Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1777: Happy Francsgiving

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Rays signing 20-year-old Wander Franco to a long-term extension, rapid movement in the starting-pitcher market (capped off by the Cardinals signing Steven Matz and Mets owner Steve Cohen tweeting out his reaction), and the White Sox inking Kendall Graveman. Then (36:41) they continue their series of discussions […]

I let my mind wander And what did it do? It just kept right on going Until it got back to you I let my mind wander Hello and welcome to episode 1777 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay, but how are you doing? Because teams have not complied with your wishes. You requested a pre-Thanksgiving lull, and instead we've seen the opposite.

Well, I'm fine because, like any good workplace, Fangraphs runs because it does not depend entirely on my presence. John has been editing in my stead. The staff is writing their usual good analysis So it's been okay But it is sort of comical That because of the looming CBA deadline We have this sort of artificial crunch

Before Thanksgiving Although, you know, it's not as if we don't have Thanksgiving-related transaction activity Or haven't had it in prior years Yes, often it's Jerry DePoto's doing. Right. Now it's kind of a collective effort. Right.

So it's been fun. It gives us something to talk about. My parents' dogs are in their crates so as not to hopefully bark excessively during our podcast. I'm ready to go. Here we are. Excellent. My dog is on my lap, but she is a seasoned podcaster. So she is just about always there. And she knows when she's on the lap under

the blanket, it's podcasting time. She's got to be quiet for a while. And usually she's pretty good about that. So yeah, it's tough to say whether there's more happening on the Hot Stove League or in Stove League, but we will talk about both today. So we can start with the former, and the headline news is the Wander Franco extension, the extension that launched a thousand jokes and witty wordplays about how Wander is in fact not wandering anywhere, and in fact he is staying in Florida, or at least he is as long as the Rays themselves are in Florida. Yeah. I guess there's still a question about that. So this is an 11-year guarantee for $182 million, right? But there is a 12th-year club option for another $25 million that could come into play here.

And then there are various escalators that could kick in if he gets some top five MVP finishes after a certain point. So it can max out at $223 million over 12 years. And that's a really long time. an old person by the time this deal is done. Like even if the club option is exercised and he's with the Rays or whichever team inherits this contract 12 years later, he'll be like, well, a little older than Freddie Freeman is now, I guess. So he could very well sign another multi-year deal after this. In fact, it's likely that he will. So this is not his complete career earnings. And I would say that either he will be in a position to make much more money by that point,

or he will probably be happy that he signed this extension, right? Kind of either or. Like if things don't work out for some reason, then maybe this will be the big signing for him. But if so, then it's not bad. So this has sort of started the usual conversation about how to decide whether a player left some amount of money on the table. And it's unusual, I guess, for that to be a Raze-centric conversation, although they have certainly signed players to extensions before, and we can discuss some of those. But this is a record deal for the

Rays easily and it's also a record deal easily for any player with the scant service time that Wander Franco has so obviously he is a much wealthier person now and it is nice for Rays fans that they can count on seeing Wander Franco for a while. Maybe not for 12 years, but for a while. Yeah, I think a couple of things. I talked about the potential for this extension a little bit with your august colleague, Michael Bauman, on your other podcast. Because you just have all these podcasts, Ben. And I think at the time I had sort of said, Wander, don't do it. I think my thinking on that has evolved a little bit. I do think it's worth noting that players of his caliber do tend to do pretty well for themselves in arbitration, right?

So it is not as if the options that were available to him were, you know, make the league minimum for the next five years or sign this extension, right? Like we've seen players like Mookie Betts make, you know, more than $20 million in an art beer. So that sort of possibility existed. I do think that it's useful to think about this extension within the context of other big pre-arbitration extensions that we have seen. And I think the one that everyone really cringes at and feels yucky about is Ozzy Albee's, right?

Where it was clear that it seemed like he maybe got bad advice, right? His agent did not do right by him, given where his talent lies, even with some of the limitations in his profile, like he should have made more than that. And then there's Ronald Acuna Jr., who I think we all kind of thought, well, you can do better than this and maybe you should have been encouraged to hold out to do better than this. But this is not like an insultingly bad deal. I don't want to like retcon it as awesome given the injury that he suffered this year.

But like that is the scenario that you are trying to mitigate when you sign deals like this, right? Is that you can have just a season-ending injury. You can have a career-altering injury. And it doesn't seem likely that that's going to be quite the severity of this for Ronald Acuna Jr. But like that is that would have been a factor in his in whatever contracts he signed after that. So that's the situation that you're trying to manage for. I think that like when you have the possibility of making 223 million dollars, like you are you are accruing generational wealth in a moment like

that you know this is not just life-altering for wanda franco but for his future children should he have them and potentially their children right you know this is this is generational money and i think that while if you look at the projections know, sometimes when I go on vacation for a day, I just get to interact with Fangraphs as a reader, which is a thing I don't normally get to do. And I opened Dan's piece on this and looked at his Zips projections. And it's like I think he put it best on Twitter. This is almost like fan service. Projections for Franco are absurd because he's so incredibly talented. There's a reason he is the only prospect we have ever AD'd at Fangraphs, right? And so I think that it is

perfectly reasonable to look at this deal and think that he left money on the table, but I don't think that it is taking advantage of him, right? I don't think that that is the sort of sheen that this deal has. And because he is so young, like this is not the last contract he will sign. And if it is, you know, the last meaningful payday he gets, well, then he properly managed his risk of something going awry later in his career, right? Like I think that we all want players to be paid commensurate with the value that they bring to their teams and to the sport more broadly. And Wander Franco has the potential to be a generational talent and a guy who is a fixture of the sport for a long, long time. But I don't look at this and feel my immediate reaction is not one of like, oh, no, Wander, why did you sign that?

Like, I'm like oh wow wander you're probably gonna make 200 million dollars man that's pretty rad and i agree with you like the first thought i had when i saw this sort of come across the transom was how cool for fans right i know that the possibility exists that they are going to see this team less often in person because of weird split time with Montreal. And, you know, I don't I don't want to let ownership sort of off the hook for that scheme, which just seems kind of weird to me. But like you can if you're a race fan today, you can go buy a jersey and do it confidently. And that's really cool because they often don't have that. And what better a guy to

be able to do that for than such a talented young player who, like you said, might not be with their club for 12 years, but is going to be with their team for a long, long time. So I'm excited for Rays fans. I think this is great for Wander. And I do think that we should continue to interrogate the labor environment that we're operating in. But I don't think that if you're on the hunt for a deal that really underscores the biggest problems in the sport, I don't think that this is it. Yeah, right. All of these deals take place in this context, in this environment where young players are underpaid relative to their production. So if you're just going to go based

on war per year or something, then yeah, he'll probably continue to be underpaid. But relative to the standards of this type of extension, it seems reasonable. And really, as soon as he came up last year and he was what he was expected to be almost immediately, there was a slight adjustment period. And then he was just on base every day for the rest of the season. a slight adjustment period and then he was just on base every day for the rest of the season but as soon as he came up there is an undercurrent of conversation of people kind of joking about oh enjoy him while you can you know the rays will trade him soon and now that conversation gets pushed back a bit they do have a history of trading players whom they have signed to extensions so Evan Longoria, Blake Snell, Chris Archer. So there is every chance that he will not play out this entire deal with the Rays

and that he will be very attractive to other teams on the trade market during the latter stages of this deal. Because if he does play as he is projected to play, then he will still be paid less than he would make on the open market at that point and so he will certainly be movable and it is possible that the rays will do that regardless of where they are actually playing at that point but this definitely pushes the conversation back years and that's good i think that they can count on him that there's some stability there because they have been a team that's been extremely successful but often hasn't had a super

duper star they've been great at assembling depth and not having replacement level players at any position or sub replacement level players they mix and match and they use different players to the best of their abilities but they haven't often had the MVP candidate. And that's what Wander Franco could be really as soon as next season because he just looks fantastic. And it's hard to come up with a non-injury related scenario where he isn't great. Like his skills just seem so projectable, so dependable. He performed so consistently as the youngest player, one of the youngest players at every level of the minors as he was coming up. And he did it in a way that gave you utmost confidence in his ability to translate that to the major league level. And then he did right away at an early age. And so it's hard for me even to construct a scenario where he just underperforms. And it's not because he hurt himself. It's just because he's not as good as we thought or the league figures him out. I just can't really imagine that happening. There's no such thing as a can't-miss prospect or a can't-miss player, but he's as close as it comes, really.

So the Rays obviously didn't do this out of the kindness of their hearts, and they did it because they think they're going to come out ahead in the long term and there's a decent chance that that will be the case but even so for franco it's it's a strange discussion to have because the numbers are so big relative to most of our salaries in all of these cases like even the albies extension which as you said is often cited as the recent example of agent malpractice along with i guess the first first Evan Longoria extension. Even that is like, well, we're not going to make that much money in our entire lives unless our Patreon supporters are really, really generous. And so for a young guy-

Unless Wander Franco becomes a Patreon supporter. Yeah, exactly. Maybe he really loves the podcast and he will now up his contribution. But unless something unforeseen happens, most of us are looking at that amount of money and saying, oh, I would in what they do and so they deserve their fair share and yeah dan ran down the projections as you said and he also compared it in an objective rigorous type of way to some of those other touchstone extensions he also mentioned that the only player who is projected by zips to accumulate more war over the rest of his career is Juan Soto. So that's pretty impressive. And relative to what Zips would have projected, I mean, I think the thing that can kind of get lost because Franco was so highly touted and was so productive right away is that he is so far away from getting a payday otherwise. otherwise like because the Rays didn't call him up earlier right he didn't get a full year of service time and so he was going to be making league minimum or close to it for not just this

season but the two seasons after that yeah and then would have three arb years where he would make more but not nearly as much as he would on the open market and then finally he would hit free agency like six years from now so yeah that's a long time to wait and yeah you know he'd be making major league minimum it's not nothing but who knows what could go wrong during that period even though he is about as dependable a player as you could imagine like he's not scott kingery he's not john singleton those are the examples of players who were signed to team friendly Extensions that ended up not being

So team friendly because at least To this point they haven't panned out as Expected but he's not that But even if you look at some of the other marquee Players who've signed huge deals I mean Tatis there's the uncertainty Surrounding his shoulder maybe it won't Be an issue hopefully it won't but maybe

It will there's Acuna and his knee As you mentioned there's Cody Bellinger right and everything That's happened to him and Christian Yelich who is at a different point In his career when he signed his extension with the Brewers but look what's happened to him Thus far since that deal was

Signed so you never know for Sure and now Franco knows for sure about how much money he will be making at the very least. Yeah. And I think that it is important for us to remember sort of the structural incentives that point players toward deals like this. And by like this, I mean pre-ARB extensions, not deals quite of the same magnitude that Franco just signed, right? Like it is not it should not be lost on anyone that an understanding that you're going to make the league minimum and then you are subject to the vagaries of the arbitration system, such as it currently stands, which may well change in the next collective bargaining agreement, although I don't expect that it's going to move all that much. There are powerful incentives for you to lock in a guarantee now in a way that if players were able to reach free agency earlier or if they had the sense that the arbitration system was

going to compensate them closer to their market value. I talked about how Betts was able to do well within ARB before he signed his massive extension with the Dodgers, but he set a record at $27 million. I think that it's important for us to keep in mind that these guys are trying to mitigate a risk that is artificially created by the system in which they operate. And if they were just free agents, their understanding of their ability to make money at the point in their career when they're the most productive would be really different. And so I don't want us to lose sight of that because I think it's an important structural force to keep in mind. And all of that said, this is within the range of the kind of deal that you maybe expect

to be able to sign. And, you know, it's a tricky thing because, like, I think there's a good argument to be made that even, like, Mike Trout's deal doesn't pay him enough or didn't when he signed, right? Like, he is not actually, from a dollars per war perspective, being compensated commensurate with the value he brings because his ability to do that would break Angel's payroll within the system they operate in. Right. Unless he has a calf entry for five months, but. Right. And so, right.

So there's that part of it too. So I don't want to sluice out of the system. And I think that it is useful to, while keeping an eye on that, conduct your analysis within the system in which these guys are actually operating. And within that system, like this strikes me as this strikes me as okay yeah we won't just be on the next cba by the time this deal runs through like it'll be the cba after that so who even knows like yeah maybe if he had waited for the cba to be signed perhaps the terms could have been more favorable in some way but maybe maybe not. Maybe the opposite. It's really hard to tell. And now he has some certainty.

And Dan's projections say that if he had just gone year to year, Zips estimates that he might have made $297 million over the next 12 years instead of the $223 million that he can max out at now. But there's a lot of variance around that number and maybe more downside than upside like if you were gonna nitpick franco which is really hard to do i guess you could say that it's maybe harder to imagine him just having a huge season than some of the other young superstars like dan said the upside his 90th percentile projection is like 360 million over that period and maybe he doesn't have trout upside maybe he doesn't have tatis upside he might it wouldn't shock me if he did but i guess it's a little harder to imagine him as the 40 homer guy. He's a great on-base guy.

He can hit for average. He doesn't strike out. But because he's maybe not an elite defender, at least at shortstop, and doesn't seem to have top-of-the-scale power, although he's so young and he seems very strong and well-built, but he's not a tall or huge guy, so it wouldn't shock me if he had some power breakout but it's a little harder to see that coming i guess so you know for him to put up a eight or

nine win season i mean it seems like he has the highest floor of of anyone that he'll just be churning out four five six win seasons and knows, like he could definitely better that. But as Dan notes, like the 10th percentile result, everything goes wrong, he gets hurt, whatever. That's, he makes less than 20 million over that span. And in 35% of the Zips simulations, he falls short of 182 million in earnings that's guaranteed to him now. And by comparison, if you compare to the time when they signed their deal, Acuna falls short of that guaranteed deal that he got only 17% of the time, Albies only 9% of the time, Longoria, with his first extension, 11% of the time. So with those, it was like really hard to imagine them doing badly enough

that they would not make more money. With Franco, it's still like he probably, it seems like if things are even the median outcome, he could and should do better, but it's a lot easier to construct an outcome where he doesn't do better. So I think that this is much more in line with the market and with his talents. And if you didn't grow up rich and you're 20 years costs himself some amount of money that probably will not make an appreciable difference to the quality of life of himself or his family, like if he invests this money at all wisely, you know, the extra 50 million on top of the first 200 million shouldn't make that huge a difference you know you should get what you're entitled to but once you get that first 200 million you're pretty much set i think so yeah yeah it works out yeah i think um like the heater just turned on ben oh no oh you have heaters now i'm not oh yeah because you yeah. You're not in Arizona anymore. It's actually chilly here. I'm cold. I had to put socks on.

Oh, my God. Well, hopefully. Sorry, Dylan. I mean, we should leave this all in. That's fine. But hopefully it's not loud in a way that's obvious. And if it is, at least it's a consistent tone. So easy to pull from the track.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think that we kind of tend to think of these things as like once you have cleared the sort of bar of respectability on the contract, it does start to feel hard to haggle over 10 million here or 20 million there because it's like you're making in all likelihood like 220 million dollars or you're being, you know, you're hitting for agency a year earlier and you are presumably going to sign something that is multi-year and also accrues you a reasonable amount of money so i don't know i i want to not be seduced by a 200 million dollar figure and just say well everything is great because like the difference is meaningful right like betts's deal was for more than this and you know he was not an 80 future value prospect so it isn't as if it's immaterial but i don't think that it's insulting like we're not going to look at this like all these and go like oh gosh dude like how did how did that happen

it's not i don't think it's that kind of deal but i do find i think it's probably worth noting, at least to me, I do find the timing of the extension to be interesting. I don't know if this allows us to read into the tea leaves what the Rays expect the next CBA to look like. as a franchise player and they want to secure his services for a long, long time. But it is interesting that this deal was completed before we had a really clear picture of what the new labor environment is going to look like. Although, again, I don't imagine it's going to be altered all that drastically, unfortunately, from the player's perspective. So that part of it is a little curious and not just because it meant that we had to make sure that we had coverage of a massive deal right before the holiday. Yeah. I am used to extensions like this being signed like right before opening day in spring training.

I'm sure that there are precedents for deals being signed at this point of the off season too, but it does seem like more than usual. So congrats to Franco for cashing in and securing his future and not having to worry about his contract for more than a decade now. There's no trade clause, by the way, but if he is traded at some point, he does get a bonus that kicks in. So that will sweeten the deal a little bit, soften the pain of parting. So that is Franco. And also, the starting pitcher market is moving. Lots of activity here.

So since we last spoke, the Giants brought back a couple of their guys, Anthony Tiscofani and Alex Wood. And there have been conversations with others, but there is also a big Cardinals deal. The Cardinals signed Steven Matz for four years and $44 million, which was way over the MLB trade rumors estimate of $27 million. So I guess we should have drafted the over on Steven Matz. Yeah. Didn't necessarily see that coming. Steve Cohen is upset. He is tweeting.

The Mets have missed out again. But the Cardinals got a guy who is not the sexiest acquisition, I suppose, but he's been dependable. Aside from the pandemic season, he's been sort of the same guy. I guess you would describe him as solid. He'll give you 150 to 160 innings, which is not nothing in this day and age. And at a time when even the pennant winners are running on fumes pitching staff wise by the end of October and Matz has been pretty good he was pretty successful for the Blue Jays in the meat grinder of the AL East so now he gets to go to the comparatively soft

NL Central and pitch in front of the friendly Cardinals defense. So not overpowering, not incredible peripherals, even for a sinker ball guy. I guess he doesn't have the hugest ground ball rates, but seems like a pretty decent fit of player and team. And I don't know if the Cardinals are done or whether they will make more upgrades to this rotation, but that's a start. Yeah. What is it with me going back to the Northwest and the Mets having weird drama? This is like the second time this has happened in the last six months.

When don't the Mets have weird drama? I guess that's fair. Yeah. I might be selecting on the wrong variable here. Yeah. I think that given the Cardinals' own free agent departures, this makes a tremendous amount of sense for them. I think that having stable innings is underrated in terms of its value to the team. I think that Matz is, like you said, like a dependable good pitcher and he, you know, seemed to do well with Toronto. So that is a mark in his favor. And Steve Cohen should log off. Yeah, he really should. He seems upset about apparently he thought that the negotiations were going differently than they did. He is making accusations about the agent who put out his own statement where he says that he's taken the high road. But yeah, I don't see the good outcomes that can come from your owner tweeting. I'm not happy this morning.

I've never seen such unprofessional behavior exhibited by a player's agent. I guess words and promises don't matter. Steve Cohen, man of his word, just the epitome of integrity in business, is appalled at how the agent operated here. And, you know, nothing's done until the deal is signed. So I don't know where things were and why he is upset about this but clearly the mets did not land steven mats and so he probably should not be so upset about it i don't want to overestimate the degree to which stuff like this matters because i think that if an agent is doing their job they're in pursuit of the best possible contract

they can secure for their client and like at the end of the day, that is the most important thing for them. And if it is done with an owner whose Twitter behavior is immature, shall we say, I don't imagine that there actually is an agent out there that said, well, I thought we were going to land a good deal with the Mets. But now that I see how Steve Cohen is behaving on Twitter, forget it. I'm going to leave that good deal on the table and take- Don't want him to tweet about me, so I will cost my client money. Yeah. That said, it is itself, whatever may have transpired with Steven Matz's agent, I don't know. I don't know. I think that, like you said, until a deal is done,

it's not done. And he has an obligation to try to secure the best possible contract he can for Steve and Matt's. And that doesn't really take Steve Cohen's ego into account. Like that is immaterial to that particular exchange, right? But it doesn't seem likely to help your negotiations when you're, you know, you look around and you're like, well, I guess I'm going to have my business like spread about Twitter by the actual owner. It's like, come on, man.

Just keep that stuff in house. This is like our criticism of him earlier in the summer. No one wants to see their boss detailing their performance on Twitter. Like those are conversations that should be conducted internally. That's like how adults operate. So log off, Steve. This isn't helping you. Come on.

Well, at least Billy Epler knows what he's in for now. Enjoy it. Just signed a long-term deal and this is what you signed up for. Yeah. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If I had the kind of money and Steve Cohen has, you'd never hear from me. You'd never hear from me. I be like i am free of all of this you will never know my name my name is dead to history now i'll keep doing the pod ben like i'll do the pod because you know i like chatting with you about baseball but um i guess we won't need a patreon if i have steve cohen's money will i only if you're willing to share it with me. But I think that when your front office is replete with process failures and you are trying to assert a new and more professional and cohesive vision for your organization, very few people have ever found success bringing Twitter into the mix in the pursuit of that goal. So log off, Steve.

It's almost the holidays. Go have a turkey or something. Yes. So log off, Steve. It's almost the holidays. Go have a turkey or something. Yes. So it's just amazing. Even when players sign who have nothing to do with the Mets currently, it becomes a Mets story somehow. Yeah. I understand Noah Syndergaard signs with the Angels.

Okay, he was leaving the Mets directly. Steven Metz, Mets, Mets, Mets had already left the Mets, Stephen Metz had already left the Mets, and yet it's still a Mets story somehow when he signs elsewhere. All right. The only other notable deal to discuss is the White Sox signing Kendall Graveman, adding to their closer collection. I guess they have at least three of them for now. For now. So Kendall Gravemanman this is a three-year 24 million dollar deal and the white socks just have like late inning relievers all the way down yeah it's

like even if michael kopech is starting in 2022 you have hendrix you have for now craig kimbrell whose option the white socks picked up then you've got like beyond Graveman, Aaron Bummer and Garrett Crochet. And then like even the back end arms had pretty decent stats. Ryan Burr, Jose Ruiz, Reynaldo Lopez, like lots of other teams would be happy to have guys like that in leverage roles. And these are the mop up arms for the White Sox. So you can't really go wrong. are the mop-up arms for the White Sox. So you can't really go wrong. As for Graveman himself, I guess we haven't talked a ton about him since the whole trade deadline uproar when the Mariners moved him.

But really, who he was with the Astros after that trade, probably more reflective of who he is. Like, he doesn't have overwhelming peripherals really for a late inning reliever in the 2020s and yes his stuff certainly ticked up when he moved from the rotation to the to the bullpen but you know he he doesn't have the strikeout rates that match up with the league leaders at this point he went from having a 0.82 era in seattle this season to a 3.13 ERA in Houston. And that's not bad, but that's probably more reflective of who he is. And that's fine. So, you know, are the White Sox buying into a one year or one year and one month wonder here? Maybe a little bit. There's not a

super long track record, but given the stuff he had like it seems like he should at least be able to sustain the level of success that he had with the astros which is you know fairly replaceable i guess like he had a 360 fip with the astros i mean that's a dime a dozen in bullpens these days in the white socks bullpen even but I guess this gives them added depth if they do move Kimbrell which it seemed like they were inclined to do anyway and now with Graveman on board even more so and I guess there aren't like that many places for the White Sox to upgrade like it's a really good roster and if they get back the players who they didn't have for the full season last year obviously they were without Luis Robert they were without Eloy Jimenez for long stretches of that

season Yasmany Grandal as well if they have better health for for them I mean there is the hole at second base that was created by the Nick Madrigal trade but yeah there aren't that many places where you would say oh the White Sox should just be the biggest spenders here and outbid everyone for top free agent X. I suppose there are always some places. But if you already have a good team and your path to the division title is fairly clear, as it still seems to be in the White Sox case for now, the Tigers, of course, are mounting their thread and maybe the Twins will be a bit more competitive and Cleveland's kind of hanging around, I suppose. But it seems like the White Sox, still the class of their division, and maybe this is like, well, we had to spend money and try to upgrade somewhere. So let's go get Kendall Graveman. Yeah. I mean, I think that the White Sox could improve in a couple of spots. I think another, it feels strange to say this, like you said, because they're getting some guys back who they missed long stretches of with injury, but I could see them benefiting from another hitter.

And they could maybe use another starter now that they're seemingly letting Rodon go. So there are a couple of places but i really like the idea of building the you know entire plane out of the black box as it were when it comes to your bullpen right and that seems to be what they're doing here you know even if they end up moving kimbrough which i imagine that they will try to now like truly in earnest that they have graveman sort of in the fold but yeah I do I will say it would be nice in in the central to have a team that's like we know we can win but we'll really press the advantage anyway right like I I wouldn't hate a team emerging from there

going like hey we shall not Cleveland our way through this oh I just get to say guardians now yeah what a team name what a relief what a treat thanks guys for not persisting in your nonsense um yeah it would be nice if they didn't like guardians their way through and that is supremely unfair of me to say because this is a meaningfully different situation than what cleveland was doing so i'm gonna take it right back but i think the general sentiment persists which is that you know like really press your advantage you know go get go get another starter i i too am willing to believe in michael kopek in the rotation but like go get one more and you know go get go get one more hitter do it like i'm i'm nervous for andrew vaughn i worry about him i i think he might need a little triple A

time to really get to get right so go get one more but yes I think this is a very very good baseball team I think that in Dan's initial zips projections he has them favored pretty heavily I think that they have a year to sort out what more they might really need to to deal with Detroit as it is ascendant and Kansas City if they ever end up being right about contending so they have some time to sort that stuff out but one more go get one more

the window is wide open they won 93 games last year they won the division and I feel like we didn't really see the full power of the White Sox because of some of those absences i mean they they had their full lineup so rarely and they perhaps kind of coasted a little they certainly were able to if they wanted to because they had such a large lead really from

the outset so they didn't play great down the stretch and yeah i feel like they could still take a another little leap here so i'm looking forward to seeing a hopefully healthier White Sox team in 2022. So that's the big MLB news as we record here on early Wednesday afternoon. And I suppose that means it is time to transition to talking about Stove League. So this is our second Stove League discussion. We started last week. We will be discussing the fifth through eighth episodes this time. So no spoilers beyond episode eight, but we will assume you have watched up until that point. And again, everyone, if you haven't gotten on board yet, please do start streaming.

Check out the links on the show page. We recommend Vicky for the best available subtitles. But boy, a lot has happened in these last four episodes. Wow. Wow, Ben. So much plot. It's like Riverdale. Yeah.

A lot of plot. Good plot. But gosh, a lot's happening oh my yeah i don't know if they knew from the beginning that this would be a single season show as it seems to be now if so then it makes sense don't save anything for season two just burn all your storylines and they are just eating through them and it's great because it's focusing on really a single off season in the life cycle of this team so there's not a ton of time the action is all compressed and you have this huge ensemble cast lots of characters many more have been introduced or fleshed out in this second batch of episodes that we're talking about today.

So you don't have a ton of time to get all this action done. They're trying to go from worst to first or at least worst to second worst. That is their goal in this offseason. And yeah, if you want to get your viewers hooked, it's almost like a show like Homeland or something that just kind of like comes out of the gate and uses its best ideas early. And then when that ends up running for seven seasons or however long that ended up running, then maybe you run out of gas a little bit at the end and you're trying to make it up as you go along. But if you know that this is more of a self-contained story and you have a single season to just use all your best material. Yeah. story and you have a single season to just use all your best material yeah it's kind of like the oc just like came out of the gate used all the best stuff and then there was a little lull although

i still enjoy later seasons of the oc but yeah just saying they're not leaving anything in reserve here so when we left the dreams last time they were in fake california which is actually Hawaii, competing with a mystery team for this foreign player, Miles. I like that the foreign players are all just like one name. It's just Miles Herbert. They're all just like Prince or something. And we learn that the mystery team is the Pelicans. And the Pelicans, like seemingly every team in this fictional kbo have more money than the dreams so there is uh evidently a 1 million dollar

maximum that these teams can spend on foreign players and the dreams can't quite go there the pelicans can and miles he's uh throwing 96 miles per hour i think that is roughly what 155 kilometers per hour is and in the kbo 96 is pretty substantial yeah so they are salivating as they are seeing this guy throw harder and harder but they are unable to afford him and our gm tries to sweeten the deal he tries to make some guarantees and assurances about him being able to remain in the rotation and being able to pursue his own training program and it seems like miles is interested but then very quickly he he signs with the Pelicans and the dreams are forced to go to plan B and plan C and plan D. And I was kind of confused about whether Miles speaks Korean. Thank you.

Yes. I was just about to bring this up. That one scene, right? Yes. They're in the bar slash restaurant. I thought I was losing my mind. Yeah. And the interpreter, like at first he is translating everything that Baek Sung-soo is saying to Miles, but then he stops. He translates very selectively and it seems like Miles just understands everything that Baek Sung-soo is saying anyway. So I don't know if that was just like, well, we're trying to save a little time here and not have you listen to this question in multiple languages.

But it was a little jarring because it's like, wait, does he speak Korean? And does Baek Sung-soo speak English as he said he did? And if so, why are they not just speaking to each other? But that was weird. Yeah, that was weird. I found it very arresting. And then I was like, this is just TV nonsense like sometimes you just have TV nonsense and like that's what

you get but I did find the mid conversation shift to like each side this happens in science fiction a lot where like both sides will just speak in their respective language and then everyone understands but I was like huh Miles

wow you really are very talented. Star Trek universal translator is inserted in the middle of the scene somehow. But anyway, just pointing out these little things as we go. So they don't like their other options here. They're not interested in anyone else they see. But then it turns out that the solution to their problems has been under their noses all along. The interpreter himself, Robert Gill, or Gil Chang-Chu,

as he is known in Korea, and Robert Gill is his naturalized American name. It turns out that he is a very promising pitcher in his own right. And he has a whole complicated backstory here. So he was a Korean player and he was playing on Korean amateur national teams. And there is compulsory military service and an expectation that you will serve

for some time in South Korea. And you can get an exemption to that if you, say, win a gold medal in the Asian Games, and he did not quite do that. He pitched very well, and he pitched for multiple teams over multiple years, but he did not get the exemption. And so he, instead of serving in the military, becomes naturalized in America, gets around the military service. And he is somewhat criticized for that at the time, I guess. People approved because they realized that he had dreams of pitching in MLB and he seemed to have the talent to do that. And so the public opinion poll was somewhat supportive of him at that time.

So the public opinion poll was somewhat supportive of him at that time. But then after, I guess, his rookie season for some unspecified MLB team, he gets hurt. He hurts his elbow. And that kind of kills his career in the short term. Now we find out here that he had another reason for going to America. It was not just that he wanted not to serve and wanted to pursue his dreams in MLB, but his wife was sick. She needed a heart transplant and the waiting list was long in Korea.

So they went to the US. She is healthy now. She is pregnant. That all worked out, but he kept this quiet because he didn't want his wife to take the blame yeah his decisions so no one knows about this until it comes to light now and so he has kind of been suffering in silence

and and suffering these uh barbs and slings and arrows and people don't know what his real motivation is and he's still training and trying to pitch and still wants to make mlb and he is uh pitching every day to confirm that his elbow is okay which seems like a good way to make it not okay i don't know i don't know if that's the best plan to just throw every day to make sure that you can still throw every day but he still has it and they go watch him throw and he clearly is outperforming all of their other options yeah they send some video to the scout team they like what they see so they know that they're in for a public relations backlash here but he is not actually suspended it was believed he believed that he could not come back to the KBO even if he wanted to because he had violated some contract rule.

But it turns out Baek Sung-soo makes a call. He finds out that this indefinite suspension is rescinded and that he actually can sign Gil Chang-ju if he is willing to do it. And he persuades him to sign in a somewhat emotional scene yeah i appreciated that they took great pains to make his story a sympathetic one right like they they did not they clearly did not want to position this as the dreams are indifferent to the reaction that will arise from this like even if he is unwilling to sort of lay out the entirety of his story and his rationale for having been naturalized in the U.S.

and not coming back for his service, like, we know as the audience that he's an honorable guy, right? And that there were extenuating circumstances and it was not simply him trying to duck his duty, but being, you know, exhibiting a strong sense of duty in another aspect of his life right that he wanted to be there for his wife and make sure she was okay and did not want her to have to bear the brunt of the blame for his decision making and you know as we navigate a league in which we sometimes find out that like players are not the best people it

was it was nice to be able to feel confident yeah i was like this is a good guy put in an impossible set of circumstances and he chose to be supportive of his wife and drew to his family and that is you know i think a justifiable reason to to do what he did so yeah i was grateful for that yeah so pek sung-soo contrives to have dinner at Gil Chung-ju's house which at first seemed considerate because he was on the phone with his wife and she's pregnant and she wasn't feeling well and it sounds like she wanted to maybe have her husband pick some medication up for her or something and come home and so at first it seems like oh well he's just making it so that they don't have to go out to dinner and they can just go back to his house and he can take care of his wife although apparently like we find out in the

flashback like part of it i guess is that he kind of like just wanted to snoop around his house it seems like like look at his photos like confirmed that yes this is a loving relationship and yeah and this is actually what happened and like maybe not the most considerate thing to just like show up with like your boss and a bunch of guests and like say hey can you cook for us pregnant wife who's not feeling well so there was that too but it is very touching because gilchang ju has has you know he still has dreams but it's been a while since he's really allowed himself yeah to believe that he is going to pitch at this level again let alone that he can return to korea so he breaks down in tears his wife breaks down in tears because she didn't want him to blame her for costing him his career so baek sung-soo extends this lifeline to this guy and to this couple and rehabilitates his career but i guess it's still an open question

what his motivations are exactly like is he doing this because he wants to help out this honorable pitcher or is he doing it just because he sees an undervalued asset here which is what he would say certainly and like when he extends the the contract terms and he offers him 500 000 right and he just like openly lowballs him he's like yep you know we're uh we're not offering you a ton here because no one else is making you an offer like yeah we have you where we want you like they are very very frank about their motivations many of the characters in the show so like again it's like the race with wander franco they're not doing this just to be generous so they see an opportunity here but also it's nice

to lock up your franchise star as the dreams employees would put it and so i get the sense that beck sung-soo like he feels good about this but like it's all on the inside for now he is not betraying any emotion himself yeah the situation we kind of have to infer it based on what we know and his impassive expressions yes he he plays things very close and keeps his cards sort of close to to his chest but it does seem like back song to it mattered to him the circumstances under which gil changju left and it it matters to him like you said that like this is a real you know loving relationship and i think extending the lifeline is meaningful but yeah i do it can be both right he can both want to give this guy a second chance and a way back not only to baseball but to Korea and also be cognizant of the fact

that he is securing a pitcher who under more normal circumstances would be far too expensive for his club to employ. So I think it can be both things, right? Yeah, I think so. So they get back to South Korea. They land at the airport. Miles is overshadowed immediately. Tough for the Pelicans. They end up with the foreign player that everyone wanted. And no one cares because immediately everyone is clamoring to hear from Gil Chang-ju. And I love the press conferences so far because you had the Kong Doo Gi press conference where he gets up there and he just yells, dreams, I'm here. Yeah. Which I think like Steven Matz should have to do that at his press conference. Just like, Cardinals, I'm here. Yeah.

But then at this press conference, the player apparently does not get to talk. Like he does not say a word at his own press conference he just sits there at the mic while Baek Sung-soo just speaks for him so that is interesting and it's all going fine and you know Baek Sung-soo for someone who is a bit prickly not bad with the media no tossing in a joke here and there but then there is the gotcha question at the very end from this hard driving reporter who says, well, why doesn't he just serve his military service now instead? That will come into play in these later episodes. But they know that they're in for this kind of backlash and they're prepared for that. And that is why they're getting such a steal here with the signing. So, yeah. And I imagine we will have more opportunity even within this little bit to talk about how certain aspects of the media are portrayed. Yeah.

Skipping ahead a little bit here. So the reporter who asks that tough question, Kim Young-chae, she is the host of a popular baseball show. And she is known for sort of editorializing and inserting her own opinion into these things and spinning things in a certain way. And she is stymied in her attempts to interview the GM. And so she does an end around here. She comes up with a clever and manipulative scheme where she interviews Gil Chang-Chu and he doesn't say anything objectionable and he is properly penitent and humble. But then she edits his answers over the objections of her editor. Who says, is this the right thing to do? She has this satisfied look on her face like, yeah, because I got a plan, sir. This is going to get me tons of traffic.

And the team marketing director walks right into this trap because he has a crush on the reporter, basically. He's a huge fan of hers. He does not see the danger coming. Baek Sung-soo sees it coming. He's like, hey, did you get final approval over these comments? Or is she able to just spin this however she wants? And he's like, oh, no, she's a good reporter. Like, I'm sure she'll handle this responsibly. And then she chops up his answers in a way that makes people mad at him so this was

mismanagement by the marketing department and really just about every person who works for the dreams other than the top couple people not the best at their jobs we will get into the analysis team leader i am sure in this discussion because i have a lot of notes on his performance here but this is uh clearly a story that is going to continue here it's not just that the press conference was uh the resolution to all of these issues this is going to linger yep And by the end of the eighth episode, it will even endanger Baek Sung-soo's job. Of course, the director of the Dreams is just eating up of this PR backlash to some extent, except when he gets called onto the carpet by his uncle and his boss, who's not happy about the noisy GM that he has hired. But yes, this will linger. But Baek Sung-soo's like, hey, is this any worse than when we suck and people criticize

us? Not really. And once we start playing and we're good and the pitcher is good, people will come around. So he's like, hey, why are you not all used to this by now? Don't you have thick skins just from being so bad at baseball for so long? You've been the punching bags of the league for years now like you should be used to this i was i was ready to get angry comments on news articles yeah i i uh you know i think it is useful to be reminded that it's in the

off season you don't have as as the team is sort of aware and as particularly as back song sue is aware like you don't have games to offset whatever existing narratives you might as a media member be interested in in propagating so you know i think he is right to say that if if they start winning games that is going to counter a lot of this criticism but in the void of the off season all you have are transactions to react to and so you're going to react to them like that is just how these things are going to go we're in we're in the midst of it now right so that was mostly episode five although we bled into later episodes a little there episode six revolves around hiring a new sabermetrician and this is

right up our alley give me an entire series aboutian. And this is right up our alley. Give me an entire series about interviewing potential analysts. This is great. This is like, I mean, you've been on the other side of this. You're hiring writers more so than analysts, but similar skill set. So you and Lisa Young

have been in very similar situations asking interview questions here. But you are, I suppose, the analysis team leader of Fangraphs in a sense, and you are much better at your job than Yu-Gyeong Taek, who is the head of the Dreams analysis team. And I have to question

what analysis he is providing here. Great. I think, I mean, this is a couple of years ago, and I know that the KBO is very into sabermetrics now, but was a little slower in adopting it than MLB. So I understand that this is a different environment, and this is not a league where every team is hiring double-digit numbers of R&D people. Right. They're just sort of dipping their toe into this and so analysis team leader like we think of that as being a strictly analytics

and sabermetrics kind of role in this case historically with the dreams it obviously hasn't been and it's been based i guess on standard stats and data and more video scouting and what pitches are you throwing. This guy is either a former player. I assume he is a former player at some level. I don't know if he's a former KBO player, but he has some high-level playing experience and obviously is extremely biased toward ex-players to the point that he is very much in the camp of like, if you haven't done it, then you are not qualified to offer your opinion here, which is an interesting choice for someone who is the head of the analysis team. Bok Sung-soo has to work with Lee Se-young, right? You are essentially foreclosing, not that women don't play baseball, but they aren't playing KBO baseball. And so you are essentially foreclosing the possibility of someone who is like Lee Se-young having a meaningful role

in any organization, right? This is part of the objection that we raised to this line of thinking. You are artificially constricting your analysis, your pool of potential applicants so dramatically. It's not just a matter of, you know, looking at the men who might apply for that position and saying, well, you didn't play, so what could you possibly bring here? You know, it is hard to imagine that you would take seriously a resume that includes even high level high school or women's professional baseball experience if this is your perspective, right? Like, I just don't think that you're going to view that as equivalent to the kind of experience you need as a player in order to have a sort of learned opinion or considered opinion on the sport. So it is, you know, you're really, what is the expression you're cutting off your nose to spite your face? Like it's, you're really putting yourself at a disadvantage when you aren't willing to consider people who have a great deal to bring to the table just because they haven't played high level baseball, right? Like, come on.

None of the nerds have done that. That's not true. Some of the nerds have, but not a lot of them. Unless you're hiring Sam Fold, what are you doing here? former assistant leaves to go run his family's orchard, which sounds really nice. Yeah. Sounds peaceful. Probably better off running the orchard than helping run the dreams. But now we get this open interview process, and Lisa Young says that the dreams have been too close-minded about Saber Metrics, which is pretty apparent.

Yes. And she notes that in MLB, teams are hiring more non-athlete coaches, whereas the analysis team leader, he says you have to hire a former player because players will only listen out a lot so that you can impress them with your physique so that you can look athletic enough. And obviously, one solution to this that teams found for a while was what in the MVP machine we call the conduit, a former player who also has the analytics skill set. So you're Brian Bannister and you're're Sam Fold. And you're Dan Heron. And that type of person. And that was a good transitional role until now. I think where you can hire just about anyone. To do any job.

And I think teams are used to that now. So this is anticipating. A trend that has certainly happened. In the majors. It is kind of incredible this is just an aside but looking at the the people who've been hired as hitting coaches this off season there's so much turnaround in that position in general yeah because i think there's been a change in hitting philosophy and how you instruct hitters and now you're seeing like michael birdar

who is just hired as the Padres hitting coach. He's 27 years old. He never played professionally above rookie ball. He was a coach at Michigan. He was a 36th round pick. So he had a little bit of playing experience, but like a 27-year-old being a hitting coach for a competitive team. And Berdar, I interviewed when I was working on the MVP machine. I don't remember if I quoted him or not, but I interviewed him a few years ago.

And it's incredible. Like all of the college coaches I talked to during that process are now like hitting coaches or pitching coaches. Like it's amazing just the rate of adoption. And part of it is that like every MLB team has like three pitching coaches and three hitting coaches now. It's like assistant hitting coach and assistant to the assistant hitting coach. And all that makes sense.

Like, you know, if you can do a little player development at the major league level, like that will more than pay for itself. But it's been amazing to see how quickly that has changed and how the backgrounds and the prerequisites for those positions and the level of experience and playing experience specifically that is expected has dramatically changed and so we're seeing that change reflected here for the dreams as well yeah so they do the interview process they they make a call for resumes they get 10 which uh i'm sure you can testify even from hiring for FandGraphs, let alone hiring for the R&D department of a major league team.

Sure would be nice to only be competing with nine other applicants. In reality, it's like hundreds. Yes. So I like the odds of the applicants here. Yes. I think they do know that it was sort of a sudden call. Right. And so perhaps that is accounting for it. But yeah, when we do open hiring calls at Fangraphs, like we are sifting through hundreds of resumes. And my sense from talking to front office folks as I work with them to get their job postings up, you know, they are sometimes dealing with a multiple of that because people still really want to work

in baseball so yep but not for the dreams at least not on short notice and so we get this interview montage and lisa young is asking the right questions and this is a lot of fun i think for us to hear and she's asking you know what sample do you need for certain stats to stabilize in KBO and in MLB? And why is it different? And as is often the case, I think she wants to know how you arrive at the answers more so than what your answers are. And meanwhile, you have Mr. Analysis Team Leader who is sitting over there just being

like, did you play? And if not not what are you doing in here so finally we get a surprise arrival and it is the younger brother of our gm and it turns out that he has been a secret sabermatian all along. The call is coming from inside the house here. He is the one who has been writing on this Korean baseball blog, Hooray for Baseball. Great name. I think you should rename FanCrafts to Hooray for Baseball. And he's been doing this study that Lisa Young was reading about the analysis of heat or

temperature on offense. And he's like an internet celebrity. Yeah. Going by this pseudonym, Robinson, after Jackie Robinson. So he's like the Tom Tango of the KBO, basically. And Baek Sung-soo suspects nothing. He thinks that his brother is studying for the CPA exam, that he's going to take the test to become a CPA. Instead, he shows up at this interview, and Lee Se-young is awed by his arrival.

Of course, the analysis team leader has no idea who he is because he's never read a blog post in his life. But this leads into the larger backstory of how he became a sabermetrician, how he went from being a player to an analyst, why he uses a wheelchair, etc. And Baek Sung-soo, not so happy to see him at this interview. Right. And we come to learn that he blames himself for his younger brother. Baek Young-soo was injured in the course of play, right? And he was sort of already, he was playing hurt. And Baek Young-soo encouraged him to just run, run full out. And he did that. And he suffered a debilitating injury that has necessitated the use of a wheelchair since.

a debilitating injury that has necessitated the use of a wheelchair since. And I think some of the first real emotion that we see from Baek Sung-soo in the course of the series, like he clearly carries a lot of guilt for this having taken place, that he was sort of indifferent to the severity of his younger brother's existing injuries. He didn't know about some of those existing injuries. It sounds like there was some pretty heavy abuse going on in the course of this team. And he blames himself for the injury that led to his brother's disability. And it's very sad. It is very sad. Yeah. We talked to Emma Ryan Yamazaki, the director of Koshin, the documentary last year about some of the corporal punishment that has

happened in Japanese baseball. And this is happening here also with this team. And he didn't say anything. He just noted that his hips hurt, right? And Baek Sung-soo was like, hey, you got to play through it. He said he doesn't have the brains to be anything else so that he should just play because he's not going to be as good at anything else as he is at being a baseball player it sounds like he didn't love playing to begin with obviously he loved it less because he was suffering and being beaten in some misguided effort to improve his performance but his heart wasn't in it. It seems like he wanted to be a blogger all along, which is very relatable. This was me, obviously, not that I was a superstar high school athlete, but I still just wanted to be a writer more than I wanted to be a player. And that's

the case here as well. So he shows up, he nails the interview, he hands over a ream of posts. He's been busy posting and just dumps the stuff on their desk and he's clearly qualified. But his older brother is just not having it. And he is quite cruel at first. And he's drawing attention to his inability to cross the threshold in the wheelchair without assistance and saying, how are you going to do this? And you're not going to be able to fit in here. And as we get the sense later, he's lashing out and he is riddled with guilt over his own role in his brother's injury. And we get the sense that maybe it's actually painful for him to be working in baseball because it's a reminder of his brother's injury and his failure to prevent it.

Ultimately, there's a hard talk where Lisa Young just, you know, shows up in Baek Sung-soo's car and says, no, you are not going to get the last line in this conversation. You're not going to leave. I am going to give you some tough love here and explain to you that actually it's very admirable that your brother has gone on to this alternate career and has become so accomplished and has transcended these challenges and you should give him a chance and yeah ultimately Baek Sung-soo finally comes around but yeah this is the first time we see real emotion from him he sheds tears when his brother is hurt he's been blaming himself all along his brother is trying to absolve him and say it's not his fault but you know he is uh trying to support his family and he's trying to make them happy at

the expense of his own happiness kind of like his younger brother did when he was playing and doing so to satisfy his brothers and his family's expectations so clearly there's a lot of love here and they're not just brothers but they're roommates yeah which is nice and Baek Sung-soo is cooking for him and leaving food out for him when he eventually gets the job and works late at the office so their relationship improves here so now they're not just brothers they're not just roommates they're also co-workers and I think some much needed sabermetric expertise brought to the dreams well and I think reminding his older brother that like he actually found a way to baseball being joyful, right?

That in a way when he was playing, like it was this slog and he didn't like it. And even though, you know, the injuries he sustained obviously altered the course of his life. Like the course that it has ended up taking has been one that you know he finds joy and happiness and this isn't just a job like he wants to engage with the sport watching it makes him happy it's not just that it isn't painful but that it is actually really pleasurable for him to engage with baseball which we perhaps could have guessed based on what he named his blog so like you know i i think that that it was a really like lovely it was a really lovely. It's nice to get that kind of story and ground characters in a show you like in something that is not just The Office. And this was nice.

And they ended up making the most qualified hire that they could. We will get to the conflict that his hiring causes elsewhere. But they got the right guy. They got the guy who's going to help them put a better team on the field. Yeah. So another great internet analyst robbed from readers by a team greedily hiring all of the best bloggers. Dreams are like the weird – they're not the rays, but –

Yeah. I thought about it a little bit in the course of this robinson's readers will miss him but really enjoyed that whole interview sequence i mean again that's like the most inside baseball of inside baseball scenes like yeah she's asking him like why is war so low for relievers and he's like no you should use when probability added yes how is this a tv show that exists? This is great. Sometimes it's nice when people make art for you, you know? Yeah.

It's like specifically for us. Yep. And then, of course, once he gets the job, the analysis team leader is like, you're not allowed to look at video. Just look at stats. And I'm redacting the names of the players because, hey, you're the fancy stat head. You shouldn't need names. You're not allowed to look at the players. You're the stat head just look at the stats so clearly like still some barriers to overcome here yes so that leads into episode seven and seven and eight

they become about the contract process so we have yet more budgetary challenges here with the dreams. Often I think an episode is over and then it's not. Like there are like multiple climaxes in each episode, it seems like. But we find out, I think, at the end of episode six that the corrupt ex-scouting team leader who has been dismissed in disgrace. He's an agent now. He's made a quick career pivot and he is getting fed Dreams contract offers from his old scout team colleague who is just like very clearly leaking everything like his loyalties. Not smooth, that guy.

Really not subtle. No, he's not really even bothering to hide it. So he is like this mole inside the organization still loyal to his old boss and the agent who reps Lim Dong-gyu evidently but he's on another team now he's with the Vikings but he has also collected a bunch of clients who just so happen to be players for the dreams. And he is not motivated solely by his desire to get them the best contracts. He is out for revenge.

He wants to make Baek Sung-soo pay for the way that he got rid of him. And his job of it is a little easier, or at least Baek Sung-soo's job is harder because the director of the team is imposing a 30% pay cut from the already meager payroll. And Baek Sung-soo tries to push back. He acts as if it's a negotiation.

He says, how about 10%? How about 15%? No, it is not a negotiation. It's 30% and like it or leave. And he doesn't like it. He doesn't leave. He decides to work within the constraints of this system. So we know that he is against this pay cut and he is, in fact, angered by this pay cut.

But he can't really divulge that, at least at first, to his subordinates and to the players themselves. He has to be the bad guy here and carry out these pay cuts. And he does his job well. As usual, he does it at least seemingly without a lot of sentimentality and a lot of attention to the bottom line and so not the easiest to root for in this episode because the whole episode is like can we get these guys to accept way less than their worth so not the most sympathetic storyline here i didn't know like we got the return of the word humanist yes you know humanists at the bargaining table and and you're sympathetic to the – and we see this phenomenon in Major League Baseball and we've talked about it a lot on the show. There are realities of ownership budgets that teams have to operate within and those realities might diverge from what certain front office personnel would like to do if they were able to just make their own choices sort of irrespective of those budgets. And some of those folks get hired because they're really good at operating within those confines. So I don't, you know, we don't want to blame front offices for everything related to budgets, but I don't want to absolve them of everything either because, you know, there's a reason you get hired when you're going to a team that wants to enact pay cuts because you're good at bobbing and weaving within those and

there were definitely moments in these two episodes where you are sympathetic to the plight that they find themselves in and i think that you're especially sympathetic to what the team is is having to go up against against when you have this particular agent involved who is not really, he is interested in doing what's right for his clients and so far as like they are being low-balled. Yeah, they need an agent. Right.

Maybe not this one, but. And the fact that these contracts, I don't, this is an area where I don't know sort of how true to life it really is. Like it seems very strange that the player would just negotiate for themselves absent an agent, even for a guy who isn't a free agent. These are players who have not yet been in the league long enough to be free agents.

I think we are given to understand that those negotiations might proceed differently, but it's really weird that they were just going in with a number. Right. And you have to sort of do stuff for themselves. So this is me betraying my ignorance of sort of the inner workings of KBO contract negotiations. I don't know if that's how things actually proceed. So on the one hand, it's like they're being lowballed.

But also he isn't really interested at the end of the day in what is best for them. He wants to, you know, stick it to the dreams. Like that is his goal. Yeah. The part of this that I imagine is not true to life is that he basically tosses out everything that happened before the last season. Yeah.

It doesn't matter what your seniority is, how old you are, what you've been paid previously. His solution to this massive pay cut is that he is just going to pay everyone based on how they performed in the most recent season so if you miss some time with an injury you're out of luck you're going to be paid what you were worth that year basically it's basically i mean it's not that far from like mlb's recent proposal with the the war basis and everything it's just like hey what was your performance last year? And someone says, one of the player points out, I think it's the catcher, the holdout, who says like, well, if your salary is based on a single season, like it should be based on the expectation for the future season.

Right. More so than what you just did. But he says, no, we're going with this one year system. Players with families don't get salary boosts anymore like no other considerations except what you did on the field and most players are understandably upset by this and some of them are in for huge pay cuts and i like the fact that they presented this from multiple player perspectives. So you get Zhang Jinwu, who is the player who is at the tail end of his career, and he's been accomplished in the past.

He was a 19-game winner, but he had surgery. He's lost a lot of stuff, and he's just kind of hanging around now as a veteran mentor type. And so you see a little bit of his family and his wife's expectations for what he's going to make. And it turns out that even though they are expecting a cut, it's a huge cut. Yeah, dramatically more than what they were anticipating. Yeah. And so he weighs whether he should give up playing and go into the restaurant business.

And then you also get a look at the catcher, who is more, I guess, in the prime of his career. He's a veteran. And then you get the young up and coming rookies who are just desperate for anything. They just want any kind of raise. They'll take whatever you give them. And really, it's pretty clear. And Baek Sung-soo makes it clear. And even Lisa Young, who is normally more, I guess, on the the player's side like she clearly feels bad about this but she is just laying it all out there it's like they're both like hey you're not a free agent for a long time like you're under team control like yeah you have no recourse here you can either accept what we offer you or not play like there's just not a lot of leeway. And yeah, their hands are tied and they are just sort of relaying this message. It's an interesting conversation where Baek Sung-soo, you know, she's like, hey, it's not our fault. We're not the bad team is saying, that this is a mandate from his uncle, the owner of the parent company, J-Sung. And so like each rung of the ladder, you can tell yourself, oh, I'm just following orders here. But ultimately, you are kind of being the bad guy. And in the director of the team's case, like he is not solely following orders.

I mean, clearly, he's under a lot of pressure at work and he's kind of being bullied by his cousin, the owner of the parent company's son, and there's a rivalry there. And he's sort of having to justify his presence and value to the company because I guess his dad was not quite as productive and we'll learn more about that. But I think, you know, clearly he has it out for Baek Sung-soo and there's a part of him maybe that likes baseball and maybe that will be fleshed out a little later. But really, he just wants power here. He is trying to shut down the team

and he is doing whatever he can to make that happen. So this 30% pay cut is punitive to some extent. I he is punishing beksung su for standing up to him and he is trying to make it even harder for him to do his job so that this team is more likely to be disbanded which is interesting because it's like on the one hand that is consistent with his ultimate goal which is to disband the team but it is strange that you hire the guy who takes a team

to a championship and then gets it disbanded and then put him in a position where they are going to be even worse than they were the year before. It's like, which part of the resume ended up being important to you here? We were sort of given to understand in the beginning that it was both, but there seems to have been a bit of a pivot there. You know what I mean? It was both, but there seems to have been a bit of a pivot there. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And at first they're talking about just cutting players to satisfy this payroll reduction.

And again, it's not totally clear whether this is Baek Sung-soo being a secret humanist. Is he a softie on the inside or is it just that he sees these players as assets and it's better not to cut them because they will be more valuable to the team in the long run. But they have this meeting where he's like, OK, can we cut this guy? Can we cut that guy? And someone has an objection about everyone. I love how the manager just pieces. Like he just leaves the meeting where the cuts are being decided.

And the manager seems to have more of a backbone now because there's that early scene in episode five where the bench coach and the pitching coach are squabbling again. And he's like, hey, just figure it out. Like, you guys have your roles. Like, I'm the manager. I have some job security now. But in this meeting about cutting players, he's like, hey, I have to hit these guys' fungos. Like, I can't decide who to cut. It's like, isn't that part of your job to like decide like which players to keep and let

go like i get that it's hard but it seems like it should be probably part of your job yeah it's like um i think that you want to be in on this conversation because if you aren't you might end up being really unhappy with the results yeah you would think so anyway the g GM here is being sabotaged not just by his boss, but also by the scouting assistant who is collaborating with the agent, the former scout team leader behind his back. And the agent knows what Dreams was planning to offer all of these teams. So that's just another problem here. And, you know, he is open about like, hey, we should convince these players to take what we're offering them. Like someone points out that Jiang Jinwu,

I think was more successful as a reliever and maybe he would have potential there. And Li Zhengsu is like, why should we acknowledge his value when he himself does not know it? So it's like, he doesn't know what he's worth. So we shouldn't tell him because we want to get him on the cheap here.

So it's definitely like cutthroat negotiations, not even negotiations, because there's not a lot of bargaining that goes on here. And ultimately, the agent, he is thwarted in his efforts to get revenge on the team because his players, they're used to being lowballed. They want contracts. they want to sign and so the dreams front office comes up with this scheme to distract him essentially and stage a diversion while they go and negotiate with his players individually they sign deals behind the agent's back and then he is left kind of empty-handed except for his one last client Kwok-Hun Young who is known as kind young because he will just always take whatever yeah it is sad and uh at first like it it seems like these heartball tactics work out for him like it's overdue that he should have an agent yeah because he does get offered more money but

then he gets guilted into signing for less than he could have signed because they're like hey we'll give you more but it's going to come out of other players salaries yeah he is kind young and he's like no i will take less so really they just outmaneuver everyone, outnegotiate everyone. Even the catcher who is the hardest to come around and the most resistant, he ultimately is cowed because they're just like, hey, what are you going to do? Are you going to retire? He's like, hey, you need a catcher. And they're like, hey, we suck. So we can just go get any catcher. It's kind of like the Branch Rickey, like we can finish last without you line, essentially.

And so there are multiple confrontations. He pours liquor on Baek Sung-soo's pants at this like gentleman's club type place where he arranges a meeting. And Lee Se-young comes to his defense and she's angry. She throws a glass at the wall and shatters and yells at him and then yells at him at a subsequent meeting so she is like very much up to the task of uh of being the bad cop when she has to be yeah she she's not taking any of his nonsense do all catchers actually have hemorrhoids i don't know if they all do i hope not for their sake well that was suggested here and i was like oh man why is anyone

a catcher you're sitting there with hemorrhoids it seems bad yeah it's an interesting strategy that he invites them into like his rehab sessions and he's like do you see like i am a shell of myself physically like i have to do all this treatment just to get on the field i got hemorrhoids i got knee treatments it's it's an interesting negotiating strategy because it's like his problem is that he can't stay healthy right and he's trying to show them yeah but i'm i'm working hard and catchers are just subject to all of these injuries and everything but also he's just like confirming what they think which is that they can't really count on him to be healthy and also back Sung-soo like stares at his hemorrhoids for

an uncomfortably long time yeah it's it's you know I think any amount of time staring at another person's hemorrhoids is probably an uncomfortably long time but yeah and then we get another display of emotion from Baek Sung-soo who comes up to the mole who who he knows has been leaking, and dramatically knocks his coffee over. So this is some leaking going on for the leaker here, and his keyboard is potentially ruined, but he's basically saying, I know what you're doing. Don't do it again. Yeah.

And so he shows some anger, and it's clear also that he is angry about being forced to impose this pay cut. And he is not happy about that either. And so he comes up with a counter strategy. This is in episode eight now, where to get revenge on the director who is cutting payroll, he then calls up a reporter. And I guess reporters are just willing to print pretty much whatever you ask them to print here in this world. But he says, hey, you want to feel good story? My story is that I'm giving up my salary because clearly the dreams are in trouble and they're all kind of financial issues here. And really, he just wants to make J-Song look bad. And they suffer a 9 percent decrease in their stock price and the director comes in he's like hey well you gave me that 30 pay cut real shame that you had to do that and get your nine

percent reduction so he is not trying to hide his motivations here either he is like hey you you mess with the bull you get the horns here yeah and it it ends up in the immediate term sort of working out for him where they reverse the cuts, at least to some extent. And some of the younger players who had been lowballed end up getting to go through another round of contract signings where they are making more than they were. And they're all very happy about it. And it was kind of nice that like Lisa Young got to deliver good news after an episode or two episodes where she was mostly disappointing players who were hoping to, you know, if not take any cuts, at least not take cuts as drastic as the ones that they were in for. So that was kind of a nice moment where she got to let everyone know like, no, you get to, you know, you get to pay for new equipment and make more. And they were all so happy so it was good that part was nice i don't know if that's a true to life thing either that these players have

to play pay for their own equipment yeah i was wondering that like in the states like even minor league players will usually get little endorsement deals where companies will just provide equipment for them and obviously at the major league level you're getting most of that equipment all of that equipment provided for you so i don't know if that is true in kbo or not these are the questions that it'd be nice to ask a kbo expert about and maybe we will but yeah yeah so she's able to just uh offer a pittance a slight raise over the league minimum for some of these players so that's nice i suppose and all the contract stuff is settled now and the j song chairman the big boss here he comes out and says i've made it this far because i don't view people as persons yeah just again like being very open

about this is like saying the quiet part out loud this is like your inner monologue i guess he is just in a position where he doesn't have to dress it up like you can say whatever he wants to because he's the big shot businessman so that's the attitude that the director of the dreams is emulating or being pressured to adopt here and in the end jeongjin woo decides he's not done yet he wants to play again he likes helping the younger players figure out how to throw ifas pitches so that's nice and uh you know it's tough to root for the dreams at various points here yeah when it's like in cost cutting mode but you also understand the pressure that they are under and you can't really root for the corrupt agent either and you

can't really root for the chairman agent either and you can't really root for the chairman of the dreams either so there's a lot of that to go around like even the director the sinister listening to master of puppets in the car as he is concocting his scheme to leak the story about nepotism with Baek Young-soo the younger younger brother of Baek Sung-soo. So at the end of episode eight, as we leave it, there is the uproar about Gil Chang-ju and his comments and his out-of-context comments in the interview. And then he has also leaked the story that the GM hired his brother to be an analyst, even though the GM initially did not want anything to do with his brother as an analyst. And so he is under fire now. It's clear that the director really

just wants him gone because he is rude and he is challenging his authority and endangering his scheme to disband the team. But this is the public story. So as we leave it, Baek Sung-soo's job is already in danger here. He's barely been on the job for, I don't know, weeks or months at this point, but he's on thin ice. Well, and it's interesting because like on the one hand, you can see how a nepotism storyline is like easy to sell because it's his younger brother. And he's like, you participated in the interview, but he didn't know that his brother was coming in. know that his brother was coming in and he really was the best candidate that they had and you know managed to escape the rest of his front office thinking that he was like being kind of a dick to a guy in a wheelchair because when he was doing that in front of lisa young like she didn't yet know that it was his younger brother right this was an expression of like deep emotional

pain right ask that in an interview. Yeah, definitely cannot. It's like, I think that what you should do is make your office accessible to everyone. Yes, build some ramps in here. Yeah, rather than holding his wheelchair against him, what if you retrofit your office so that it can actually be accessible to your employees? That seems like a much more prudent course of action. be accessible to your employees. That seems like a much more prudent course of action.

But yeah, you can see how this is going to potentially play. And it does seem as if other members of the organization who were previously ignorant to the relationship between these two guys are upset that his younger brother was hired and assume that the reason there is that he was his brother rather than him being the best candidate, which is too bad because, you know, don't they read Hooray Baseball? Hooray for baseball. Yeah. Like, come on, this guy's a celebrity. The Tom Tango, the Jeff Sullivan of Korea. Why do you want to hire that guy? He's great. Forgot to mention another little bit of manipulation, which is that Baek Sung-soo is using the other teams, using the Pelicans and the Vikings to undercut the players leverage in these negotiations because he is spreading rumors that he is going to be trading for their replacements at those positions. And he never seriously intends to, I guess.

placements at those positions and he never seriously intends to i guess and so he has angered his rival gms here who feel like they have been used because they have been used but that's like the other contingency plan here just to undercut the agent's efforts so he's got many schemes running at the same time here and uh there's just there's so much going on here. There's also like the deciding which players to reserve on the 40 man and like the rule five draft kind of equivalent is coming up. So I don't really believe in the dreams ability to handle any of these things very well. But hopefully now that they have a real sabermetrician, they got Robinson in the house, they can probably come up with some good finds in the Rule 5 draft. Yes. And the team leader seems to be begrudgingly sort of acknowledging the expertise that he is bringing to the team. He has asked if he has sort of sufficient resources to do what he needs to. And he says that he does with his existing staff. It seems as if his sort of chaps are being recognized even as they are being called into question in a sort of more public way with the accusation that he's just an epitome hire. And yeah, Baek Sung-soo uses the wormy scout team members leaking to his advantage, right? Yes.

When he sort of passes on to the team that the positions they are targeting are all of the positions of these players. And he whips his phone out in the meeting. Right. Not even subtle about it. Yeah. To pass that on. So, you know, he is aware of the scheming and sort of uses it to his benefit here. But, you know, we can root for winning days and a bigger budget. These guys are paid what they're worth.

Yeah. And a little shout out just to Lisa Young's mom, who's the best. Yeah. Like, she's removed from the dreams. Like, there's not necessarily a reason for her to be in the show, but I'm glad she's in the show. Yeah. Because everything she says is funny. And for anyone who works in the baseball industry, like, a parent criticizing your salary is probably pretty relatable.

So I like the attitude there. Yeah. I think she also serves as sort of a good neutral arbiter for Lisa Young to sort of bounce the moves of the team across. Like, how does this read to you? Because they're sitting on the couch and watching this interview. And I think this is where Lisa Young starts to realize like, oh, we're in real trouble here based on how this is playing. Right.

Yeah. Okay. So we'll pick it up again with episodes 9 through 12, maybe late next week. We'll see how things go. And I do want to talk about like the hints of romance or the lack of romance but we can get into that next time it certainly has not been a big part of the first eight episodes here but uh that's all for today i suppose we did have a patreon supporter michael noted in light of our recent hall of fame discussion that lim dong yu would be an interesting case when lim dong yu is on the hall of fame ballot

it's kind of like what you were saying, like the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence when it comes to bad behavior. Like no one knows seemingly that Lim Dong-gyu is like hiring thugs to beat people up. Right. Like throwing his gold glove awards through windshields. Like people seem to think he's a nice guy. I guess at least one reporter knows that he's paying reporters off, but he is unlikely to divulge that fact because he is the recipient of it. So everyone thinks Lim Dong-gyu, great guy. Maybe not very clutch, but seems to be a nice guy in the community and everything.

And then we find out that he is hiring people to kneecap you, essentially. So you just never know. I would probably cast a vote for lim dong gyu and then it would come to light later that actually he's a very bad dude and i feel bad about that yeah all right so we will end there we have worked hard as everyone says in dreams that's one of the the two korean expressions that my wife and i have kind of integrated into our dialogue is uh we've worked hard or you've worked hard, which is basically like good job.

And then fighting, which is something that the character is fighting, which is like good luck or let's go, you know, something along those lines. So I've incorporated those expressions into our domestic conversations at times. So hope you're all enjoying dreams as much as we are. And we will be back next week. Yeah, and have a good Thanksgiving, everyone. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening.

And thanks to those of you who have supported us on Patreon, where you can help us keep the podcast going and help keep the podcast ad free and get yourself access to some perks by pledging some small monthly or perhaps not as small annual amount. You can also get access to our Discord group for Patreon supporters, where there is a dedicated Stove League discussion channel. And you can get access to our off-topic AMA bonus episodes for Patreon supporters, the first of which we plan to publish next week, before the end of the month but just under the wire. The following five listeners have already signed up.

Mohamed Khan, Meherab Amaria, Elizabeth Baldwin, John Maslon, and Jeffrey Hochstein. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit where you can discuss the show.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. And whether you enjoy Thanksgiving or dread Thanksgiving or don't even celebrate Thanksgiving, we hope you have a wonderful rest of the week and weekend. Enjoy the lull before the potential lockout, and we will be back to talk to you early or mid next week. I love Night all those who wonder how those who wonder

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