowed four hits exactly, but three of them were homers. And so he allowed four hits and four runs in three and a third innings. So he would not call that a successful start, but it was for fewer hits. And then June 19th, he made another start. This was against Baltimore. He gave up four hits and all some of these very ineffective starts. You might see that fun fact and think, wow, he had a streak of 10 excellent starts to start his career, which is misleading, and yet not totally misleading. Because if the point is, hey, Alec Manoa, he's been pretty good, well, that part is true at least. Right. Yeah.

I mean, yesterday, he gave up five hits. Five hits. But he struck out 11 guys. Yes. And he gave up two runs. And he only gave up two runs. And he only gave up two runs. So, and won six and two thirds. So, yeah, there are a lot of ways to

present quality if one sir chooses. And we should always be skeptical of fun facts that might depend on early exits. Yeah, there were a couple other things related to start length this week that were interesting. On Tuesday, I saw something tweeted by Stats, and they pointed out that the longest start in the majors on that day was six innings.

And the fun fact was this is the first time in MLB history that every team was in action on a given day and no starter pitched more than six innings, which is a pretty good fun fact. I mean, that's interesting. It sounds like a sign of the times. Now, it does lie a little bit in that one of those games, Nats at Mets, was suspended. I was just about to say, haven't we had multiple weather delays this week? Yes. And then also there was a pitcher's duel going on in Dodgers-Phillies and Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola were both dealing, but then there was a long rain delay. And so they were both removed after that rain delay. And the way they were going, I'm guessing one of them would have made it more than six

innings if the game had continued uninterrupted, but it didn't. And so you got this fun fact. So there are caveats that go along with almost every fun fact, but I think it's still interesting because it's noteworthy. I mean, no starter going more than six innings on a day where every team is playing, even if the weather played a part, it's still something that would not have happened in an earlier era and is emblematic of Major League Baseball in 2021. So it's still something that would not have happened in an earlier era right is emblematic of major league baseball in 2021 so still worth sharing i think at least in that case well and i i don't know that this is the way that everyone responds to fun facts but sometimes i think that

the fun fun facts like the one you you shared about manoa are you know like they're the start of a conversation you heard that and you were like, well, hey, wait a minute. That could mean a couple of different things. And then you spend some time getting to know Alec Manoa. And like, that's a good use of your time as a baseball person. So sometimes when they're obviously,

potentially, potentially, not always, sometimes you look into them and you're like, well, that's an undisputably fun, fun fact, right? There are no kinks in that fun fact. Kinks in that fun fact? Anyway. And so you find that out, but sometimes it couple really good and long starts that were also notable because they had unusually low pitch counts. So Adam Wainwright, he threw a nine inning shutout and granted it was against the Pirates, but still he went nine innings and he threw 88 pitches, which is like if a Maddox is 100 pitches or fewer. I don't know what a 90 pitch or fewer complete game shutout is yeah maybe it's a Wainwright I don't know but that was the first time anyone had done that since Sandy Alcantara in 2019 Kyle Hendricks also did it in 2019 and then Jeff Samarja did it in 2015 Corey Kluber in in 2014, Henderson Alvarez in 2014. I'm cribbing from the baseball reference stat head email here, but that's something that happens maybe every couple of years or so at this point. It takes more pitches to get a strikeout than an out via some other method.

Although maybe if you're more efficient, it might take more pitches per plate appearance, but maybe you'll face fewer batters than you would if you're allowing lots of contact and you get some of them out more quickly, but others you don't get out at all. But that's a pretty impressive one. a pretty impressive one. And I also like the idea that the Maddox as a term has just entered the baseball lexicon in a way where I think even Wainwright cited it. And this is just something that came from a blog post that Jason Lukhart, he wrote in 2012, where he coined the idea of the Maddox. And now, yeah, everyone just refers to thematics as if we always have. So Wainwright himself said, I didn't look at my pitch count all day. I knew it was low, but I didn't want it in my mind. I thought I had a chance at thematics, but I didn't want to think about it. I just wanted to execute pitches. So kind of cool

that even players are citing and aiming for thematics. Yeah. I wonder if it being named after a player makes it more likely that it's going to sort of permeate because then you can associate with like a long and distinguished career and a guy who's done cool stuff. And so maybe or it's a surgery everyone gets and then you remember it that way too. It's interesting that he was conscious of it as a as a potential sort of achievement in the course of his start i was watching corbin burns just like carved through the cubs yesterday and i don't remember which of the broadcasts i put on so because i switched at one point so you'll have to forgive me there but at one point

on the broadcast maybe this was the breers broadcast, one of the commentators said, you know, we don't know if the guys in the dugout are aware of the record or not. But I was like, I think that people in the Brewers dugout last night were probably like, Corbin Burns is throwing a hell of a game. Even if they aren't putting it in the terms of a particular number of consecutive strikeouts or what have you, I'm sure that they were cognizant of the fact that he was doing something pretty cool and special. But it is interesting to sort of think about which ones of those guys become conscious of and cognizant of mid-start and then are keen to sort of put aside because they're worried it's going to psych them out or something. Yeah. Yeah. The burn start was the other one I was going to mention because he- It was so good. He was. Yeah. He didn't throw a Maddox because he only went eight innings, but he did it in 99 pitches and he struck out 15. And of course, he struck out 10 consecutive batters. And granted, he is going against the depleted Cubs. So that's maybe not quite like going up against the Pirates, but at this point, it's pretty close. And therefore, he tied the record set by Tom Seaver in 1970 and matched by Aranoa just this year, which it's really, in retrospect, it's even more impressive that Tom Seaver did that in 1970 when strikeouts weren't nearly as common as they are today. So the fact that it's happened three times in baseball history and two times In 2021 in not even a full

Season that's not really A coincidence and the only Previous to 15 Strikeout starts in an Eight or more inning outing in fewer than 100 pitches were Garrett Cole in 2019 and Jacob deGrom just This year in April against the Marlins

So again speaking of Sign of the times, this is emblematic of the era. But yeah, Burns looked great. And all 10 of those consecutive strikeouts were swinging if you want to assign some extra value to that dominance. So yeah, that Brewers top of the rotation is pretty special. Yeah. So he has thrown, let's see,

he has thrown 35 fewer innings, right, than Zach Wheeler. Has the same, has accumulated the same amount of war by our version of war, has a much better FIP. So maybe our Cy Young race, maybe Byrne's going to keep pushing there. What do you think an appropriate delta from an innings pitch perspective he could kind of work with before Cy Young voters would be like, this is basically, this is good enough. Yeah, right. Because he's also been really excellent on an inning per inning basis too.

So like maybe not quite to Grom, but like not that far. Maybe not quite DeGrom, but like not that far. So yeah, it's I mean, that his latest MRI is clean and then maybe he has to have some rehab stints so it seems like by that point he's gonna be what 40 innings behind Burns maybe more than that and even further behind Wheeler of course who's leading the majors in innings pitch so I think that is probably too much to make up and especially the fact that DeGrom is not going to come close to qualifying for the ERA title, which you don't have to, to be eligible for awards voting. But the fact that he's not even going to sniff that and he's going to be well behind the innings leaders, I think that ship has sailed. sailed yeah but i will be very interested to

see how you know and obviously we have some time left so the the difference there there might prove to be a broader difference but i just do wonder whether you know i guess it's burns and wheeler at this point how many how many i'm gonna ask a i'm gonna ask a rude question, Ben. Okay. How many starts did Burns lose when he was on the COVID injured list? Oh, I don't know. I guess it can't have been more than one or two. But it might have. It was probably some of those innings that he hasn't thrown. Yeah, that could be too. Yeah, I mean, his FIP is only like a quarter of a run higher than DeGrom's. Yep.

The ERA gap is a little bit bigger but the peripherals not that far apart yep good pitching this year yeah some very good pitching and also just wanted to mention some good hitting that has happened lately because uh in a recent effectively wild tradition we talked about someone who is not hitting and then he immediately started hitting which is kind of cool if we have that power it's like the opposite of the sports illustrated cover jinx where you talk about someone who's doing well and then they slump and they regress well it works the other way around too so it worked with Bryce Harper early in the season when he went on a tear right after we talked about him not being talked about and then it happened with Joey Votto. And lately, it seems to have happened with Cody Bellinger, too.

So in our trade deadline recap pod, we talked about the fact that the Dodgers lineup bolstered by Trey Turner, like the worst hitter in that lineup, apart from the pitcher on any given day, might be Cody Bellinger, 2019 MVP winner, who was batting eighth and looked kind of lost. And since that episode, now it's only eight games as we record here on Wednesday evening, but he has hit incredibly well. He's hit 333, 375, 800, slugging 800 with a 209 WRC plus, and he has four homers in his last three games so if the Dodgers get Cody Bellinger going watch out the rest of baseball I mean I know that they're not totally at

full strength and Mookie Betts is back on the IL with his hip issue but if you get Bellinger looking like some semblance of his old self rather than essentially the zero that he had been to this point in the season and of course he had been to this point in the season. And of course, he had been dealing with injuries too. But if he starts clicking,

then that lineup has no hole at all assigned to the pitcher. And it's just like all-stars and MVPs and former MVPs almost top to bottom. Yeah, it'll be interesting. I don't know. I know that they've attributed a lot. Dan wrote about this for us earlier this week. I know that they have attributed a lot to the shoulder. That seems, at least from Dan's perspective, that was not a satisfactory explanation for him. It just would defy the sort of historical trends of injuries that are sufficiently bad to dampen one's performance, but not so bad to keep one out of the lineup entirely. I know that Bellinger has missed big chunks of time, but it hasn't been because of the shoulder injury. So I don't know, but it sure would be great,

except that I would like it if all of our races stayed competitive and if they have a fully operational Cody Bellinger and then they get Kershaw back and they have Trey Turner doing the coolest slides imaginable, then we'll be on to the Giants. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, well, the Giants do have a four and a half game cushion and they have showed no signs of slowing down. Seriously, I swear, like every single day,

I just stumble across a headline like, Giants come back down three runs in the night or whatever. Like Giants walk off with, like it probably is not literally happening every day but as someone who is not watching every one of that team's games it seems just like following from afar it's that everyone ends dramatically with a giant's victory yeah well i mean you can't watch them all you're busy watching the angels exactly right the western Exactly. Right. The Western team that matters the most. So I have one other thing to mention here. So we talked recently about Flood versus Kuhn and Justice Blackmun opinion. So talking about legal decisions that are related to baseball. And there was just another one this week involving the Philly Fanatic. this week involving the Philly Fanatic. And I think this has come up on the podcast before that the Phillies were getting sued and there was some question about whether they would be

able to continue to use the Fanatic as their mascot because there was this two-year fight between the Phillies and the design firm Harrison Erickson that originally designed the Fanatic back in the late 70s. And there was a decision in this case, and not only does it have implications for the Phillies and the Fanatic, but also apparently the larger entertainment world, which is pretty interesting. So I'll just read a little bit from this Hollywood Reporter piece about the case. Back in 1978, Phillies executive Bill Giles decided the team needed a mascot, so he hired Bonnie Erickson, who had previously worked with Jim Henson in developing the Muppets. The fanatic was the result, and during an April 25, 1978 home game, the character came to life when Dave Raymond, an intern in the team's marketing department, donned the now-famous costume. in the team's marketing department donned the now famous costume. Many years later, after the fanatic became very popular, both sides would dispute the amount of creative direction that the team had given Erickson. What became important was how Harrison Erickson obtained a registration

from the copyright office by calling the fanatic costume an artistic sculpture, which is interesting. I would not have thought of it as a sculpture, but anyone who has worn a mascot costume probably on a hot day would say that that's what it feels like. So then attempting to leverage the termination provisions of the Copyright Act, which allows authors to reclaim newer works after 35 years, Harrison Erickson attempted to grab back rights in a suit the team raised all sorts of theories why copyright termination was invalid and before the termination became effective the phillies made some alterations to the fanatic to the confusion and ire of its fan base yeah so they went through with this case now comes u.s magistrate judge sarah netburn's recommendation in the case she wants to let harrison erickson which is really tough to say. I'm impressed that I've managed to say it so many times, reclaim rights to the original

fanatic and preclude the team from challenging the validity of the copyright. But that's not why this decision may change Hollywood's destiny. Who knew? In another part of the report, Netburn looks at the recent alterations that the team made to the mascot and examines something called the Copyright Act's derivative works exception, which basically allows the copyright holder to continue to use amended versions even past termination. So, Harrison—oh, there it is. I screwed it up. Once I said, I knew I was going to do it. argued that the changes were trivial and not original enough to be considered distinguishable, which leads Netburn into a visual assessment that whether the newer fanatic is a, quote,

slavish copy. So the judge had to determine whether this fanatic was significantly different from the original fanatic or basically the same fanatic, and they were just trying to get around these copyright provisions. So here's a really funny little excerpt from the decision and i guess she's abbreviating fanatic one and fanatic two as p1 and p2 so p2 has pink star-shaped eyelashes light blue eyebrows round eyes oval pupils a cylindrical snout that is one that is the same diameter the whole way across, wingtips on its arms, and a blue-tipped duck butt, she writes. Legal terminology, duck butt. Yeah, duck butt. P1, for its part, I don't know.

She's not anthropomorphizing the phonetic here. She's referring to the phonetic as it. But P1, for its part, has scalloped-shaped eyelashes, dark blue eyebrows, oval or egg-shaped eyes, a megaphone-shaped snout, no wingtips, and a dark blue tail that comes to a smaller point. strokes of brilliance. But as the Supreme Court has already noted, a compilation of minimally creative elements, no matter how crude, humble, or obvious, can render a work derivative, which normally derivative is not a compliment. That's kind of an insult. But in this case, you want to be derivative because it's different from the original, I suppose. And so she accepts that the newer version falls within the derivative works

exception, which if now accepted by the district court would mean that the Phillies won't lose their mascot. And the story includes pictures of P1 and P2, the original fanatic and the new fanatic. And they're both clearly the Philly fanatic. I mean, you would not see the second one and think, oh, that's a different mascot. But you would also be able to point out the differences pretty clearly. And I guess that is enough. So that's what it takes to be derivative. Glusker partner, the Phillies case could have an impact far beyond the world of sports mascots, potentially serving as a blueprint for motion picture studios looking for ways to retain rights in fictional characters. So as long as relatively modest changes are made to a character before copyright termination is affected, that derivative version could be used even after termination. And if the modified version has become the definitive representation of the character in the eyes of the public, this could significantly devalue the original

grantor's termination rights. So this could be an important precedent for the larger entertainment industry, the Philly fanatic precedent. So if you have, I don't know, a superhero or some other character from- I was going to gonna say does this mean we get more stupid sorry that was editorializing does that mean we get more maybe it means we get fewer of them because you only have to do one every now and then but i guess they might look slightly different so if you have some character from i don't know the 70s or the 80s who's expiring now, then maybe you can just slap a duck butt on them. So now it's the same character, but it's different enough that you can keep using it, I guess.

So we might see a whole bunch of duck butts or the equivalent on other famous characters. Was a Spider-Man with a duck butt already in the the spider-verse did we already get that did we get yeah spider duck spider there's howard the duck and there's spider ham there must be a spider duck somewhere in the multiverse anyway it's funny to me that this was a 91 page report that's how long it took to establish whether this was a different enough fanatic with diagrams and breakdowns with a very legalistic language that is also talking about duck butts so i enjoyed this story and i guess congrats to the phillies and phillies fans for continuing to

enjoy the slightly altered but essentially the same philly fanatic duck but duck but i have one thing yeah i already sent this to you but i feel the need to to share it so on uh yesterday i saw a tweet from john schwartz about joey gallo yes playing alongside carlos stanton and aaron judge and i'm there's a there's a swear in this quote so everyone be ready for that but I'm not doing the swear Joey Gallo did the swear I don't like it he's too fucking big he's too big!

I don't understand how he's that big I don't like to look up at people like that I'm used to being big and I don't really care that much about being the biggest but he's like huge and then Stanton's there that much about being the biggest, but he's huge. Then Stanton's there. All right, I'm like the skinny tall guy now.

I'm the weak guy in the outfield now. I would like to say a couple of things about this. First of all, I think that it is incredible that we are seeing Joey Gallo grapple for the first time with the reality that he is not the biggest beef boy. But I also, Joey, if you're listening, we want you to know you're all equally good beef boys in our hearts, to our mind, and you're definitely an actual beef boy compared to, say, some of the other guys who might roam the outfield like Brett Gardner.

So feel confident in your beef boy status and just know that if any of us encountered any of you on the street, any of you, including you, Joey Gallo, we would say he's too big. OK, that time I was doing this. Yeah, no, it's absolutely right. They're all giants and they are all powerful and they all hit the ball 450 feet all the time and it's awe-inspiring like that i guess it was the first homer that he hit with the yankees where it was like a i think it was a 48 degree launch angle or something like that like it almost looked like he hit it straight up obviously he didn't but it kind of looked like that like he just kind of like crouched he like bent over almost and just like

lifted it just like at this trajectory that you can't believe that it would have been out and granted it was helped a little bit by being in yankee stadium but even so like no one hits the ball that high and and that far like joey galla does that and so he has uh nothing to feel inadequate about or he has no need to compare himself to the even larger outfielders who are flanking him there either in the field or in the lineup there's uh no shame whatsoever in being smaller than aaron judge or john carlos stanton he is still bigger than almost everyone i do find something comforting about all of us. You know, we all just have moments where we feel a little insecure. And I don't know, there's something nice about the connection that implies between all of

us human beings living on the planet. But it's just like when you're at that idea, yeah, apparently you do notice the difference. But who would have thought such a thing was true? So anyway. Yeah. I wonder if it is liberating for him on some level like it doesn't sound like he's super insecure about it he has no reason to be but being on a team where he is not the biggest anymore and he's walking around with judge and stanton and steven

writings and all these other guys who are even bigger than he is like is there some part of him that feels that he has to compensate because he's always been the biggest and the strongest and the hardest hitting and now he's in a lineup with like the three guys who hit the ball like 120 miles per hour sometimes or is it nice yeah maybe it's a relief yeah just blend into the crowd like i don't have to shoulder all of the power responsibilities in this lineup i'm not the guy that everyone looks at and points at and wants to take pictures of i'm small compared to these even larger people on this team so maybe on some level it's a bit of a relief even if it's

also an adjustment newly a beef boy not the beef boy All right. So we are speaking now just as the Field of Dreams game is getting underway. And after that, Shohei Otani will face the Blue Jays and Vlad Guerrero Jr. So we will have to discuss whatever happens there in a subsequent episode. But looking forward to those. And just in honor of the Field of Dreams game, I will read this Twitter thread that I saw earlier this week from a user on Twitter whose name on here I don't know how to pronounce because right now he has just like a piece of corn as his handle. But he is at C-L-O-O-O-N-A-N, Clunin, maybe. So he says, I did some Field of Dreams math today to try to figure out how much money the baseball field actually cost the Kinsella family, which I know has been a point of contention. Like I've heard Nick Offerman, who knows a few things about farming.

He has complained about the fact that Ray like basically bankrupts his family by using a few acres of corn or what would have been corn to make a baseball field. That should be just a tiny sliver of the overall land there. And it should be like a drop in the bucket in terms of the loss in revenue from the corn. And yet he is putting his whole family at stake here. And so I've heard Offerman complain about that. And I'm always in favor of people way overthinking things and doing the math. And so this thread here, the user says, I started by figuring out the yield in that part of the state. Dyersville is on the border of Dubuque County and

Delaware County. Their 10-year yields in 2010s were 191.3 and 196.6 respectively. We will call it 194 near the border. Then I checked what yield looked like in the 2010s versus the 1980s. 10-year yield in Iowa this past decade was 182. In the 80s, it was 114.7, about 63%. Then he does some quick Google Maps work and figures out that the field itself sits on about three acres. Then he checked corn prices from the 1980s, which I don't know how hard it was to dig this stuff up, but impressive commitment to research. The movie came out in 1989, so we'll look at 88. We know

Ray wasn't a great farmer, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he could have gotten the best possible price for his corn, $3.48. So you have 194 bushels per acre times 63% times three acres times $3.48. And the grand total is $1,275.98. That is what Ray sacrificed here by building a baseball field on these three acres. And somehow that almost cost the Kinsella's their farm. And the kicker to this thread is that that amount is roughly the price of one ticket to the Field of Dreams game on the secondary market. So, but yeah, it never really made much sense that Ray was really jeopardizing his whole livelihood by doing that. Now, granted, I guess this analysis doesn't take into account the construction costs, although it seemed like he was doing that single-handedly. But did he have to hire field hands to take care of the rest of his property?

And maybe it's like multiple years because it seems like a winter goes by. like multiple years because it seems like a winter goes by. And so I guess you can double this because that part of the field is lying fallow for a couple of harvests. But really, there's no way to make the math work out to this is something that's going to cause the bank to foreclose on us. But that is probably far from the top of the list of things that don't make much sense i was gonna say ben ghosts come out of the corn there there are ghosts coming out of the corn i think that the the invitation to um suspend our disbelief was yes hand delivered as it were i think you're right yeah the commitment to like real life veracity is not that movie's strong suit. And that's okay.

Like I think you have to suspend your belief to enjoy the movie. And the better you can suspend it, the more you'll enjoy it. Yes. So. All right. So we're going to take a break now. And when we come back, we will be joined by Danny Funt, who is a senior editor at The Week. And he wrote a great piece last week for the Columbia Journalism Review

that's all about sports gambling and the takeover of sports media by sports gambling interests. And it's just unavoidable these days. Wherever you look, you will see gambling lines, you will see gambling picks, you will see gambling shows that are officially affiliated with leagues, including MLB. Just in a few years, MLB has done a complete about face from, no, we would never want to be associated with gambling to, yes, we will be associated with all the gambling. Give us all of the money and build our sports books everywhere. And of course, that about face has coincided with the increasing legalization of sports gambling. So it's not a surprise, but I think a lot of people are wary of this and kind of concerned about where it's all leading and what sort of scandals could be in our future here.

And I guess I should, in the interest of journalistic integrity here, just disclose that The Ringer, my primary employer, has a partnership agreement with FanDuel. And as far as I know, I'm not directly receiving any of the proceeds of that deal, nor am I covering gambling or being pressured to cover gambling in any way, but figured I should acknowledge it. And that's just a sign, I guess, of the fact that whatever you do in sports media, even if you're someone who knows very little about sports gambling, you're probably going to be connected to it in some way, whether now or in the future. So we're going to get into all of that with Danny in just a moment. gamble roll those laughing bones seven come eleven boys i'll take your money home

all right well we are speaking just a couple of hours before the White Sox take the field at the Field of Dreams game, wearing duds that make them look a lot like the Black Sox, which is maybe a little on the nose these days, given that so much of the news about baseball is gambling related. And we wanted to dive into that today. We've tended to avoid it thus far, but it feels like the time. And we are joined now by Danny Funt, who is a senior editor for The Week. And he wrote an article last week at the Columbia

Journalism Review called All In, How Gambling Swallowed Sports Media. Danny, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. What's the over under on it that's for Moonlight Graham tonight? That's an excellent question. I have not checked the lines. I wonder what got you into this topic because it's sort of a sensitive territory, I guess, for a lot of people who are maybe in sports media just because it touches on so much of what sports media members are doing these days. But as you made clear in your story, it's something whose tentacles have reached into really every area of the sports world and the sports media world. So what got you started and did you find that people were receptive

to your reaching out or were they wary of discussing this? Yeah, most people I talked to were very nice and very helpful. I was speaking mostly with sports media members, mainly beat reporters, and no one went so far as to say, yeah, I'm betting on games that I'm covering. But the thing, you asked what got me interested in this. The thing was basically just that reporters are sort of by definition, they should be by definition expert gamblers. They've got amazing access. They know the team and the games as well as anyone. They're seeing things behind the scenes that the general public and, you know, in theory,

bookmakers don't know. So, man, this would seem like an amazing money making opportunity for them if it weren't ethically problematic, legally problematic, and just a very messy, uncharted territory. What is your sense of how some of the governing bodies around the sports world are maybe looking at this or anticipating it? And I don't mean the league so much as, you know, like, what is the BBWA's position on the ethical ramifications of potentially betting on inside information that you have as a beat? Because obviously you have independent beat writers and other media folks who are trying to navigate this. Do you have a sense that some of the organizations that help to maintain their access are trying to get ahead on any of these issues? Yeah, I spoke with Henry Shulman, who was

a San Francisco Chronicle Giants beat writer for a really long time and sort of stepped back over the past season. He was a pretty senior official at BBWA, and he expressed a lot of skepticism and concern. And at least as far as stuff that's directly under their purview, they've been pretty strict in the past about setting rules for gambling. There were these contracts, Kurt Schilling was a famous example. He had an incentive in his contract where if he got a single vote for the Cy Young, he would get a million dollars or some sort of bonus. And Schilling made some sort of quip like, well, I might as well bribe a voter. It's as easy as that. And they quickly said that if anyone has, the union quickly said that if anyone has that type of incentive in their contract, they would be ineligible for the Cy Young. So I bring that up just to say, this has definitely been something that they've wanted to have a strict control over.

But what shocked me as I reported this and I talked to people and I said, hey, does your does your employer have any rules on this is just how little consideration has been given, how few rules, if any, there are about what you're allowed to bet on as a as a journalist. And yeah, I think it's kind of shocking considering just how huge this is getting and how it's such an important part of how media covers sports now that that has been largely ignored. And I guess it makes sense that this is still sort of a Wild West because all of this is developing so quickly. And so recently, it's just 2018, right, when the Supreme Court struck down that federal ban on most sports gambling outside of Nevada. And so various states have been legalizing it ever since. Can you kind of convey just how quickly all of this has swept up the sports world and the sports media world? I mean, outlets and entities and leagues that previously would have turned up their nose at sports gambling or distanced themselves are now wholeheartedly

embracing it, and it's no surprise, perhaps, given the money that is in play. Yeah, I mean, it happens so quickly. Like since you invited me on this show, there's been huge news, whether it was Major League Baseball saying they're thinking of doing gambling-focused broadcasts with Barstool, states pushing forward legislation, all these things. it's happening so rapidly. And, and, you know, so much money is at stake, a lot of these interests are kind of racing to what their beaks and figuring out ethics and rules and all that sort of stuff as they go. One thing that I thought was kind of a funny example of how quickly and how starkly things have changed is I'm sure you both have talked a lot about baseball's pace

of play problem and how, you know, obsessively they've tried to figure out with testing things in the minor leagues, you know, what can be done to speed up games and keep particularly younger fans engaged in these, you know, three or four hour games. And Rob Manfred gave an interview in the past few months where he said, he got a call from Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, and Silver said, Rob, you guys got to stop talking and worrying about pace of play. Your sport is perfectly positioned to take advantage of in-game betting, where if you're sitting in between pitches, you're bored, you're already staring at your phone. It's the perfect opportunity to bet on, you know,

is this guy going to get a hit? Is the next pitch going to be a breaking ball? Is the runner on first going to steal? And I just thought the fact that Manfred was gleeful about that as a solution to pace of play just shows how radically things have changed. And what mechanisms, if any, are there in place to sort of detect impropriety when it comes along? I mean, you made the great point in this piece that if you're a beat reporter and you're able to capitalize on inside information, the amount of money that you could make doing that might be really meaningful to you, but probably isn't kind of on the radar of any of these sports books relative to some of the other of money that you could make doing that might be really meaningful to you, but probably isn't, you know, kind of on the radar of any of these sports books relative to some of the other big bets that they're getting. So what, if any mechanism would employers have, even if they were

keen to monitor the activity of their reporters to, to really do that and ensure that they're not using that information to their own financial gain? It's a great question. Honestly, I don't know. And I didn't hear a lot of good ideas or compelling ideas about how it can be solved. It's basically, you know, if you have rules saying don't bet on this or don't bet specifically on games you're covering, it is borderline unenforceable. You know, it's so you can place a bet in some states in like 20 different places. These sports books take such an absurd volume of bets every day that they're not going to bat an eye if someone makes a few grand on a bet. That just wouldn't show up on their radar. The only real example, famously at least, of a sports writer getting in trouble for

betting was at the Denver Post. There was a longtime columnist and reporter named Jim Armstrong. And I think it was 2011 he got in trouble. But the only reason was because they indicted this huge gambling ring in Denver, and he happened to be one of the people betting. He wasn't personally indicted. But yeah, prosecutors took down this huge illegal operation and the Post after the fact said, okay, this guy so many writers who, in theory, could have some stake in these things, or maybe even explicitly does? As you cover in the story, there are a lot of people who have gone from traditional reporting to working for sportsbooks and becoming touts, basically. And so that changes things, obviously. But some people who are still doing sort of straight up reporting, you never know, I guess,

what they're doing on the side or what relationships their employer has with various sportsbooks, etc. So is this something where you think people should be concerned that there won't be kind of an independent media that's speaking truth to power just because these things are so intertwined? You know, if there is some sports gambling related scandal that affects MLB or one of these other major leagues, will people actually be able to look into that or be motivated to look into that? Or will they not? Because maybe they're working for a rights holder of one of those leagues, for instance, and it would not reflect well. Yeah, great question. I mean, definitely as sports outlets do business with sports books, it potentially becomes difficult for outlets to, you know, for reporters to cover, you know, the things that their bosses are doing business with. Yeah, I don't know. I kicked around a bunch of

ideas and hypotheticals about how a misbehaving journalist who's betting on the side, how that would hurt a fan, a reader, or just someone in their audience. And there was a famous example, because there are a lot of parallels between this, I think, and investing, like traditional stock market investing. And there was a famous example of a columnist at Barron's who had a business partner who would say, I'm going to tout these stocks, and then you invest beforehand, and the stock price will go up once I put so many people on to this investment opportunity. And that was taken down as a form of insider trading. I don't really know if there's an equivalent to that in sports media, which I

guess is a positive, right? Like there wouldn't really be a way to screw over your audience to and profit from that. Like I wondered if, I don't know, some really popular personality in sports media could talk up a bet and then bet the other way, talk up, you know, some issue popular personality in sports media could talk up a bet and then bet the other way, talk up, you know, some issue, like say, you know, the Yankees are going to win tonight, and then they bet on the White Sox and get a more favorable line. There's just too much betting volume for that to be a possibility. So yeah, basically, what I'm trying to say is I don't think there's a lot of ways for the general public to get victimized by this. But, yeah, I would worry if, you know, just so many things about journalism are about the appearance of a conflict of interest, not even, you know, an actual conflict of interest.

And I just I would worry as a member of the public, you know, if a reporter has multiple loyalties or multiple interests, that would be potentially concerning. Yeah, or at least should be acknowledged, maybe in some way. But I guess you could have not so much a journalism sin of commission as omission, where you have some sort of information, and you could sit on it in theory, so that you could kind of reap the rewards and the lines wouldn't change because everyone else doesn't know. I mean, I guess you could just place your bets before you send the tweet, right? But it seems like there could, in theory, be some sort of situation where you might know something and it might be advantageous to withhold it. Like, I don't know, maybe you want to cut your friends in on it or something. I mean, it's very much an insider trading sort of scenario. I wish that I

could say that I was righteously refraining from betting on sports, even though I have all of this inside info. But the kind of reporting I do, I do not think would help me. And I don't think I would have any chance of making money if I were to bet on baseball. But you could imagine that if you're covering a team or particular players or a league on a different level where you're getting insight about injuries or who's going to trade whom or pick whom or whatever, some of those situations could theoretically come up. in my piece, which is if you're talking about this type of insider trading like betting, where you get a scoop and you bet on it with a favorable line before you report it, some people would say, oh, come on, reporters are in the business of breaking news. They would get so much publicity if they are headed on something. Obviously, they're not going to sit on a story just so that they can place a bet. And as you pointed out, they don't have to choose. They could go, you know, open FanDuel or

DraftKings, place a bet, and then five seconds later, post a story and they win on both fronts. So yeah, it's a scandal waiting to happen in some ways. Well, and I think part of, you know, people engage with the aesthetic of the sport in a lot of different ways. And I don't think that Ben or I would like to claim that we have sort of a monopoly on a good version of baseball. I think that people can engage with the sport in a lot of different ways. But I think that one of the things that's been sort of surprising is not just the speed with which the sports betting industry has seemed to grow in the wake of 2018, but the speed with which it has seeped into every aspect of broadcasting a game, right? You turn on any of the Bally sports networks and you got the lines going across the bottom.

And so, I mean, folks can read your story, but just like how much money are we talking about on an annual basis? Because I think that, you know, when I talk to my parents who don't watch baseball every night, they've been shocked to see just how much gambling content has made its way, not only into apps and stuff that you can bet on your phone, but just on the broadcast, right? You're seeing it every day when you're watching. Yeah, it's an obscene amount of money. And I think, you know, financial analysts project that in the next few years in the US, it could be a gambling as a whole could be a $10 billion industry. That seems maybe conservative. I mean, they don't know at what pace states will legalize, but it's just,

it's mind boggling. Yeah. And it's infecting every single aspect of the game. And I didn't really have space in my article to get into issues with gambling addiction, but I did talk to some addiction experts in the medical, you know, doctors who focus on recovery. And yeah, they pointed out that for their patients, it's really hard to be a baseball fan or a fan of any sport nowadays, and not just be triggered left and right by ads. As you said, you know, if the ticker on the bottom of the screen is showing lines, the announcers are talking about lines, they're interrupting the

action to cut to some fan duel promotion. Yeah, it's just blanket gambling promotion. And it's, it's unavoidable that you can't be a sports fan nowadays and not be inundated with that stuff. Well, and I was going to ask on that score, if perhaps this is one of the places where we might see some of the ethical sort of rubber meet the road for journalists where, you know, I think we don't want to necessarily moralize and people can gamble responsibly and have fun and, you know, they lose some money, but it's not backbreaking to them. But I do wonder if the real impact of this kind of activity is potentially going to get lost when the outlets that might cover it are linked so closely to sportsbooks. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, as far as is there a potential kind of boomerang effect, there was this, I think it

might have been 2015 when DraftKings and FanDuel were really, really aggressively fighting for market share and they just bombed every sporting event with advertising. And it kind of got a lot of pushback where fans were just saying enough already. It's four gambling ads per commercial break. It's ridiculous. People talk about, could there be that kind of backlash to the trends we're seeing? I don't know. I think that in some ways that was a new experience where gambling wasn't legalized and it was sort of a shock to our systems. Now we're kind of numb to it. So maybe it could just be just infiltrate every aspect of sports and it'll just become second nature. just become second nature. Yeah. It's not the biggest problem as a consumer of sports media or baseball media, but there doesn't seem to be much of a line or a demarcation between

gambling-related content and non-gambling-related content. So it'd be one thing if, okay, if you're interested in gambling and you want to place a bet on this game, then you go to this site or you go to this vertical within this site and all of the gambling related content is there and the other stuff is somewhere else, then it would be easy to find what you want and avoid what you don't want. But it seems like that's not really what happens. And I guess it makes sense that that's not what happens because if you're sponsored by DraftKings or someone, then presumably they don't want it to be cordoned off somewhere. They want the most people to see it as possible. So I just went to MLB.com, for instance, and looked at

their latest articles. And there's an article about Shohei Otani facing the Blue Jays on Thursday night. And if it's Otani related, I will click. So I clicked. And the whole thing is about, oh, here are the Blue Jays' odds and here are the Angels' odds. And it's cross-posted from the Action Network and it has DraftKings' odds in here and over-unders. And then there's a pick at the end. And it's still baseball content. I mean, it's still about Otani and the Blue Jays and that matchup and trying to break it down there. So it's not completely not of interest, I suppose, to someone who's not placing a bet on this game. But there's definitely a gambling slant there where it's not

what you would expect to see unless you have some financial stake in the game. And that can be a bit off-putting, I suppose. I mean, there are bad articles of all kinds. But if you're inundated with that type of article, and that's not really what you want to see, and you often can't tell that that's what it's going to be before you click, then there's kind of a fatigue associated with that, I think. Yeah. And not all of this is insidious, as you've both pointed out. Some of it can be very subtle, pretty benign. I talked to Kevin Clark, the football reporter at The Ringer, and he was just telling me about how it's so natural and basically expected nowadays that let's say you're

talking about who's going to win rookie of the year in the NFL. Sure, mention the odds for some of the top contenders. That's just, as he put it, a storytelling technique. I listened to Bill Simmons' Guess the Lines podcast during the NFL season. And yeah, he's talking about football through the lens of gambling, but he hits all the same points as any basic sports talk football show would. So in some ways, that type of weaving it in, I think does just enhance the way that we talk about sports and think about how different outcomes and players and all sorts of things are evaluated. But yeah, if it turns into just a way of baiting people into betting more and more, that would be concerning. So what does, I mean, you mentioned Kevin, and Kevin does a good job of this, and you mentioned Bill's podcast.

What to your mind does the sort of good version of this content end up looking like? What are the do's and don'ts for the aspiring sports writers who listen to our podcast in terms of how to best present this and still be able to nod at the angel on your shoulder? Right, totally. Well, one thing I heard from people who are real experienced gambling experts is those people who really know gambling can tell when someone who loves sports but isn't familiar with gambling is trying to parrot that sort of stuff just because it could expose them to a new audience. It's very clear who is fluent in that and who isn't. So if people want to make that a part of what they do,

I do think there's a learning curve and it's hard. You see some people kind of, it's clear that the people in sports media now who are trying to talk gambling and are a little in over their heads. The other thing I think is a little bit of a sensitive subject is when it comes to saying, here are the games you should bet on. These are good looking lines. Here are my picks for the week. That sort of stuff, I think, can get it's sort of low hanging fruit for a lot of sports, sports journalists. And I think there are good ways of doing that where you have you publicize your record so people can see like, you know, what rate you get games right, you're more selective about what's something you've actually done research on and think is a

savvy bet and what's just, you know, oh, I like this team today. I think that some of that can kind of push people to bet recklessly and get sucked into this. When it is, you know, you should approach it with the same savvy and restraint and levelheadedness that you would approach any type of investing. So I think that type of responsibility is possible and hopefully something that outlets and journalists prioritize. You mentioned the addiction risk earlier, and there have been recent examples in MLB and other sports, I think, where players have gotten death threats and people direct messaging them or direct messaging their significant others because they lost a game that someone had money riding on, you know, and people will send these very scary messages. and celebrities of all kinds are somewhat accustomed, unfortunately, to getting that sort of message from deranged fans for all sorts of reasons that are not related to gambling. And of course, I'm sure it's an extremely small subset of the people who are betting

on sports who are sending that sort of message. But I wonder what the obligation is. Is that pervasive enough that an outlet that is delivering gambling content or encouraging people to bet on sports like have to take that into account like i don't want to create some kind of you know moral panic here and generally i don't care how anyone gets their jollies if they're not hurting anyone else or themselves and most people who bet on sports aren't presumably and so i might spend money on sports aren't presumably. And so I might spend money on, I don't know, video games and someone else couldn't care less about video

games. And so I don't care if someone is getting entertainment out of betting on sports if it's done responsibly, but there is some percentage of people who can't really walk that line. And I guess to some extent, the business is also based on the knowledge that there will be some percentage of people who essentially can't control themselves when it comes to this. And I don't know if that's just so built into the model that the whole enterprise is tainted to some extent. Yeah. What I've heard is that about one and a half to two percent of the population suffers from gambling addiction. And just with alcoholism, there's alcoholics and then there's people who might want to drink a

little less. I think that's a useful way of thinking about gambling. There's definitely also plenty of people who gamble who aren't problem gamblers, and it's just a fun way of losing money and enjoying sports. The examples you shared are scary. I hadn't heard of that. Even beyond that, like some of the skeptics of gambling before all this legalization happened so quickly just wondered like what the atmosphere will be like at a, you know, at a, at a, at a ballpark or at any sort of sporting event when fans are just thinking about the game single-mindedly or to a large extent through the lens of bets they've made.

Like, will that make heckling, you know, more vicious? Will people be cheering, you know, bizarre things that have nothing to do with winning and losing? I do feel like that's a funky future that is going to be interesting to see. But yeah, just again, it's not all life or death. On the other hand, though, you pointed out these threatening messages. That's definitely unfortunate. A lot of the people I've heard about who have gambling addiction, it is just a really sad disease that can be financially ruinous. It can break up families,

can cost you friends. It's sad. And yeah, I mean, one and a half to 2% of the population isn't maybe enough to dictate how business decisions are made, but it's not nothing either. I know that we're not breaking new ground in the US with this, that sports betting and more accessible sports betting has gone on in other countries, sometimes for a lot longer. Are there any lessons learned that we might take from other markets that have maybe gotten the jump on this a bit quicker than the US has that might spare us heartache down the road? Yeah, I think particularly European soccer fans are farther along and having just opportunities to gamble and figuring out what

the best way to incorporate that is. I think one interesting thing there, I don't have good examples right now, but people pointed out like, you know, there've been cases there where these enormous gambling conglomerates start owning or being more involved with media than just as sponsors. I think that would be an interesting thing to keep our eye on. We've seen DraftKings and FanDuel either acquire or try to acquire some major media properties. Other sports books have tried to get into the content game. I think that's something that people have had concerns about overseas that would be definitely something to keep our eye on as this grows here. I have concerns about that.

grows here. I have concerns about that. Right about the time your story was coming out, I guess there was another story about Evander Kane, the NHL player for the San Jose Sharks, whose wife accused him of gambling on his own games or throwing his own games, which the NHL is currently investigating. He denied it. But that sort of story, I think, is what a lot of people fear as the money grows and the connections between leagues and sportsbooks get closer and closer. I mean, you alluded to it earlier, but even since your story has come out, I mean, there's been news about a Cubs sportsbook at Wrigley Field, and the Nationals are doing the same sort of thing, and the Yankees, and Maury Brown just wrote a piece for Forbes about how in the future, probably every ballpark will have a sportsbook attached. And so even though your story was focused mainly on sports media,

I wonder how much you've thought about the implications for sports leagues. I mean, is it inevitable that there is going to be a sports gambling story involving players betting on themselves or even throwing games? I mean, I started this off by alluding to the Black Sox. Are we headed back there? And is everyone kind of just rushing headlong forward because billions of dollars are there for the taking without considering the risks? Or do you think there are protections in place to prevent that? Yeah, sometimes people who are trying to say that's not a risk say, you know, oh, today's athletes make so much money, they're not going to be tempted by bribes to throw games. I mean, the ringleader, speaking of the Black Sox,

the ringleader of the Black Sox was paid more than half a million dollars adjusted for inflation. So it's maybe not going to make Mike Trout do something inappropriate, but it's not nothing either. I think one thing that interests me, and I don't have any examples of this, but just as there's so many prop bets and so many opportunities for kind of in-game micro betting, where as i said earlier like you're betting on how a certain at bat will go that seems so much easier to mess around with than outright throwing a game like if you're you know if uh if you are you going to walk the lead off better yeah you could do that and no one would bat an eye and you go on to to win the game there's limits on

how much you can bet on props. It's a little harder to make a killing doing that kind of stuff. But I just feel like that's so hard to regulate. I'd be curious to see if that ever becomes an issue down the line. Well, and I want to say before I say what I'm about to that I don't want to impugn anyone or suggest there has been impropriety, but it's not as if the players are the only ones on the field that have an impact on the outcome of a particular at-bat or a game, right? The umpires are paid reasonably, but they're not making half a million dollars generally, right? And they're certainly not making Mike Trout money. So it doesn't even necessarily have to be players that are potentially in a position to be

compromised. There are other folks on the field who could end up getting the sport and themselves into deep trouble if the incentives are right, right? Oh, totally. And there was the whole scandal with a referee in the NBA in the mid 2000s, where he was involved in gambling. So yeah, you're right. There's a lot of players who, not literal players, there's a lot of people involved in this who need to be policed. And yeah, it's quite a burden for the leagues and quite a burden for the sportsbooks. Fortunately, as far as the sportsbooks are concerned and the leagues, they definitely don't want integrity problems. That's like the last thing they want. So yeah, they have tremendous incentive to crack down as hard as possible.

Meg, it sort of sounds like you're making another argument in favor of robo-umps there. Not that the person programming the robo-umps can't be bought off to, but the umps themselves maybe can replace bets. Wow, bribing the programmers. That's next level. Yes, you never know. Well, and you got into this a little bit in your piece, but really the history of baseball and gambling are just so tightly tangled. I mean, people think of the century or so. But it's not as if this is unprecedented like you mentioned in your story. I think it's kind of like coming full circle. So the money is even bigger now. And I guess it might take like another Black Sox-esque scandal to make MLB say, no, even though we could make billions of dollars here, it's not worth it ultimately. And hopefully that doesn't happen again. But it seems like given the incentives, that is what might have to happen to stop the momentum here. just the extent to which this industry has grown. You kind of wonder how you reverse that. Is it just out of control? Can you put that back in the hat? But yeah, as you touched on, it was a cool

learning opportunity for me. I didn't know how deeply rooted gambling is in baseball history. Just basically turning it into a national pastime, turning it from kind of a kid's game to something that serious fans wanted to pay money to go see. And the National League was founded in part with the intent of ridding the game of gambling. And then five years later, one of its charter clubs, the Louisville Grays, they had players who were taking bribes to throw games and that team subsequently folded. So yeah, it goes back to the start of baseball and it's just always going to be, even whether gambling is legal or not, a lot of these problems are going to exist, right?

Like the people, the U.S. people estimate there were like over $100 billion a year in action before anything was legalized. So it's going to be a problem one way or the other. And I don't want to be too doom and gloom. Are there upsides here for baseball in that, as you mentioned, it may be uniquely positioned to capitalize on this just because there are so many games and so many events within those games and so much time to place bets on those events that maybe it gets propped up by that gambling interest. And if that just means more revenues for owners and the league, then I don't know that both fans of sports and also fans of fantasy sports.

So could it be that by attracting people to bet on baseball, you will also be attracting people to be fans of baseball in a broader sense? Or is there not a lot of potential overlap there? a lot of potential overlap there. Yeah, I mean, you mentioned fantasy, like me and my football team co owner Ryan are like studying, you know, the Jaguars backfield right now, we definitely wouldn't be doing that if we weren't so obsessed with fantasy sports. And that seems pretty harmless. I mean, we put we, you know, pay, you know, pretty minor amount of money to enter these leagues. But yeah, it just it intensifies our engagement. It makes us care about things we wouldn't otherwise. I think that the same can be true of gambling to a large extent. It's just, as we've discussed, it can be a slippery slope and you get a little in over your head and get

that sick feeling in your stomach where you say, man, did I waste a lot of money pointlessly? But no, there is a lot of healthy, benign ways to incorporate gambling with fandom. And I think that if done responsibly, that can be a great opportunity for growth. is, quote, totally independent and really run from an editorial angle. If it's not benefiting you, why the hell own it? So I guess I'm here to say, make me feel better about the future of our industry with respect to gambling, because I read that and thought, oh, I'm going to have to start being nice about DraftKings. Yeah, and that was coming from one of the co-founders and the founding CEO of FanDuel. So I'd say he knows as well as anyone what their true motives are. Yeah, I don't know. I think that if more people care about sports and care about the

nitty gritty, and there was a fun example I thought of, a Detroit News, Detroit Pistons beat writer, who if all you cared about was wins and losses, the national audience wouldn't necessarily have much reason to watch Pistons games and care about, you know, their bench rotations. But this guy started, Rod Beard is his name. He started talking about daily fantasy and he got this huge new audience

and a lot more visibility. So yeah, to that extent, I think it can be great. It can be a way to bring in new readers. It can be a way to dive into new readers. It can be a way to dive into statistics in ways that you might not normally. And it can bring a lot of money to an industry and maybe prop up some outlets that are struggling. As you were saying, some journalists think, oh, well, in due time, we'll all be working for sportsbooks and they'll have their huge content departments that will compete with the ESPNs and the ringers

of the world. And I tried to kind of tamp down expectations on that just because I don't think that's happening. But I do think that if there's kind of more money in the pot, maybe a lot of outlets can hire people and invest in things they wouldn't be able to otherwise. Yeah, that's a good point because a lot of the sports leagues are doing pretty well already. And MLB was having record revenues every year even before it really got into bed with gambling in recent years. But not so much the case with many media organizations. It's not the most stable business to begin with. what with the decline of local media and some of the bottom falling out of the ad market or going to because you're fired and your employer went out of business or something. Well, I guess if you're choosing between those two things, then maybe it's the better of those worlds. Yeah, I interviewed

J.A. Adande, the ESPN analyst, and he now directs the sports journalism department at Northwestern. And he was saying that, yeah, he incorporates gambling coverage in his journalism classes, basically with the idea that, you know, a lot of people trying to crack into this industry just want to report and write and be thinkers. And if this is how they earn their living or get their foot in the door, that's great. And I totally buy that. I think as long as you're not deceiving readers or doing unethical bets on the side or whatever, yeah, if that just opens more doors for people, go for it. This may be beyond the scope of your reporting, but do you think that the revenue that is coming into sports leagues from betting on those sports will filter down to players? Do you have any idea how that will be distributed? Because one thing Maury Brown wrote about at Forbes is that owners like the idea of having sports books in ballparks that are sort of maybe attached to the stadium, but not actually part of it. And so they can kind of separate that revenue. In the books, it's maybe non-baseball revenue, and so it won't be part of what they have to split with players, for instance. But of course, as with so many baseball-adjacent revenue sources, it all hinges on the games and the players are the ones who make those games entertaining. So I wonder if the players have the same incentive here

that the owners and the commissioners do. Are they all going to profit from this equally? Did you hear anything about that? That's a great question. And the example you gave of how they're kind of creating these artificial boundaries between sportsbooks and stadiums is funny. No, I'm not an expert in,

you know, collective bargaining, revenue sharing. I do think just on a simplistic level, you know, a huge, a huge way that a lot of these leagues and teams make their money is through TV deals. And a huge incentive for embracing gambling is that gamblers watch way more games than even passionate fans, like something like twice even passionate fans. They watch twice as much games as the ordinary fan does. So if those deals are more lucrative, there's more money to go around. And yeah, maybe that can lead to more lucrative salaries. All right. So lastly, what's next? If there is anything that we haven't touched on here, or maybe that you

didn't have room for in your story, are there any other developments that you see on the horizon in baseball specifically or across all sports, or is it just going to be more of the same? I don't have good predictions. As I've said, I don't think it's great sometimes for journalists to get too much in the prediction game. I do think it's worth remembering, this feels like a huge industry that's exploded out of nowhere. And we are really at the tip of the tip of the iceberg. I mean, New York hasn't really implemented opportunities to bet on sports. Almost half of the states haven't. Some states that have legalized, you can only bet in person at a sports book or there's other types of restrictions. So the potential for this industry is enormous and totally unrealized.

it's totally unpredictable how this is going to transform sports, but it's going to be, if this seems dramatic, what's happened now, it's going to just be even more, you know, night and day. So that'll be very exciting to follow. Oh, I hope it's exciting and not depressing. Maybe it'll be a little bit of both, but. Yeah. Great, great, great edit there. We'll see how many years it is until Effectively Wild Stat Blast sponsored by DraftKings or someone. Not for now. All right.

Well, we will link to the piece, which is excellent and insightful and illuminating and deeply reported. And you can also find Danny on Twitter at his name, Danny Funt. And again, he is a senior editor at The Week. Thanks very much, Danny, for coming on. Thank you both. I had fun. Well, the Field of Dreams game delivered. The setting was fun and the game was even better. You had a super exciting top of the ninth inning

where Liam Hendricks blew a save. Big moment for Meg's Beef Boys. A homer for Judge, a walk from Gallo, another homer by Stanton. Sadly, no stat cast in that game, so I guess we'll never know how hard those balls were hit, but they looked pretty hard, and it was extremely aesthetically pleasing to see them disappear into the corn. Of course, the Beef Boy bombs were overshadowed by another blown save, off-sack Britain in the bottom of the ninth, where Tim

Anderson hit a walk-off shot into the corn. That was quite fun, although Black Sox scandal expert and former Effectively Wild guest Jacob Pomrenke of Sabre quote tweeted a picture of the Yes Network studio in which you could see a big DraftKings ad right next to the Field of Dreams decorations. And Jacob said a huge DraftKings ad to promote a game inspired by the Black Sox scandal is chef's kiss. Then he continued, He held a tough lineup to two runs over six innings. He did give up a single and a walk to Vlad Guerrero Jr., although he also struck him out, and Otani himself doubled and walked at the plate. Just a fun night of baseball all around. And before I leave you one weird funnish fact, we got a couple of emails from listeners Sam and Brian

about something that I'm going to guess more than two of you were wondering. On Wednesday, there was a Red Sox-Rays game where the Red Sox blew out the Rays 20-8. And I'll quote from Brian's question here. Is the line score in the Wednesday-Rays-Red Sox game the most unique run ever of consecutive number half-inning scores? Has there ever been a game that went to 8 or higher? So what he's referencing here is that if you look at the line scores of the Rays and the Red Sox, there was a half inning of one run scored, a half inning of two runs scored, a half inning of three runs scored, and so on, up until seven runs scored. So you had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and Brian and Sam

want to know if that has ever happened before, or even if you've gotten to eight or nine. Well, I directed this question to Jeremy Frank at MLPRandomStats on Twitter, and he queried it up for me, and he discovered that this has only happened one other time before, at least since 1901. On August 31st, 1996, the Reds beat the Marlins 22-8, and that time too, there were half innings of one right up through seven runs scored. If you look at it in terms of full innings, so you combine the runs scored by the two teams, then it's still a tie with this Red Sox-Rays game, but with two games in 1955. The White Sox beat the Kansas City A's on April 23, 1955, 29-6. And then the poor Kansas City A's were beaten later that year, August 7, by the Red Sox, 16-12.

So we have never gotten to eight in the same game. Six of those runs allowed by the Rays, by the way, were coughed up by catcher Francisco Mejia, who threw two innings, gave up a homer, two hit by pitches, and six hits. That's six earned runs. Not a good outing, but position player pitchers still better than pitcher-hitters,

as we established last week. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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. Sam Minter, Brent R. Krebs, Michael Rower, John Yearley, and mrob54. Thanks to all of you. 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 podcast.fangraphs.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 one more episode before the end of this week.

Talk to you then. Outro Music