Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1746: They’re Saying Boo-urns

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Padres reliever Austin Adams tying the single-season hit by pitch record (and some resulting safety concerns), Corbin Burnes pitching (most of) the season’s record-setting ninth no-hitter and the changing norms around pulling pitchers mid-no-no, Max Scherzer’s recent run, pitchers whose whole careers are covered by pitch-tracking tech, and […]

Just outside of Austin High as I've ever been Just outside of Austin I think I'd fall in love with you again Hello and welcome to episode 1746 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. Meg, what are we as a society going to do about Austin Adams? The man is a menace. I feel bad saying the man is a menace because I'm sure he is not being a menace on purpose. And yet he is a menace. Yeah. sure he is not being a menace on purpose and yet he is a menace yeah pretty inarguable at this point we talked about Austin Adams the Padres reliever who is making a run at the hit by pitch record recently I think he had 18 at the time or actually he had 18 and then you informed me as we were speaking that he had just racked up two more and so he had 20 well

now he has 23 he has tied the all-time record. He hit three Dodgers in an inning in his most recent appearances. So he has now hit 23 batters in a mere 48 and two-thirds innings pitched. He's just broken the scale entirely. Anyone who has ever been in this neighborhood of hit by pitches has pitched like twice three times as many innings as austin adams so we've never really seen anything like this this level of effective wildness not just with walks but with hit by pitches it's just off the charts like is this is the point where you gotta bench him or suspend him or something because it's just like throw some pitches in the

strike zone my man or at least don't hit people right like i don't imagine that there's any intent right i don't want to ascribe i'm sure he doesn't want to hit batters he doesn't help himself or his team when he does that you know i'm sure he's not some vigilante out to injure the rest of the league, but I do wonder and I don't want to be overly hand-wringy or moralizing when I say this, but it does seem that there is a sort of fundamental breakdown in his ability to throw strikes or at least put the ball where he wants and have that place not be on someone.

And so I do wonder if it wouldn't benefit him just to have a couple days off. I know that the Padres are in sort of a bad spot in a number of ways, not the least of which is they really need to win baseball games right now. So I don't think that you could even really argue that benching him is working against their interests necessarily, but it is just a shocking rate of hit by pitch. And at some point, given the proclivity, you have to say like, I got to sit you down for a little while so that we can, you know, figure out what's going on here. Yeah. There's no precedent really for this kind of hit by pitch rate over this sort of sample. And so the Padres are in sort of a tough spot too because it'd be one thing if he were doing this and he had a 6 ERA or something, but he has a 3.5 ERA.

He has been pretty effective. And whether that is because it must be an uncomfortable at bat and how would you want to stand in or dig in against this guy right now? But beyond that, I mean, can you bench someone who is playing well for your team in a pennant race? He's not like elite late inning reliever. And yet it has kind of, without being too concerned trolley, like become sort of a safety issue. I mean, and yeah, it's not intentional in the sense that like he's trying to get vengeance or something.

I don't think. But I guess there's like inevitably some degree of intentionality in that. Like, presumably, if you just told him, hey, you have to throw this pitch in the strike zone, you can throw it at any speed. He could do that. Like, I assume if he could just lob it in there, right? So there must be some trade-off between command and speed where, like, there's a happy medium where maybe if he took a little off, he would have the pitch a little bit more under control. So I guess he could do that. Although, again, it's hard to ask someone who's competing at this level to intentionally not perform as well. It's a very strange situation. It's an incredibly strange situation. It really is. I guess one mitigating factor is that he mostly throws sliders and he's mostly hit people

with sliders. So at least they're a little slower than fastballs would be and just looking at where he has hit people on their bodies like right there are a lot that probably were not incredibly dangerous like there's some low ones and some ones in sort of the the core area and maybe on your butt or whatever so there aren't that many that are way up high in the head. Although like even in that inning where he hit three Dodgers, one Dodger he didn't hit was Trey Turner, but he made him duck.

I mean, he threw a pitch. Yeah, he sure did. Yeah, that pitch was like where Trey Turner's head was before Trey Turner moved. And fortunately, he did move. But there's potential for something bad to happen here so i don't really know what you do in this situation yeah i don't know like on the one hand i think you're absolutely right like it has not been we have we have in no way realized sort of the worst case scenario that you could envision with a set of circumstances like this and to your point like he is not otherwise bad at his job and the Padres sort of need every

not bad at their job bit of help that they can get right now because they are in a tough spot from a playoff perspective but it is I don't know I had the thought I just think we should take every opportunity we can to revel in realizing that we would be just so much worse as big leaguers and big leaguers are. Even as just guys in affiliated ball, we'd be so much worse than them. Yesterday, there was a moment in the Mariners-Red Sox game where I don't remember which of the Red Sox it was, but he had to go into the netting to try to make a play on a ball in foul territory, which he did not succeed in doing. And I thought to myself, I would hurt myself doing that.

Like going into the netting, I'd get caught in it somehow and like rip off a fingernail or like break a finger or do something. And so, you know, I'm glad that no one's getting hit in the head, but like spare some thought for the butts out there, man. Like you gotta spare a thought for those baseball butts. They still they can feel pain too yeah still get got right so yeah the only other comp really is like 41 year old oral hersheiser in just the last innings of his career in 2000 he hit a ton of batters in in even smaller samples so the rate was kind of comparable and right for him that was a sign that like,

okay, time to hang them up maybe now. And for Austin Adams, I don't know that it's that, but it's like we need some remedial strike zone training or something here. So anyway, I hope that the worst case continues not to be realized. Usually I would root for this strange kind of weird quirky history to happen.

But in this case, it's pretty hard to root for someone else to get hit so now the the ghost of howard emke right now who hit 23 batters for the 1922 tigers while throwing 279 and two-thirds innings so yeah adams now has just tied that and it seems almost inevitable that uh there will be another victim at some point in the next few weeks and that he will go ahead. So it'll be one of the strangest seasons really ever. And hopefully he can harness his control at least a little bit. He doesn't have to be a control artist. He just has to be not constantly plunking people.

That would be good. Yeah, I don't think, like you said, I don't think we can in good conscience root for the trend to continue. But here's the thing that I look forward to with great anticipation. I can't wait until next spring training when he reports to camp and talks to a beat reporter about how he has refined his approach and what changes he has made. Or that he made no changes at all like how he addresses this set of circumstances in the offseason is going to be fascinating just because you know you have to imagine some of this is the way he's pitching but also it's just such an extreme rate that you know you gotta regress even just a little bit right like every slider you

throw can't possibly hit a guy can it so i So I think we can root for the spring training story. That we can root for with Abandon because it doesn't involve butts at all, hopefully. No butts involved. Yeah, it seems like the Padres have been a little more hesitant to use him lately. Like they've used him more sparingly. It's almost like they're afraid to roll him out there because who knows what will happen.

Just one of the weirdest things. So strange. Speaking of longstanding records being tied or being broken, we had another one this weekend. On Saturday, we had our ninth no-hitter of the season. And we don't dissect every no-hitter in great detail here, but this one seems worth noting because at a certain point, I was rooting for the ninth no-hitter to happen just to set the all-time single season record, go ahead of 1884, which is like completely different baseball, completely different pitching. But still, there was that caveat that there had been eight no-hitters that year. Now, there have been nine. That has never happened before.

So I wanted this to happen. It's like the elusive planet nine somewhere in the solar system that astronomers think is out there somewhere and they haven't detected it yet. I hope that we find it someday. And I was hoping for the ninth no-hitter to happen. And it happened at the expense of Cleveland, of course, for the third time this year, which really, that's an indignity. I guess it's one that in part part maybe they brought upon themselves, but that's rough. That hasn't happened for a single team to be no hit three times in a single season. And it happened in this case after Corbin Burns was pulled

after eight brilliant innings and Josh Hader came in to finish this off. And this would have caused a firestorm at any earlier era of baseball history if this had happened for any non-injury related reason your ace being pulled after 115 pitches with a no-hitter on the line this time it was pretty predictable you could kind of see it coming and there was some backlash i guess but mostly muted because this sort of thing happens now it's like we were talking to Rob Maynes last time about the state of the starting pitcher these days and just how light the workloads are and what could be more emblematic of that than Corbin Burns being pulled

after eight brilliant no-hit innings. And that's just sort of a shrug. It's like, yeah, okay. Could kind of see that coming. What of that do you attribute to modern pitcher usage though? And what of that do you attribute to no hitter fatigue? Because I think that I imagine that the way that we have adapted to how starters are used and sort of what pitch counts teams will allow them to brush up against, that accounts for the bulk of it. I would say that that's the majority of it. but i have to imagine that some non-zero percentage is also that we are just tired which is unfortunate because corbin burns is like incredible and he pitched so well that day and you know it was a combined no hitter but if you're going to throw a combined no-no and feel

as if you have witnessed a display of dominance sort of on par with a typical no-hitter, that combo of guys is, like that's a pretty good combo of guys to be like, the opponent here was pretty thoroughly decimated, right? So the fact that that's probably in there too, but what do you make of it being the ninth one and us just being like, oh, we're doing this again?

We're doing this more? We're doing this more? We're doing more of these no more things? That's definitely part of it. Like when we had Emma Batchelary on earlier and she was talking about previous seasons when there had been a lot of no-hitters and just how quickly everyone sort of sours on the no-hitter. And it's like, oh, it's not special anymore. And I wanted there to be a record-breaking number just because we got out of the gate quickly and it was like, oh, it's the year of the no-hitter. And I just sort of wanted to make that official. And also, I feel like the more no-hitters there are, the more the root

causes of that could potentially be addressed just because it's such a big story and lack of contact and everything. But yes, I think any individual no-hitter, it's less of a career highlight or this is the only time this is ever going to happen. I mean, the Brewers hadn't had one since 1987, right? They had one in their franchise history. So it's something. It's not like Corbin Burns has thrown one, but yes, I think that is part of it. But you used to get fired for this sort of thing if you were a manager. I was looking the last time that this happened, that a pitcher was pulled from a no-hitter after eight innings was 1974. And in that case, it was actually a repeat instance of this happening with that manager. I was just reading and I will link to the account from UPI in the New York Times, September 5th, 1974.

And it just says, Preston Gomez did it again. For the second time in five seasons, Gomez, the manager of the Houston Astros, removed a pitcher working on a no-hitter but trailing by a run when he replaced Don Wilson with a pinch hitter in the eighth inning against the Cincinnati Reds tonight. And also for the second time, the relief pitcher lost the no hitter and Gomez's team lost the game. And it goes on to note that the first time Preston Gomez did this, it actually maybe came back to cost him. So it says Gomez was managing the last place San Diego Padres on July 21st, 1970, when he used a pinch hitter for Clay Kirby after Kirby pitched eight hitless innings against the New York Mets. The Mets, who had scored their first run in the first inning, got two more runs and three hits in the ninth off the reliever after the pinch hitter struck out batting for Kirby and won the

game 3-0. Gomez then defended his strategy on the grounds that I'm here to win games, which, hey, that's reasonable, but it didn't go over so well. San Diego finished the year with a 63 and 99 mark. His boss, then club president Buzzy Bavese, later disagreed publicly and eventually dismissed Gomez. So it had real consequences for him. And this was a case where, again, it's defensible that the team is trailing and you want a better hitter up there to try to come back. And Don Wilson had already thrown two no-hitters before that game, so maybe a little less of a big deal. But still, in that era, it was something. But now it's pretty routine.

And I'm going to quote from Joe Sheehan later in this episode. I will also quote from him here. He just wrote about the Burns game. Through 2010, pulling a starting pitcher with at least a six-inning no no hitter in process before he finished nine innings was an incredibly rare event per baseball reference it happened just six times before expansion in 1961 and then another 29 times in the expansion era through 2011 it's now happened 32 times in just the last 10 seasons it's happened eight times just this year it's no longer controversial and you know in this case like i get it because the brewers you know they're way up in the division

and that game was well in hand and burns is over his career high in innings pitch like a lot of that staff they've been worked harder than in the past and they're expecting them to make a deep run into october so of course you want to conserve their energy and 115 pitches was a career high for him. And he doesn't usually even throw a hundred, like he's not really a workhorse. And last year they didn't have him for the playoffs, right? And that may have contributed to their early exit against the Dodgers. So you can certainly see like who knows whether that one inning you saved there will come back to be beneficial in October sometime. But possibly, I get the rationale,

but it's a lot easier to justify this today than it used to be. Yeah, I think that that's definitely true. The good side of it is that we want to prioritize guys' long-term health. I think they're just not built up often to be in a position to really max out past what they're used to throwing in a lot of cases but yeah losing losing your job because you're trying to keep someone's arm from falling off is like or trying to win the game or trying to win a game yeah that too pretty much the only time you really see pitchers pushing it with pitch counts is in no hitter or perfect game attempts like there's a limit even to that now but often if you see someone go like 120 or more that's so rare

at this point it wasn't within fairly recent memory but now you can almost bet if you see a pitch count like that oh guy must have had a no hitter attempt so yeah there's still like some luster to it but just not enough that you'll be left out there for all costs. Who knows? Maybe he would have come out there with 115 and had a minimum inning. Maybe he could have gotten out there and you make him think that he's going to get the chance to do it, then are you going to pull him there? So just on the off chance that he gets bogged down and someone fouls off a bunch of pitches or reaches base or whatever, it's almost better to rip the bandaid off there. So if you're a manager, I'm sure you're rooting for the guy, but also some part of you must be like, maybe just like a little blooper here or something. Just like, take the pressure off me. You know, don't make me make this decision.

Don't make me do that thing that managers have to do, you know, where they manage. Right. Speaking of no-hitter attempts by Cy Young contenders, Max Scherzer had one going. Ultimately, didn't end up with the no-no or the perfect game but pitch brilliantly again and when has he not for the dodgers or really most of this season he has been everything that was advertised for the dodgers thus far you know it's nice when there's a surprise and someone you didn't expect to do that much that you picked up at the deadline actually does but it's also nice when a player performs as advertised and you gave up good prospects deadline. Actually does. But it's also nice when a player performs. As advertised.

And you gave up good prospects to get him. And then you immediately see why. You gave up those prospects to get him. And Max Scherzer for the Dodgers. Now he's made eight starts. He's pitched 51 innings. He has 72 strikeouts. He has walked five.

He has a.88 ERA. I mean this is like one of the all-time best runs by a trade deadline acquisition, I think, and that's exactly what they wanted from him. And he is contending for yet another Cy Young Award. What would it be? His fourth? I've lost track. I think his fourth. to the Cooperstown credentials that he doesn't even need to add to anymore. But this was in the start when he got his 3,000th strikeout. And he also had an immaculate inning just to make it even more special. And the reason I mentioned this, just other than celebrating how good he's been, is that I saw this graphic that MLB put out sponsored by some company or another where it showed every pitch on a strike zone plot that he has gotten a strikeout on. So all 3,000, I assume. Oh my gosh.

Going back to the beginning of his career. And that's awesome that you can make that for Max Scherzer because his career started in 2008, which was the first year of complete pitch effects coverage. The first year that we had public pitch tracking data in MLB. And that goes for Scherzer. That goes for Clayton Kershaw, who just made his return from the injured list. And he also debuted in 2008. I love that, that we have pitchers now who are winding down Hall of Fame careers.

And we have every single pitch that they threw on record. Not for everyone. You know, we're missing some early Justin Verlander, some early Zach Granke, some early Adam Wainwright. Those pitches, or at least some of the data on them, is lost to posterity. But future generations will be able to look at and appreciate every single pitch that Scherzer and Kershaw and their like threw in the majors. And that's pretty cool. Even if we don't have the full stat cast data and spin rate and all that for the early pitch fx years still pretty awesome that we're

now at the point where like entire legendary careers can be encompassed by the pitch tracking era yeah i like thinking about it that way instead of having it make me feel old like i think your approach is better yeah there's that too yeah who even starts game one for the dodgers now or that's assuming they have a game too which at this point yeah i mean they're still very much in wildcard position what do you do in a wildcard game if you're the dodgers and you have walker bueller and you have maxers or do you just piggyback them i don't know you can't go wrong with either no you can't go wrong it is sort of an interesting managerial conundrum i mean i guess like the wild card is a hard thing to manage right

because you uh your stakes are so high and uh you can't in some respects worry about future you because future you depends on present you succeeding right so uh it's not as if they don't have a lot of good options, but it also isn't like Walker Buehler's a slouch. So I don't know. I mean, they've both pitched so well. I don't know what you do. I think it probably will just come down to where they're ordered in the rotation right now, right? But I don't know. I don't know. I mean, the good news, I guess, for the Dodgers is that if for some reason they do have to play like a 163 against the Giants, they really don't have any bad options. Although rest will obviously determine a lot there. But I don't know.

Have you been thinking about? Here's the thing I've been thinking about, Ben. You know, the Padres exist still, which is funny because we don't really talk about them very much because they've been on sort of a bad little skit here. But they have a bunch of games against the Giants. And if they win all of those games, I don't know if the math works out on this, but they could, you know, depending on what the Dodgers do, knock the Giants out of first and then have to deal with the Giants in a wild card. And that's kind of funny. How do you, what do you root for if you're the Padres I mean you root for making the playoffs however you

have to and I'm sure that's your primary concern but would you rather yeah that's a good question I don't know the answer to that yeah that is a dilemma the Giants like still refuse to lose yeah not have they lost a game I mean I guess

they lost that first game to the Dodgers, but I don't think they've lost since then. So they're on a nice run and they have built up, I don't know if you can call it a cushion, but at least a tiny bit of a buffer, like the Dodgers, as well as they played, they just can't close that ground. They're just stubbornly, like perpetually, it seems like about two and a half games behind the giants but yeah in a wild card game i don't know that there's anyone on the giant staff who scares me as much as multiple dodgers pitchers do i mean yeah just looking at the names on the dodgers roster and the underlying performance and the run differential and all that like would suggest that probably the dodgers are the better team or you would project them to be better going forward and in a single game you're either going against Scherzer or Buehler not that like Kevin

Gossman or Logan Webb or Slouches or anything but it's tough to beat I mean Scherzer and Buehler those are like if not the two top candidates for the NL Cy Young Awards you know they're right there with anyone else and Burns and Wheeler and And yeah, I don't know who you choose. I mean, I guess Scherzer's been on the better run of late and Buehler has the standing in that clubhouse as like a career dodger, but also Scherzer is Scherzer and he's a legend. And I think everyone respects him. So it's not like any feathers are going to be ruffled if Max Scherzer comes in and starts that game. But yeah, if you're the Padres, I guess I'd rather play the Giants, but you can't go right either way. No. Did you see Max Scherzer reacting to Clayton Kershaw getting a hit in his return when Max Scherzer has not... He has not reached base one time this year. No, he has not. Not one time.

Not under any circumstances. You know, he should face austin adams and then maybe he'd have a he'd have a shot although i can't imagine a person i'd rather hit with a baseball less than max scherzer um just because he's so scherzery when he's pitching and that seems like it would be terrifying to stare down but um but he he was um he was delightfully ruffled, let's say. He was not angry, but he was strongly aware of Kershaw reaching when he had been on the injured list for so long. And Scherzer has just been unable to buy reaching bases this year. That is a record as well, or it will be if he fails to get a hit or reach base this season.

So I'm sort of rooting for that he can't do everything no he does everything that is actually like really part of his job yes you make an interesting point there like what if you do have a valuable member of your team who is scheduled to hit against austin adams at this point like do you just pinch hit for a max user or do you instruct him like, just don't even stand in the batter's box. Maybe they'll just tell you to go back to the dugout or assess strikes on you until you're struck out or just don't stand close enough to the plate that even Austin Adams could hit you. That would be my advice for someone you really can't afford to lose for a playoff run or a

potential wildcard game. Yeah, I mean, I guess. I mean, I suppose the set of circumstances under which Scherzer, who does go deep into games on occasion, but he's probably not standing in against Austin Adams all that often. But yeah, what do you do? I mean, I guess if you're confident in your padding, then it probably is fine, but it would make me at least a little bit nervous. Yeah, I would stay away so we're actually going to talk to jay jaffe on our next episode about some outlandish playoff scenarios so we can do a little check-in on the standings there because things are interesting

in the wild card races but we can talk to jay about all of that all the teams that are neck and neck and neck and neck and neck and neck and neck and neck. There are some good ones there, but you did want to just briefly bring up the Blue Jays who are right in the thick of that too. I did. Well, I wanted to say two things, one at greater length than the other, but we talked, I think on our last episode about the sort of improbable run that they went on and how that run accounted for them surging up the playoff odds in addition to the actual standings, which are the more important thing there. And one of the really cool things about working where I do is that we sometimes talk about something and I'll think that'd be good for someone to write about. And then I go bother them and ask them to do it and they do a good job. So, you know, some of the

exact percentages have shifted around a little bit since he wrote this but ben clemens wrote a fun piece for us at fan graphs on the greatness of the blue jays and also how that greatness and some of the ineptitude on the part of the yankees in particular has has allowed them to ascend as they have so people should check that out if they want a non-snarky like explanation of how some of that stuff works which you know i i think is good to like meet people where they are and and say hey we have a cool compelling real world world case to help us unpack a thing that people sometimes find a little opaque so so check that out and then also i just thought we should like take a moment to be like hey isn't

it cool that we get to watch vladrero Jr.? Yep, it sure is. I think we should. How did that home run he hit become a home run, Ben? That's wild. That should have been a line out to the third baseman. Yeah. What? Yeah, it is. The only sadness

I have is that he has now surpassed Otani in the home run race. Obviously, I'm pulling for Otani there, but I'm not pulling against Vlad because how could you? I invoked the specter of Jorge Soler passing Mike Trout a couple of years ago in the home run race. And in that case, not that I was rooting against Soler, but also he's Jorge Soler. Even that season, he wasn't that great. He wasn't a sensation or anything. This year, Vlad, I mean, if he ends up with the home run crown, he deserves it. Offensively, he has been the story of the season, and it's so much fun to watch him. And he has now surpassed Vlad Sr. as well in most home runs in a single season. And that guy's a Hall of Famer so that seems pretty good yeah seems pretty good ben can we talk about these blue jays over the last 30 days on on offense because it's i'm gonna i'm gonna read

you some numbers because they're sure fun so this is the last 30 day split marcus simeon has a 153 wrc plus tay oscar hernandez has a 165 wrc plus loretta scurero jr has a 196 wrc plus vladimir guerrero jr has a 164 wrc plus boba shett has a 119 wrc plus like this team over the last 30 days is like the best hitter in baseball yeah question mark like it's it is a spectacular display of offensive competence. And their bullpen has stopped coughing up the runs late since they got rid of Brad Hand. So, yeah, it's just a delightful display. Yeah. Watching them just massacre the Orioles this weekend, I mean, it was hard to tell, like, how much of that is Blue Jays' bats and much of that is Orioles arms. Like, obviously, it was a team effort. But the Orioles, you could do the same sort of split. I actually looked up the Orioles team ERA post trade deadline. So since August 1st is 7.28. That is over like almost a month and a half at this point. The entire team has a 7.28 ERA. And Orioles manager Brandon Hy hitter. So Hyde said, we swung the bat pretty well.

We're just not pitching very well, which is one way to put it. Master of understatement, Brandon Hyde. I mean, I don't know what he's supposed to say. Like he's not being given Major League quality arms to work with at this point. But yeah, you could say that, Brandon Hyde. My only complaint really is that our man,

Mickey Janis is not one of those Orioles pitchers at the major leagues level. I know that he has not pitched well at the AAA level or in the minors in general this year. So it's not like he's banging on the door or demanding a call up here. But honestly, how much worse could he be when your entire staff is producing a seven plus ERA? I think Mickey Janus could probably replicate that. And at least then you'd have a knuckleballer on your staff, which would be fun for everyone. So,

Hey, if you're calling up sacrificial cannon fodder here for the Orioles to have, then, you know, make one of your call-ups, Mickey Janus, give him a more extended taste of the majors. That's my loan request.

Other than, you know, fielding a major league quality roster which at some point will hopefully happen yeah but it's a lot easier to call it mickey janice yes can i say a couple more things about the blue jays sure here i'm gonna quote from from ben's piece so you know this like 16 games that they won on a 14 and 2 tear through was really what turned things around so here they scored 125 runs in those 16 games ben did you know that yeah so you didn't know so here ben anticipates other ben man so many bends how do you score 125 runs in 16 games you need everyone to contribute and that certainly happened here over that stretch

vladimir guerrero jr is hitting 373 425 731 with home runs. And he doesn't even have the best batting line among starters. That would be Lourdes Gurriel Jr., whose 392, 500, 824 contribution works out to a 243 WRC+. The whole team is hitting 304, 395, 28. That works out to a 409 team Woba. A batting line that would be the fifth best individual player in baseball over the course of a season. Ben.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Wow. I said wow. Wow. It's a fun fact, clearly. Yeah, like those Blue Jays. So anyway, and the Mariners beat the Red Sox.

So everyone is doing what they can to make my preferred playoff scenario come true. And I just want to say I appreciate all of you very much. Yeah. The one team that is trying not to have that happen, which is what's your preferred scenario? Mariners, Blue Jays is in the wild card game. Yeah. And then the Blue Jays win because it's their time. Then they can do cool stuff.

So another AL East team, the Yankees, hoping that that won't happen, that they will be one of those teams. And one move they made toward that goal is moving Gleyber Torres over from shortstop to second base, which is where he started, I guess, when the Yankees had Didi Gregorius, a competent shortstop. Once Didi left, they moved Gleyber over there, and he wasn't like a defensive wizard, but he was hitting at least. Now he's no longer hitting the way he was, and also the defense was

not what anyone wanted. And really, the advanced stats tell a sorry tale, but also the eye test, too. He's making a lot of errors. He's double pumping a lot. He's not getting to a lot of balls. And so they have shifted him across the infield to second base where presumably he can handle the defensive expectations better. And they'll just fill in in the meantime with some combination of Gio Urshela, I suppose, and maybe a little Tyler Wade and DJ LeMayhew from time to time. Not exactly your ideal solution either, but they're making do with what they have. But I just have to imagine that the agents of all of the shortstops who are free agents this coming offseason are just salivating about this move. I mean, maybe it was inevitable anyway, and maybe they're doing this now both to help themselves in the short term, but also to just get Glaber accustomed to his long-term position or at least evaluate him there. But really, when you have all of those shortstops who are about to hit the open market, Marcus Simeon and Carlos Correa and Trevor Story and on and on, Corey Seager, I'm sure the Yankees would have been expected to be bidders anyway.

But now they have cleared that position. It's like, hey, we have an opening at shortstop. So we will be contenders for those players. And Glaber, his bat will have to rebound for him to be valuable even as a second baseman. Yes. I know a lot of Yankees fans have been frustrated watching him there. It's funny. Everyone's talking about Derek Jeter's defense

prompted by his recent induction into the Hall of Fame. And I think Glaber's defense is maybe more obviously bad just because he fumbles a lot of routine plays, which Jeter didn't really do. He didn't have great range. He couldn't get to balls, but that was a little less obvious than when Glaber gets to them and just doesn't field them so there's been a chorus of complaints and the yankees have heard those complaints and i'm sure they had their own internal complaints and they've decided to do something about it yeah it's one thing when you're you know hitting as well as he did when you know when gregorius needed tommy john and he got shifted to shortstop you're're like, okay, like it's good to get a look at you. There's an injury reason to put you here.

You're hitting really well. And so the miscues, like in addition to you adjusting to a position that isn't the one that you've been playing, like, you know, the bat is backing you up. And now it's not. And I think that people do react to sort of those sort of miscues and errors. And, you know, like he'll just he also doesn't appear to be confident out there all the time. Right. Like it's he is aware of his limitations. And so there will be times where you're watching him play and he like feels the need to fully come set rather than throw and he might be able to get someone at first. And so it's just, this is probably best for everyone. And like you said, really great for the guys who are hoping to make a splash on what is probably going to be a difficult to predict free agent market because once the Yankees

enter the chat, I feel like all of your prospects go up. I mean, not your literal prospects, although sometimes that too, but your odds of securing a bigger contract are good when you feel like there's someone at the table who's known to spend a bit of money. Yes. All right. Well, we will return to the pennant races tomorrow with Jay, but for now, we have a couple other good guests. Really periodically throughout this podcast history, we have returned to the topic of minor league conditions, whether it's minor league pay, minor league housing, minor league nutrition, and the ways that teams are still falling short in those areas. We've talked to people who've started advocacy organizations. We have talked, I'm sure, to Russell Carlton from Baseball Prospectus about that before because he has been writing about it for just about as long as we have been talking about it, if not longer.

So he is going to be back on to talk to us about that. And he will be joined by, I believe, a first-time guest, the writer Robert O'Connell, who just wrote a reported piece about this for Defector, which was also cross-published at BP. Of course, it's not as if baseball is the only industry where some of the working conditions aren't great, but this is a baseball podcast, so we tend to focus on baseball issues. So we'll get into whether those conditions have improved and the arguments for improving them and refuting the arguments against improving them and more in just a moment. And one more player who is among the minor leaguers now, unfortunately for him, is Ryan LaVarnway, the star of our recent stat blast. He has been designated for assignment by Cleveland. He was the star of our stat blast because he is the first player in Major League history

to play his 162nd game in his 10th Major League season to take that many seasons to get to essentially a full season of games played. And he got there, but not long after he got there, he was designated for assignment

yet again. So his travels continue. He got 30 plate appearances for Cleveland and Roberto Perez is back from the IL and away LaVarnway goes. So his odyssey, good for him for sticking it out, I suppose. I wonder how much longer he will, but he had some nice moments. He was seven for 28, I think, with Cleveland. And he's played for, I think, eight major league teams and like seven major league organizations in the last seven seasons. So I'm sure he has some stories to tell and hopefully he can write a book about it someday. But I'm sure he is very well acquainted with the conditions that we're about to speak to Russell and Robert about.

So we'll take a brief break and we will be back with them. The orchestration's in the undertow Can you see all of the power In the petals of the flower The sweetest thing you've ever known You chase the flower from the storm Alright, so we've spent a lot of time over the last year dissecting the state of the minor leagues, its structure, the effect of that structure oning the state of the minor leagues, its structure,

the effect of that structure on the people who play in those leagues, and there's been some really good recent work on that question. And so we thought to analyze it, who better to do that than the folks who wrote it. So we are joined now by Russell Carlton of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Russell. Hello. And Robert O'Connell, whose work appears in a variety of places, including Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic, and most recently at The Defector, where he wrote on minor leaguers. Hello, Robert. Hi, thanks for having me.

Thank you both for joining us. So I guess the place that maybe makes sense to start, even though we have heard a lot about the condition of the minor leagues over the years, as I said, you both have written on this recently. And Robert, maybe we can start with you. For the folks who haven't had a chance to read your piece in The Defector, you spoke with a number of minor leaguers on their experience of the minor leagues. And I guess you don't have to go into everyone's story in detail, but I'm curious if there were any themes that emerged from those conversations in terms of not only their treatment, but sort of their expectations of their treatment in that system and what they thought their lives would be like as minor leaguers versus how their lives have sort of unfolded. and college tend to know in large part what fans kind of, you know, think about the minor leagues. They think of it as this kind of, I don't know, sliver of Americana, this space where they can,

you know, pursue their life's dream of making it to the big leagues. And I think that's changed a lot in recent years, especially the last kind of year plus as more and more of these stories get out about sort of teams' mistreatment of players, the incredibly low wages, the, you know, poor nutrition and housing practices, all of that. But the players I spoke with who had been, you know, had been in the minors in some cases since like 2011, 2012, or came in around 2017, 2018, I think they largely really didn't expect the kind of reality that they've faced for the last few years. And so, yeah, that's kind of been part of the project, I guess, of my piece and recent pieces is to pull the cover off of kind of that reality, I guess, both to, you know,

I guess the small part of that is letting incoming players know, but also kind of lay there the economic reality of the situation. And I think for a lot of organizations, you know, chief among them advocates for minor leaguers, the idea, the hope is that the more people know kind of what minor leaguers are going hope is that the more people know kind of what minor

leaguers are going through, the more sort of quote unquote radical change is on the table, whether that be, you know, the eventual formation of a minor league union or the minor leaguers be involved in the major league union or even the sort of revocation of the antitrust exemption for major league baseball. Yeah. And Robert, between your reporting and June Lee's reporting about the Angels minor league system at ESPN and advocates for minor leaguers, all of these various sources, it seems like we're hearing more and more about these conditions. And I assume that that's not because the conditions have gotten worse necessarily. It's just that there's more visibility and more people are interested in bringing these things to light. And maybe the conditions have not improved also, but that's what I wanted to ask you about because ostensibly part of the reason for the downsizing of the minor

leagues or part of the justification was that, oh, well, if we have fewer affiliates, the conditions will be better and there will be higher pay and everything will be better for the remaining minor leaguers. But from your reporting and from what you have gleaned from others reporting, has there been a significant improvement in any respect this season? Yeah, you know, there certainly have been improvements, but the bar is so low that it's hard to call them significant. You know, the kind of shorthand way to get at it would be the going rates for single A, double A, and triple A players this year are $500, $600, and $700 a week, respectively, for those kind of levels.

And that's up from, pulling up the pre-pandemic rates here, it was $290, $350, and $502 a week were the previous rates. So I guess, yeah yeah to take triple a players as an example they're seeing a you know 200 ish dollar a week increase uh single a players are seeing a 210 dollar a week increase but as you know anybody who lives in the world understands that 500 a week still isn't enough to live on in any real way and so yeah there have been these these gains made kind of at the edges, but the worry in some camps is that these sort of incremental gains will be,

you know, kind of window dressing or kind of like these half measures that don't really address the root problems, you know, namely the fact that at whatever these incomes are in these ranges, players aren't really able to live off of what they make. They have to train all off season without any pay, despite the fact that that's functionally an expectation for the clubs and a requirement for being a professional athlete. You know, the nutrition is lacking, the housing is seriously lacking. So there have been improvements, but certainly not what anybody involved would call going far enough. And then Russell, your work has focused on what the impact of those stressors is on players and their performance on the field. So maybe you can lay out for our listeners, you know, when you take the sort of stress of financial insecurity and housing

insecurity and insufficient nutrition, given that these guys have to perform at a very high level as athletes, what does that sort of package of stressors end up doing to these guys have to perform at a very high level as athletes, what does that sort of package of stressors end up doing to these guys and their ability to be professional baseball players? Yeah. When I was originally, and I've been looking at this for like a decade, just on and off, and this is one of those beats I keep coming back to. And in that time, I've kind of wondered, well, when you have a situation where you can be promoted and that's great, but that means you have to go to another city, which means what do I do with the lease on my current apartment? And making sure that, you know, people are paying their rent. And if you're splitting an apartment with six other players, you know, how do we handle that?

with six other players, you know, how do we, how do we handle that? And then things around food and people, players talking about that, yeah, you know, they kind of cut back on food, which is just an insane thing to say when you're talking about people who have to take care of their bodies and their health, because that's literally how they make their living being professional athletes. You know, when you are constantly in that state of worry as a psychologist, which is where my formal training is, you know, we call that food insecurity and housing insecurity and chronic stress. And the thing about chronic stress is that it releases stress hormones. Cortisol is the big one. And, you know, earlier in the year, I actually wrote a piece and I said, you know, if you think back over the last 18 months and

the pandemic, you know, we've all kind of had some chronic stress going on around just, you know, if you think back over the last 18 months and the pandemic, you know, we've all kind of had some chronic stress going on around just, you know, just everything's a little crazier and we've all kind of felt that creep of what chronic stress can do to you. You're just a little more tired. You can't focus quite as well. Maybe it doesn't knock you out, but it's just a little bit that kind of bleeds away. And so what you would expect to see, and it's what we see in the data, is that you would expect to see that over time you lose a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. And suddenly over the course of five years between when you get drafted and when you're ready, or you're at the age where you might get

called up to the major leagues, that that starts to wear you down. Yeah. And Russell, you've written about this probably more than any other topic over the years. I know you've written about pickoff attempts plenty of times, but I don't know that that can compare to the number of times you've written about minor league pay and working conditions and housing. And your most recent six articles are about that, right? So this is a topic you keep returning to, even though you're very prolific and wide ranging. And I've joked before that it's like the rule 34 of sabermetrics is that if you can think of a topic, Russell has researched it and written about it at some point. But what is it about this particular topic? I suppose part of it is the lack of progress.

If everyone had read your first articles about this and said, hey, yeah, great idea. We'll take his advice. Then you would not have to keep writing about this. Yeah. I mean, for me, it goes back to, I mean, I think of my own life journey. And when I was a graduate student, I worked in some low income areas of Chicago. And I remember when I first heard about what the conditions were really like in the minor leagues, I went back to that and I remember, you know, when I first heard about what the conditions were really like in the minor leagues, I went back to that and I put in one of my articles, I remembered a particular when I was doing a classroom observation in a Chicago public school and they didn't have enough books to run both the math class and the reading class at the same time. So what they did was they did both at the same time. And then they had the kids switch books. And, you know, I remember thinking, well, that's no way to learn.

And when you don't have the resources that you need, and you're kind of always worried about whether there's going to be enough, you know, you don't learn as well. And you have minor leaguers who are trying to learn to be major league baseball players. And I thought, I said, wow, that's kind of a crazy thought that my mind's going there when I hear about this. But, you know, the more I thought about it, the more I'm like, this really maps onto it. And so if you have a major league organization that's trying to say these, well, you know, 18, 19, 20 year olds are our future. I kind of wonder, you know, the rhetoric just doesn't match up very well with what conditions they're providing for them in terms of them being able to grow and learn and develop and all those sorts of things.

I think one of the things I was struck by, Robert, in your piece, and this sort of ties back to what Russell just said, is, you know, the sort of feeling of suspicion or acrimony that these conditions seem to create within clubhouses. a number of the players you spoke with highlighted moments where it felt very clear to them that their own interests and their own careers were sort of what kind of atmosphere this seems to create in minor league clubhouses that these guys just don't seem to trust that their parent organizations really have their interests at heart at all. are pretty clear eyed about that and see that this kind of line about, you know, every single A player having a hand in the organization and potentially being a future contributor to, you know, double A, triple A or big league clubs doesn't align with how they're treated. Yeah, there's a general sense in a lot of the players I spoke with of just kind of, I would call it paranoia if it weren't well founded, but it's this sense that kind of any actor in the clubhouse, be it a pitching coach, a physician coach, general manager, manager, is kind of arrayed against them in some ways, because the, you know, the goals of the organization, which is to field this kind of crop of player as cheaply as they can run counter to the goals of the individual, the individual player, which are obviously to try to maximize their chances of reaching the big leagues. And so the way that manifests is, you know, the beginning of my piece was about a pitcher who, you know, had been coming back from

leg injuries, had a long road back, was about to pitch this season. And his pitching coach wanted him to try a pretty strongly overhauled delivery right before the year started. He ended up tearing his UCL and getting Tommy John surgery. And he described to me just kind of feeling, you know, feeling that it was the wrong thing to do. You know, even a few pitches into that session, he threw that one day feeling like it was putting stress on his arm that it couldn't really handle. He hadn't been built up to it and just being curious about why it was happening at all. And, you know, he, he kind of holds the belief that he's just this kind of one point in an experiment that it really doesn't matter from the organization's perspective if he gets hurt if that's the process by which they can you know produce one pitcher somewhere

down the line with the delivery that they want so i think these players and unfortunately i think they're right to think so but i think these players often see themselves as kind of you know having to push against the uh kind of macro objectives of the organization and protect their own interests at times um and that'll also sort of filter down into everything from, I mentioned in the piece as well, but they were pretty careful about when and where they spoke with me, you know, arranging their calls because there's a sense that, you know, talking about these things can also hurt their progress through the club. Yeah. And I'd be interested in the thoughts of either of you or both of you in terms of how public opinion has shifted on the subject and just general awareness.

And I know that the average mainstream kind of casual baseball fan probably isn't that aware of these conditions or doesn't really care that much if they are aware. Certainly among the extremely online, hardcore Twitter kind of contingent of baseball fans and media members, it seems like there has been increasing coverage. And maybe because of these advocacy organizations or maybe because some minor leaguers have gotten more willing to speak out, you do hear more about it. And one would hope that it's a case of sort of sunlight being cleansing, but obviously it's not happening very quickly. But you do see some instances, and Robert, I think you mentioned this in your piece, where, you know, Brittany Trolley will report something or June Lee will report something or advocates for minor leaguers will bring attention to something and you'll get a picture of like the very sad looking spread after a game or, you know, the food that a player has, something like that. And then you'll

get a response because there will be an outcry about that, but it's very much a piecemeal response where maybe that one team will look into that one issue and maybe address that, but not in a more institutional sense. So I guess, Russell, just because you've been writing about this for several years now, as we've been talking about it on the podcast for several years, do you sense that there is a shift in public opinion and that that has any power to actually affect change? I think there's an awareness of it in the public and for the reasons that you just mentioned. I think that I don't know that that's going to filter down to players feel, feeling comfortable talking about it. And as Robert said, there there's concern about,

you know, is, is talking about this going to get me in trouble with the, with the parent club. And I mean, I, in, in my own work,

I have had times where I've kind of, you know, tapped people on the shoulder and reached out and done stuff. And, and, you know, people won't talk to me even off the record and because, you know, people just don't want to, the phrase I always hear is I don't want to rock the boat.

And, and, and, and so I think that between, I think the public opinion may be a little bit more, more arrayed toward at least understanding what conditions are like. And there are going to be some people who won't, you know, they just don't think it's a big issue to worry about, or, you know, if you don't like it, play harder. But at the same time, I think that there's a real feeling of, whether that's paranoia or just feeling like, you know, that somebody's really watching me, that I think is going to keep players themselves from speaking out. And I think that if the players themselves were more able to speak out and you had a face to put with it and a name to put with it, the narrative would probably hit a little harder than just kind of a picture of, you know, a styrofoam clamshell with, you know,

some pretty awful looking lunch meat in it. Yeah. And to piggyback off that, it does, just speaking with kind of the team at Advocates for Minor Leaguers, their sense that I can just kind of echo here is that there is kind of a slowly snowballing effect that when one of these stories comes out, they'll have the next week, a lot of players, you know, reaching out and letting them know of similar circumstances. And I sense that more and more players will be kind of like willing to go on the record as things go. But as Russ said, it seems like pretty slow going and, you know, they have well-founded reasons for kind of being somewhat cautious there. We'll get to whether the organizational

will to change anything actually exists in a minute. But Russell, you've done some work on this. What would it actually cost to change this? It kind of depends how deep a team wants to go, but the back of the envelope number that I keep using is something around $4 million in net new spending. And that kind of gets you to where if the team were to take on, for example, leases for apartments and were to cover those, or if they were to provide catering services that would be along the lines of something that a sports nutritionist would recommend, or if they were to have a stipend in the off-season for players to train or something like that. And you could do all that for somewhere around $4 million or so.

I want to put a big emphasis on or so just because it's going to depend on a lot of different factors, but that's the right order of magnitude. Yeah. And we've read some reports of what the Astros, the Orioles have provided some housing for minor leaguers this season. It's not clear if that's going to be permanent or not. And part of that may just be in response to the unavailability of host families this year, just because of the pandemic, at least at some levels. But Robert, as you noted in your piece, host families, you know, kind of this quirky sort of quaint tradition of the minors that I think people think fondly about. And I know that many people have warm and wonderful experiences with host families and build good relationships there. But as you noted, it's not always a playground either. I mean, it would be better to live on your own if

you could. Generally, people prefer to. And you had a sort of nightmare scenario with a host family that I hadn't heard about before, but makes sense now that you brought it to light. Yeah, no. In the piece, you know, a player spoke with me about living with the host family and the man who owned the home was, you know, just a real super fan of the organization, had kind of clutter everywhere, a lot of, you know, like bobbleheads, posters, things like that from the team and its various minor league affiliates. And as you can imagine, that might be a strange energy to go home to every day. And so this player mentioned he and a handful of teammates lived in this place and, you know,

would try to be home as little as possible to avoid that kind of uncomfortable living situation. But when they were home, they kind of had to humor this guy, sign things for him, you know, try not to rock the boat as you as you put it with regards to the organization, try not to rock the boat sort of on the home front as well. yeah he this particular player kind of developed he developed ulcers uh the season he was living in that space just you know likely i guess caused because of the stress of you know the stress of being a professional athlete tied to the stress of not being able to really relax when you get away from the ballpark but i'd also kind of want to emphasize that you mentioned it's seen as this kind of quaint tradition and you're're right, I'm sure in many cases it is. But that is kind of a prevailing dynamic of minor league reality is, you know, you have this kind of quaint understanding of it from the outside that sort of masks these harsher realities inside.

Another example in the piece is that, you know, there are some players with a minor league club who couldn't really afford, you know, very good dinner. It's the kind of dinner you need to keep up your body to be an athlete. And so they would get kind of discount deals from a local restaurant. They would get pretty cheap chicken fingers and burgers and things like that, which in kind of classic American capitalist fashion scans of this nice you know, nice story about one person lifting up another, but you take a step back and you kind of realize why the conditions there exist. And in this case, it's as simple as when the when the team went on the road, they didn't have that.

So they didn't have that same resource for food, or when the person they knew at the restaurant happened to not be in on a certain evening or what have you. So yeah, I think there is this real dynamic where, you know, people from the outside kind of understand the minor leagues as a broadly quaint and kind structure. And that's part of why this kind of system has been allowed to flourish, I think. Yeah, we think that it's so nice. And then this guy ends up with the host family from misery and things start to look a little bit different for him. Yeah, exactly. I'm curious. I don't want to praise the bare minimum here. So that is not the intent of this question. But I'm curious for the organizations that have seemed to give a little on these questions, right, that have provided some housing stipends or have provided back pay for been an impetus in some cases, but do either of you

have a sense that there are organizations that are looking at this and trying to see that there is, you know, it seems so basic, but like value in professional athletes being able to eat well and not worry about where they're sleeping? Is there any kind of sort of front office move to try to alleviate this stuff because there's a recognition that they might end up fielding better baseball teams as a result of that? I can start with this one. So I know I wasn't able to speak for my piece with any of the heads of the organizations who have made very strong changes in that regard. But I know the athletic piece from a few weeks ago did a pretty great job of sort of laying out why that tends to be a difficult thing,

which is that a lot of the cases, a lot of the organizations that even do, you know, take steps to make an improvement will be unwilling to publicize those steps in large part because of the kind of, I don't know, collusive sort of mentality tying major league organizations together. The idea being that if they put the more they publicize those steps, the more other teams will feel pressure and the more the kind of movement to give minor leaguers more equitable treatment kind of gain steam. So I'd feel irresponsible kind of speaking to why a club like the Astros or Blue Jays might ultimately have made those moves. My guess would be, you know,

kind of some combination of maybe a very small game they see happening on the with the big league club eventually down the line plus kind of trying to mitigate in some soft way the you know the pr pressure around this issue but i also love to make the point just as an aside that you know something that advocacy group talks about quite a bit something the players talk about quite a bit is this frustration with being seen as kind of first and foremost as an investment for the major league club and not as an active employee of a minor league club. That, you know, this idea that they have value even if they never make the major league team, even if they never make the double A team. They're providing the service of A, playing for fans and playing for this organization and B, you know, providing competition for those prospects that do make it through. So I think that's kind of one of the tricky things in thinking about this issue is not thinking about these players as kind of, you know, only as investments, but also as active workers kind

of with their club that deserve sort of the rights and protections that that entails. And, you know, my own, when I talk to people kind of on the inside and, you know, they kind of get it and they'll say they get it and they'll kind of echo it back. But, you know, there just hasn't there hasn't been much of a move. And I kind of wonder if there's just, you know, these half measures that are a little easier to do. And I think some of it's just, you know, if you wanted to do a full root canal kind of let's completely revamp everything on how we do this. It would be a lot of work to do it. So, you know, it's easy to just kind of bump up the wages and say, you know, have the payroll

department send a memo down to them and have them do it that way. That's fairly easy. You know, some of the other things that we might be talking about in terms of teams assuming responsibility for leases in the minor leagues. Well, now you got to have somebody who's making sure that, you know, that you got to go develop the, talk to the landlords and you got to actually have, you know, review the leases and make sure that all that's in order. And so I think that there's a certain bit of just, it's kind of a hassle to do that. And I think that

might be one of the reasons why, you know, we haven't seen a whole lot of work, at least on a broad scale. And I think that, yeah, you know, there is that kind of whispered, well, you know, we behind the scenes, well, you know, we've done this or we've done this to try and help out, but it's certainly not something that teams are publicizing, you know, possibly because they're,, possibly because in the same way they're trying to keep all their other competitive advantages secret, they might just be trying to do that as well. And Russell, one of your recent pieces was sort of anticipating and responding to some of the objections that people have to the idea of improving these conditions. I guess maybe one of the more common responses is just apathy. But beyond that,

when people try to justify the current system or argue that it actually makes the most sense or it's in the interest of teams to have it work this way, I guess there are a few general things you hear with former players who went through this themselves. Sometimes they'll say, well, I went through this, so why shouldn't the next generation go through this? Others will try to argue that maybe it was even beneficial to them to have the minor leagues be this sort of Darwinian crucible where only the strong survive of the player that Robert mentioned, or as you cited, Russell, their stress effects. And you can see that some players wash out who might not otherwise. But I think one thing that you often hear is that, hey, most of these guys don't make it. And so they're not actually providing value to the organization. And Robert, as you just noted, well, they're at the very least playing the real prospects, the ones who will make it.

So that's something. And of course, sometimes the prospects don't pan out and the non-prospects, quote unquote, do. I wanted to just read you something, Russell, that Joe Sheehan wrote in his newsletter last week on this topic because he's sort of a skeptic about it. And Joe's generally no fan of MLB owners, and I'm sure he has no reason to root against minor leaguers being paid. But just putting it in kind of the coldly calculating economic terms that we might imagine a front office or an owner is thinking in, he seems to doubt that you could make a good case along those lines. So here's what he wrote. I've been on the unpopular side of this argument for a while. The vast majority of minor league players produce no

marginal revenue. They're there to provide context for the prospects, and even the true prospects don't generate any real revenue. Minor league baseball teams stopped selling baseball a very long time ago, so what happens on the field who who is playing the games, is an afterthought. No one likes to hear this, but there's no economic case for paying players much more than is legally prescribed. MLB's efforts to avoid doing even that are reprehensible. And then he goes on to say that absent organizing, he doesn't see a path. Just pay them more loses me because these jobs just don't support healthy salaries. So, Russell, you've made that case many times, I think, that beyond just the desire to have human conditions, that there are real reasons for teams to want to do this. So lay out the competitive case.

It's not often that I disagree with Joe, but on this one, I think he's got it all wrong. What you're doing is that, let me put it this way, growth and development in human beings, and this is me as a child psychologist talking, you know, growth and development in human beings is kind of, you know, happens in fits and spurts. And, you know, you think about there are just times, and probably everybody listening to this in their own life has had a moment where you kind of figure out one little thing and it unlocks everything. You know, you think about all of the players that are getting drafted or signed internationally by major league teams. They're all gifted athletes. And, you know, once in a while you get one that just is a 13th round pick and, you know, you just kind of sort of pick up on something that makes the curveball

a little curvier. And all of a sudden you've got an out pitch and everything kind of sort of pick up on something that makes the curveball a little curvier and all of a sudden you've got an out pitch and everything kind of falls together and suddenly you've gone from a non-prospect to somebody who actually has a chance. So when you put people in these conditions of deprivation, you are foreclosing the chances that people are going to pick up on those little things and maybe have more of those breakouts. Because when you're hungry or you're not sleeping well or you're always worried, it takes away cognitive bandwidth for you to be able to say,

hey, I'm really paying close attention when the pitching roving instructor comes by and shows us that little trick. And if you're worried about other stuff, you're not as able to integrate that into your own mechanics or whatever the little trick is. But I think that, yes, it's true that if you just look at it as, well, what marginal revenue are they providing? Well, they are providing the potential for that breakout to happen, which eventually will have a cascading effect on the major league team. What's interesting is that we even have kind of quasi-experimental data on the subject, because if you look at, and this is some of the work that I've done, you know, we have a draft bonus system where, you know, first round picks get paid, you know, millions of dollars right up front, and that's a nice cushion. And they have, they have that to draw from on their way up through

the minor leagues. And then you get kind of, you know, your 20th round senior college signs who get a, you know, a thousand bucks and a hat and they, you know, they don't have that to draw from and so they're kind of living off the wages and so what you see over time is if you use draft bonuses as a proxy for how much do they have to worry you see that over time even when you you know you do all the gory math and you control for all the things that you're supposed to control for, it starts to bleed away little bits of value over time for the players who just, you know, didn't get a very big bonus. And you start to see, well, you know, is that, you know, the high dollar players were first rounders and we kind of knew they had it in them all along? Or is it that, you know, it's just over time we're privileging

some people and we're not privileging others and we're giving them more opportunities and after a while that just kind of you know takes its toll and you know there there might be room for a little bit of both in there but I think that I think it's a mistake to think that if you that anything that's invested in these kind of lower level, unfancy, low draft pick, non-prospect type players is a waste. Because, you know, there is always room for people to surprise you. I would imagine that part of why disagreements like this, right, over the value that those players bring is part of why it's difficult to rely on incentives as a means of remedying these issues, right? Because there isn't necessarily agreement on how much value teams are going to extract. And then there's just the obvious sort of

dehumanizing part of thinking about players and strictly those terms. And so, Robert, I'm curious in the course of your reporting, you spoke to a number of players and you also spoke to the advocacy organizations. What are some of the remedies that they are sort of the most optimistic might bear fruit in this scenario, rather than simply relying on teams to one day realize like, yeah, we might have better baseball if we like treat people like people. Well, so Harry Marino, the head of the advocacy group, he, you know, he was quoted in the article saying he's very forthright about saying that as helpful as these kind of piecemeal gains are, be it, you know, a slight hike in salaries, teams agreeing to pay for housing, better nutrition plans, what have you, the ultimate goal is kind of a total restructuring

via one of two avenues, either unionizing, you know, either the minor leaguers having their own union or joining in somehow with the major league players union or kind of attacking in court the MLB antitrust exemption and so yeah their goal is to kind of try to be total pretty total with the overhaul eventually and he makes the point Harry makes the point that you know these incremental gains you see in the meantime there's not you know they don't kind of add up necessarily to obviously to one great overhaul like that. Obviously, the formation of a union isn't automatically awarded after, you know, two dozen articles run about poor housing practices or what have you. But the idea is to

kind of, as you've mentioned earlier in the conversation, introduce more and more into the national consciousness, this idea of the minor leagues as this kind of exploitative area of baseball. And so, yeah, the advocacy group is very forthright about hoping that really strong structural change occurs via one of those two methods. Yeah. And as currently constituted, the MLBPA can't really represent minor leaguers, right? I mean, under labor law. And I guess if you did come up with some way to do that, it seems like, you know, while it could maybe benefit minor leaguers, the interests of a big leaguer, whether it's a veteran or even a rookie, is just so different from the interests and conditions of a player in a ball or something like that. It's hard to imagine that all those things could be represented under one umbrella, though I'm open to the idea. But as you noted, the G League in the NBA did unionize last year and did so with assistance from the National Basketball Players

Association. So it's not part of the same group, but there was some kind of coordination there. I don't know if you know all the details of how that worked or what guidance was provided, but is that a model that might work for minor Uyghurs in baseball? You know, I actually, you're right. I don't really know the backstory of how the GLE unionization came about as well as I should. But yeah, I do know that the advocacy group certainly looks at that as kind of a model and kind of ideal. And I, you know, it also kind of speaks to how entrenched these sorts of ideas around minor league baseball are, I think the fact that the G League is a more recent phenomenon, I think helps those players in a lot of ways, whereas,

you know, the minor league advocacy group has kind of decades of inertia to push back against at this point. And Russell, maybe you can just take a moment to, I mean, you talked about this sort of in your answer to Joe's objections, but from your perspective, what do you imagine the, if we do want to think about it in sort of the cold value terms that we often evaluate these things in, what value do you see accruing to organizations and what is the timeframe over which that value is realized? Because I imagine, and you wrote about this in your most recent piece,

that the first mover, it might take a little while for them to actually see treating people better, bear fruit on the field. This is just like such a gross way of talking about this, but what are the timelines that we're talking about here? And if you're trying to make the case to sort of the average fan in stands, what is the value from their perspective? Well, I mean, we're talking about chronic stress over time and we're probably talking about for this to fully work out. You'd probably have to go through an entire minor league cycle of,

you know, players getting drafted or signed and then working their way up through low A and, you know, all the way up into the point where they're kind of at that triple A on the edge of major league level. So, I mean, and that's probably, you know, four or five years worth and that's an eternity in a major league front office. And I mean, that's, there's, there are a lot of general managers and front office regimes that just, that don't survive for five years. payroll, which is where, you know, spending that is very, very obvious and can be a quick fix on something that you'd have to, you know, some problem that you have. And instead spending it on this thing that's going to, you know, slowly build up over time so that, and maybe you just kind of get, if you think about end of the bench type players,

you know, you might have slightly less crappy utility infielders that you can plug in. And so that's just not, that's a hard sell and both to the public and to a general manager. And it's very difficult to do. Now, if you look at the numbers, you can see that you probably actually do clear more value with investing it in the minor leaguers than you do in a free agent. But at the same time, I mean, the shape that it takes and the length of time that it would take is something that you'd have to have somebody who very much buys into the vision for them to really be able to go forward with it just because it's it's going to take so long until you really fully bear fruit now somebody were to really go into it and and get these benefits and yeah eventually others would start to copy them but the good news is that it would also take them as the second movers it would take them similarly long to to really get those benefits.

So you would enjoy a nice period of time where that was your advantage and your advantage only, and you were the only one that could really access it, even as everybody else knew it. Yeah, it's funny how, I mean, not funny, funny, but one of the best arguments I could make, if you're talking to an owner, say is, hey, young, productive major leaguers are a really great deal for you. And you're getting all sorts of surplus value from them just because of the way the pay structure works in Major League Baseball. So if you can make more minor leaguers into young major leaguers who you can profit from, then you'll make even more money. So I guess the way to their hearts perhaps is to appeal to the greed. But also, this is just kind of codified in this system. I wanted to ask you both maybe because,

Russell, you wrote something recently about how a lot of this maybe falls in line inadvertently with some of the language of early sabermetrics, which is about competitive advantages or market inefficiencies or just being efficient in general. And perhaps when you advocate those things on field, then you lead to more people who look at the world in that way, working for baseball teams. And maybe some perversion of that perhaps is that they look at minor leaguers as potential cost savings. But then again, these conditions have been present really for all of baseball history. So it would be tough to lay it at the feet of sabermetrics when, Robert, as you noted, this goes back to Branch Rickey.

I mean, I guess you could say Branch Rickey is sort of a proto-sabermetrician in some ways. But really, it's not as if this came in with analytics. It hasn't improved along with analytics, and maybe it hasn't even kept pace with inflation. But this was kind of the way it always was, right? I mean, it was just sort of set up from the start to be somewhat exploitative, right? Because people want these opportunities and they want to be big leaguers. And some people will say, well, that's enough of a reward that one in however many people actually gets to make it and fulfill their dreams. But that's just sort of the way it's always been set up. Yeah, you know, when Branch Rickey went back when he was with the Cardinals,

kind of established a farm system there. It was kind of about the idea of, you know, he had been outspent a time or two for players that he had scouted and seen coming up. And, you know, obviously was frustrated by that and kind of devised the system as a way in which, you know, kind of identifying talent early held financial benefits for an organization. Meaning that that player then when he was ready to go to the major leagues couldn't negotiate with any team. He was, you know, beholden to the club that was at the top of the major leagues. Couldn't negotiate with any team. He was beholden to the club that was at the top of the farm system,

Major League Club, of all those affiliates. And so, yeah, it really is kind of baked in. Obviously, everybody of our generation and recent generations has come up with this kind of understanding of the minor leagues as just the way things work and that it's kind of baked into it from the word go. You know, I'm always amazed kind of

to read some of these quotes that Branch Rickey had, but a couple that always struck me that made their way into this piece was, you know, he had this phrase, you know, a few players would, the quote from Rickey was ripen into money. This kind of like pretty gross and grisly, like farming metaphor or something. This idea that, you know, you would just stockpile enough people and a select few would pay off. Another quote that makes it into the piece was out of quantity comes quality. That's kind of very sort of calculating approach to talent development.

Certainly, you know, you can see the kind of tension between the individual player and the organizational goals from the word go. That's not something that prioritizes kind of maximizing the value of any individual player at all. It's much more about maximizing your chances, your turns to take a shot, I guess, so to speak. But yeah, you're right that it is kind of baked into the way baseball has worked, you know, at least since the middle of the 20th century. And I always feel kind of icky when I write about this and I'm like, well, I guess I got to make a business case here because, you know, we are talking about, you know, making sure that people have a nice place to sleep at night. And that, you know, seems like I shouldn't have to make a case for that.

But in terms of, you know, whether Sabermetrics has to blame for this, I mean, we now have the predominant way to run a baseball team is the asset value management model. And that's, you know, what people talk about. And I mean, there's always going to be room for some of that, but so much of finding the efficiency, finding the loophole, finding the extra thing is, it's always, I mean, it has become the thing over the past 20 years. And so I don't know that it's, you know, all the, you know, econ and finance majors that are in the front offices. I don't think they're opposed to the idea, but, you know, we're selecting for, we're not selecting for people who have a background in how human development works. And so I think that it's just, you know, they're kind of,

as I put in one of my pieces, it's not that they're aware, it's that they're vaguely aware that this is a thing. And that if they were to, you know, kind of dive down a little bit deeper, that they might have more understanding and say, you know, look, maybe this is not only a humane thing to do, but also there's a good business case for how this works. And, you know, eventually you do have to have somebody sign a check. And as I mentioned, that check is probably going to be for a few million dollars. So, you do have to have somebody sign a check. And as I mentioned, that check is probably going to be for a few million dollars. So you have to have some business case for it. But at the same time, I don't know that the model that we have currently is really set up to find that particular issue or that particular, to use the term, inefficiency that

they're looking for. So last thing, right now now it seems like the priority is just to make sure that minor leaguers are making a living wage and have livable living conditions. I'm saying living a lot during the season while they are actually playing baseball. That would be a big improvement. But then I guess the question beyond that, if that were hopefully resolved someday, is, well, is minor league baseball a full-time, year-round occupation? Can you make enough money playing minor league baseball for half the year that you don't have to get another job during the offseason? Because that's the way it works now. If you don't have a second job during the season, you certainly have to have one over the offseason, which is how things used to work for many major leaguers when the pay scale was different there. But you can imagine that the advantages would be pretty big if minor leaguers didn't have to hustle over the offseason working some non-baseball related job. They could practice their baseball skills. They could work out. They could have better trainers. They could have better nutrition. There would obviously be baseball benefits there. But the direct revenue

that is coming from most minor leaguers, at least in the short term, I guess is not what it is for major leaguers. So is there a path to minor league baseball player just being your only occupation as long as you are a baseball player? I guess the one silver lining might be that unfortunately, most minor leaguers are not going to make the majors. And so maybe getting some sort of headstart on your second career if you're able to do that when you're not playing baseball is not the worst thing long-term, although maybe you can't afford to stay in school or go back to school or whatever and get a degree that might help you toward that. But that's what I'm wondering, essentially, will owners ever be convinced to open their purses and pocketbooks and wallets enough

to just make minor Uyghurs minor Uyghurs and not whatever else they are in their spare time? One point I'll make just starting, and I certainly don't know kind of the odds that owners will ever sort of concede that, but the reality of it kind of is at this point that, you know, it's an implicit year round job, despite the fact that they're only paid for when they're playing. There are certainly expectations of these players being in a certain level of shape when they make it into camp, having their skills tuned up to a certain degree. And so the reality is that I wrote about this in the piece as well, that every offseason, every player is having to make really difficult decisions between, you know, going further into debt to have more time to practice, finding a job, you know,

sometimes at the expense of their readiness for the next season. Players talked about taking retail jobs and being on their feet 10 hours a day and then trying to you know take time at the batting cage or throw off a mound in their off hours and how difficult that was players spoke with me about you know playing winter ball which obviously is oftentimes a great deal that you know people will do for all sorts of different reasons but if you played a full minor league season then go play winter ball with the idea of you know making some money while staying in shape and then go immediately into another minor league season those you know especially if you're a pitcher those uh those throws that up so despite the fact that it's not

paid as a year-round job it functionally is i would say at this point the players if you have you know any expectation of advancing towards the major leagues. You're going to pull out all the stops you can to put everything you can into your progress and athletic evolution. And so that's again another category of labor that they're pretty much required to do that they aren't paid for. But yeah, I would say that most of these players, it's kind of the requirement these days that they treat it like a full-time year-round gig. And the other thing, and Robert just mentioned this, but the kind of jobs that you're talking about that they take in the off-season, I mean, just out of hand, you know that, okay, I get back to wherever I'm from. And I'm only going to be here for, what, four months.

So you can't walk in and ask for a full-time job for most employers if they're like, well, you're going to be gone. So, I mean, you end up working retail or you work as a UPS driver or you work doing that sort of thing. And it takes away from, well, you know, that's time that you could have been doing something related to your athletic ability. And, you know, again, then you have those, you know, the high draft players who don't have to do that. And, you know, again, then you have those, you know, the high draft players who don't have to do that. And so they can go and they could hang out at the Texas baseball ranch, or they can take that, that extra time and focus on themselves over the winter. And so I wonder if that's also a drag on, on, on the system as well. And, and, and why we start

to see some of those divergences from, youces from high bonus and low bonus players over time. And so I think that, you know, there's, I've heard a couple of people say, you know, maybe they could come up with some way to, they'll have spring training facilities, come out to Florida or Arizona, and we'll have our coaches and roving instructors out there. And you can, we already have all the baseball facilities ready to go. You know, we'll put you up in an apartment or something like that. We'll feed you and you can just spend the winter, you know, with us under our supervision, you know, with our trainers, with our coaches going over the type of stuff that we have using our data and our capabilities. And, you know, and again, it again, it's tempting to say, well, you know,

you're going to have a bunch of players who aren't going to, who are never going to make it, who are just consuming resources and won't ever show a return on that. But, you know, there's a certain amount of, well, you know, what if one or two actually do pop out of that, even if it's one or two out of, you know, 50 or 60, that's still a lot of value that can be recouped at the major league level. Yeah. The next inefficiency is treating people well, and the inefficiency after that is not viewing people as inefficiencies anymore. That'd be nice. Yeah. Would that we could, or that we would. Well, thank you both so much for joining us. We'll link to all of your pieces. You can find Robert on Twitter at Robert F. O'Connell and Russell on Twitter at PizzaCutter4.

Again, thank you both so much for joining us. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. Of course, as soon as we rave about the Blue Jays bats, they get shut out by the Rays. The Orioles did their thing, though.

They gave up seven runs to the Yankees. They actually lowered their post-July ERA. So now we've got quite a multi-team pileup in both wildcard races. Stay tuned for our next episode when we will discuss that. I was asked to pass along an announcement from listener John Topolesky, who is organizing the third Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area Effectively Wild meetup at the Bowie Bay Sox game this Friday.

That's the Orioles AA affiliate. As much as we were lamenting the Orioles' lack of major league talent, they do have a lot of minor league talent. You can see some of that on display in this game. It'll be this Friday. The Bay Sox are playing at home in Bowie, Maryland against the Altoona Curve. That's a Pirates affiliate. The game will be at 7 p.m. Eastern, and

they've done this a couple times in the past, and evidently it went well, so I will link to the information, but the tickets are $11 each. John is buying them today, Wednesday, if you're listening to this on the day that we're posting the podcast, so you can contact him, and then PayPal or Venmo him, or you can get your own

tickets. The section is still TBD. It is prospect t-shirt giveaway night for the first 500 fans. 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, help keep the podcast ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Zach Wertz, John Liu, John Davey, Andrew O'Hara,

and Alex Nazer. 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 podcast. The fan house.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. You're gonna make me pay for it now You're gonna make me wait for it now You're gonna make me wait for it now. You're gonna make me pay for it. You're gonna make me wait for it.

You're gonna make me pay for it now.