Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2006: Not My Cup of D

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Akil Baddoo taking a baseball to the beans, broadcasters describing groin shots, and players deciding whether to wear cups. Then they compare a resurgent Joey Gallo and a slumping Andrew Benintendi (20:25), recall reliever Zack Littell’s affinity for cruise ships (33:22), forecast MLB’s international future (37:22), consider the […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2006 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I realized that because we didn't get a chance to podcast early this week, we neglected to discuss something very serious and important, which is Akil Badu getting hit in the beans by a baseball thrown to second base. Just graphically, just an impact on a cupless groin, a cup-free groin, as we soon discovered based on his reaction.

If anyone didn't see this, Akilpatoo of the Tigers attempted to steal second base and the throw came in and the throw just nailed him directly in the beans. I feel like I need to credit Grant Brisby for that phrasing, I think. I don't know if he coined

in the beans when it comes to baseball plunkings in the penile area, but he's definitely popularized the usage. Okay. So, like, look, I don't want to be too specific. Kielbadu does not owe me or you or anyone an explanation of exactly where. But, like, you know, does Grant mean in the beans to encompass the whole package?

Because you don't know what is, you know, like it might, maybe it's. Yeah, you don't know which way it's hanging. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's a nice euphemism for what I was like, oh, it just took a funky hop, a weird carom, bad jump. And then you see it up close and you're like, oh, no, he got hit in the beans, you know? Right.

Just right in them. Yeah. I guess we could say junk, but junkballer has a different meaning in baseball. So really, I think the thing that I find most entertaining about cases when this happens, and there's always a strange sort of tension between pity and kind of pointing and laughing. It's always like, oh, all the guys know what he feels like. You know, there's always some kind of comment like that. And if you have experienced something similar, then you do feel almost a sympathetic pain. And yet there is still, I mean, I guess it's just that comedy comes from tragedy oftentimes, right?

So this is why we like pratfalls. This is why that makes us laugh, right? makes us laugh, right? And this, it's a particularly painful and specific sort of mishap that really you feel for the guy. And yet when I search baseball players getting hit in groin on YouTube, as I just did, the Badoo video, despite its recency, is only the ninth result below such classics as Baseball Nutshots, parentheses, Hit in the Groin, MLB compilation. 5.4 million views. This is viral content. Now, sometimes it can cross over into territory when you get some sort of testicular torsion

situation. When it becomes like a Mitch Hanegger level incident, then I think it ceases to be funny. Yeah, anytime the word rupture might be involved, no longer amusing. Right, which is always a risk that you can't really assess in the moment. That's something you find out about or hopefully don't find out about later. That's a possibility in any case like this. But generally, you walk it off or you just sit there for a while, as he did, until the pain passes. But one of the things that is, I think, amusing about these incidents is how long it often takes the broadcasters to notice what happened. Because you can see the replay and you can see it in slow motion.

They're watching it in real time. Usually they're probably not looking at the monitor in the moment. And then they're busy calling the play. And so if you watch the replays of the Akil Badu, can we call it a beating? I guess a beating is also something different. Yeah, I don't imagine that Mike Zanino was intending for Akil Badu to maybe contemplate his future ability to have children later. He doesn't seem like a mean guy. If he did, it was impressive accuracy. But no, I'm sure he didn't.

But really, it's a shame that beaning and junk ball is just already in use. That's where we got to go with this. But really, if you watch it, I saw multiple broadcast commentary on this on various clips on YouTube and Twitter. And it just it doesn't dawn on the broadcasters. They're like, he's slow to get up. Oh, it must be an ankle, a knee, a leg. And gradually, like, they see several replays. And then you finally, and they're like, oh, it hit him. And rarely do they acknowledge exactly what happened.

You know, the baseball broadcaster almost never is just going to say, oh, he got hit in the beans. You know, Grant probably would if he were on the air. But the baseball broadcasters, they will be super vague and circumspect and they'll just be like, oh, you never like to see that or that never feels good or he got hit without specifying exactly. Oh, he's really slow to get up. Yeah, those are tough, you know, but they never specify exactly what happens, which I guess they don't necessarily need to because almost all the

people who are watching along at home can intuit it for themselves. But there's always a delay between the actual injury and them realizing where it hit and why the reaction is that way. And then there's also the period of trying to assess how much it hurt and whether there was a cup present, right? There's kind of a cup check that goes on in each of our minds as we watch these replays, in my mind at least, because there's the initial reaction. Even if you're wearing a cup, there's going to be some discomfort in that situation, especially if you got hit by a pitch in that region, right? but you can kind of tell the difference between oh i can walk this off in a minute because there was a cup and there was not

a cup and so this is gonna it's gonna be a while before i can move again and i think it was pretty clear from the replays that there was no cup present in the Akil Badu situation. And Tigers media did their jobs, took their responsibilities seriously, and did question Akil Badu on the whereabouts of his cup. And there wasn't one. And on May 8th, there was a tweet from Jason Beck, who covers the Tigers for MLB.com. Akil Badu on his cut stealing. It hit me in an uncomfortable spot. Just needed to catch my breath a little bit. So polite.

Yeah. So again, very, very, so Victorian, you know? Like we can't specify exactly what happened here. I'd never experienced something like that before, but it makes me think twice about wearing a cup now. That was May 8th. Now, on May 9th, the next day, Chris McCoskey, who covers the Tigers for the Detroit News,

yes, Akil Badu plans on wearing a cup in games from now on. Hashtag journalism. So I guess he thought twice. He thought about it overnight and decided, yeah, I'm going to wear a cup from now on. It just took one time to decide that. It's funny because upon closer inspection, you look at it and think, clearly not wearing a cup based on the reaction. But the force of the carom made me initially assume that he was wearing one and that it had hit him square in the cup.

was wearing one and that it had hit him square in the cup. And I would imagine, Ben, I don't know, but my imagination tells me that that would also be deeply unpleasant, right? Like you're being protected from the worst of the impact, right? Like I get that part, but I would imagine that the ricochet back would still be a big ouch, you know, a big yikes if you're possessed of beans, you know, if you're a person possessed of beans. So, yeah, you all are so vulnerable down there. Yeah. You know, you're just. Just all hanging out there. You're really quite yeah vulnerable it's you know it's not um it's not like it doesn't hurt to get like i imagine a baseball to the i'm not gonna

offer a word i'm not offering one i refuse okay okay i'm I'm refusing. But that would also hurt because it's a baseball to soft parts. What does the Grant Brisby of softball say, I wonder, when that occurs? There must be a term, a euphemism for that as well. Probably. But either way, it's going to leave a mark, yes. well. But either way, it's going to leave a mark, yes, but it will leave a greater psychic imprint, I think, in the cupless situation. Yeah, totally. Totally. Cups can be uncomfortable. I know from personal experience, my brief baseball career, I wore a cup and I didn't like it, but I preferred it to the alternative, I think. And there are people who are shocked to

learn that any major league baseball player would ever be caught cupless. And quite a few of them go about their business routinely, just cup free. I think it correlates to position, obviously. So a lot of outfielders do not wear cups, a Kipa do an outfielder. So it's not even unusual, really, that he wasn't wearing one. But even outfielders who are less likely to get nailed by a line drive

or take a short hopper in that area, right? They still have to hit and there's still that risk. It's rare that you can't get out of the way enough. There are some famous, again, I want to call them bloopers, but it's almost like, you know, you swing and you corkscrew and you get hit in the beans and you kind of feel embarrassed about that. And your first impulse is often perhaps to protect that area

and to take the ball. If you have to get hit by it, then you want to get hit on the opposite side of your body where there's quite a bit more padding, right? But there are cases where you can't necessarily get out of the way. So you would think that just in case, just in an abundance of caution, as everyone has said about everything since COVID started, that it would be worth wearing it. And obviously, Kielbadoo has reached that same conclusion. So sometimes it just takes you learning a very painful lesson to do that. But gosh, if I were a ballplayer, I feel like just watching those, again, can't call them highlights, lowlights, I don't know what to call them, but those mishaps, those misadventures, just seeing them and feeling the sort of sympathetic second degree pain would probably make me wear one, even if for the most part, I never actually needed it. I feel like I'm a cautious person. I think that I would rather experience small amounts of discomfort jostling the cup around than potential big discomfort of

rupture. You know, that's just not a word you should be familiar with. Like you shouldn't, you know, someone shouldn't say the word rupture and then you do the shiver of the well-informed, of the lived experience. You don't want the rupture lived experience, I think. No. I think you want to avoid that. I'm glad Akil did because, man, bad enough to get thrown out, but in such a, oof, man. Right. That's the thing.

Insult to injury, right? I mean, out to injury. If you were going to get hit there, at least you'd think that it would be deflected away so that you'd be safe, right? Right, yeah. And so I guess it's not the worst part of this. It's just an additional bad part of this is that the carom off of his private parts went directly into the glove of untrace menace somehow private parts is worse i don't know i can't articulate why but i i'm here to confidently state that that is worse yeah i mean like this they become very public parts we are discussing them they aren't public parts they are still shielded from us ben what is wrong with you a thin layer from our eyes but not from our conversation. But most clothes are but thin layers, Ben.

That is true. But we are contemplating the parts currently. Wait, I want to be very clear that I am contemplating with no specificity his parts. I just want that. I acknowledge their existence, but really only because of reporting that has forced me to. Of course, yes. But it was a very unfortunate impact in many ways. I mean, it was a good throw. It's roughly where you want the throw to be.

If it's going to be offline at all, you want it to be to that side of the bag and just so that the glove of the fielder who's covering is just kind of drawn into the body of the sliding runner. And you don't even really have to apply a tag because your gloves already there, but not there specifically. Exactly there. Precisely. But around there. Around there. Yeah. I wonder if anyone apologized to Bidu. Does Zanino or Jimenez say sorry about that?

Oh, I bet. I bet. Yeah. I bet that – I hope so. I would. It's just a courtesy, right? Yeah. When a pitcher hits a batter, sometimes they're all stoic. And even if they clearly didn't mean to, they don't want to like show any sign of human emotion, you know, that they don't want to concede that they feel bad for the person or that they feel bad about the pitch, or perhaps they want to even preserve the possibility that it was intentional for some kind of intimidation value. I always appreciate it when the pitcher just

shows like, oh, I didn't mean to do that, you know, and just like, I feel bad about that, you know, puts their hand up or cringes or gestures. I like that, you know, just like you just hit a guy with a baseball really hard, you know, like it may not have been intentional and sure it's part of the game and everyone understands the risks, but still like common courtesy. I mean, if you bump into someone on the risks, but still like common courtesy. I mean, if you bump into someone on the street, you say, excuse me, right? If you hit someone with a fastball, then say, excuse me for that, too. Sorry, that one got away a little bit.

You know, I guess the only exception would be if the guy like really leaned into it, you know, and made no effort to get out of the way. But that's clearly not the case here with the unfortunate Akil Padu. Yeah, it's just, you know, a record scratch moment. Like, you're probably wondering how I got here. Yeah. Now what we'll have to see, I think, is whether there's any difference in his stat cast stats in the outfield now that we can clearly delineate cupless and cupped Akil Padu? Because is it merely discomfort or is there some adverse effects on your performance?

I mean, do you get the same jump? Do you get the same burst? Do you have the same sprint speed and route efficiency when you're wearing a cup as when you're not? I guess we're about to find out. We're about to get some hard data on that question. Hard data. Sorry. You're a root, not route guy? I am. Yeah. I'm learning a lot today about all kinds of people. Root, not route. Yeah, I think so.

I accept either. I have no strong feelings or preference. You're not an evangelist for root. Absolutely not, no. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, I guess we've exhausted my Akil Padu cup content, but didn't think it should go unremarked upon. And now it has gone extensively remarked upon. Yeah. I mean, I think that the likely answer, and of course that makes it boring, is that like

he's a professional athlete and he'll be fine. Probably. But I think that it is an interesting, you know, it's like, you know, you know what I've often wondered about, Ben? This is sort of tangential, but you know but how many pairs of spikes do you think baseball players go through in a season? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, we've answered emails about how many pairs of pants. How many spikes? I couldn't tell you. I don't know. But you don't have to wear in pants, really. You know, like they generally come pre-worn in.

I mean, not pre-worn necessarily, but pre-worn in. You know, they probably don't rub, but like shoes rub. So like what do they do with that? Because, you know, you don't want to get blisters because of your shoes. Yeah, you wouldn't want to break a new one. Like you'd use the same glove until it's falling apart, basically, because you don't want to have to break in a new one. Right. But shoes, they get a lot of wear and tear, obviously, depending on the player.

I think that there are some times where it is really obvious that I did not play baseball. And I think this is probably one of those times but i am genuinely curious i think about this like you sometimes hear guys talk about it in spring training they're like oh i'm breaking in new nucleates like do you break them all in in that time do you have like a reserve of broken in ones um and then like what if you need new what if you need new shoes um you know what happens then do you get blisters does it affect your day like i you know even shoes that you know are gonna be comfortable eventually because they're like ergo shoes like you know the first couple weeks you're wearing new birkenstocks you

get all kinds of rubbing and then you get the little blisters and then you have to precisely place your band-aids but you want to keep wearing them because you know that they won't get comfortable until they're broken in. And what do you do, Ben? And then you're like, do I have to buy the same ergonomic shoes that my mom wears? And then you realize one day at a family event, yeah, I have. And then you contemplate your mortality. Like, is it like that? It could be. I wear shockingly few shoes, few pairs of shoes. I wear shoes about as much as

anyone else, but different pairs. I was like, oh no, are we going to have to have a different conversation about, are you grounding? No, no, I'm not. Very rarely do my souls touch the earth, I very rarely do my soles touch the earth, but I rarely acquire new shoes. This is probably more Patreon pod content than main feed content. We can move on. I will go years without changing shoes, but I'm also not stealing bases. Right. Yeah.

It's just, you know, it's an important piece of equipment. It's not just a fashion accessory. They need to have reliable shoes. Yeah. And ones that don't rub. So anyway, it seems like being a major leaguer is really hard. We got to talk to a clubhouse attendant at some point. It seems like a lot of the questions that we've had over the years could probably best be answered by one of those. Yeah, I'm sure we have listeners who are like, aren't you guys journalists or something?

Can you just go find the answer to this question? So elsewhere in the AL Central, in non-Groin-related news, I did just want to celebrate the fact that Joey Gallo appears to be back, at least for now. I love that. I always have enjoyed Joey Gallo when things are going well. And then Joey Gallo just brought me nothing but sadness and sympathy over the past year plus. Worried about him, really. Very much so. In kind of an active for his person sort of way, not in a baseball player way. Yes.

And now he seems to have gotten his swagger back, gotten his swing back, gotten his mojo back. He is hitting thus far, at least, more or less like Pete Gallo again. hitting thus far, at least, more or less like Pete Gallo again. And I always think of him now in contrast to, or at least in comparison to, Andrew Benintendi. Those two players now are linked forever in my mind since last year because coming into last season, I don't know that anyone would have said I would rather have Andrew Benintendi than Joey Gallo,

or if they were free agents, I would give a bigger contract to Andrew Benintendi than Joey Gallo. I don't think that would have been a common opinion, even though there was that late season swoon for Gallo in 2021 after he got to the Yankees. That was still a small enough sample, and he was so good with the Rangers that you figured he'd bounce back. And his production dwarfed that of Benintendi. From 2020 to 2021, Gallo, even with the late season slump in 2021, was worth 5.2 fangraphs were, and Benintendi was 1.4.

Benintendi seemed to have sort of stagnated as a player, failed to fulfill his potential. And then their trajectories just went in completely different directions last year, right? To the point that they were exchanged for each other, essentially, that Gallo's struggles continued and intensified with the Yankees. And it became clear that there was a psychological aspect to it as well that I don't know whether it was a cause or a result, but it was clearly hampering his performance and his well-being as a Yankee. And so he was replaced by Benintendi. He went to the Dodgers and he did only slightly better than he had done with the Yankees. Meanwhile, Benintendi came in to fill that hole that was not expected to be a hole.

And he had had that sort of high BABIP, high batting average first half with the Royals, where he was batting 320 without a lot of power. And then he went to the Yankees and he got hurt, but he was still semi-productive for them. And then we get to this offseason. Joey Gallo basically gets a flyer contract. He gets a one year deal with the twins for $11 million and the White Sox break the bank, at least by their standards, with a five year $75 million contract for Andrew Benintendi. And that contract, I think, probably surprised some people, right? It's just that he got that much.

But even so, I don't know how many people would have said, I'd rather have Gallo than Benintendi now. I think probably the disparity in pay might have been a little smaller for some other teams, perhaps. But still, like, clearly, Benintendi had taken the lead. And yet the gap in projections was pretty minuscule just because Gallo had a track record of performing at a higher level. And so coming into the season, neither had a really robust projection. But according to the Fangraph Steps charts, I think Benintendi was at 2.7 and Gallo was at 2.2. So very little daylight between them, despite a lot of daylight between the contracts that they got this offseason.

Well, and also between them as people because one of them is so much taller. Now, it seems like six or so weeks into the season that it's flipped again. Right. And Gallo's back to mashing. And Benintendi has a 75 WRC plus and has yet to hit a home run this season. Yeah. And so now how many people would still want Benintendi over Gallo, let alone pay Benintendi way more? So these two players are now just sort of associated in my mind, I guess, because it was like the projections and the longer track record said Gallo's better. You'd rather have Gallo. I think I mentioned when the Yankees made the decision that we want to swap Gallo essentially for Benintendi, that the projections even then said

that Gallo's the better player, right?, the projections didn't take into account the quotes, the words that were coming out of Gallo's mouth. Right. Which were just almost I mean, just you were taken aback to read how miserable he seemed to be in the Bronx. Yeah. So I didn't doubt that it was a wise decision for for both parties to move on from each other there. But still, kind of clean the slate, reset, new town, new threads, et cetera. Would that still linger or not? And now it seems like the longer track record again is being borne out by the fact that Gallo's back to his old slugging ways thus far,

whereas Benintendi's having an even more extreme power outage. Yeah, I have yet to sort out a way for us to include psychological anguish in the projections, which is probably for the best, because trying to quantify that seems like a bit of pretty nasty accounting. But it was such a precipitous fall for him that, and the him here, I mean, being gallo. And again, like, of course, any fall would be precipitous because he's so tall. But, you know, when you're trying to make sort of mental adjustments to that, I find big dramatic falls like that to be tricky because mentally I either want to attribute it almost entirely to like bad variants that will just course correct or you're like, or he's broken fundamentally.

Like on some level, I think there are players where I'm always worried, like, will you ever get a hit again? Like ever again? Or you just have something, you know, do you have like hit or yips basically and with gallo that felt a little unfair because he is still in a way that is like really amazing for a guy his size like he's a good base runner he's defensively impressive right like there are other tools that can bolster the profile and sort of provide some baseline of performance are impacted in a way that would be totally understandable, right? If you're in the midst of dealing with something that is pretty profound, it seems odd that it would only be isolated to your performance at the plate, right?

Or at least that it would be isolated over the long term. I've always been kind of a, I've always been just okay on Benintendi. And so when he like hasn't been doing well, I'm like, man, it seems like it's just, um, the, the, the, the profile is, is pretty limited. Um, right. Like he, he doesn't hit for that much power. The defense seems like it's declining and so then it's like okay if he can't get on base like when i'm seeing him right yeah i've always been

fascinated by gal because he's just so extreme i wrote something about him and talked to him almost a decade ago at grantland and i called him the most interesting man in the minors and he was because it was like will this profile work just the extreme swing and I called him the most interesting man in the minors. And he was because it was like, will this profile work? Just the extreme swing and miss and also the extreme power. And it did work at least for a while. And then it catastrophically stopped working. And now it's working again. And I know Ben Clemens wrote about him for Fangraphs this week and he broke down what he's doing differently. He's swinging more often early in the count and taking advantage of some fastballs. And Robert Orr also wrote about him and noted that he's laying off changeups. So I don't know whether that will continue once pitchers realize, oh, he's back and maybe we

shouldn't throw these fat pitches to him anymore because he's still Joey Gallo and he will hit them a mile. But I hope it keeps working because even though he's almost like an avatar of three true outcomes and a lot of people will lament and bemoan the Gallo-fication of baseball as a whole, the fact that he is just such an outlier even compared to a league that maybe has looked increasingly like him offensively. Yeah. It's still extremes are always going to be interesting, even if it's an extreme that you wouldn't really want other players to look and play like that. Right.

But the fact that there's one guy who does that makes him really interesting, especially if it works and he could actually make it work so well that he could be a star player, at least for a time. So I hope that it keeps working. I mean, he still strikes out a ton, but a ton for anyone else is still like less than he's ever struck out before. It's just how extreme he is. He's struck out in a third of his plate appearances exactly, which would be a career low for him. So that's just that's Gallo for you. So I hope you can keep making it work. He's been playing mostly first base, but he had kind of a juggling acrobatic trick catch the other day in the outfield that started a

double play that was fun to watch, too. So he could still make some plays out there. I just I enjoy him. But I always wonder with extreme fluctuations like that, we don't always get the insight from the player performance just because of the nature of the sport. I think that's probably a big reason why baseball players are reputed to be so superstitious is that they play one of the most random sports. whatever it is, just in some attempt to exert order over just this inherently kind of anarchic, chaotic pursuit where balls are going to bounce in the beans sometimes, and sometimes they're going to go your way. And you just can't do that much to control that. But I think a lot of slumps, if we actually knew the true causes, like sometimes it really is just randomness. And sometimes it's you're hitting balls hard and they're not falling. And sometimes there is something going on there that we're not privy to.

It could be an injury. It could be just mechanical issues. And that's, I guess, part of the randomness sort of, but it's a different kind of randomness. It's not like batted ball luck. It's just like you might be nursing some injury or you might be out of whack and those things might be indistinguishable to us statistically, but probably not to the player, right? But you figure that they'll fix those things generally if they're talented and if they have a long enough track record of making it work that even if the approach at the plate is off and the swing is off

it's like well it worked before so maybe they can get it back and that i guess is what the twins were counting on or hoping for and gallo has rewarded them for that thus far yeah i think he you're right that he's a good he's a good reminder to not assume that we know everything that's going on with someone because we're not always it in terms that are easily comprehensible. I think people struggle to know themselves their whole lives. And so to be able to say, oh yeah, here's what's going on with me. And to, you know, have the gumption to be in New York and be like, it sucks. Because, you know, a lot of brave people wouldn't wouldn't even dare ben they wouldn't even dare because um you know folks don't take kindly to that sentiment in the in the five per house yep all right so there are a few articles that we wanted to talk about here i will not make

you guess what the FIP of newest Rays reliever Zach Littell will be because the Rays have claimed another reliever, Zach Littell. We won't play the Jake Diekman FIP game, I think, with Zach Littell. Although I will say that Zach Littell forever in my mind, I will remember him as an obsessive cruiser, by which I mean – I should probably clarify what I mean. Man, terminology can get you in trouble sometimes. Yeah, you know. What I mean by that is that he takes cruise ships all the time. That's what everyone understands that phrase to mean.

He's a cruise ship guy? Huge cruise ship. I think it was Sam that I talked to about this. This was on episode 1508. We were both shocked to learn there was this article published February 2020 by Phil Miller in the Star Tribune about Zach Littell's just like obsession with cruise ships and his whole family. My family is a little cruise happy, you might say, he said.

And like that was the least of it. He said that he had spent more than 80 nights aboard cruise ships in the past year. More than 80 nights. That's a significant percent, especially because he's a baseball player, which means he cannot be on cruise ships for most of the year. Right. I think we did the math on that episode about like the percentage of nights that are not during the baseball season that Zach Littell must have been on a cruise ship. And it was like a huge percentage of the time. Like he had, you know, diamond level status. He had like frequent cruiser status. They

probably don't call it that. Maybe they do in a cheeky kind of way. But it's a family affair. They celebrate holidays on cruise ships. He was at sea for three months on cruise ships in that past year. And what I have wondered more than almost anything else about baseball in the past couple of years is, is Zach Littell still a cruise ship guy post-pandemic, post-COVID, right? And was he cruising during the pandemic? Did he take a break?

Did his family swear off the cruising, at least until the COVID died down, at least until we had vaccines, like until they weren't petri dishes of disease, at least, you know, as much as they were at the height of the pandemic. So I have continued to wonder about that. And I hope that some media member will ask Zach Littell about that. I just, I need to know whether he still has the same affinity for cruises or whether COVID cured him of that. But I don't know. That's just, when I think Zach Littell, I think cruise ships. What an unfortunate association. I've never been moved to take a cruise. I've never been a cruise person. I don't like that. No, thank you. I'm not into that.

I did it one time when I was a kid, and I got to say I enjoyed it. I would do it again, despite all the great reasons not to. We don't have to go into whether being on cruise ships or not is a good idea. I don't want to upset anyone if Zach Littell is listening. But there are a lot of places you can relax, I suppose, and see the world without being in the same place in close quarters with many people who can make you ill, etc. But there's something kind of nice about it. I went on an Alaskan cruise, not a Caribbean cruise, but I'd do it again someday if Zach will tell. Hit me up.

Maybe you and I can cruise together. Oh, Ben. Moving on. Oh, Ben. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the internationalization of baseball because there's been some news on that front. There was an announcement, it seems like confirmation, that opening day next year, the first Major League Games of the 2024 season will be in South Korea, which is a first. in South Korea, which is a first. And that's just the start, really. It's part of the CBA, which I imagine you still have not cover to cover read yet, but one of these days. But part of the CBA is that there are plans for more baseball in more countries. And we just saw the first regular season games played in Mexico, right? And that was entertaining in some ways.

And so there are going to be games in Seoul. And it's going to be the Dodgers and the Padres, it sounds like, which should be fun. And the only part of it that I don't love is that sometimes when there are these international series to start the season, they will be way before the opening day for most other teams. It was kind of cool to have like every team start at the same time this season. That was really nice. So there's always that weird like you have to decide when opening day is. Is opening day the first day that a major league game is played? Because it used to be that there would be like one game on a night and then

the rest of the teams would play the next day. But then sometimes there's a series in Japan or somewhere that's like a week before everyone else plays. And then it's like, when did the season actually start? Should we be pedantic about this or not? But there's going to be games in Seoul, which obviously hotbed of baseball, South Korea. So that's nice. And there are going to be games in London. There will be more games in London. There have already been some, of course. And there are going to be games in France,

it sounds like. There are going to be games in Paris in 2025. The first MLB games in continental Europe, which is an interesting milestone. And of course, you know, there have been games now in Mexico and Japan and Australia and London, in addition to the places that Major League games are regularly played. And I'm all for playing games in as many places as possible.

I am looking forward to this. I don't really know what kind of baseball community there is in Paris. Of course, there are baseball fans in many countries all over the world that are not known as hotbeds of baseball. And there are a lot of people who play baseball in Europe and high-level leagues in various places in Europe. I don't know that the reception in Paris would be super strong or that there are many, many, many people clamoring for Major League Baseball in Paris. I could be wrong about that. So sorry if I'm slighting the very intense and dedicated baseball community there. I'm sure that whatever community there is, is pretty intense and dedicated. We have

listeners in France listen to the show and talk to us. So I'm not saying there aren't baseball fans there. It's just maybe not the first place that you would think of. But I'm all for generally expanding where MLB is played because baseball is more popular in other countries now than it is in this one, right? And we saw that in the WBC, I think. So there may still be more baseball fans here than anywhere else just because the population is so huge. But in terms of the proportion of the population that is really just diehard intense into baseball, we have been lapped by other places. And it's fun to experience that enthusiasm, even vicariously, because so often the discussion about baseball domestically is baseball is dying and it's not

the national pastime anymore. And it's just so tiresome. There's some truth to it, obviously. I went back to speak at my grammar school recently and talked to some seventh graders and their dads. And during the Q&A portion, one of the dads asked a very long-winded question about, do people still care about baseball? And are kids still interested in baseball? It's like, thanks, buddy. I'm up here talking about baseball. You're going to ask me that question right now. It's more a comment than a question.

You suck, and so it's the thing you like. Right. There wasn't really a question as far as I recall. Ben, there's so rarely actually a question. So I conceded that, yeah, obviously there's been some slaking of – some slackening of enthusiasm relative to earlier eras. I also noted that people have been bemoaning that exact same thing going back to the 19th century, right? And we've talked about that. And I also, though, in my response, I mentioned the enthusiasm for baseball worldwide and I talked about the WBC and I talked about the percentage of people in Japan who were watching Team Japan play in the WBC. And it's kind of nice to be able to focus on that when everyone wants to seemingly fixate on baseball. game anymore and talk about TV ratings and often sort of distort the situation in many

ways. But to be able to point to, OK, yeah, in some ways, baseball's popularity has slipped in the U.S., but hey, look over there. They love baseball. They're so into baseball. Baseball is growing and spreading. And I think there's a vitality to that that is really refreshing. It's a change from the normal doom and gloom conversation.

Yeah, I think that the way that I would characterize sort of the discourse around baseball in the last while has generally been in there. rosy portrait, but it feels like it has had energy, like excited energy behind it in a way that isn't, you know, like purely the manufacturing of marketing or anything like that. Like people feel light and sort of frothy about the game in a way that is really exciting. And I, you know, does it hold the same cultural primacy it once did? I mean, like, no, but okay. Who cares? Like, I don't. Nothing does other than football, but. Well, and I think that we, we have perhaps, we've maybe overstated the existence of, overstated the existence of monoculture or fail to appreciate like how early the fracture has taken place like i i don't know i just i'm increasingly skeptical of that it's like who

who's monoculture though you know what i mean yeah i'm sure there's some truth to that too so i think i think baseball's fine i think baseball's doing pretty fine. Yeah, and I've got to think that there's probably no better way to drum up interest in a sport than to have your league play games there, right? I mean, that's a real sign of, I don't know if it's commitment, but at least

interest. It's kind of like a good faith, like, hey, we're going to come over here. There are a lot of logistical hurdles and scheduling hurdles and jet lag. And we're going to put on our traveling roadshow. It's almost like barnstorming in a sense. It's just like, let's send our emissaries, our baseball ambassadors over there. And often you're going to a place where there's already significant interest in baseball.

But when you're going somewhere where there's not as much already, then, of course, there's growth potential. It's a steeper uphill climb. But it's also like, hey, it's kind of a curiosity. It's so we've never seen major league games here before. Let's go take in the spectacle. And maybe most people are confused or indifferent, but some people are probably like, hey, this is cool. Like I've never really seen this before.

I've certainly never seen it in person played at this level before. And maybe I've never really even seen it from afar because of the time difference or the difficulty of finding it. So I am all for within the constraints of not wanting to disadvantage any team by turning them into a traveling team and having them go all over the world. But if teams are willing and players

do seem to be willing, and I hope that and think that they understand that there's some benefit to this too. If you want a healthy and vital sport and you're not getting the same percentage of the population in this country, then you want to continue to enrich and deepen the player pool by sort of expanding your scope. So I hope that the reception to that is strong and think that's a great initiative. I'm not suggesting that the 31st team is going to play in Paris anytime soon or anything like that, but I feel like it can't hurt. It might make you sleepy for a few days if you go over there and come back. But beyond that, and I guess that is probably a reason to do it early so that you can be back to your old self by the time the season starts in August, although then that also means that spring training is kind of curtailed.

So there are problems. There are reasons not to do it, but I think there are great reasons to do it. Yeah, I agree with that. And, you know, does it make my schedule more complicated? I mean, yeah, but that's not a reason to not do it. My schedule is complicated no matter what. But that's not a reason to not do it. My schedule is complicated no matter what.

Well, speaking of complicated, there is another article about international baseball. This is why I said it's not all rosy, Ben. Yeah. So this came out about a week ago in the L.A. Times. It's a piece by Kevin Baxter. It's headlined Inside the Secret Baseball Academy the Dodgers are running in Uganda. And it's about the burgeoning baseball population in Uganda, which has generated some signings. Some players who've come over, the Dodgers signed two players from Uganda. There are a couple of Ugandan Division III baseball players.

And all of these players hailed from this quote-unquote secret Dodgers academy. And there have not been many players from Africa to play in the majors. There's Gifton Gopay, who was not long ago on the Pirates. And then there's the pitcher Taylor Scott. They're both from South Africa. And there is, of course, an enormous population that, in theory, if you could expand baseball to Africa, then that would be an enormous boon to the sport, just as we were talking about, just getting more people interested in baseball, getting more talented players involved in baseball, raising the caliber by one guy, this guy named Richard Stanley, who was a former chemical engineer for Procter & Gamble

and once part owner of a minor league baseball team who is working, I'm quoting now, as a volunteer on an international development project in Uganda when he was asked to help start a baseball league for children. A year later, a soccer pitch was commandeered and a tournament for school children 12 and under was held. And it kind of caught on. And I guess there are often similar origin stories in other countries where baseball did not originate, but has since gone on to be quite popular.

You know, you can read similar things about Japan, for instance, which was supposedly introduced in the 1870s by an American named Horace Wilson, who was an English professor in Tokyo and just brought baseball over and it kind of caught on. I'm sure it's a little more complicated than that and maybe would have caught on anyway. But if it's not something that started there, then often there's sort of a Johnny Appleseed of any given sport who spreads the love of it there. I think it's sort of random that it could catch on and it can govern the course of people's

lives for generations to come because someone happened to settle somewhere and decide to introduce baseball to people. I mean, I guess that's how, you know, almost everything happens in the world, whether we realize it or not. It's all kind of traced back to something that easily couldn't have happened. But I think it's also kind of heartening that even now in recent years, you could sort of light a flame, you know, you could, the spark could catch, right? Even in a place where baseball was previously largely unknown and where other sports were popular that you could bring baseball over and that people might say, oh, hey, yeah, this is kind of cool. You know, it's not something that relies on having been introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like, you could still get into baseball for the first time and convince people to play it now.

So that's kind of cool. And apparently Uganda is just like the total powerhouse and dominates its rivals to the extent that it has rivals in the region. So that's, I guess, the good news. That's sort of the positive spin. Like, hey, there's another country that's embracing baseball and more people like baseball great we want a big tent for baseball yes the less savory the more nefarious aspect of this is that there does seem to be sort of a plundering aspect to what the Dodgers are doing that they appear to have parachuted in and they're trying to

suck up the baseball resources of the region without sort of supporting the larger baseball initiative. And some of the language in the piece, some of it, some of it intentionally, some of it possibly unintentionally, I don't know. But it is kind of uncomfortable, I guess. I mean, the whole sort of situation is it's like this secret academy, like there's a guard out front, you know, like the Dodgers won't talk about it, seemingly won't acknowledge it publicly. Probably they think that this is a competitive advantage for them, right? They have established a foothold in this region. They want to maintain their privileged access to the talent there. But the way that it's talked about here, and they themselves are criticized by some people

there who are coming down on the way that they have gone about it. So I wanted to summarize the situation for people who haven't read it, but what was your reaction? I just think that I'm sensitive to the fact that no private entity is going to be able to alter the sociopolitical landscape of a country on its own. And it's certainly not going to be able to undo the impact that colonialism and extraction have had on a place. So expecting that of any private entity is, I think think unrealistic. And we can expect that they will not further that legacy, right? Like, I think that that is a reasonable expectation. And I can, I can appreciate how within the context of sports, you know, if you have what you view to be a competitive advantage,

it generally behooves you to keep that private, right? Whether it's, you know, hiding a guy who you see, you know, on a backfield somewhere, or, you know, who is playing at a Division II college and who you think you can get as a steal in the draft, or you've discovered a new method of injury prevention, or you have some cool new model that is going to change the way that you think about pitch design, right? You want to keep that to yourself because as soon as it travels, you lose some of the advantage. But that reality is always butting up against the other reality, which is that often the advantage you're talking about are people. And in this case, very young people, right? And we know we don't have to rehash all of the abuses

and terrible incentives that exist in the international amateur space. But I think that what we should expect of the league and its teams is that as we look to new places where baseball is less well-established or might be entirely new in the sporting landscape, that we will, at a bare minimum, not replicate those same abuses and bad incentives. And obviously, I haven't been to this academy, and I don't think that it's on the Dodgers to provide opportunity for every kid in Uganda, but it is on them to not exploit those kids. Uganda, but like it is on them to not exploit those kids. And I think that whenever you're entering a market as the only avenue that those young amateurs are going to potentially have to a career in baseball, you're inherently in an advantageous position power-wise, even more than

like teams would be in the DR, where if you're the best young amateur in the Dominican Republic, there are going to be multiple teams that are trying to secure your services as a professional. And I don't mean that as if they might not be super unsavory in the way that they do that, and that there aren't going to be potentially hundreds of kids who don't end up signing a contract with a big bonus whose lives are permanently disrupted by their attempt to play professional baseball. Those things all still happen, but you do at least have some amount of competition for contracts and you have an infrastructure and you have, for better or worse, agents and trainers who have some lived and professional experience with dealing with those teams. And so for a club to parachute in and try

to have this private, separate, secret little thing, that just feels like it's automatically going to lend itself to potential abuse. And then to talk about it in the same way you would talk about natural resource extraction. I think you're right that some of that is intentional in this piece and some of it feels like it's not in a way that like I might've had feedback on as an editor. You know, it's very tempting to look at sports as a ladder, right? Out um bad situations and dire circumstance and i don't want to speak pretend that i have you know firsthand knowledge or or particular expertise on the conditions on the ground in uganda so like i don't want to speak out of turn there but like we we tend to

to valorize sports as this ladder right it's an opportunity to pull yourself up out of circumstance. And that can be true, but it doesn't have to be. And I think that you want to be really, really, really careful when you're going into a place that doesn't, particularly that doesn't have a lot of context for professional baseball, that you are not exploiting vulnerable people. And without oversight, I don't know why we would expect it to be different in a place with less competition and, you know, less big league infrastructure than it would be in places where there's a ton of baseball talent and we still see abuse. So this, it's not that there can't be a version of, hey, we're trying to spread baseball. We think that there might be people here who are talented and who could help our organization, but we're going to make sure that we have age limits,

that there will be education involved we're going to try to be a partner to local governments on infrastructure so that like you know we're not doing this in a way that is inherently exploitative it's not that there might not be a version of that that can work but i just you know whenever you have secret involved it feels like where like, where's the guarantee that that's what we're getting? And so, I think we have to adopt a posture of skepticism from the jump. And this, I think, just goes to show how much urgency there is for the Players Association, the league for teams to figure out a way to be less predatory in this space right because it's you know it's it's kids like it's kids so we kind of need a hop to on this yeah there's a passage in the piece that says it's unlikely the team

will be able to keep the academy secret for long though because as the first big league franchise to plant its flag on soil that is rapidly becoming rich in baseball talent the dodgers are uniquely positioned to being begin harvesting those riches so we're talking about planting flags and harvesting people so that's not great the reason why i i suggested that there's some degree of intention to that is that the piece does acknowledge that interpretation of what the Dodgers are doing still may have not been the best phrasing. Right. I mean, it raises the concerns that we're expressing here and gives voice to people. I would not be aware of all the issues involved if not for this piece bringing attention to those. So it says there's another passage. Many Ugandans say the Dodgers, unlike Stanley, the guy who introduced baseball there, have acted like the colonizers of centuries past, mining the country for its natural resources, in this case, athletes, but refusing to give back. Then there's a quote by a guy named Derek Bice, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, a former Dodger scout who says, what the Dodgers are doing is picking the best, the cream of the crop. And if you're not the best, they're going to drop you. Now, obviously, that's sort of how scouting works everywhere, you know, to some extent, right? I mean, think they could do, given the specific of this

situation. As the piece goes on to say, baseball equipment is hard to come by in Uganda since none of the things needed to play the game are manufactured locally and shipping them in can prove costly. Yet the Dodgers have shared little, leaving those on the other side of their walled compound to rely on gear smuggled in by missionary groups. yeah if it's just like we're gonna squat here and the only place that you can play baseball in this area with equipment other than using rocks and tree branches which is what the article says some some people are forced to use which is not an unfamiliar story, then it would be nice, I think, if you were like, hey, we're promoting baseball in this region, even if that's not our primary purpose, but also we're trying to recruit people to play in our organization.

It would be nice just to give back and to sort of support the community and give some sign that we appreciate that we're here to not just try to get a competitive advantage, even though that's obviously why they're there ultimately. And that's what their business is about. But they're the Dodgers, you know, like it wouldn't cost a fortune for them to hand out some baseball equipment. I mean, it's almost like when we talk about like minor league pay and nutrition and everything, it's like, it just makes sense. Like forget about the humane aspect of things, but also it seems like just generating goodwill

and further interest in the sport in the area. Like that seems like it would not be a bad idea, right? Especially because as rivals and competitors come in and say, hey, we want to have an academy here. Well, if you were the first and also you engendered some goodwill by handing out good baseball equipment or providing clinics or coaching or whatever it is that you could do at not an exorbitant expense, then that could create some loyalty toward you as opposed to the next team to come into the area. So you'd think it wouldn't be a bad idea even on that level. I think that, and I don't imagine that this is a perspective or philosophy that is unique to the Dodgers by any means. They just happen to be the club involved here. But I think that one thing we have observed of baseball in the last probably 10 years, and this probably precedes that too, but there's a level of plausible deniability that comes with being the first mover into a

space. And I think that a lot of the ethical and moral questions and issues that are present in new frontiers of the sport, whether it's scouting players in countries that don't have a rich baseball tradition or wearable tech or sign stealing or, you know, what have you, some of those issues are hard to anticipate, but a lot of them aren't. And I think that teams are aware of the fact that if they're the first ones in a space, before regulations can be written and before specific incidents can occur that will inspire either the league or the players association to say, well, hold on now, we need to put some bumpers in place to guard against abuse abuse that they're going to be able to

say, well, you know, what do you want from me? We were the first ones here. There weren't rules. So, you know, gotcha. Pro tip for next time. Won't do that again. But in the meantime, they've been able to sort of reap the benefits of being a first mover and taking advantage of, you know, either obviously wrong acts or moral gray areas. And then, you know, rules come in and stuff gets tamped down and the next team that does it doesn't get to take advantage of that stuff. But because there isn't regulation in place, they don't really get in trouble for it either, right? Because we didn't violate a rule. And I think that teams are savvy about that and they know that they can do it. And so that is the other sort of impetus for being in

the first mover is that you get to do things before we say, wait, hold on and put a rule in place. And like, I think that that perspective and sort of approach gets valorized because it can feel clever and it can feel groundbreaking, but it can also just be obviously icky. And so I think that there are, I'm sure, And so I think that there are, I'm sure, particular and idiosyncratic aspects of this that are going to be unique to Uganda. But like a lot of the stuff that we would have to anticipate about behaving and conducting oneself ethically in a market like that, particularly around very young amateurs, we know what a lot of those questions and concerns are already because there's been decades of baseball teams operating in the international space and doing it in ways that are unsavory. So it's fine for us to expect more and to ask really hard questions now so that little kids in Uganda don't get taken advantage of by literally the Los Angeles Dodgers.

What are we doing? I guess one good thing the article mentions, unlike in the Dominican Republic where every major league team has an academy, the few players the Dodgers do invite to their Ugandan facility aren't under contract, meaning they're free to train there, then sign with another team. And that did happen when the Pirates swooped in and signed a pitcher who had been an academy player for the Dodgers. So I guess that's a little less exploitative potentially, even though for now they're almost the only game in town, at least when it comes to kind of an on-the-ground permanent presence. But at least you're not bound to the Dodgers if you train there. Someone else could

sign you if they offer better terms or if they start their own academy. If they start behaving in a different way, then you wouldn't be locked in essentially to the Dodgers because they were the first ones there. Yeah. I think mostly my takeaway having read this is like, Rob Manfred has put a lot of time and attention and effort into one baseball, right? Into consolidating the U.S. baseball presence under Major League Baseball and having the league's sort of fingers in everything and everything falling under the league's purview. And I think that there's a lot about that that sucks and isn't great for labor, but this actually seems like a place where it's like, okay, Rob, you want one baseball? This seems like an opportunity for you to assert one baseball's sort of power and reach in a way that actually hopefully would work toward the benefit of the players and communities on the ground, right?

Like, why do the Dodgers get to just, like, have a baseball fiefdom in Uganda? What? What's up with that? Why did they get to do that? Rob, you're really going to stand for this in the face of one baseball? So I think that this should be a thing that the league is like, hey, hey, one moment, please. And I'm saying that as if the league's own track record with enforcing rules internationally is so sterling. It's definitely not. But what an opportunity to turn over a new leaf.

Rob. I'm using first name in a derogatory way. Hey, we'll be the only team there and we can just put our stamp on baseball in this region, in this a team to move in there and establish a presence. And then if they have success, then that gives incentive to the next team to do it. And the next thing you know, perhaps there's a thriving baseball community. But there could be other ways to do that, whether it's just that a grassroots, it's introduced by someone else. Obviously, baseball predated the Dodgers presence there. It sounds like there was a thriving baseball community already. And so, yes, I wonder whether the league could step in and just say, scouts were regularly referred to as ivory hunters, right?

Which I guess, given this development, brings kind of a different resonance. But the whole idea was it's just like we're hunting, you know, we're hunting for talent. We're just going to swoop in and we're going to find this talented player and we're going to spirit him away, right? And the better hunters will get the better players and we'll be better at baseball. So that's kind of always been part of the business, but it has always been an unsavory business in a lot of respects. So, yeah. Yeah.

Teams are always going to want to spend less on players. Players are always going to be at a disadvantage in terms of the power dynamic between the player and the team. That's true everywhere. That's true in the domestic amateur space. That's true in the minor leagues. That's true in free agency. agency. And I think that we don't want to obscure that reality all throughout the process, but I think we'd also be naive to assume that there aren't gradations within that power differential. And I can't think of a wider chasm that could exist than between a team with the reach and resources of the Dodgers operating in a country that doesn't have baseball infrastructure, or at least doesn't have, you know, a particularly mature baseball infrastructure, and where the players there don't necessarily have the support system around them of agents and trainers. And again, I don't want to say that like all of that

is always above board and that there can't be unsavory stuff that obviously happens. It happens in the international space, but like, it just seems like it would be hard to imagine a circumstance where you have a bigger power differential. And when that kind of a power differential exists, like it just lends itself to abuse. And I don't mean to say that like, there aren't people operating this facility who don't have like a genuine desire for there to be like fun competitive baseball in Uganda. I'm sure there are,

but in terms of the institutional power that's being brought to bear, it's wildly out of whack and that's a problem. And clearly teams will just keep pressing this point even when they've been previously under investigation right like yeah yeah it's not like the dodgers have a sterling track record here no although they do have a track record of doing this sort of thing of being the first mover of establishing a foothold of being pioneers in a new region.

Cause they were the first team to open a baseball Academy in Latin America that was run by a, an MLB franchise back in 1987 and in the DR. And then there was a wave of Dominican Republic players who signed with the Dodgers. I mean, guys like Pedro Martinez and, and Adrian Beltre of future hall of Famers, and Raul

Mondesi and guys like that. So they've done that before, and they're probably following the same model and hoping to reap the same rewards. But it would be nice if some aspects of the model could be a little bit different. And gosh, we could go back even further. I mean, with Branch Rickey and the color barrier and Jackie Robinson and Don Newcomb and Joe Black and Jim Gilliam and all of these players from the Negro Leagues signing with the Dodgers. And then, as has come up on the show before, obviously that had a devastating effect on the Negro Leagues eventually, too. But the Dodgers were at the forefront of integration and because they were the first to do that then they ended up with a lot of the talent though not as much of the talent as they could have because they passed on some players too but i guess it kind of is history repeating itself to some extent and and i guess maybe that's a segue into another article we

wanted to mention because there was an athletic piece this week by Stephen Nesbitt that provided an update on MLB integrating the Negro League statistics into its official record. And the update is that there isn't one really and that there hasn't been much progress made there. that there hasn't been much progress made there. And it was sort of assumed and presumed by everyone, I think MLB included, that the league would partner with seam heads as Fangraphs has, as Baseball Reference has, and that that would expedite the process of that their great Negro Leagues database

would be incorporated into MLBs. And it was always bound to be complicated and it was going to take a lot of deliberation and figuring out how exactly do we incorporate these stats and how do we display them. And with MLB, there's just the whole hurdle of the Elias Sports Bureau and what is official and what is not.

So it was always going to be complicated, but it has sort of stalled. And so Nesbitt provided just this look at where things stand. And basically, it looks like it's going to be years and years because for whatever reason, the negotiations between MLB and Seamheads broke down and they are not partnering. And neither MLB nor Seamheads commented officially for the piece so it's not exactly clear what the issue was it sounds like it was not that MLB was not willing to pay for it but there were other issues here so I'll quote what it says this is about as specific as it gets representatives from

the league office and Seamheads met on and off over the past two plus years, but after a meeting around opening day this spring, failed to result in a deal. MLB elected to pursue RetroSheet as an alternative. According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the sticking point for Seamheads was not compensation, but rather concerns about control of the data, how it would be used, and who would have a say in its implementation. about control of the data, how it would be used, and who would have a say in its implementation. There's also another note later on that MLB and Elias were requiring or would have required access to game-level statistics,

whereas what's displayed at Fangraphs and Baseball Reference now, it's like season and career-level stats. Yeah, it's aggregated. Right. So that becomes even more complicated. So it's aggregated. be a years-long process that is well underway, but far from completion, too, because they're basically applying just the retro sheet model and process that they've done with such success to other leagues, now to the Negro Leagues. And of course, the data is tougher to acquire, and I imagine that they're retracing some of the same steps that Seamheads has already taken. So it's going to be a while, years it sounds like, before those Negro League stats are officially linked with the Major League stats, at least in Major League Baseball's record books. So we talked a lot about the decision to reclassify the Negro Leagues and that whole belated effort.

And I did some writing and reporting about that that was spurred by an Effectively Wild listener. So it's unfortunate, I guess, that this has hit these roadblocks. And I don't know how much MLB is at fault with the specific points of the negotiations, as was pointed out in the piece. Maybe they could have locked these things down before they publicized it all. But then again, it was so overdue, I think, to do what they did that a further delay once the issue was raised also wouldn't have been the best. So ideally, they could have found a way to get on the same page as as fan graphs did and as baseball reference did i understand the desire to on retro sheets parts like be precise and follow their own

process but yeah it's it does seem as if if you're not in a place to then make the stats that you are acknowledging, you know, in a long overdue way as major league quality, like why, why make the announcement, right? Like people put a lot of stock in being able to see those stats and those players represented on MLB's official website, right? Like that means something to people. As much as I appreciate the place that we occupy and the baseball reference occupies in the larger sort of stat community, like I think that for a lot of kind of normie fans, like it's MLB or bust, right? Yeah, I was wondering about that because, you know, I do think that in a lot of ways, it's better that MLB did what it did, even if it has

not fully followed through on the implementation of that, because I think a lot of good has come from that. And I think that's true. in August 2020, which was basically when I reported that MLB was considering changing that classification, which was kind of because I approached them about it and was like, why haven't you or would you? And I wrote, the difference that major would make might seem semantic, but there would be tangible benefits to the new designation. At baseball reference, the Negro Leagues are grouped with minor leagues and foreign leagues. Sean Foreman says that if MLB were to reclassify the Negro Leagues, they would likely join

the SBRC. That's the committee that made those initial designations decades ago. Join the SBRC-approved leagues on the leagues page on Baseball Reference and be included in the site's Major League historical totals. In addition, pages for players who spent time in both the Negro Leagues and the integrated majors would display all their stats in the same place without cordoning off the Negro League's numbers on a separate tab. The site's subscription-based stat head service might also add the option to slice and dice

data from black baseball. Foreman says his company would attempt to acquire more comprehensive Negro Leagues records and perhaps fund further research. Like, all of that has happened, right? And that came about, I think, in large part because MLB did that. And so I kind of hesitate to say like, yeah, it would have been great if they could have gotten all the ducks in the row early or if they had just kind of done what everyone expected that they would do and just partner with seam heads and sort out whatever the differences were. But I don't think it would be better off if they hadn't done it because the fact that all those stats are on baseball reference and are

on fan graphs and that there's been a lot of attention to those players and to their accomplishments and probably, you know, there's been donations and funding for the Negro Leagues Museum and Negro Leagues players inducted into the Hall of Fame. Like all of these things, I think, have flowed to some extent from MLB finally going to follow through? Because, like, I guess in my mind, where it really mattered, it had happened already. Right, right. You know, and as you said, like, the normie baseball fan, you know, not to insult the normie baseball fan. No, yeah.

We welcome everyone. Yeah, we do. People who are not already devotees of Fangraves or Baseball baseball reference, I assume that it would carry a lot of weight for them. I mean, to me, like baseball reference, especially for historical stats, fan graphs for more modern stats and historical stats, like those are kind of the papers of record. Like they're the baseball encyclopedias these days, in my mind. You know, like I had to go look at MLB.com to even confirm that they had historical leaderboards.

They do. But I honestly, I was not sure that they did because like when was the last time I actually looked at that? I always go to baseball reference or paragraphs for those things. So I would be curious, like MLB.com obviously gets a ton of traffic.

I wonder how much traffic like MLB.com obviously gets a ton of traffic i i wonder how much traffic like mlb.com stat pages for like historical years gets compared to baseball reference let's say yeah i i gotta think baseball reference is kind of the go-to destination so like it's more than a symbolic gesture i guess like there are probably ways in which, I don't know, even now you will see on broadcasts, people will cite those stats from baseball reference or fan graphs. So in a way, it's like MLB's got to do it too. But the places where it's most visible, at least to me and to the internet,

I feel like have done it already and are actively working on all of that. So like, I don't know, to me, I guess it's not the baseball encyclopedia days. It's not like the days when Elias controlled all the data and everyone else, you know, had to start RetroSheet or its predecessors just so that we would be able to actually consult some numbers. Like, it's all out there, and at some sites has been thoughtfully integrated already. So I think that that kind of ameliorates the problem to some extent. I think that that's all very fair to say. It does make me wonder. I mean, I know that they have, clearly they have specific requirements,

but I know that they're not saying any of this is like a commentary on either b ref or fan graphs but only like they've done seam heads has done all of this incredible work which obviously mlb acknowledged in their in their announcement of the the overdue recognition so and you're right that neither the league nor Seamheads commented specifically for the piece. So the exact contours of the disagreement are, I think, a little bit cloudy here. But it's surprising. It is a surprising thing. But you're right.

I hadn't thought about, hey, where are they on MLB.com? Because I occupy one corner of the internet. But I think, you know, stories like this show that not everyone lives in that same corner. And for, you know, some of the surviving family members of these players that, you know, the corner of the internet where they want to see this really come to fruition is unfortunately a number of years away. Right. Yeah. There was some backlash, of course, to MLB just making that announcement from people just being like, well, who is MLB to decide this, right? And really it was, I mean, it was rectifying basically MLB making the mistake of not classifying the Negro Leagues as major leagues previously. I mean, that's one of many mistakes.

It didn't help that they used the word elevate. Yes, the language. Yeah, that was a problem. That was an unforced error, but a meaningful one. Yes, it was. An unforced error, but a meaningful one. Yes. But as a lot of people were pointing out, like, MLB doesn't, like, own the legacy of the Negro Leagues. Right. The Negro Leagues existed because MLB, I mean, to the extent that an entity like MLB existed at the time because white baseball said it had to be separate. Right.

And wouldn't allow those players to be there. And so, you know, MLB should't be celebrated basically for, people were worried that the distinctions would be broken down, right? That MLB would kind of get credit, I guess, for some enlightened stances pertain to the Negro Leagues without acknowledging just the greater legacy there, right? And I hope and think that that distinction has not been lost. But also, MLB, it's a big deal when MLB does something. I mean, it's the biggest and highest level and most famous baseball league there is. Sean Gibson, former guest of ours, who's quoted in the piece, says nothing is bigger than

Major League Baseball, right? And former guest of ours who's quoted in the piece says nothing is bigger than Major League Baseball, right? So when Major League Baseball makes that change in designation, it's going to generate a lot of attention, right? And there have been other separate independent efforts like Sabre had its own process to decide what it thought the years and the leagues that should be classified as major that reach the same conclusion. But there is like all of the data, like MLB is not generating the data. Like researchers have done that tirelessly. And there's this whole network and infrastructure of stat sites and fan graphs and baseball reference, which obviously have some ties to MLB, but exist separately. some ties to MLB, but exist separately. And so MLB, like saying we consider this league to have been major now, I think that was a big deal in a lot of ways. But also it's not that we need MLB to do everything subsequently or that like if MLB doesn't do it, then there can't be progress or

anything. Because in a lot of ways, like mlb has been sort of usurped or outstripped when it comes to like access to stats i mean again like i go to baseball savant for for the stats that i can only get from mlb but for everything else i i go to some other site some third party and obviously like all the researchers and the historians and everything, they're not at MLB, so they don't necessarily need to spearhead the, I guess, the entire process. I think it was important for them to make that gesture finally. But beyond that, you know, the fact that they are dragging their heels a little bit doesn't mean that a lot of good hasn't come out of it and can't continue to come of it. Well, and I think that you're, you know, you're right to point to sort of the range of reactions to their initial announcement that there isn't necessarily consensus, even within the community of researchers and family members of former players in terms of what MLB's role ought to be in acknowledging the Negro Leagues

and ameliorating some of the harm that has been done. Some people are going to be more bothered by MLB's sort of slow action here than others because a lot of people are going to say, well, they're not the keepers of this. This isn't theirs to further validate, right? So, you know, I think that you're right, that that piece is true. And I think you're right that their acknowledgement is, at the very least, I think generates further attention to these efforts and helps to, you know, raise

money for the museum and inspire further researchers to sort of devote themselves to the effort to fill in what gaps remain in the record. And there are gaps that still remain, right? Right. Yeah. And if anything, it would be nice, I guess, if MLB would devote some money to that cause. I don't know if it has. I'm not aware that it has.

And I guess RetroSheet is an independent organization, and I don't know that it would want to be funded by MLB anyway in that effort. But it is, I guess, sort of strange that this painstaking process of digging up box scores and compiling everything. like this painstaking process of digging up box scores and compiling everything. And RetroSheet has like three or four researchers working on that as well as sort of the head of RetroSheet, who's kind of consolidating it all. Like it's a very small grassroots sort of process, right? That if there were more people involved, perhaps it could go faster. So it's, I guess, sort of strange that you have this giant business that's like waiting for this kind of crowdfunding effort, you know, to complete its work in order to integrate those stats, which MLB will then use without having to license them or anything. Right, right. All right. Last thing, we didn't talk about this. Maybe we can just do sort of a quick

snap judgment version. Are you more concerned or less concerned about baseball betting gambling scandals because of the Alabama baseball story than you were before? So as people may not know, probably they know but but the head coach of of alabama was fired because we don't have all the details yet but we know that a starter was scratched like the ace of the team couldn't start there's no suggestions that uh there was anything nefarious about that like he legitimately couldn't start as far as we know, but he was replaced. And the Alabama baseball coach,

who of course I imagine was the first to know about that, tipped off someone who placed a bet on LSU, Alabama's opponent or multiple bets. And so therefore that better who was placing that bet at Great American Ballpark, by the way, the sports book there was apparently in contact with Brad Bohannon, the Alabama baseball coach at the time. We still don't know, I think, whether Bohannon was directing him to make that bet, whether he was just passing the information along so that this other person could benefit. I assume he was aware that the bet was being, you know, he was fired. Like, I assume he knew that the bet was being placed and that it was not just like he casually mentioned this in conversation to someone.

And he happened to run and place a bet while Bohannon was on the phone. Like, there's something untoward about this situation. We don't know whether Bohannon was going to directly profit from this or not, but obviously not a great situation. So he was fired. I guess the positive spin on this is that it was detected, right? It was caught and he was punished and there is some mechanism in place. And there is some mechanism in place. And in our preview pod, our bold predictions pod, I suggested that there might be some match-fixing scandal in the minor leagues just because players don't make a lot of money and maybe the payoff would be good. Now, this is not a match-fixing scandal as far as we know, and no players were involved as far as we know in this particular scandal either.

were involved as far as we know in this particular scandal either. But there is some mechanism in place where if it's college baseball, which does not draw a lot of gambling action generally, and so it raised red flags when a big sizable bet was placed on this Alabama LSU game. They were like, huh, how about that? How about that? Yeah. So you could say Joe Sheehan has made the argument that this is sort of the system working. Like, there's a failsafe. Like, it raised the alarm, you know? It triggered a response.

And people said, huh, this looks fishy. This looks suspicious. And then they looked into it. And then they caught the perpetrators. So you could say, OK, there are some guardrails here. You could also say, it's's just there's so much gambling. There's so much sports betting. It's inevitable that there are going to be stories like this that are not detected.

And maybe this is just the tip of the iceberg, right? The way you phrased your initial question is so it allows me so much latitude, Ben, because am I more concerned? No, but I was already pretty concerned. Yeah. My threat level was high. Yeah. I mean, I just think that the incentives for it are pretty obvious. Now, you're right, but there clearly were mechanisms in place to, in this instance, detect it.

But I think that when you're talking about, you know, I don't know how much betting there is on minor league stuff. It's just every... Yeah, not a ton. Not a ton. So maybe in the minors, it's, you know, maybe that's fine because there would be somebody would be going, hey, now, excuse you. But also, I'm pretty concerned. It just seems like there are so many games, there are so many guys,

and there is so much money at stake. Someone's going to try it and try to do it in a way that is smarter than this. Yeah, right. This wasn't a sophisticated operation, as it turns out. No, not even Pete Rose is, I think, confirmed to have placed bets against his team also, which is like if that's what Bohannon was doing. Yeah. And there were lawsuits against this guy, Bohannon, for like treatment of players and injury recovery and that sort of thing.

So, again, like maybe he's just not the exemplar of fine college coaching. But there's also been another wagering sort of scandal involving Iowa State and 41 athletes there. Including some members of their baseball team. Yes, right. And according to reports, also not a point shaving or match fixing or game outcome related sort of situation. So probably just some sort of betting that they should not have done. Potential criminal conduct related to sports wagering, whatever that means. Whatever that means. Yeah. So in theory, none of these calls into question the integrity of the games, which is, I guess, the greatest concern when it comes to sports leagues themselves.

And again, it was detected. And that's a good thing, I guess, that at this level where one would think the incentives are greater to do things like this. And certainly players in tennis and all sorts of other sports have been caught doing these things. players in tennis and all sorts of other sports have been caught doing these things. But also, maybe it's more obvious if you do try to profit from that just because there's not usually much action on those games. So I don't know. I was already somewhat concerned, too. I guess what you could say is that there's going to be this temptation like, OK, maybe

this pitcher was actually hurt and bohannon wasn't actually doing anything to influence games but like you could right like it doesn't seem like a great leap to be like actually i'm going to switch my starter assignments for another reason which is just that i will be the first to know and therefore i can play some bet, right? Like maybe there's some pretense that's not as legitimate as this entry was and you could just make that swap and you would know and in theory be able to profit from it if you could get away with it. And just, I guess, I always just sort of assume like anytime there's some sort of nefarious activity, like what we know is probably not the half of it so there are just so many avenues to feel like you have some influence now like i don't know i don't know enough about like the expectations of of

gamblers here because like changing starter potentially very impactful right some of the other small things that one could do to try to sway the game what is the efficacy of those moves i don't know right um and uh what what's betting and like what do people do when they're betting about stuff like what are they what are they betting what are they you know what are their what are their goals what do they want to happen yes i just i you know i know i will not be able to maintain this level of ignorance which is an active protest on my part uh for all that much longer but i'm gonna hold on as long as i can so i don't actually want answers to any of these questions but um there are just so many moving pieces um and so many decisions many of which are going to be defensible

from a lot of different angles that it seems likely that there might be something shifty that goes on and, and it doesn't even necessarily have to be shifty to your point. You just have to know first, you just have to, it can be legitimate and you just know early because you're the guy doing the thing, you know, we were just like, open that can of worms.

What's the worst thing that could be inside there? You know? I think a lot of bad stuff. Worse than worms. So many moral quandaries on this episode. Cool. Yeah, worms are like, they do all kinds of great stuff. Worms get a bad rep, I think is actually what I really want people to take away from today.

It's like, be nicer to worms. You know, they do all kinds of great stuff. They're not slugs. You know what? Screw slugs. Comfortable with that, too. We're going to get emails about that. Someone's going to be like, actually, slugs have important ecological benefit. And then I'm going to be excited to have learned that.

Slugs and snails, I think, yeah, they serve their purpose in the Great Tapestry, too. Yeah, like eating my plants. getting hit in the beans. We waded into some weighty waters in this one, but we ranged far afield. We went all over the world in this episode. So we're not just a Major League Baseball podcast. We're a baseball podcast. Yeah. It's a rich tapestry and some parts of it are very exciting and bright and sunny and other parts require, I think, rather urgent attention. Well, here's something else that requires urgent attention. Drew Rasmussen's flexor tendon, type of a raise number two starter placed on the IL with a flexor strain slash forearm strain.

Aren't you glad we just prepared you for that on our last episode by explaining flexor slash forearm strains? Or if you're a raise fan, maybe you're not so glad because you know it's worrisome. Then again, if you're a Rays fan, you're probably already pretty familiar with the anatomy of the elbow. Shane Boz had Tommy John surgery. Jeffrey Springs had Tommy John surgery. Andrew Kittredge had Tommy John surgery. Those are just the guys who are currently recovering from it. Given how unstoppable the Rays have seemed this season, it's almost shocking how hurt they are. Between Boz and Springs and now Rasmussen and Tower Glass, now they have almost an entire rotation on the IL. And injured relievers, too.

And that's how you end up with Jake Diekman and Zach Littell. Their depth chart on Roster Resource has three starting pitchers listed. And I know it's the Rays, and how do you define a starting pitcher on the Rays anyway? But, man, tough to think of other teams that have seemed so dominant and simultaneously so vulnerable. We talked last time about the causes of all this and max effort velocity contributing to injuries. Got a great email from Patreon supporter Runrin, who pointed me to the example of Met starter Tyler McGill. We were talking last time about how players put pressure on themselves to throw harder, teams put pressure on them to throw harder, the media, scouts, everyone, fans,

everyone wants to see those velocity numbers go up and up. And at the start of last season, Tyler McGill, who is suddenly throwing 99, this Tim Healy Newsday piece said, but no pitcher once he has thrown 99 wants to stay at 99. I'm throwing 100 this year, McGill said. Always, you want to throw as hard as you can. If you're at 99, why not 100? And he had already experienced multiple velocity jumps, much like Jacob de Graam. After smoothing out his mechanics, he said he couldn't help but look at the stadium radar gun on the 99 mile per hour pitch. And he said he may have been throwing especially hard in that outing because it was opening day and he was amped up. But once he saw it, he wanted to go even higher,

which reminds me very much of Noah Sindergaard, who had the same sort of chasing the velocity monster, always wanted to throw harder, and then he got hurt. And so did Tyler McGill. He was pitching great, and then he had a shoulder injury. But unlike Sindergaard, unlike DeGrom, he decided this spring to take his foot off the gas a little bit to stay healthy. So he's taken it down from 97, 98, more like 93, 94. He said, I've been talking to Max Scherzer. He's had a very long, healthy career. The way he pitches, he saves some in the gas tank when he needs it and is able to stretch it out and go the distance. That's what I'm trying to do. Save my bullets and stay fresh longer. I think he

learned a lot last year that more is not always better, Buck Showalter said. Sounds like a great little morality play, but the catch is that he has not actually pitched all that effectively. Is that because he's not throwing as hard? Is it because the injury has hampered him in some other way? I don't know. I wish the outcome of the story was that he took a little off the fastball and continued to excel. Not quite, but I do think Jacob deGrom could, given how hard he throws. Let me leave you with the pass blast, which comes to us from 2006 and from David Lewis, who is an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston. David writes, 2006, the Rockies look for high-tech aids for improved performance. Yes, the Rockies, not a misprint. In 2006, the Colorado Rockies experimented with new ways to improve their team

performance. One such trial, as reported by the AP in June 2006, was downloading game film to their players' video iPods, allowing them to watch whenever and wherever. Explained Rockies assistant video coordinator Brian Jones, It wasn't like we invented the wheel. We're using Apple's technology as best we can. We figured if you can watch music videos by Rock and Roll and by Country, why can't you watch it Bats by San Francisco and Pitches by Jason Schmidt? That's the same Brian Jones, by the way, who has since been promoted to be the Rockies Director of Research and Development.

As of June 2006, David continues, 14 Rockies players were using the video iPods for game footage, although according to the AP, the players themselves, not the ball club,

had to front the $399 cost of the device. Just when the Rockies were really starting to impress me. The team hoped to have players, coaches, and scouts all use iPods

to review game footage. Just a few months into the Rockies' experiment, the Marlins and Mariners reportedly decided to begin utilizing iPods for their players as well. How well did this work out for the Rockies? In 2006, the team went 76-86, good for fourth in the NL West. While not fantastic, that showed improvement over 2005 when the team went 67-95 last in the division. One year later, however, the 2007 Rockies went 90-73 and made a run to the World Series. Perhaps they couldn't have done it without their iPods. Remember, this is not an iPad. This is an iPod with a two and a half inch screen and a resolution of 320 by 240. So who knows how helpful it was. But back in 2006, at least in this respect, the Rockies were on the cutting edge.

Other teams were sending players home with DVDs to watch on their laptops. Jones thinks his iPod idea will soon be used across college and professional sports. We're always trying to figure out the easiest way to help our players, he said. In the old days, when you had a VCR, you had to go through so much tape. Now it's so much easier and portable, you don't have to search for two hours to find that one swing on that one day. And he was right, not necessarily about the iPods, but the principle. If only the Rockies had stayed so progressive when it came to helping their players improve. You can help us by supporting the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged

some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Justin Dashner, Linus Marco, Tyler Hodges, Chris Gillings, and Eric Peters. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams and discounts on merch and ad-free FanCrafts memberships. The list goes on and on, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. You can message us through the Patreon site if you are a supporter. If not, you can contact us via email at podcastofancrafts.com. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod,

and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend with baseball, or if you're like me, with baseball and The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. We will be back to talk to you early next week. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation. You're all about the stats we've compiled because you listen to Perfectively Wild. With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley,

you can come for the ball, banter's free Baseball is a simulation It's all just one big conversation Effectively wild