Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1749: Cheat Sheet

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the unwritten rules controversy stemming from Kevin Kiermaier absconding with a Blue Jays scouting card, the Padres’ collapse, dysfunction, and outlook for 2022, the Cardinals’ surge and the Braves’ revamped outfield, Anthony Gose’s return to the majors as a pitcher, a number of injured arms making comebacks, the […]

🎵 All the things he plans With the card up his sleeve What would he achieve? It means nothing Hello and welcome to episode 1749 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Kevin Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

Can we discuss what is possibly the silliest Unwritten Rules controversy I have encountered all year? The most 2021 possible Unwritten Rules controversy. Maybe the best one in this vein since 2016 when the Mets got mad at the Dodgers for using laser range finders to mark up the outfield before the game to establish where their outfielder should stand. The case of the stolen scouting card.

Tearing baseball apart, two AL East opponents at each other's throats over a game plan card that was apprehended by the Rays' Kevin Kiermaier under nefarious circumstances in Monday's game in Tropicana Field. So just to set the scene here, the Jays were visiting the Rays and it's the sixth inning. Kevin Kiermaier slides into home plate. He grabs a card. You know, all the players, they have those cards in their back pockets or under their caps or somewhere on their persons these days that tell them where to stand in the outfield or what pitches to throw or what pitches to call for, depending on the position. So Kiermaier slides into home.

He sees a card. And the card, it turns out, was from Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk's wristband. And this card contained the Blue Jays game plan pitching to Rays hitters. So this is, who knows, the work product of Fangraphs alum Carson Sestouli, possibly transferred to fellow Fangraphs alum Jeff Sullivan in the Rays front office. So I haven't talked to them about it. I don't know whose side they're taking here, but this has become a controversy because Kiermaier made a way with this card, took it back to the dugout. And as we speak here, has not given it back.

He has held on to the card. It is, as Joe Sheehan dubbed it, the great finders, keepers, losers, weepers scandal of 2021. What are the ethics of pocketing a card that are not yours can i just say what a nice dumb scandal this is what a what a treat ben we've had such real real, weighty, awful, you know, like people's jobs and respect for their personhood and lives impacted by scandals. And this is the dumbest shit I've ever- Hey, don't minimize this. The stakes are high here. No, this is great. This is what every scandal should be. I wish that every unwritten rule scandal took on this flavor.

I wish every rules controversy took on this flavor. I wish every team intellectual property scandal took on this flavor because it's just, what a gift. What a lovely gift. I had no idea what you were talking about when you messaged me before we started recording to be like, do you have thoughts about this? I was like, no, and I watched that game.

I didn't even know this happened. Didn't see any of the kerfuffle. I think that his explanation for why he picked it up is logical to me that he keeps his own outfield positioning card in his back pocket and he slid into home and naturally thought that it might be his i will admit to some surprise that the equipment failure of the little wristband that the catchers wear because like you know i associate those wristbands still to this day more closely with football than i do with baseball and i have just watched again i'm gonna do another swear here just you know quarterbacks get the kicked out of them. And that thing's still

on their wrist. And it seems like all their parts are there. Parts of the card, sometimes the parts of the quarterback are a little more dubious. But so I'm kind of surprised that it was there for the for the picking up for the claiming. I do think it's a little weird that it hasn't been returned, if only because they're like, hey, can you hand that back? They're like, no. We have it now. It's ours. It's like if you left, I don't know, a towel or a piece of gum or some seeds.

I don't want to underestimate the work of the Blue Jays here, so I don't mean any offense to them or to Carson, but I can't imagine that anything's on the catcher's card that is so proprietary that they really have to fret over it, right? Am I underestimating exactly how fancy the scouting reports might be? I just want to say also before you answer,

Carson, Jeff, I love you both equally. I'm not choosing between the children. Right. Yes. I think that at this point in the season when you have potential playoff opponents, sometimes advanced scouting efforts ramp up. That is absolutely true. Perhaps these teams have been paying closer attention to each other and sitting on each other. in paying closer attention to each other and sitting on each other.

And if there's any potential for some sort of playoff matchup, which I haven't even considered how likely that is or isn't, if that is coming into consideration here, then maybe that is part of why tensions are high. And of course, the Jays need every win now just to get to the playoffs. I would think that teams do a lot of self-scouting probably. And so they have some sense of what their hitters weaknesses are, and perhaps even their hitters have some sense of what those weaknesses are. And probably you're not totally reinventing the wheel here and coming up with some secret Achilles heel that no one knows about, but you never know. It could come in handy to some extent. If I were the Jays or any other team that the Rays might play in the postseason, I'd probably be more worried about the fact that the Rays' top pitching prospect Shane Boz debuted this week against Toronto and looked as nasty as advertised than I would be about whether the Rays had access to my scouting reports.

Boz could be scary in October but I think the most entertaining part of this is Kiermaier's comments from before Tuesday's came because he seems to alternate between like I don't know how this happened like it suddenly I was just holding it to like but I'm not gonna give it back or anything I'm just gonna read some of his comments here when it was there I saw a piece the play happened so fast honestly the play happened so fast I picked it up didn't know what it was whether it was mine or not they're all pretty similar and then as I picked it up I realized it was that I never even looked

at it I'll say that but at the same time I'm not going to drop it or hand it back it's just funny it's like why I wasn't gonna look at it but I'm not gonna give it back to you I hope they I don't know what the Blue Jays thoughts about it were or whatnot at the time,

though I saw it on the ground and I picked it up nonchalantly, not thinking anything of it and haven't heard anything of it since everything was so quick. And after I did it, I was like, dang, their scouting reports or whatever it was were on the ground. And I picked it up.

Like I said, it got to the point that I'm not going to return it or do that. It's September, whatever. I didn't know what was going on. He keeps like changing his story. He's like, I don't know, man. I blacked out.

Suddenly I was holding this card and then I was carrying it back to the dugout and then I was giving it to our front office and I'm never going to give it back. I don't know what happened. I was it was an out of body experience. So, yeah, he's like, I keep my outfield positioning card in my pocket. Okay, that part is plausible. Certainly, initially, I thought it could have been that. And then, like I said, I don't remember what I

read, but I knew it wasn't my card. Then, like I said, at that point, I'm not giving it back. I love just how, like, logically, like, that follows. Well, it wasn't my card, but of course I'm not going to give it back. It is what it is. I hope I didn't offend anyone or anything like that follows. Well, it wasn't my card, but of course I'm not going to give it back. It is what it is. I hope I didn't offend anyone or anything like that.

I handed it to one of our other personnel in the dugout. I couldn't even tell you what happened from that point on. I didn't have a conversation, but I told one of our players, I think I grabbed something from them. I don't even know. I just know it wasn't mine. But again, it got to a point that I picked it up and wasn't going to return it or give it back that was definitely weird everything happened so fast i love it i also just love the idea that like great that he might look down and be like i do what yeah right no yeah you're you're certainly

right to say that like you know most most of the scouts i know at this point in the year are are doing if they work for playoff teams they're they're doing advanced scouting like that's really what they're up to these days so you're not wrong to to imagine that they might be like you know in in possession of some sort of trade secret there. But yeah, the way that he's describing this is like, it's very child. I don't want to say it's childish, because that describes a value judgment that I don't necessarily mean. Because again, I just want to say, this is the best stupidest we've ever. I just want to say this is the best stupidest shit we've ever had. This is so great. It's yummy. But it's childlike in that he's like, well, I have this now, so it's clearly mine. My sister and I used to beat each other up over this kind of logic when we were young people.

We would be like, well, no, that's mine now. It fell on my side of the room, so you've relinquished all rights to it. It's definitely mine. And I do like the idea of like the quickness being so important to him, right? Like the fact that it happened so fast. Yes. Sights and sounds surrounded by colors and movement. Right.

And then he's like, it got to the point that I couldn't just give it back. Right. It was 20 seconds. The dugout's right there, man. It's like the first game of your series. You're going to be hanging out for a little while. Yeah, he just passed the point of no return at some point. It was just snowballing.

He just couldn't turn around. He was compelled. September, whatever. I don't know what's going on. I love this. Anyway, I suppose there is a level on which it is unethical, and you would not want the other team to do it to you. Sure.

So if we're going by golden rule rules here, then I get it. But it's not that big a deal. And you could say that all's fair in baseball, I suppose, at least things that are not technically cheating. This is not using technology to steal signs or anything like that. It's just picking up some litter that someone carelessly left there. So you brought this upon yourself, Alejandro Kirk, I suppose is what they're thinking here. So yeah, I don't think this is going to swing a playoff series or have any appreciable on-field impact at all. Apparently, there was an on-field discussion between the Blue Jays and Rays managers, Charlie Montoyo

and Kevin Cash, before the game. And I don't know exactly what was said in that discussion. I hope it basically was like, give it back. No, I'll tell Rob Manfred. I don't care. You're going to get in big trouble. I hope it was basically your sibling argument, but probably it was more civil and high-minded than all of that. Montoyo, of course, was Cash's bench coach in Tampa, and apparently Cash apologized and the two were on good terms. But at least as we record, we have not heard that the abducted card has been returned to the Jays. And here's one of the things that I find to be most interesting. When I read about this incident, incident, in the piece that you sent me by David Adler, he has embedded a tweet here from Arash Madani, who works for Sportsnet and covers the Blue Jays.

And I clicked through, and the follow-up to his tweet that was embedded in the story says, the Jays are pissed as a team source told me, if there's one card we wouldn't want any opponent to have, it's that one. Why on earth would you say that to a person who's going to say it out loud where other people including the Tampa Bay Rays can hear? That seems like a strategic error on their part. Play it cool. Just like, oh, that card?

Oh, yeah, that thing. Oh, that was like an old one. Yeah, there were a bunch of typos on there. That was actually the wrong scouting reports that just got onto this card somehow. Yeah, it's sort of embarrassing that he got to see our mistake like that. Like, wouldn't want him to think anything's important on that guy.

Silly us. Everybody needs to learn how to play it cool. This is like when I go on walks with my mom. Love you, mom. You don't listen to the podcast. You're not going to know that I tell this story. She likes to see what people are doing with their interior decorating. She'll be like, look at what's in that house.

I'm like, Ma, the people who live in that house can see you pointing. You got to play it cool. Everyone be smooth. I do this perfectly and never make that mistake. I guess now that the secret is out, the Jays could just go against the scouting report, throw the raise hitters pitches that are right in their wheelhouses. They'll never expect it. Yeah.

So we will see if there are any further developments here. This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that will rise to the level of a beanball war or anything, Oregon, who said the ongoing shenanigans regarding the dropped pitching plan card between the Blue Jays and Rays got me thinking about the practice in general. I think it would be a good idea to ban them. It puts the onus on the players to actually learn the scatting reports. It would certainly make pitch sequences and shifting more interesting if it came down to memory instead of a cheat sheet card. Any thoughts? And I've expressed some similar sentiments myself not too long ago on the podcast.

I've kind of become anti-card after being pro-card initially because just in general, I am in favor of information and being able to use your intelligence to help you win. But also I kind of like the idea that the players are on their own once they're on the field. They actually have to study this stuff and remember this stuff, and they can't just follow instructions and stand at some pre-appointed spot that they don't have to remember or find on their own. And maybe it's an arbitrary distinction at this point, but I still sort of am inclined that way. But this controversy is making me reconsider because this is so much fun that I want everyone to just have cards falling out of their pockets constantly so that this with a couple of different signs with pictograms to signal to

the outfielders where they should stand like they're calling a play in college football. Because I mean, if nothing else, Ben, we would get so many words out of that. We'd get so many words. So I think it should be a bigger display that we can all try to participate in. Yeah, that's what I think that's what I've arrived at. Yeah. Anyway, Kevin, I see what you're saying and I am sympathetic to it. But if they didn't have cards, then we wouldn't have been able to talk about this. And that alone may be a reason to keep using the cards. So, all right. Just a couple other things before we bring on our guest today, Jonathan Judge of Baseball Prospectus, for a discussion on baseball economics.

But a fun one for those of you whose eyes just glazed over from your memories of econ classes. I wanted to talk briefly about the Padres because the vultures are sort of circling the poor Padres at this point. And actually, just before we started recording, or maybe even since we started recording, the Padres designated Jake Arrieta for assignment. So end of an era. The not very illustrious Jake Arrieta era on the Padres seems to be over. So that's something. But too little, too late at this point. The Padres are not out of it, but they are getting there because they just got swept by the Cardinals. They have yet to begin their game on Tuesday as we are speaking, but the Cardinals swept them after beating the Reds and sweeping the Mets.

And the Cardinals, as we speak, are attempting to finish off the Brewers for their 10th win in a row. And kudos to the Cardinals, who have had a hot streak against wildcard opponents at the perfect time. And they have put themselves in pretty strong wildcard position at this point. And the Padres have been one of the teams on the other end of that. And they had their own internal controversy this weekend, a shouting match of sorts between Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr., two of the faces of that franchise, which was publicly visible because it occurred in the dugout. And of course, this followed what has been really a pretty historic second half collapse,

given how well the Padres started the season and the fact that they are not even a cinch to finish the season with a winning record. So it's been quite a comeuppance and we have covered some of the reasons for that, namely the pitching injuries, but it has kind of graduated to the point where the losing has now spilled over into clubhouse issues and questions about relationships and who's going to be running this team. Of course, they already fired their pitching coach a while back. They have just recently decided not to renew the contract of their player development director, which is tough without knowing any of the details of that. Think about all of the great players that the Padres have developed recently. But then again, it's not that homegrown a roster.

This team was really put together via trade and free agency, and they have traded away a lot of their prospects. In any case, he won't be back. to a report that followed that dugout kerfuffle by Ken Rosenthal and Bridge Roley and Dennis Lynn has, if not lost the clubhouse, seemingly lost some members of the clubhouse. And people are upset with what seems to be or has been perceived to be an abrasive style that Dickerson has employed. And a lot of this is just what happens when a team loses a lot, especially a team that started out well and was expected to be good and has been starting Jake Arrieta. And just everything is going wrong. And I saw it firsthand with the Sonoma Stompers.

Not that that is equivalent to the major league experience. But when we were winning, guys got along. And when we were losing, suddenly everyone was squabbling and getting at each other's throats. And so I don't know that I personally have concerns about like, oh, how are Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis going to coexist long term with the Padres? This seems to be something that the heat of the moment, the frustrations boiled over, and probably they've already settled it or they will soon settle it. But there do seem to be some larger questions about at least the field

staff of this team or who will be steering the ship or how it has been steered to this point. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to make too much of the Machado and Tatis thing either. I mean, I just talked about how my sister and I used to beat the crap out of each other and like we're best friends. So I think that, you know, when you are engaged in a very intense competitive endeavor together, like sometimes you get mad at each other and you blow off steam or you feel irritated or you're trying to, you know, if you're Machado and you're the veteran in that situation, trying to impart some wisdom and guidance to a younger player. I don't want to treat Tatis like he's some kid. He's been in the bigs too, but nothing about that struck me as evidence of inherent dysfunction. It just struck me as two dudes trying to work it out.

It happened to be that it took place in the dugout where we could all see it. of inherent dysfunction it just struck me as like two dudes trying to work it out and it happened to be that it took place in the dugout where we could all see it but like that workplace is strange and like a lot of their workplace happens in our view and so i don't know i like have a hard time getting overly fussed about that stuff but it does seem as if the the way that the back half of their season has gone is starting to wear on the club. And like you said, I don't think there's anything all that surprising about it. I think that a lot of people are able to sort of get on and get along, even if they have underlying tension when stuff is going well.

And then when it isn't, it's like, and another thing, you know? And so I don't know that that's all that different than what you see among people in other workplaces it's just that like we all watch them do their jobs and we don't watch like accountants because that would be boring sorry accountants we always pick on accountants i'm so sorry accountants it's just that you know it's a lot of people wouldn't be engaged or interested watching me do my job either and people think that i have a cool job and like i agree with you i think my job is pretty cool but like i'm mostly just sitting at my computer like doing doing typing

stuff you know it's not all that thrilling so i don't know i just think that it's a it's a really weird workplace i think that it brings together a bunch of people who are inherently very competitive and want to win and when things are not going quite the way they want them to it's natural that it would lead to some some kerfuffles but i don't know i never know in situations like this like what is an appropriate response to a situation that needs to change and what is needing to change something so that people stop asking you when you're going to. Right. And I think that as outsiders, that's really hard to discern because, you know, I think that you're right. The Padres have had a lot of really great prospects. I think that we can look at like some of their pitching prospects and be like, how good are they at kind of finishing these guys off

and helping them get to the next level? I think that's a reasonable question to ask, and your answer may vary, but I don't think that it's a wild thing to think that they could be doing better in that department than they necessarily are. So it's always tricky to know when are these necessary changes, when are they sacrificial lambs

that might be providing cover to some more senior people, when are they like, hey, we're going to move on from you and we are going to do it now so that you can start looking for a new gig rather than have to wait around until the end of the season when your contract is actually up. It's hard to know exactly what's going on there.

I don't know that my opinion of the 2022 Padres is super different than it would have been at the beginning of the year. I think you have to account for some of the guys who have not performed as well as you would hope them to, but they've been so hurt. Yes, so many injuries. They've been so hurt. Yeah, so many injuries, right. They've been so hurt, especially on the pitching side. So I don't know.

It's a tricky, it's a sticky wicket. Yeah, and you could say, well, they didn't do a good enough job of assembling pitching depth, but who had more pitching depth than the Padres come into the season? I mean, AJ Preller basically traded for an entire starting rotation of good pitchers over the past year and then had prospects to supplement that and others. And yet it just wasn't enough. So it seems to me, and I know Dan Szymborski just wrote about how the Padres project for next year. And it seems like the foundations of the roster, I mean, not that much can change in the course of five or six months. And it seems like the foundations of the roster, I mean, not that much can change

in the course of five or six months. And five or six months ago, we thought the Padres were set up to be, if not a new dynasty, at least a team that could rival the Dodgers for who knows a decade to come. And fundamentally, not that much has changed, except that the Padres have had a really lousy couple months. I suppose they started the season 66 and 49. They were flying high like things were going OK. And then the wheels fell off and the arms fell off. And this is what happens. So, yeah, I would think that obviously there's going to be some bitterness and disappointment.

And Padres fans have waited a long time to see a young, exciting and talented Padres team. So it's a big bummer to see how the season has gone. But does that mean you have to clean house? I mean, obviously we're not there, so we're not seeing what is exactly happening. We're just speculating from afar based on the results. But there is still so much talent on that team. And were there rumors and rumblings and mutterings about Jace Tingler when the team was winning? Maybe. Maybe they just weren't loud enough to become public. It's tough because he

is a manager in his first full season, his first non-pandemic shortened season. And this is a team where Andy Green, who seemed like a smart guy, was reportedly losing the clubhouse and then lost his job. And then Tingler comes in and instead of sort of the established manager who has managed before, who has played in the big leagues and has that cachet next to his name, Tingler was kind of unknown. And so maybe he has heard to earn that respect and maybe he has not earned it from everyone. But again, I doubt his job would be in jeopardy if the Padres still had an intact pitching staff and had continued contending this year. So is he not the guy? Does this prove he is not the guy who can take the

Padres to the promised land? I don't know. They were pretty good for the first year under Tingler. So I'm inclined to chalk this up more to shorthandedness than to Tingler, but who knows without being there, it's tough to say. And if people involved are considering making changes, then presumably there is some rationale for that. i think that's right and he did sort of step up and save tatis from getting ejected right because yeah this started when tatis was complaining about a call and he struck out and tingler sort of inserted himself and got ejected for arguing balls and strikes and spared tatis from getting ejected which is the right move that's what the manager should do in that situation. And then Machado was like, hey, don't make this about you. It's about the team. Like, you've got to stay in the game and everything. And maybe that and sometimes that causes clashes. And usually those clashes occur in the clubhouse, right? And behind closed doors and out of sight of

prying eyes. And we never talk about it until someone brings it up in a biography or something decades later. Right, exactly. Yeah, I think that that's right. All right. Well, that's the sad story of the Padres. I'm sorry, Padres fans. Things will look up for you, I'm sure. It's probably going to be fine next year. Probably, yeah. I think that's a good thing to remember. And you get to live in San Diego. Yeah, there's always that. That's a strong plus in the plus column. And I did want to just salute another team that is in playoff position now, Atlanta, still holding on to that NL East top spot.

And we didn't really give Alex Anthopoulos a ton of credit for shifting that entire outfield at the deadline, but that has really worked out. Yeah, it sure has. Those were low profile moves and we were busy talking about Trey Turner and Max Scherzer and all these major moves. And I think we mentioned, hey, the Braves have a new outfield now, basically. But it seemed like maybe shuffling deck chairs in that outfield. Not that that team was entirely out of it, but they weren't exactly bringing in superstars necessarily. it, but they weren't exactly bringing in superstars necessarily. But I was thinking of this in the past few days because, of course, Eddie Rosario, one of the players they acquired, just hit for the cycle on five pitches, which I saw, according to Jeremy Frank on Twitter, is the fewest pitches

on record in a cycle. So that's kind of cool. And then Adam Duvall hit an absolute monster shot at a 483-foot home run. So I had occasion to think, hey, good job, Alex Anthopoulos, for not replacing Acuna or Ozuna or the guys that they didn't have on hand that they expected to, but doing a pretty darn decent job of patching those holes. Because so much of it is about, hey don't play jake arietta you know don't play the sub replacement player and instead these guys have hit i mean entering tuesday they have had adam duvall who has a 121 ops plus they have jorge saler who has a 124 ops plus and then they have rosario who in more limited playing time has hit even better 198 OPS+. The only one who hasn't really performed all that well is Jock Peterson at 81, but he hasn't been horrible. If you combine them into some outfield Voltron, they just got themselves a pretty productive player. If you could just combine them, that's probably one of the biggest impact combined players that any team made at the deadline. And obviously, they have needed every win to hold off the Phillies. So kudos to the Braves for not sitting on their hands. Because

at the time, I remember there was even some sentiment like, oh, they're still going for it. It seemed like, oh, maybe they could just throw in the towel here, regroup for next year. And clearly they didn't see it that way. And they were right not to see it that way. Maybe they just understood that that division is totally crazy and that if they just tried a little bit, they'd be in it. That's the way it has worked out.

That's the way it has worked out. Good for them. And also just wanted to salute Anthony Go Goes for being back in the big leagues because we've been waiting and kind of keeping our eye on him for a while now. Yes. And he finally made it back as a pitcher now. So we can't do a meet a major leaguer because he has been a big leaguer before, but it's a new and improved or at least completely different. Anthony goes, not the Tigers and Blue Jays lousy hitter of 2012 to 2016, but the pitcher who reinvented himself in 2017

and has been slowly working his way back to the big leagues and made it up this week with Cleveland and touched triple digits and looked pretty decent. So congrats on the career reinvention. Always nice to see a two-way player, even if you weren't doing the two ways at the same time. Didn't I draft him in the minor league free agent draft? I think you did. Yeah. So you've had faith all along. Oh, yeah. I mean, because I watched him pitch in Lidl, and I was like, someone will try this.

Someone's going to give this a shot, and I was right. Isn't that nice? The rest of it has gone so bad for me. Oh, yes. But I knew about Krismat. I just didn't get him in time. I'm at least encouraged by that. My sights were set correctly. I just wasn't get him in time. I'm at least encouraged by that. My sights were set correctly.

I just wasn't aggressive enough. I know that Go Your Own Ways by Fleetwood Mac is just a mistake, you guys. I'm sorry. I know. I love rumors. I'm an old millennial. Of course, I like that album.

Ghost is a second round pick, 2008. He's 31 years old, but he throws 100 now. He does not throw strikes. No, he sure does not. He has some serious control issues. So I don't know if this will work out long term, but just getting back to the big leagues is quite an accomplishment because most players do not have that kind of talent. So just wanted to recognize his making it back. That's what we like to see, 100 mile an hour

fastball where he doesn't know where it's going. That tends to go great. Exactly, right. Yeah, a bunch of guys are coming back soon. It seems like I love when someone who has been hurt for a while makes it back just under the wire, you know, and maybe assuages some concerns about them heading into 2022. Not necessarily, but it's looking like Luis Severino is going to be back in the Yankees bullpen, Noah Sindergaard back in the Mets bullpen. Chris Bassett is starting for the A's on Thursday, which is wonderful considering what he's coming back from. And Shane Bieber may be making a start or at least a pitching appearance for Cleveland.

Bieber maybe making a start or at least a pitching appearance for Cleveland and Jacob deGrom seemingly lined up to actually pitch for the Mets again. So whenever you have pitcher injuries, especially if it's a case like deGrom where it just hasn't been clear like what was going on or how severe the problem is at any given time, it's not like you go into next year with the slate wiped clean and zero concerns. But still, just to get back. Psychologically, it's probably big for those guys to make it back. And for fans of those teams, nice to see them again. Noah Sundergaard and Jacob deGrom are probably the two pitchers who have caused me the most injury-related anxiety just over the past few years because with Sundergaard, I just always felt like, try throwing a little less hard.

You're really good, and it seems like you're just trying to throw as hard as you possibly can. And then eventually he broke, and that was what I was worried about with DeGrom. And if he hasn't broken, he has certainly cracked or come close to breaking so still worried about those guys but still nice to see him back in uniform if we can't have mike trout at least we can have them well and i think severino is maybe pitching like as we're recording oh yeah i think he he uh he saw game action this evening so yeah it is nice to see those guys back it's also also nice when you have guys who have a small late season corrective to bad performance. And you're like, see, there's hope. Jared Kelnick, it might be okay. You have a 155 WRC plus in September and October.

Perhaps you're figuring it out. It could be fine. And then they don't have to go into the offseason like with nothing there's something even if it's a tiny something that probably doesn't mean anything or means less at the very least than all the plate appearances or innings pitched before that but they can you know there's something to build on and i imagine that feels really good and like important even if it ends up not mattering like it feels like it like it does, so that's good. Yeah, it's kind of like when a team is losing in a blowout and then they mount a late comeback and they don't win.

They don't come all the way back, but they make it close at least. And sometimes you will hear players or people on the team say like, hey, this is psychologically, this is a big boost to us. Like we were in the game, like we had the fighting spirit. We didn't give up and does that actually carry over for two successive games if russell carlton were to do a study on that i would guess probably not probably not if it makes them feel better maybe there is some sort of undetectable benefit and even if the benefit is just that they feel better that's something

yeah it sure is. Yeah. I wanted to note, by the way, I actually watched the Pirates play the Marlins this weekend as a direct result of our stat blast in the last episode, which was about the Pirates having a historic streak of not completing sweeps, of getting to the verge of sweeps and not sweeping. And that was what happened this weekend. I said on that segment that it seemed like that weekend might be their best shot because they were playing the Marlins and they took the first two games of that series and they went into it. They fell behind because Sandy Alcantara was pitching for the Marlins, but as usual, he got almost no run support and the Marlins were up 3-1, but then the Pirates made it close, and it was 3-2 in the seventh. And then they took the lead in the top of the ninth. They hit a two-run homer, and it was actually Hoy Park, the subject of a previous Meet a Major Leaguer segment.

All the segments kind of coming together as I was watching this. And they went into the bottom of the ninth trying to get their first sweep of the season, and they couldn't do it. The Marlins tied it up. And then the Pirates took the lead, scored the zombie runner in the 10th. But then the Marlins won it in a walk-off home run by Llewyn Diaz, who I always think of as like inside Llewyn Diaz whenever I see that. Yes, me too. You probably said that too. But he had a walk off and the Pirates lost. So they are now 0 for 15 in attempts to finish off sweeps this year, which is unprecedented and has blown away the record. But that's the nice thing about the segments that we do meet a major leaguer staff last.

Like sometimes it gets me interested in a matchup that I would have zero interest in. Otherwise, I actually tuned in to a mid-September Marlins-Pirates game. And when I did, I knew who Hoy Park was. And I was happy for him because we had met him. So that's nice. Yeah. All right. For sure.

So now we are going to talk to Jonathan Judge of Baseball Perspectives about a piece he wrote last week. Baseball Perspect is about a piece he wrote last week, and it is a modest proposal, not very modest proposal, to try to fix baseball's salary system. I don't know if it's starting from scratch, but it's a sweeping change that would involve a player pool and paying players based on their performance in that season after the fact, their performance in that season after the fact and the owners and players actually divvying up revenue and then the players deciding how they want to apportion that money to players. It is ambitious and creative and Jonathan hasn't had a hole poked in it yet by his readers or other people who read the article. So we will encourage everyone to check it out and listen to his explanation. And I wanted to mention too, last time we talked to Rob Mainz or last week about the role of the starting pitcher and how that's changed. And one thing he mentioned, the economic angle was that the fact that pitchers are just all

this amorphous mass of people who go two innings or five innings or whatever, and you don't have high innings totals and you don't have as high war or warp totals anymore. He speculated that one ramification of that could be that pitchers won't get paid less, and that that could be contributing to the player payroll stagnation that we've seen in recent seasons. in recent seasons. And he hadn't actually examined that contention yet, I believe, but he subsequently did. And he checked the math and he produced the evidence. And it turns out that that does hold up. And according to his analysis, it seems like, and not necessarily because teams are trying to stifle pitcher pay, but just because they are trying to use pitchers in a more optimal from their perspective, from a run prevention perspective way, that seems to have translated to lower salaries for pitchers as one would expect given that individual pitchers are not pitching as much.

So he found that if you look at recent earnings by pitchers as a group, they haven't actually declined, but that is because pitchers make up a greater share of rosters these days because there are just more pitchers on rosters. And he wrote that the composition of rosters has changed really dramatically. As recently as 2013, teams opening day rosters had more hitters than pitchers. In 2017, there were exactly 446 of each. This year, there were 20% more pitchers than hitters than pitchers. In 2017, there were exactly 446 of each. This year, there were 20% more pitchers than hitters. That's unprecedented. And so while the total amount of money going to pitchers has not changed, there have been more pitchers who have been dividing

up that money and obviously fewer hitters. And so Rob found that it seems like this is a significant contributor to the fact that payroll has stopped climbing and has perhaps even regressed. He wrote that this year's median pitcher salary, $925,000, is the lowest it's been since 2009. And it's unusual. We're unaccustomed to seeing salaries go down in baseball, right? It's kind of a steady climb over a long period of time. So just wanted to report that that did hold up and that that's part of what we're seeing. And so people can keep that in mind as they weigh Jonathan's proposal I was just a card caught up in the stars looking down to Mars. You know, you know, I know, I know something about you that you don't want me to know All right, we are joined now by Jonathan Judge of Baseball Perspectives who just last week solved baseball's salary system,

which I feel like was an underreported story. Personally, I was going to MLB Trade Rumors, going to MLB.com. I expected to see some headlines like, Judge has done it. He has solved the issue. But I haven't seen that yet. I assume that it's just a mere formality at this point that you have forwarded this on to the negotiators on the MLB side and the MLB PI side. And they're just dotting some T's and crossing some I's or whatever the opposite of that is. I haven't written with a pen in quite a while, as you can tell. But Jonathan is here with us today to share how his salary proposal works. So we are happy to have him. Hello, Jonathan.

Hello, Ben and Meg. It's great to be here. This is an impressive sideline for you fixing the economic issues because baseball is just a side gig for you to begin with because you're a lawyer. And usually when you dabble in baseball, you are operating Pocota or you're doing the mixed models and you're quantifying catcher framing or whatever it may be. And now you are freelancing as an economist, too. And you have solved one of baseball's core issues and in just the nick of time, too, with the CPA about to expire. So thanks on behalf of all baseball fans. You're welcome.

You know, in order for it to be solved, people have to actually try it. But aside from that, theoretically, I think part of being an economist is having some ideal structure where everything works out, whether it does or not. So I think this would qualify, I guess. As someone who came up through political science departments, I can tell you that your understanding of economists is spot on. Thank you. Thank you. This is great. It's just very clean and we don't have to test it against any of your assumptions or anything. We can just assume that this would work as intended for now.

But let's talk about what your proposal was and what you were trying to fix. So the piece published on September 16th is titled An Alternate Baseball Salary System. So what is the issue here or the issues here that you are trying to address with your solution? So there are a couple of issues. One is the issue of the fact that this CBA negotiations, even though it's hard to really know what's going on from the outside, seem that they have a high likelihood of being a train wreck. So that was one concern. The second one is that the player salary compensation system is just horrible. And it's not a system that anyone would actually design that way if they

were starting out. It's sort of a remnant of what you know, sort of what Marvin Miller had to do to turn it into a system that was at least arguably somewhat fair, but it really hasn't moved beyond that. And so those are really the two things that I was targeting. And as I kept writing and seeking feedback, then I started sort of, you know, there's some other aspects of this that actually didn't pop up until I was writing. But those were the two things that bugged me was that I was really concerned that we weren't going to have baseball for a while. And I was also concerned that even if we did, that the current system isn't really worth saving. So it really felt like it called for a different approach. Yeah, few crisis averted.

Hopefully. different approach. Yeah, few crisis averted. Hopefully. So what did you arrive at as a sort of workable alternative to our current predicament? Sure. So what I was sort of struck by, and since as you noted, my day job is being a lawyer, I spend a lot of time dealing with people who are arguing about things about that they really aren't that upset about. It's sort of like a kind of like in a relationship, you're never arguing about what you're supposedly arguing about. And this feels very much like one of those situations and that the only thing that people care about is the money. And yet no one ever talks about that. It's it's, you know, how can I get, you know, more per diems for spring training? Or how Or how can I get my service time down by a quarter

of a year? And everyone engages in what, as far as I can tell, are just like hundreds and hundreds of these hard-fought line items in which the effect on the big picture is completely speculative and may not even last, even if it is effective. And so my idea was, the first idea was, why don't you just talk about the overall pool of money and just agree on that? And I thought that that's going to be easy. But the idea was, why don't you just agree on the pool of money to be paid to players, whatever it is, instead of these nonstop sort of proxy wars over what that amount will be. over what that amount will be. And then the sort of two branches off of that were number one, to just let the players then decide how they wanted to spend the money, and thereby also mean that all of the other owner-related issues that the owners try to make the players' problem, like the luxury tax and salary floors and competitive balance and revenue sharing, just becomes the owner's problem in which they would basically have to show up with their money. But as long as they did that, how they arranged all those things

was not the player's problem. And then the third part of it was to indulge the idea that the parties would not only agree to this more rational, in my opinion, way of sort of divvying up responsibilities, but that the players would actually try to set up a more modern compensation system that has an animating principle besides screwing junior players as much as possible, which is pretty much the animating principle of that. So I set up the idea of kind of a base salary plus bonus principle. And when you do that, you can actually pay some of our stars, our younger stars incredibly well. That was the third part of it, which was if we had a more rational system,

how well would it work? And it could possibly work quite well, depending on the final details that everyone agrees to. So you can get as deeply into the weeds as you want to or think would be appropriate. But what are the exact mechanics of how this would work, how that money would be divvied up, or I guess how you would agree on what the pool of money that should be divvied up is, which seems like a thorny question. It is. It is. But I also, when I was kind of thinking about this whole concept, was that it felt a lot like medical billing to me, in which when you get a medical bill, you have your name at the top. Famously, a simple process.

Yes. And you have a number at the bottom, and that's what you really care about. And then there's just sometimes pages of indecipherable, if I can say this word on this podcast, bulls**t in between that nobody understands. It doesn't mean anything because it immediately gets corrected by something below it. And so the idea is that, you know, you just have to agree on what the amount of salaries will be, that that's the bottom line number. That's what people care about. What the clubs want to know is how much do I, you know, how much are we all going to have to pay? And then for the salary purpose and then how they divvy it up is a secondary issue. But you just focus on that.

And maybe that takes three weeks of screaming and shouting and unhappiness. But on the other hand, at least you're talking about the one thing that everybody cares about. And that would probably be a number, but it could also be a formula. It could reflect some combination of TV revenues and attendance. It would be tricky because no doubt the players would try to get some real estate investments part of it. But again, the point is, that's all that they are fighting about now is just that they pretend that they aren't, which might be one reason why it feels like they never get anywhere. So the primary innovation is focus on that number,

fight over that number as much as you have to. And then once you agree on that number, fight over that number as much as you have to. And then once you agree on that number, then actually a lot of these ancillary issues are sort of solved automatically, for lack of a better word, because then the players don't have to worry about all of these other issues that, you know, the owners kind of try to bring into these agreements to lower their compensation. And sort of likewise, the owners don't really even need to care anymore how the players pay themselves. I mean, who cares? Once the money has been paid in, the players can divide it however they want. And if the players don't like it, then the players can only complain to one source themselves. So I admittedly have not seen anyone do anything like this before,

but it seems so incredibly rational that I wish someone would consider doing it. It's not often that I read a piece and at the end of it say, huh, and don't know what I think. And I still am not totally sure what I think of this because on the one hand i think you're right that sort of having a system where in theory the the actors on the player's side are going to more rationally distribute salary so that younger players who are producing more are being compensated appropriately for their production not quite in real time but you know on an end of season lag in a way that they're certainly not compensated now and their production, not quite in real time, but on an end of season lag in a way that they're certainly not compensated now. And that seems very appealing to me because

it's really wild that I don't think Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is the AL MVP, but that he is putting up the season he is and he is basically making league minimum, right? So that's pretty crazy. But on the other hand, I don't know if either side would necessarily behave quite as rationally as you would want them to. So maybe we can walk through some of the particulars here. So you're proposing a system in which everyone is paid sort of a baseline minimum, and then they accrue an end of season bonus that is determined by some version of their production, right? You have it as a warp bonus here, understandable because you work for Baseball Perspectives, but some bonus

that represents the production that they brought to their team in that season. And I guess my first question around that is whether we feel that war or warp or whatever version of a value metric that we're ascribing here is sufficiently precise to be the metric we use in a system like this. Because what I worry we would get in the end is, you know, if you are worth two and a half wins to your team, you get X amount. And if you're worth between two and a half and three wins, you get Y amount. And we three know that war is not that precise. So I'm curious what your thoughts are on that because you in your other work beyond this do, I think, a really nice job of reminding everyone to not get overly fussed about minor differences in wins above replacement because it suggests a precision that isn't really there. So maybe we can start with that. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on war or warp as a means of doing

this. Yeah, thank you for that compliment. And I agree with you. So yes, it is not precise. It is not as precise as we wish. It is not going to ever be perfectly fair by any means. But a phrase I often use when I'm, again, in my day job, when people say, well, that alternative has some problems too, I always say, compared to what? And so the issue is, would something like this be a major improvement over the current system in terms of paying a young player who could blow their ankle out tomorrow more fairly for what they're doing, no longer paying a sort of legacy veteran who isn't contributing very much, and just generally sort of tying pay to performance in at least a rational, reasonable way. That's where I would say I do think it would be such a massive

improvement that it would be sort of difficult to even appreciate how much of an improvement it would be. And one of the benefits of this proposal is that there's nothing that would stop either the owners or the players within reason from iterating and saying, okay, for this season, we did this. Again, if the players are going to get, you know, four and a quarter billion dollars or something, you know, at the end of the season, they could say, you know, we really feel like this is the defensive part of this wasn't really very fair. We suggest tweaking it this way. The owners really wouldn't care. And so the players could try something else and then they could try something else. And whereas right now, not only do you have a horrible system, but you're like, it's written in blood for years

and which in no small part is part of the problem too. So I think you're absolutely right that this isn't and should never be based on the idea that somehow, you know, the Torah has been waiting for us all along to just use it as the basis for all of our decisions. But it's to say, you know, if we were to do things this way, I think fans would be a lot happier. I think a lot of players would be happier. I think I just think that it would be such an incredible improvement and it would have the potential to get even better. But that's what I think its main benefit is, that if you don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, you can still make things be a lot better. And that's kind of where I would think its value lies. Yeah, I know we definitely answered this question or talked this through on an ancient Effectively Wild listener email show at some point, and I think it was episode 835. weird, awkward situations where no relievers would make very much money or someone would add framing to their war model or whatever. And suddenly someone would be like, hey, I would have made way more money this year than

I did last year. Can I get some back pay here? So that would be awkward just because war is constantly evolving and getting closer to some platonic ideal of accuracy. And so that would benefit some players and hurt some others. But I do see some virtues of it. This is sort of a tangent, but I wonder, do you think if this system were adopted, that the quality of play in Major League Baseball would change in any appreciable way? And by that, I mean, just because players would have perhaps even more

incentive to constantly be at their best, not that they're like lollygagging out there as it is. And there's obviously a lot of incentive to do well and pressure not to do well now. But I wonder whether that's already being maximized or whether the fact that all of these players at all times would be playing for their next paycheck essentially would actually produce any difference i mean it'd be hard to tell because all players would have that same incentive but if there were some way to do that not that i want like more pitchers to blow out their arms or something because they're trying to throw even harder than they already do but yeah i wonder if you added that into the system, whether there would be any expectation that, oh, suddenly guys are trying even harder than they already are,

which is pretty hard, I think. Yeah, I think what I would say is that to the extent that there is any slack in the system right now, I think this would help get rid of that. But I sort of share your feeling that I doubt there is that much. I mean, just to get to this level and to be able to just go through rough stretches and still somehow show up and be productive again requires sort of, I would assume a level of mental toughness that doesn't really leave a whole lot of room for slacking off or, or, or doing other things, but sort of like how I felt that this would realign team incentives considerably, I am less worried about player incentives being misaligned. But it does seem like team, fan, and player incentives would all be pointing in the right direction, or at least arguably the right direction. And at the moment, they seem to be pointing in all sorts of directions and certainly not the same one. So I think it would have the potential to improve that. I just I don't see how it would hurt. Yeah, I think one of the good insights here is that we tend to talk about ownership as if it is a cohesive and completely sort of unidirectionally

aligned group, right? And there are competing interests within the owners. It's not as if they all agree on what salary structure should be or how we should compensate players or any number of things, right? There is disagreement there. And I would imagine that there would be some teams that would look upon this proposal and think, well, why would we do this? And there would be others that would think that it is a really kind of creative innovation to a problem that's stymieing them. So I wonder if there are particular, maybe not particular organizations, but particular kinds of organizations that you think would find this proposal to be especially appealing as a way forward. So I wonder that too, because a lot of my focus was on, in my mind anyway, was on like,

sort of like, how would the pirates deal differently with this? And I don't mean to pick on the pirates, although some would say you should. It's at least okay to pick on them. You don't have to, but you're allowed. I mean, pirates, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, for example, are clubs that I think are less morally foggy in sort of on a sort of year to year basis. But yeah, so I was thinking, I was like, okay, let's say you are a legitimately small market and your pitch is, yes, I'm part of this larger whole. I cannot make money. I cannot do anything. I can only do the bare minimum. I basically have to build up, trade people away, hope for the best and then go down. How would this affect me? And it just kind of seemed to me that it would solve a lot of these problems, because a lot of

your problems come from the fact that salaries are, at least on the free agent market, sort of set with an eye toward the overall market, which you really are not a representative part of. And so what I was really worried about was if you set up a system in which people basically didn't have to pay more to be good, would that have the opposite effect? And the more I kind of thought about it, I said, I really didn't think so. And I was thinking, if you're the owner of the Pirates, and you know that as one of the smallest markets, you're going to owe, I don't know, 30 or 40 million in salary or whatever as your contribution between your TV revenue and your ticket revenue.

Now, all of a sudden, your incentives are very clear and you don't have to really worry about a lot of player salary anymore or any player salary. Now your goal is, okay, I know that I have to make this amount of money. How am I going to make this amount of money? And I have this fixed cost. And so if I have to discount some tickets or I can do this promotion or whatever, it's like everything suddenly is very transparent. And it's like my goal is to make more than bring in more than, you know, $40 million of revenue this year. How do I do that? Well, I probably should try to make sure all the good players I can find are here. I should, you know, pitch myself to veteran players as a place where they can come and

get 600 plate appearances or pitch 162 innings. All of a sudden, lots of people are going to be coveting these slots and my fans are going to appreciate it. And so my thought was that I felt that the larger teams, it's sort of like whatever, by which I mean the larger markets, but I thought the smaller market teams, I thought this would just be completely sort of revolutionary for them because it would no longer be, how much longer can I keep a hold of this guy? And how much am I going to get fleeced when I trade this person? It's going to be, wow, you know, I think I might be able to keep this player for a while and maybe I'll go get a few more. So I think one, to the points you've made earlier about the effects of this, the effects of

anything are never what we think they will be. So there's always unintended consequences. Even if this is the smartest idea in the world, there will be something that will go wrong, something that some loophole that will be exploited, who knows. But it just keeps feeling like a lot of the incentives just keep pointing in the right direction. And if I were a small market owner, it more, then that means that large market owners probably like it less. And there's also that on the player side where presumably the older and more senior members of the players association who usually tend to be in positions of leadership would probably be less amenable to this given that they are already making more money.

And so this would take money out of their pockets and put it in their younger union mates pockets but on a macro scale when it comes to players or owners i assume that owners are happier with the status quo given that players salaries seem to have stagnated lately so they may be less motivated to want to have a sweeping overhaul of the whole system. But who do you think which side and then I suppose which factions within each side would be most opposed to this proposal? Oh, what a great question. I would say within the union, I wish I would be wrong about this, but I have this feeling that it would be the most senior players who admittedly have had the most wealth confiscated from them would be the most hostile to this, or that would be the presumption. I would hope not. I hope that they would say, you know,

even if we have to, a lot of these salaries aren't that different from what we would get, and maybe we can sort of do a credit thing where we phase into this. Certainly, the younger players would think this is better than sliced bread. I think we can pretty much assume that. On the owner's side, I can see, since it is such a zero-sum game from their standpoint, I guess, in a sense, they would dislike it. But part of me also, and the other issue is that their main goal, as it seems with the stock market and so many other things, is not to make money. It's to sort of build up these possessions that people overvalue. And that's sort of where they make their money, is off of this idea that their clubs are worth mystical billions for tax reasons that no one understands except for them

and their accountants. And they pay the players a fair amount, but no one's really sure how much. So I guess I could kind of see some pushback there. But again, a lot of the people who own these clubs are very smart people. And there just have to be, I would think, at least a bunch of them that would say, man, you know, there's so much bulls**t surrounding this all. Like, it's just, it's tiresome. It's man, you know, there's so much bull surrounding this all. Like, it's just, it's tiresome. It's just, you know, we spend all this time fighting our players and, you know, and it's just, what's the point? So considering that if you're one of these larger ball clubs, especially, you're writing out these big checks anyway, except right now they're

basically going down a rattle to go, you know, to go somewhere to the Rays and then the money ends up who knows where or to the Pirates. And it's, you know, if I were the Yankees or the Dodgers or clubs like that, I would be sitting here saying, well, this system doesn't seem to be working that great. Maybe they would say they like the system because their financial resources allow them to keep always renewing the pot and they don't have to actually compete for free agents like they would in a system like this. It's possible. But as the Dodgers have shown, although people seem loathe to admit it, the strength of an organization like that comes from their ability to constantly generate new talent, not from just going out and buying someone else's talent, although it doesn't hurt. So boy, I think a lot of it would be, frankly, both sides trying to figure out whether the other

side would be upset about this or not. And if the other side's upset about it, then they would be for it. And I really don't know whether they would do it. But it does seem like the sort of thing that you would hope that one side or the other would just sort of call up and ask if they could have an off-the-record conversation, as lawyers would say, and say, so seriously, how crazy is this after all? And then, I don't know. At least I think that would be required to actually make any progress like this. That's a good lead into my next question. And you do address this in your piece, but we wouldn't want this system to be one that does away with free agency, right? We like the idea of players being able to, after a certain amount of time,

finally pick their employer. And so I'm curious what incentives you imagine clubs being able to offer free agents under this circumstance because suddenly they can't say, well, you know, we're offering you $20 million more over the course of a deal than another club is. You know, this makes me think that everyone ends up in San Diego or Miami. Right. But what inducements do you imagine clubs being able to offer potential free agents to attract them to sign with, you know, with the brewers or in Cleveland or, you know, in Cincinnati compared to another place if money is really off the table for them? Yeah. And I will just confess that this was the part that was sort of depressing for me as I was writing this. I knew when I got

to the free agency part, I was just going to say, you know, I mean, what did Pete Rose say to the locker, to the clubhouse once, you know, you know, sorry, guys, I'm going to the Hall of Fame. That's what I know. And he walked out. I mean, that's sort of like, okay, I've come this far. The hard part is yet to be decided. But I actually, the more I thought about it, I said, you know, wait a minute, this isn't quite as crazy. It's just, again, you have to kind of put the status quo to one side and kind of think it through. So, I mean, my thought was that the inducements would have to be non-monetary, and that would be a hard thing for, I think, everyone to agree to take off the table. I'm expecting that might sneak back in somehow. But my thought would simply be that the incentives are to play ball somewhere where you're going to get a lot of played appearances

and therefore get compensated for it. And if that's the only way you can get compensated, your number one priority is to find a place where you can do that and keep doing that. So my thought was that it would be somewhat self-regulating in that there are only so many of those slots available and going and sitting on the bench of a super team or going to San Diego because you just love the weather. If you only are getting, you know, 150 plate appearances per year, that is going to get old for most people pretty quickly. The other incentives that I, the second thing is, is that I think a lot of people would be perfectly happy to stay with their current teams for longer. You know, if they've been there for a while, perhaps even we'd see more lifers because you

wouldn't necessarily make more money going somewhere else. And that, you know, would be sort of an interesting incentive. If you don't have a Yankees paycheck waiting for you, maybe you do want to stay in the place where your kids are already going to school and stuff like that. But in terms of, you know, there are going to be some movements and why would you choose one over the other? And how do you avoid what people call the NBA problem, which is perceived to be very evil, as you know, by some people, which is, you know, all the players are just going to all go to the same team. And, you know, my thought was, in addition to having the incentives for players not to do that, because you can't get paid that much doing that, it would be to basically use options. So if you went to a team that they

would sort of automatically get a one year option on you once you selected them, and they could exercise it or not exercise it. And if they didn't, then you would kind of go back into the pool and be able to go somewhere else. Maybe they could waive that option to say, come, we could really use you. We promise we won't exercise an option on you. So it'd only be a one-year deal. Try it out, see what you think. But it would be incentives more along those lines and sort of hoping that the system sort of encourages the players to sort of disperse themselves and also to sort of encourage players to stick around a little bit, but not to somehow put them back in a situation where they can never leave. And if it just turns out they're not very productive anymore,

or they're just not a good fit for a ball club, then we don't have a ball club trying to dump off a contract. It would just be okay, not going to renew the option, off you go. You know, if you can get, hopefully you can do really well somewhere else, and then you'll get a lot of playing time and achieve and get well paid there. So it really would hope that the system sort of incentivizes people to disperse and play and achieve counting stats. And otherwise, sort of these little inducements would be more of the things that I've thought of around the corner. But this would be such a different concept that I'm, I'm confident that there would be at least a few more incentives that could sort of make it work and even make it kind of fun, I think.

Were there any other obvious flaws or objections that you anticipated prior to publication or any that have surfaced since publication once it was out in the world and no one said, hey, you didn't think of this or that, or here's why it won't work? Not really. The things that I was worried about were injury issues and backup players who just aren't adequately measured by a war type statistic. And I think both of those really are very minor issues. I mean, it's like, okay, you'll have to have some compromise. That's not going to spend most of the money. These are edge cases, as I would call them. They're like, okay, we have to have something for the backup catcher who has a 15 year career and is highly valued, but just doesn't do anything that we can see. Okay, fine. You know, then they'll get, you know, like, you know, an extra hundred grand or something or whatever. Again, that to me is somewhat of the wisdom of the players getting control over how to allocate the money, because it's just, you know, if they decide that backup catchers are, in fact, some of the most important people in baseball, fine, go ahead, you know, take care of your backup catchers. But I really haven't had anyone raise any concerns, which is a little weird.

And that partially may contribute to the fact that maybe people were far too concerned about, you know, Nicki Minaj's cousin or something at the time. I don't know what more important issue was that I didn't get a lot of feedback on it. And the feedback I did get that was negative was mostly just sort of people trying to fight the same old battles. You know, well, this small market team is doing well. So clearly none of this is necessary. I'm like, well, what does that have to do with anything? Not at all. Or the owners always lie. Well, I'm like, well, yes, they often do. But I again, what is that? What is that? Why would we not want to still make a system better? So somewhat eerily, I have not seen any substantive objections raised that struck me as sort of like, oh, yeah, that would be a big problem.

Our listeners will rise to the challenge. I think they will. So I'm looking forward to it. I am because somebody will say, but on the other hand, I would say, of course, there has to be something wrong with it. There always is something wrong with it. On the other hand, the question is, is that something that is truly like a deal breaker? Or is it something like, oh, yeah, be sure to add that to the list when you're finalizing out the details? Because those are two very different situations. So I would think it would be more of the latter. But this is far too radical for there not to be something about it that is lurking that I just have not thought of. But I will say that I ran this

through an extremely not right wing group of people at the organization with which I'm affiliated. And people decided to, you know, I don't think I'm talking out of school to say that this sentiment was this would be a good idea. And baseball perspectives, folks don't agree on anything. So it was sort of a neat kind of moment for me. I do want to I don't want to let the like perfect be the enemy of the good here. I think one thing that I wonder how it will play out in terms of the incentives that both players and owners would have to agree to a system like this is the question of what I kind of came to think of in the way that you wrote it as the Bryce Harper question. We could call it the Mookie Betts question. We could call it the Fernando Tatis Jr. question. We could call it the Lindor question, right? These long existing, the Mike Trout question, because it's effectively wild, but these sort of long and existing contracts that

extend beyond the end of the current collective bargaining agreement that are highly lucrative, right? And that are likely to shift in terms of their average annual value for the players involved if this system were adopted. Although maybe not, because I think that what you have proposed is that sort of existing contracts would be honored, right? That Bryce Harper's deal is Bryce Harper's deal, and we can all continue to feel uncomfortable about how old we'll be when that deal expires. And it sort of remains in place because the guys who have big deals like that, first of all, as you point out, are the ones who most likely were not being fairly compensated in the early parts of their career because of the value that they were generating for their teams relative to their compensation. And those are senior members of the union. They're not incentivized to give

those gains away. But I do wonder if it changes the likelihood that a team would necessarily buy into a structure like this. Because I can imagine this gets put on the table in the CBA negotiations and the Phillies say, awesome, we can get out of the back half of Bryce Harper's deal. And that's the part of the deal that isn't necessarily going to be worth it to us from a production perspective, but you kind of have to give him those years in order to get him to sign here. And if we do something like this, we don't have to worry about that. We don't have to pay him however much in year 10 of his contract. So I wonder, I don't know that there's a solution to that, but I wonder kind of if you did get any feedback on that point in

particular, because I could see it changing the calculus for some teams in terms of how attractive something like this is. Yeah, the it was interesting, because I mean, people have people molded over for several days, as we sort of said, Okay, what's wrong with this? Why is this not going to work? And we people would say, Well, what about this? And there were a lot of revisions. And then people said, you should talk about this. And honestly, I think a lot of it was just as sort of just sitting down as I did and just kind of say, look, let's just talk through all the issues with these contracts. And I just couldn't get away from the fact that two points being number one, the people who sign these contracts often, especially from a team standpoint, are the ones who can most afford them. And number two, it's like you knew that a CBA was coming up and that it was a CBA that was going to be incredibly contentious to renegotiate.

And yet you chose to enter into a, you know, what, 10 plus year deal with some of these folks? Right. I mean, you know, your complaints 10 plus year deal with some of these folks? I mean, you know, your complaints are invalid, like all of them. And I certainly think that the, you know, the Milwaukees and Cincinnati's and Kansas cities of the world are not going to be all that sympathetic, they're going to be delighted. So I really don't see a lot of justification for sort of depriving Bryce Harper of what he has, you know, earned. I think that that was that was the price. That's what they paid. Again, I think they could probably offset that to the Phillies a bit by giving like

partial credits or something. I mean, it, it just feels like especially if he's reasonably productive, which at the moment, he's very much being I mean, right? Are they paying him that much more than he would be making anyway? I mean, a little bit, but not that much. And even that's assuming that, you know, and that depends on how his defense is valued. If the defense is valued differently, maybe it would be an even better deal. So I don't know. I think it's just one of those things that I just don't see as a deal breaker at the end of the day. And to the extent that a few clubs are grumbling that, you know, there's an extra 100 million being flushed down the toilet for them uniquely, it's going to be sort of an

oh boo hoo from the other two thirds of the owners. So I think it's fine. I think it is what it is. I can see the owners sort of saying that if we're going to agree to a pool of money, that stuff has to be included or something like that. And that would be part of why the negotiations would be hard over this upfront pool. But on the other hand, I don't know, at some point, I think people would turn to the folks that signed these big contracts and say, you know, what do you want us to do? This is your decision. And apparently you were fine with it. And now you're not fine with it. Well, that's not the way this works. So I think it strikes me as something that's pretty doable, although I would imagine the owners would all be united in solidarity to try to keep that pool down as much as possible.

But beyond that, I don't see it as something that should really hold things up. Certainly asking them to tear up their contracts for the good of the whole is probably not going to go over well. All right. Well, the defense rests there, I suppose. And people can let us know if they have quibbles with Jonathan's proposal here. You can email us, you can email him, you can tweet at him at BatchLaw on Twitter. And maybe introducing something this sweeping about two and a half months before the CBA is due to expire doesn't leave quite enough time for the two sides to agree on this framework before the CPA expires. I don't know. You never know. But maybe sort of starting from scratch and wiping

away decades of precedent, maybe it's a little late. Maybe that will have to wait for the next round of competitive bargaining. But the solution is out there as Jonathan has conceived it. The blueprint exists. We will link to it on the show page if you want to check out his argument in greater detail. And Jonathan, we thank you for thinking about this and for coming on to explain it. You bet. It was my pleasure. And it is, I know people always kind of wonder,

but these articles, but this one is free to read. So it is available to all. And so there's no qualms about the pointlessness of logging into it. You can go ahead and read it to your heart's content. All right. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, guys. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. Wanted to wish a belated happy birthday to the great Roger Angel of The New Yorker, who turned 101 on Sunday. I saw a

recent picture of him watching a Mets game on TV, so he's still at it. For those who haven't heard it, please do check out episode 1592 of the podcast, which is our Roger Angel centennial celebration, one of my favorite episodes. And an additional follow-up to our recent discussion with Russell Carlton and Robert O'Connell about minor league pay. On Saturday, minor league players from the Phillies and Mets wore teal wristbands that read hashtag fair ball to protest and bring awareness to minor league pay. This was players from the Jersey Shore Blue Claws and Brooklyn Cyclones. The players put out a statement, as did Advocates for Minor Leaguers, one of the organizations we discussed.

Minor league baseball players have been severely underpaid and silenced for decades, the players said. Today, we are wearing hashtag fair ball wristbands to show our solidarity with every fan and ally who is working to change that. We love the game of baseball, but it needs to evolve. It is time for every minor leaguer to be paid a living wage. I will link to a story about that, but it's an additional sign that this issue is prompting more attention, that minor leaguers are becoming more outspoken about it,

and perhaps that will lead to additional change. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks while preserving the ad-free nature of Effectively Wild. Justin Cusone, Nicali Jalili-Giaccio, I hope I came close to the correct pronunciation there, Sebastian Martinez, Alexandra Romanoff, and Jeffrey Fastow, 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 podcastoffangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then.

I am a salary man Singing to a rock and roll band Happy, happy, joy, joy Happy, happy, joy, joy My failures are put out to pasture I gaze through the window There is still poetry there We can forgive

But we can't forget No, not when No one shuts up about it