Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2020: Boo This Manfred

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley review the most disappointing teams of 2023, ultimately anointing one team as the most disappointing and trying to identify which of the contenders for the “most disappointing” title is most likely to turn things around by the end of the season. Then (32:21) they discuss A’s fans’ reverse boycott, the […]

Effectively Wild I want to hear about Shohei Ohtani Or Mike Trout with three arms Hello and welcome to episode 2020 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Which do you think is the most disappointing team of 2023? Oh, boy. I guess limiting it to teams that actually had high expectations coming into the season.

Maybe that's assumed it would be tough to be the most disappointing team if no one expected you to be good. I'm just thinking of, well, the A's. We'll talk about the A's, but also the Royals. We talked about them last time and how they're disappointing, too, in that they're terrible. And maybe we're expected to be not terrible. But I'm talking less about the difference between terrible and less terrible or terrible and not terrible and the difference between and really good or bad and good right i think there there are a few contenders i think for most disappointing team

thus far and you know we're only what uh 41 or two percent or something of the way through the season. Long season. Do we want to establish the field and then pick? Sure, yeah. Can I offer some nominations and then you can tell me what yours are if they differ at all? So I think like the obvious contenders for me sit mostly in the National League. How about that?

Well, most of the bad teams are in the National League. I mean, there's some notable exceptions that you just mentioned. Yeah, no, the worst teams are in the American League. But a lot of the bad ones are in also, I guess. And not a lot of the good ones or the really good ones, I guess. I just saw Joshian tweeted earlier that two-thirds of the American League has a positive run differential. Two-thirds of the American League has a positive run differential. Two-thirds of the National League has a negative run differential. Pretty good chance that at least one of the ten best teams in baseball misses the playoffs this year.

Although it probably won't be that great a team. But, yeah, there's a skew there, which I guess we kind of knew coming into the season that the leagues were looking that way. But it has been striking. I mean, it's mostly meaningless, I guess, because what is a league in MLB anymore? I mean, it's just a historical relic at this point more than anything else, but it obviously impacts playoff berths. So it matters in that sense. Okay, can I offer my teams? Mm-hmm.

Okay, so in the National League, let's just take it by division. Here are teams I find disappointing. The Mets. Yes. I'm starting in the East. I'm exhibiting a surprising East Coast bias for a Meg thought. The Mets. Yes. I want to put a pin in the Phillies. We should talk about not like in a literal way. That would be rude. They've already had such injury misfortune, right? But let's think on the Phillies. We're going to put them in there, but we're going to, I think, have to have a conversation about the Phillies.

Okay. In the Central, and it feels odd to have like Central teams be disappointing because the expectations for the entire division are so low but cardinals definitely probably a disappointing team and then in the west like we do have to talk about the padres you know we have to we have to talk about those padres those are my nl squats that i'm gonna offer is is that little amalgamation of guys and then in the american league the blue jays you know i'm gonna i'm gonna offer the blue jays which feels you might say what meg what right because they're they're 38 and 31 as we record here on thursday morning so you might say what but i'm gonna say we should we should talk about the blue jays we should offer them as an option okay you know we should probably talk about the Blue Jays. We should offer them as an option. You know, we should probably talk about

the Guardians. We should talk about the Guardians. And then in the West, you know, we should talk about those Seattle Mariners. Yeah, they're probably in the conversation. They're in the conversation, but I think that there's the conversation about

teams that have genuinely disappointed, right? And then there are there's a conversation to be had about teams that perhaps challenge us to more realistically calibrate our expectations. You know, that when they present themselves for inspection prior to the start of the season, we should maybe be like, I'm going to poke you now. And maybe we were. Some of us were. Yeah. I think you have identified a good field there or a bad, disappointing field. And I think my top ones, my really top contenders are in the National League, all of them. But yeah, we can talk about each of those in turn. So, I mean, on the American League side,

you want to lay out the case for the Mariners being disappointing, as you probably feel that more acutely than I do? I mean, I do and I don't, right? So, on the one hand, yes, they're disappointing because at times it has been like incandescently good pitching, right? It has been good pitching lately, right? It has not been as, like, wow. And, you know, they have had to witness the ups and downs of Julio's sophomore season, right? They have a bad offense. Just, like, objectively a bad offense. So, on that score, yes, they are disappointing.

But I think I was clear that, well, yes, I did think that they would be a wildcard team, I think I picked them to be a wildcard team prior to the season. So in that sense, they are disappointing my expectations. in the wilderness here by any means, or a lot of folks who pointed this out, that like the ways that things could go wrong for Seattle were fairly obvious, right? They did do some stuff, but it wasn't a lot of stuff, right? Their additions on offense were to Oscar Hernandez. It was Colton Wong. It was sort of bats that we expected to either stay good or rebound some in Wong's case, but you know, they didn't sign any of the big marquee free agents. They didn't really sign anything at all. Um, Mark here.

Otherwise it was an offense that was going to be heavily dependent on Julio staying as good as he had been last year. And he's obviously, you know, started to turn things around in the last little bit here, but he's not what he was, uh, in that rookie season,

at least not so far. And the offense, they are even with Jared Kelnick being like, oh, no, no, I can be a good big leaguer. You know, the thing about me is I can be a good big leaguer, although his June hasn't been as prevalent. Basically, the top line takeaway for the Mariners is that I did not feel that they had put themselves in a position to take advantage of potential missteps on Houston's part or, more accurately, injury issues on Houston's part,

that they were not challenging the Rangers for sort of making big, decisive moves that would put them in a position to really make a run at the West. And so to call them disappointing is like true and not true. Like this is what they were. They were kind of projected to be a team that was right around 500. And you could imagine ways that that could break in their favor because they have Julio and they have all of this really great pitching

and they've been able to develop really good pitching, but they didn't reinforce the offense. When you compare their staff to last year's. Last year's rotation in particular was so healthy. We've already seen the ways in which they aren't healthy this year, right? And so even though they have been very good, they just didn't have a lot of margin for error, and we are seeing the results of not giving yourself margin for that you're 33 and 34 and you're nine games back and you have, you know, 20%, 19% playoff odds. Yeah, I would kind of lump the Mariners and maybe the Phillies together. Yes.

And cross them off the list probably of most disappointing teams, even though they've been disappointing. I think they've been disappointing relative to 2022 because they were the opposite of disappointing last year, right? At least when it was all said and done. The Phillies were not a great baseball team in 2022, but they won a pennant. They were super exciting at the end. And then they signed Trey Turner, and he is probably among the more disappointing players if we were talking about individuals. So I think if you had come into the season thinking, hey, the Phillies just made a World Series and made it tough for the Astros in that World Series, and then they went out and got Trey Turner, like, this is our time, then you're probably pretty disappointed by the

Phillies. And similarly, if you're a Mariners fan and they finally broke the drought and they made the playoffs and you thought, okay, the competitive window is here and we're contenders now and we're going to be a perennial playoff team. I don't know how many Mariners fans took it for granted that they were going to be a perennial playoff team. I knew not a single one, not even one. So that's a person I just invented. Did you make up a guy to fight with, Ben? What is this, Twitter?

But I still think that, you know, you might have hoped that that was the start of something. You know, it could still be. But relative to maybe more sober-minded preseason expectations, those two teams are performing roughly as expected, right? I mean, they were sort of projected to be 500-ish teams, and they're 500-ish teams thus far. Again, like, not that the Fangraph's playoff odds or any site's playoff odds is necessarily the consensus preseason expectation, but obviously it's something that frames our expectations to some extent and that we're conscious of. So you look at the Phillies and, you know, they were, I think, projected to be roughly what they are right now. I mean, their playoff odds are down a little bit, but not even double digits. You know, they're, what, they're 34-34 now. They've been a little bit better of late. They've gotten back to 500,

and they're projected to be an 85-win team. So it would be disappointing, I think, if the Phillies fail to make the playoffs after how their season ended last year. But it was far from certain that they would make the playoffs again, that they were good enough to do that. They just barely squeaked in last year.

So where they are right now does not really surprise me, I guess. You know, like it certainly it could have gone better, but this was more or less like the median outlook for them, I think, coming into the season and tough division. And I don't know that the Mariners are that much different again because it was like disappointing that they didn't do more. But once the dust settled and they hadn't done more, then it wouldn't be so disappointing to find them where they are now, which is projected for 82 wins or something. Because that's more or less where they were, I think, when the season started. In fact, it's exactly where they were. Like they're bang on. Like the Phillies, their projection was 84.9 wins before the season started. The Mariners, 82.3. And neither of them has changed that by any significant margin even now. So I'm going to rule them out of

contention for most disappointing. Guardians are sort of similar, I think, in that they were a surprise team. They were a fun team. They exceeded expectations last year. And neither of us projected them as a playoff team coming to the season, right? I mean, I didn't think they'd miss by much, and they aren't missing by that much, and they might not miss when it's all said and done. Who knows? But yeah, they've been disappointing in that they have not built on their success last year, and the offense has cratered. Not that it was great last year. It was interesting last year, but it's just been downright bad this year. So yeah, the fact that they have not taken a step

forward and have taken something of a step back, disappointing, but still within the range of reasonable outcomes for them coming into the season again Again, they were projected for 81.9 wins, and now they're not that far off that pace, right? I mean, they're projected for 79 or something now. So when we're talking about most disappointing team, we're talking about a team that's more than a win or two off its preseason projected pace, even though there are people who probably had significantly rosier expectations for them coming into the season than the stats and the projections did. Okay. So we've ruled out the Guardians, the Phillies, and the Mariners. The Blue Jays. Now that's an interesting one

because unlike these other disappointing teams that we're talking about, the Blue Jays are good. these other disappointing teams that we're talking about, the Blue Jays are good. They're a winning baseball team. And they are still projected to make the playoffs more likely than not. But it's closer than it was, than it could have been. So, again, I don't think they're going to take it here because they're having a pretty darn decent season. But what's the case for the Blue Jays as disappointing, if not most disappointing, just somewhat disappointing?

Well, I think some of that case is maybe specific to me, to little Meg. Because I do not remember and I refuse to check, but I'm pretty sure I had them winning. Yeah, I may have too. Yeah. And so it is not as if they have like a bad offense, but I expected a more potent offense than they have had thus far, which is you're like you're sitting there as a listener and you're like, Meg, they have a Team WRC Plus of 111. They have the fifth best Team WRC Plus in baseball. And to that I say, yeah, I mean, yeah. You're not wrong.

That's a fair point. Will I find myself hoisted on some sort of petard? I mean, maybe. But I just expected it to be more potent than it has been. I expected it to be dominant. I expected it to be overwhelming. I expected to sit here today as we record and be like, wow! And I did not expect, for instance, for Bobachette to have a higher WRC plus than Vladimir Guerrero Jr. You know, and some of this is just like being damned by prior excellence, right? Because objectively a player with a one 21 WRC plus, it's a very good player, you know,

useful, super like, you know, you're looking at that guy and you're going, wow, what a strong offensive contributor. And then you look and you're like, oh,

but it's Vladdy. And I expect him to be other worldly. Right. And is that fair? I mean, I don't know. We build expectations, and those who are met with them help us to build them also. Yeah.

There's that, you know? Did I think that Dalton Varsha would be a below-league average hitter by WRC Plus? I didn't, Ben, you know? And he's starting to heat up. It's starting to turn a little bit for him. but I thought it would be, and it has been, you know. So, Kevin Kiermaier, though, man, how about that? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, they're a good team. They're a good team. They do still feel a little bit disappointing to me, too. I think maybe, as I sit here, perhaps the word that I mean more than disappointing is vulnerable. They feel vulnerable, right? Because the offense is good and I expected it to be better. The rotation is, I'm going to just use the word weird mostly to describe, I think, the Blue Jays rotation. I think that the word I want is weird because it's like Kevin Gassman has been so good and Jose Barrios, what is that? Like, what are we, where are we? It's been better,

you know? Yeah, I think we could say he's good again. Yeah, I think he's good again, but again, he feels, it feels vulnerable, right? And then, you know, you have Bassett who is doing bassett stuff you know he's doing bassety things and then then there's the manoa of it all and like what's he gonna be like when he comes back we don't know we don't know so they feel are they like a really locked down team from a bullpen perspective i mean in some ways i i guess but in other ways only only like the back end of that bullpen really and you know it's like it never like jordan romano has been very good but it doesn't always feel easy with him you know so and and granted, I'm also doing that thing that I'm sure makes dedicated fans of a team crazy.

Because you're like melding what you see of the stats with the games that you have watched. And I don't watch the Blue Jays every day. So, you know, it's like there could be a disconnect there. I might be being too harsh. Although the Blue Jays fans I follow on Twitter tweet as if they are 10 games under 500. So I don't know that my perception is all that different from their own experience. Sound off in the comments. But they feel vulnerable.

So I'm going to amend my statement. They're not disappointing, but they are not what I thought they would be and what they are feels vulnerable. A lot of it is the division. A lot of it's the division. It's such a hard division. It's just such a, it's such a hard division. Break up the East. Yes, right. Just sprinkle some of that talent on the central divisions, let's say. But yeah, it's the strength of schedule. Like if you look at ESPN's strength of schedule rating thus far, it's Red Sox, Yankees, Blue Jays. And I think that makes them look not as impressive as they would were they anywhere else. But also, I've just been expecting the main event that Vladgaro said was going to come after the preview, right? I keep

expecting them to be the best team in that division and one of the best teams in baseball, and they just haven't quite gotten there yet. So again, I cite the playoff odds just because it's a handy way to remind ourselves what some reasonable expectations were so that we can gauge disappointment. But they're right in line with what the playoff odds saw them as, like an 88-win team. That is still what they're tracking as, basically. It's just that, yeah, you know, it doesn't look like they're going to make a run at winning this division. And that's somewhat disappointing.

But the offense, it's a top-five offense. They remade their outfield defense, and their outfield defense is leading the majors in defensive runs saved. And sorry to interrupt you, but again, Kevin Kiermaier, what a—I'm offering a take. I think that might be the best mid-tier signing of the offseason. Yeah, it's worked out really well because it seemed to make sense on paper. If you want to remake your outfield defense, go get Kevin Kiermaier. But he is 33 years old and he was coming off a significant injury. And so who knew whether he would still be the same Kevin Kiermaier.

And yeah, he has been. So that's worked out really well. And I guess it's like the pitching, particularly the bullpen. They've given up some blowups. Like Joe Sheehan had a stat in his newsletter that just compared to other AL East teams, the Blue Jays have given up 49 runs in the eighth inning, which all the other AL East teams like the Orioles and the Red Sox are tied with 27 allowed. The Yankees and Rays, 24 and 21.

Like the Blue Jays have had some come from ahead losses, right? Like they've blown some games that if they had gone their way, then they might look a little better than they are. But that's all it amounts to. Like they're still a good baseball team. So I think that leads us to the top three here, which were the three I really had in mind, although these others were all worth talking about. But it's got to be the Mets, the Cardinals, and the Padres. We've talked a fair amount about each of them at times this season. odds since the start of the season, which I guess is one way you could gauge this,

then the Cardinals take the cake with just the, I guess, the biggest decline in pure playoff odds. So 54 percentage points they're down since the start of the season. That's the most of any team. If you go by World Series odds, then the Mets are ahead. They're down 5.6 percentage points of World Series chances. The Cardinals 3.9. The Padres 4.2. Surprisingly, the Yankees actually are down 5.5 percentage points. They had more to begin with, but just because I guess they are probably not going to win this division, so their odds of winning the division are down very significantly as the Rays,

despite looking vulnerable themselves at times, have kind of solidified their lead again there. So I would say that the Padres and the Mets just had their expectations inflated by their offseason. I mean, not unfairly inflated, just inflated because they were active, particularly the Padres, I guess, because when you look at the Mets, like they spent a lot of money. But as we noted, they didn't really add a whole lot to their team. They were retaining. Yeah, they were retaining or replacing, right? And, you know, except for when they signed Carlos Correa, and then he ultimately is not a Met. And I guess the teams that made runs at Carlos Correa and lost him or decided not to keep him are not disappointed about that decision thus far. He's been a little bit better lately, but he's also been injured,

not in the ankle, but in the foot, the other leg. And so he has had a somewhat disconcerting season himself. But that's a whole other conversation, I guess, about Carlos Correa's year in review. And again, he's been better lately, so maybe by the time it's all said and done,

he will have rated the ship somewhat. But I think just because the Padres like this was the year and this is the year they were finally going to be better than the Dodgers and they spent all that money and they got Xander Bogart's

expectations were super high. They have not lost as much in playoff odds as the Cardinals, let's say, because— Because they were in a better division. Yeah, right. We believed in the Dodgers. Yeah.

The Cardinals, like, not that I thought they were a super team or anything, but I think, man, the Cardinals, it's tough to beat when it comes to disappointing teams because— Yeah, they might just take it. They might. I mean, they started so slowly, and then there was the whole, I mean, multiple messes with Marmole and Messaging and O'Neal and then the whole Contreras debacle. Multiple messes with Marmole. Yeah, multiple messaging messes with Marmole. And then they were better, right? Messaging messes with Marmol. And then they were better, right? And it seemed like, okay, that was maybe just a blip and Contreras is catching again and they're playing better. And then, no, the wheels fell off again. And, I mean, Contreras, I guess, has been part of the problem offensively. He's been slumping. Whether that is at all related to the way they jerked him around, who knows. But that hasn't been going great lately.

And they've just been like a depressing team. I mean, they were expected to win that division. And again, sort of a weak division. So not being the best team in the Central maybe is not quite as disappointing as not being the best team in the East or the West, but they have the worst record in the National League right now. Yeah, how did that? That's, yeah. And you say that, Ben, you know, and it assumes everything I'm about to say, right? It's obvious given what you just said, what I'm about to say.

But like, that means, for the record, they have a worse record than the Rockies. They have a worse record than the Nationals. They have a worse record than the Cincinnati Reds. They have a worse record than the Pirates. I would argue, potentially, with the exception of maybe the Nationals, also way worse vibes than all of those teams. Yes, yes, that's the thing. You know how you can objectively measure vibes? But like when you put your finger to the wind and you're like, what's the vibe?

It's bad. It seems like it's a not good vibe. I know. Despite the hamburger phone's best efforts. Yeah, wow. Remember the hamburger phone, Ben? Right. That's when things seem to be turning around.

It's weird. It's weird, I guess. But not if they've been predicting positive outcomes for the team. But yeah, man, I don't think you can beat the Cardinals. It's just like they don't have the payroll and the baggage of those other two teams, like the pressure, the expectations. And they have been so successful for so long that you might be inclined to say, eh, you know, give them a mulligan on this year. Like, they're always contending.

The fact that they're always contending, I guess, makes it more disappointing that they're not this year, but also more excusable in that, hey, everyone has an off year eventually, I suppose. But yeah, if you're the Cardinals and you're expected to be a division winner, most likely, and then you have the worst record in the league through a significant portion of the season, tough to beat that. The only reason why the Padres and the Mets might have a better case, despite not being as bad at baseball thus far or as far out of things is just because of everything that goes along with them and the history of their franchises and trying to change the narrative about those teams and then the

expectations about the payroll and the spending and what it means if that totally backfires on them but just in terms of yeah vibes and just this has been bad to watch. Yeah. It hasn't been. Yeah. I'm not offering that it is as bad as Stanford, Texas, which is like my new North Star in terms of, oh, no. Yeah.

But Ben, oh, no. Right. Some of these losses have just been jaw-dropping. Okay, so let's say it's probably the Cardinals. Of those three main contenders, which are you most confident will take themselves out of the running for this title by the end of the season? Oh, so who has some devil magic is what you're asking? I don't think it's the Cardinals. Because when the Cardinals were struggling at the start of the season, I was still kind of like, eh, they'll be fine in the end. But it doesn't look like they'll be fine

now. They're only eight and a half games out because, again, it's a central division and it's not like there's a great team at the top there. So, like, the Mets are further out of the lead in the East than the Cardinals are in the Central. The Mets are ten games back of the in the East than the Cardinals are in the Central.

The Mets are 10 games back of the Braves, who've been playing really well lately. And the Padres are seven and a half games out of the West lead. So I guess this comes down to which of these teams do you actually think is better than it has looked thus far or is like actually a pretty decent baseball team and is in the circumstances that they could maybe change the story of their season by the time it's all said and done the Padres are still according to the playoff odds a likely playoff team like they are there are 62 percent chance to make the playoffs only 14.5 percent chance to win the division it's not.5% chance to win the division. It's not where they want it to be.

But if you believe in the underlying talent there, it's not too late for them. I think it's probably San Diego. I think that that's the honest answer. I mean, I think that for a couple of reasons. First, I think that just from a true talent perspective, they are probably underperforming where they were. Just from a true talent perspective, they are probably underperforming where they were. And I think that when you think about the guys who might kick it into a different gear and really turn it around and like me, it feels like your room for that starts to diminish as you age. You know, I say as someone. If your mechs are in Justin Verlander and you're not playing like your old self, you're playing like your old self.

Right. Yeah. Then. Oh, I old self. Old, right? Yeah. Aw, I shouldn't laugh. Yeah, look, neither of those guys has been bad. You know, most people, most athletes, most pitchers would be quite happy to be pitching like Verlander and Scherzer at the age of 40 and 38, respectively, right? But relative to what the hopes were, what their salaries are, what their track records are,

it's not going to cut it with those two at the top. You know, 4.45 ERA for Scherzer, 4.40 for Verlander, and peripherals that are not really much better. They're basically the same FIPS too. Like those guys just, they haven't looked like rotation toppers to this point. So, and when you're at that age and with that level of, you know, mileage on you and nagging injuries, then you're less confident that things are going to turn around and you're going to look youthful again. And I guess you could also say, if you look at underlying performance rather than record, if we were to look at base runs, for instance, the Mets have actually, if anything, have a better record than their underlying. The bad news is they've outperformed.

Yeah. Whereas the Cardinals are six games below where they quote unquote should be. The Padres are four games below that. So if you want to look at the underlying performance, you could say, oh, they should be better than that. They've maybe gotten a little unlucky, whereas you can't even make that case for the Mets. Do we think that, you know, you said that that Marmol has the wobbliest chair, but I wonder, is it actually Buck Showalter? It could be. I've certainly heard him mentioned. Some of Buck's decisions have been kind of confounding. They've been, you know, they've been a little like, hey, Buck, chip deal over there.

This is unrelated to those teams because one club i'm confident is not going to turn things around and make the postseason as the a's but you know they've been on this run i'm just i'm noticing this because i was looking as you were talking at like you know these clubs based on records and where their pythagorean expectation is and run differential and whatnot and you know the the a's they've been on this run you know they lost last night but like but they've been on this run. You know, they lost last night, but they've been on this nice little run, right? Yeah. There was a while there

where you didn't even have to ask if they had lost last night because it was assumed. Right. And then they went on a little win streak and they still have a negative 190

by Rondon Rachel. Oh, God. All right. Well, we could just talk about the A's because obviously we were going to. But I think we're agreed.

Cardinals, most disappointing team thus far. And top three, Cardinals, Mets, Padres. Padres least likely to be in the running for most disappointing of that trifecta by the end of the season. Right? That's what we've decided here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I think so. It's close, though, with the Mets and the Padres when it comes to that. You know, it's a race we're going to have to revisit, I think. Yes, I'm sure we will. It could move. Yeah. So, the A's. They had their

reverse boycott on Tuesday. It was an Irish wake of sorts for the franchise in Oakland, right? It had that feeling. They drummed up pretty impressive support. People, you know, almost 28,000 fans in the ballpark came out just to tell John Fisher to sell the team and to send the message that it was not Oakland's lack of support for the A's that has driven them out of town. It is ownership that is primarily responsible. And they did a lot of good in that respect, I think, in sending that message.

Also in basically forcing the team's hand to donate all the revenue from that game to local community charities, right? Which was over $800,000, right? Which I saw a lot of people just like boggled, you know, their minds were boggled by that number because that's one single game. And it's just the gate. It was, yeah, it was just the gate, right? Which I guess, I mean, I guess if you divide 800, whatever it was, thousand by almost 28,000 fans, it's not shocking that it would be that much. It's like less than $30 per person. So even if that doesn't include, that didn't include concessions and everything else. Yeah. So, you know, you could make a lot of money if you drew fans to come to your game by putting a competitive team on the field it turns out yeah but it was sort of a a stunning admission on their part candidly like

oh i again they just got what they wanted from the nevada state legislature so you know maybe you know jokes on me but i continue to be amazed that they are um so bad at messaging and also politics where it's like you know they're they're like that gif of the guy going he admit it i don't know what it's from ben i don't want you to tell me it's fine that i'm not no it's fine i think you should leave i haven't i haven't watched it that any internet meme is from i think you should leave and you'll probably be right a high percentage i think i. I think I missed the window, right? Because it's like I have seen so much of the show now. You can join. But yes, you're right. It was kind of like, hey, if you just made an effort to draw

fans to your ballpark, not out of spite, but out of genuine desire to see the baseball team that you put on the field, maybe you could make a viable business of that. Who knows? But they have, yeah, it appears to be a done deal now. I mean, it's the A's ballpark moving saga. So it's like the opposite of the killer in the slasher movie where they look dead and yet they keep coming back it's the opposite of that it's like every time it it looks like they're getting what they want something happens they step on a rake or something but it appears this time that they have uh gotten what they wanted not as much as they initially wanted but the nevada politicians uh the assembly the senate have passed the measure for public funding of the

ballpark. And it's now gone to the governor, who, of course, is a supporter of the initiative. So sure looks like we are going to get the Las Vegas A's. And so that send-off the other night, which was before that was a more or less done deal, it still felt final in a way. I imagine it will be the last Oakland A's game for a lot of the people who were in the park. And you could sense that atmosphere. It was sort of a mourning, but also a defiance, a pride. It's just like a poignant mix of emotions. But I thought they did their fan base proud by going out there and spitting in the eye of John Fisher. I will admit to being a person sort of prone to strong feeling. And so, you know, you can take every tear shed with a grain of salt, much like the salt it leaves on my face. But it made me, I felt pretty worked up, you know?

I know that it didn't work insofar as it is not going to keep Oakland in the Major League Baseball bitsness, at least not in the long run. But it was loud. It won't be forgotten. I think that there, and, you know, as we're recording this, quotes from Rob Manfred are coming in that we can talk about being alive so infuriating is how obviously and willingly people in positions of power will just lie about stuff, you know? They will just say as fact a thing that is obviously rebuked by reality or study or math or common sense, and it makes you feel crazy. And so it felt very meaningful to me to have this statement made so profoundly, because we aren't enthusiastic. It's not because we don't care about baseball. It's because you're greedy and we

wouldn't vote to like compromise the quality of Oakland school so that you could be a real estate developer. And I think that it was so, it was profoundly cool. You know, it was just, you're not going to, you're not going to be able to censor clips from that game, you know? And to have an entire stadium of people go completely silent for a hole at bat and then roar back in the next one, it was really spectacular. And so, I know that it didn't keep that team rooted in Oakland as it were. But I think everyone who participated in that should feel pretty proud of themselves because it was a thing that I'll remember for a long time, certainly. Yeah, right. And, you know, now I guess we can quote some of these Manfreds.

Ben? So he says, the real question is, what is it Oakland was prepared to do? There is no Oakland offer, okay? They never got to a point where they had a plan to build a stadium at any site. And it's not just John Fisher. The community has to provide support. Then he commented on the reverse boycott. I mean, it was great.

It is great to see what is this year almost an average Major League league baseball crowd in the facility for one night. That's a great thing. Wow. All the charisma of someone running down ballot on the Republican primary. Jesus. I didn't hear him say this, so I don't know. We don't know what the tone was. Yeah.

Try to imagine a good one. Can you? Right. I know. Like it sounds sarcastic. I don't know if he meant it to be sarcastic. It reads that way. But it's also just, like, disparaging those folks on the way out, basically, like, to pat them on the back and of John Fisher, who, you know, was anointed by the anointer of Rob Manfred, Bud Selig, and ushered into the ranks of MLB ownership. And then rather than try to pressure John Fisher to sell the team, Rob Manfred has basically become his mouthpiece publicly because John Fisher doesn't really talk much. So Rob Manfred does the talking for him. He also commented on

the many, many studies that say that stadium projects don't generate a lot of local economic growth. He said, I love academics. They're great. Take the areas where baseball stadiums had been built. Look at what was around where baseball stadiums had been built. Look at what was around Truist Park before that was built. Academics can say whatever they want. Okay, so, like, here's the thing about this. I'm going to lose what remains of my mind. I mean, like, look, if you want to convince me, Rob, that there are economists who do kind of questionable work, I'm a political scientist.

You don't have to work very hard to do that. But there is a mountain, a Mount Everest-sized mountain. Yes, Mount Davis-sized. There you go. Better than Mount Davis. Good note. I accept your edit, Ben. Checking off yes to that in the Google Doc. That is unanimous.

It all points in the same direction. It points, it's largely in agreement in terms of the magnitude. It has been studied up and down. The data has been sliced every way you can think of. It has accounted for, you know, the sort of real estate development nonsense he is pointing to here. And it all agrees, all of it agrees that it does not deliver the kind of economic growth and revenue that remotely justifies the tax expenditure. Like there's, it just, It's all in agreement. And even if you're inclined to not believe academics for whatever reason, you run a league that is obsessed with stats and you

have such disregard for anything resembling rigorous analysis. But anyway, one of the ways that you can tell that it doesn't work the way they want it to is that if it were such an obviously good investment, if what you got out of putting these ballparks in those places was just like uniformly positive, they wouldn't ask for public funding. They just round up a bunch of investors and reap all the rewards themselves. But they don't want to do that because it costs a lot of money and it doesn't return what they want it to. Yeah, it's frustrating. This is obviously his job. Like, I guess it's a little less maddening when you remind yourself that, like, he is a mouthpiece for the owners. They're his bosses and he wants to get them public funding. He's not employed to be a truth teller. It's like just the old confusion about the commissioner and maybe what the commissioner of baseball was originally intended to be and what the commissioner has actually been for the past most of a century, right? is some like impartial arbiter who's looking out for the best interest of baseball, but really is looking out for the interests of baseball as they reflect the interests of

the owners, which sometimes align with the interests of the fans and baseball as a whole, but very often don't and certainly don't when it comes to public funding in a place like Las Vegas, which needs funding for schools and everything and is now going to get funding for this ballpark. This instead. Yeah. So, like, it's his job to sell that. That's why he continues to be employed.

He is doing his job here. commenting on the sport and does like govern the direction of the sport to some extent, or at least helps oversee it and wrangle owners to support certain things. And so when he says things that are clearly contrary to the truth, like it is frustrating, even though you acknowledge that he is employed to sell that fiction to the people who can pass it and make it a reality. sell that fiction to the people who can pass it and make it a reality. But it's not great because he's often put in the position of like, talk to us about baseball, like sell us on baseball and its merits. Not that he has excelled on that historically. This has been a pretty good year for him in that regard, just in the sense that the rules changes that he helped usher in have

been positively regarded and there have been good byproducts of that. But then he reminds you what his actual job is in addition to all of that. I mean, we've talked about this before. Like on the one hand, I guess I'm grateful that he has the level of charisma that he has because it does make it easier to sort of pry apart the pieces of it that are obviously false or coming in with, you know, a heavy skew on the part of the owners. It is shocking that, like, they care so little about the guy who's the ostensible face of their league, at least on the management side, being this guy. Like, he said what he said, and then it's already been refuted by the mayor of Oakland's

office, right? Like, he says this stuff as if we're not gonna, I mean, I didn't do it. So, this is coming from Casey Pratt, who I think works for the local ABC affiliate. I reached out to the Oakland mayor's office for a response to the commissioner's comment on, you know, what is Oakland prepared to do, et cetera. This is just totally false. There was a very concrete proposal under discussion and Oakland had gone above and beyond to clear hurdles, including securing funding for infrastructure, providing an environmental review and working with other agencies to finalize approval. The reality is the A's ownership had insisted on a multi-billion dollar park 55 acre project that included a ballpark residential commercial and retail space in las vegas for whatever reason they seem satisfied

with a nine acre leased ballpark on leased land if they had proposed a similar project in oakland we feel confident a new ballpark would already be under construction oakland showed its commitment to the a's and that is why the a's belong in oakland like rob we're going to ask questions we will do math we will like look at studies we're not're going to ask questions. We will do math. We will, like, look at studies. We're not just going to sit here and be like, well, he makes some good points, and he's so charismatic. Yeah. No, he's definitely not charismatic, but he does have a big podium and microphone, and maybe more people will hear what he says than hear what the mayor of Oakland says, unless you're in Oakland, right? And look,

probably the owners don't want him to be super charismatic and popular because they want to control him. And also, it's sort of his job to be unpopular and be the punching bag and take the blows that would otherwise be aimed at the owners. So he said what he said about the reverse boycott night that I read earlier. He also did comment on the fans in Oakland. He said, I hear from him. Now, maybe he's referring to some of our Patreon supporters who email him directly, but he says, I hear from him. I feel sorry for the fans in Oakland. I do not like this outcome. I understand why they feel the way they do. And that was the preface to the rest of the quote, which is about what was Oakland prepared to do. It's not just John Fisher, et cetera, et cetera.

But if he doesn't like this outcome, there were other possible outcomes that perhaps he could have had some control over. But again, it's not necessarily what he is employed to do to ensure that the ownership ranks are better than they are. It's just to take his marching orders from who the owners are. You'd like to think that there'd be better control over who the owners are and that if they can't afford to own a baseball team or that they insist on running it into the ground so that they can get a sweeter deal somewhere else that has nothing to do with baseball,

then you'd like to think that that would be disqualifying. But no, it isn't. And in fact, like there was the recent report at The Athletic from Evan Drellick and Ken Rosenthal, right, about the idea that MLB is possibly seeking to cap teams spending in off-field areas like staffing in baseball operations, technology, player development, right, that they would like to limit this to have sort of like a salary cap that applies to what baseball teams can spend on baseball operations employees and baseball-related technologies. And MLB denied this and said there is nothing happening on the staffing front.

What we are focused on is gathering information on vendor costs to find potential cost savings through efficiencies and to ensure equal access to all technology. But Ken and Evan are pretty well connected, and they had sources suggesting that this was part of the motivation, or at least that owners would like for this to happen, which is no surprise because some contingent of the motivation, or at least that owners would like for this to happen, which is no surprise because some contingent of the owners, they want to limit spending on anything and everything, even if we're talking people with five-figure salaries in the front office who are barely making competitive earnings as it is. It's frustrating on a number of levels. I think that there are a lot of people who work for the league and work for the league explicitly in roles meant to help diversify the front office and make it look more diverse meritocracy. There are people who are working

to do that. And they are going to be stymied if the institutional response to the front office is to contract. Because even if salaries don't go down or stagnate, even if they weren't already too low, if you have fewer spots, I am skeptical that we are going to get as diverse a workforce as we could because we know the profiles that tend to get hired, right? We know how many spots are filled by predominantly white men who went to elite colleges, many of whom can afford because of family connection and money to work jobs where they are underpaid relative to what those similar skill sets might bear in other fields, right? And that isn't to say that those guys aren't smart and that they don't know ball. Like, that's not what I'm saying. But when you constrain the realities of that job to people who can, you know, afford to live in the Bay Area

and make less than 70K a year, you're naturally going to constrain the pool of people who try to, you know, secure those jobs, who are able to stay in those jobs. And I think that it's just obviously counter to any effort to make that workforce more diverse. You know, I, like, I totally believe that there are teams that are getting taken for a ride by technology vendors. Like, sure, if you want to audit the way that major league teams engage with service providers, fine. That's probably worthwhile. Don't throw away money.

But if you're trying to limit the size of the front office, at the very least, it's not going to get less monochromatic than it is right now and and it might get more monochromatic and it just is like you know if that is the vision of baseball you want one where every front office looks the same they all have similar resources they're all constrained to you know a headcount cap and a salary cap like okay but i don't think that you're going to end up with a more even playing field as a result of that the way that the rays stay in it is that they spend money on baseball ops and tech right like that's the way that they compete when they can't necessarily compete because of the budget constraints on the player side.

So you're not going to inspire a more balanced league. You're going to, if anything, concentrate power further in the teams that are able to spend up to and past the luxury tax threshold. So, you know, we don't need to continue to cater to, I'm just like, like the clubs that don't want to spend anywhere. They should just get out of the business then. Like, why do we keep helping these people? Yeah, that's the thing. Like the amounts of money we're talking about here are just not huge, right? I mean, if you're so cheap or anti-competitive that you want constraints just in how many baseball operations staffers you can have or how much you can spend on technology, we're not even talking about player payroll here. We're talking about a pittance by comparison. I mean, people in front offices mostly don't make that much money.

It's a tough gig. In fact, there was a thread this week, Sam Schultz, who was a former A's employee and other teams and was on this podcast. And is a friend of mine, I should disclose. Yeah, yeah. We're positive. Yeah, it appeared on this podcast some time ago.

She had a whole thread about just like since getting out of baseball, as a number of front office people have like how much better her life has been like in terms of work-life balance and and earning and stress and hours worked and everything like it's not a uncommon story i don't think you you have to really make some sacrifices if you want to work in baseball. And a lot of people do, and they find it rewarding in other ways. But it's not like you're doing that to get rich or something. So owners who, even in that area, they want other teams' hands to be tied. It's just, it's sort

of pathetic if you feel like you can't even compete in that area. You need just your front office. The size of that has to be constrained. RJ Anderson wrote for CBS Sports maybe a couple months ago about how some front office staffers have at least discussed the idea of perhaps trying to unionize. There are all sorts of obstacles to that happening, but this is the kind of thing that might push them to do that or make them have those conversations because it's already a pretty precarious job and vocation and occupation. And now it's like owners hoping to limit that. It just feels like an overreach, too, kind of to say, I mean, teams, you know, like you have to have the same number of, let's say player roster spots available to teams, right? Like you can't have one team has 25 players

and one team has 40. We used to have that in September, right? But they, they kind of did away with that. And it's a lot different though, when you're talking about how many scouts you can have or how many player development people you can have that just it feels like or how many whatever cameras you can buy or data you can pay for that just seems like we're we're taking things too far if we actually have to ensure some sort of level playing field there not that it it will ever be level, even if you have the same number of people. Some will have better people than others or better processes set up. But yeah, that's an area where even the cheap teams, at least some of them, managed to differentiate themselves by saying, like Rob Arthur and I several years ago wrote an article for FiveThirtyEight that I think was headlined like stat heads are the best bargains in baseball or something.

We basically made the point that, you know, hiring front office analysts like it correlated with performing a lot better. And you don't have to pay those people as much as you have to pay players. And now even like the relative bargains, even if that's not as much of a bargain as it was several years ago, if we're saying even those people, it's just a drop in the bucket in terms of how much we're spending on a team. Even there, we have to hold the line. Like, come on. Come on. Come on. Can I tell you something that has become an intrusive thought for me? an intrusive thought for me.

And I want to clarify before I say this, that I know that the owner that is depicted in Moneyball was Stephen Schott, not John Fisher. So like, it's not Fisher. The previous majorly A's owner. Yeah. I did not know that it's in the movie.

It's Bobby Kotick of Activision Blizzard. I forgot that. Yeah. Oh man. How Blizzard. I forgot that. Yeah. Oh, man. How appropriate, I guess. I didn't. Look, I don't know a lot about video games, as we have established. But I know enough for that to be a fact that is rolling around my brain.

That fact is living rent-free in my noggin. Yeah, it got public funding for the real estate in your brain. It did. It did. I, wow, Ben. Wow, wow, Ben, Ben, Ben. Wow, yeah. Gosh, thank you for reminding me.

I didn't know. Bouncing around my brain too. But yeah, oh man. I've been thinking about Moneyball too. I had not been thinking about that. But, you know. Have you been thinking about it in a way that actually involves words

and not just random sounds? Sort of. I was thinking about it because did you see this new legislation introduced by some California representatives that they called the Moneyball Act, which is intended to address the antitrust exemption that MLB has.

And, you know, politicians are always taking a run at this thing, and it's been tilting at windmills, and nothing has really happened. But this would be, this is in response to the A's decamping from Oakland the way that they are, and it would require the owners of any professional baseball club seeking to relocate to compensate the state and local authorities they move away from. And look, I'm sure that like previous attempts to challenge the antitrust exemption, this one will probably also go nowhere. But the fact that they called it the Moneyball Act was interesting because this week, I think, is actually the 20th anniversary of Moneyball, the book. I believe it's this Saturday, June 17th. It was definitely June 2003, but I believe it's this Saturday. And I've seen some

interviews with Michael Lewis, a time to the 20th anniversary. I thought about seeing if you would want to come on this podcast, but I almost felt like so many people are asking him to talk about it because of the anniversary. I didn't want to pile on, but like in the wake of all of this happening at the same time, it's like an interesting time for the 20th anniversary to happen when it comes to assessing the impact and legacy of that book, right? I mean, I don't think it's fair to hold things against the book that are happening 20 years later. And again, it's a different ownership group and everything.

But it's sort of a similar ownership group in the way that they've handled things there, although this one is actually leaving. handled things there, although this one is actually leaving. But coming to it now with the frame of, yeah, I guess we always knew that it was an integral part of the story that the A's, they didn't have the resources and they weren't willing to spend the resources. And baseball and the economics of baseball were different in 2002, 2003 than they are in 2023. But still, a lot of the impulse to embrace sabermetrics and try to get an edge there was because of either inability or unwillingness to spend on players, right? And that was the whole story, the 50 feet of crap quote and the, well, we can't replace Jason Giambi with Jason Giambi. We have to go get

Scott Hatterberg or we have to find some underpriced, undervalued commodity here on the market. And it was always kind of integrally tied to cheapness, right? I mean, not necessarily for the people at the forefront of that. They may not even have been thinking of it in those terms, but the drive on the ownership level. And I think that in the wake of Moneyball, I heard Michael Lewis say, like Billy Bean at the time didn't think anyone in baseball was going to read the book, but owners read it, right? And so the fact that the ideas in that book spread would have happened anyway, I think, on some sort of timeline, and obviously was already happening, right? I mean, Michael Lewis didn't discover sabermetrics. I mean, this had been going on in some circles for decades,

and Baseball Perspectives had been around for several years at that point. But this was a mainstream look at the topic that obviously had a huge impact and that it's just the best-selling baseball book and it became a popular movie and everyone knows moneyball and the term moneyball has been exported to all sorts of different industries right and so the ideas in there were pretty influential and like lewis said it was because even if uh the rank and file baseball people weren't reading the book when it first came out and were maybe even misconstruing it based on things that they'd heard about it, owners were reading it. Hey, I don't have an executive like Billy Bean, and my team could be run this way, and I could save some money, and I could go get players who were good without paying as much for those players, right? And so they were driving that. And people who are interested in sabermetrics like us, that's not part of the appeal.

It's not like I'm interested in the science of baseball and learning more about baseball because I want teams to pay players less or anything. It's just that that was kind of a byproduct of that that came from people who were more steeped in finance reading this and thinking, oh, baseball could be run like a business. We could run this more efficiently. If I don't have a money ball front office, then I should and I could. And so many people were attracted to work in baseball because of that book, right? So many people read Moneyball and thought, oh, this is an outlet for me. I love baseball and here's a way for me to have a place in baseball and I could put my skills to use. Again, I don't think it's because they were thinking, I don't want to pay

Jason Giambi market value. It's because they were thinking, I don't want to pay Jason Giambi market value. It's because they thought like, oh, we could discover some secrets about baseball and some hidden truths and we could find some overlooked gems and it'll be fun and intellectually stimulating. But you could sort of sell yourself to an owner like, hey, I could save you some money here. So it's just because this anniversary is coinciding with the A's getting out of town and being the owners from Major League, it does kind of remind you like, oh, the initiative for this, not for Bill James and maybe not for Billy Bean, but for owners often who were hiring people to run their teams this way, it was tied very tightly to not wanting to spend a whole lot and being cheap. And then there was this whole explosion of analysts

because it turned out that you got great return on investment and now some teams have so many analysts that some super cheap owners are now like, let's limit the analysts. Because it used to be that you could go get one quant or one R&D person and you might have more than other teams did. But now teams will have dozens of those people. And I think there's a diminishing return at a certain point. You know, it's not like having an infinite number of front office employees would continue to make you better.

At some point, you have to sort of streamline things and have people work together. make you better at some point. You have to sort of streamline things and have people work together. But it is, I don't know if it's ironic or it's fitting or it's curious or what, but the fact that this anniversary is coming just as the A's are escaping from Oakland and ditching Oakland, it's, well, it was remarkable at least. And now I have remarked on it. There's like this fork in the road, right? It's like, you know, I don't want any player to be underpaid, but if you are correctly identifying players who you know to be good and other teams don't, and then you reinvest the savings, quote unquote, that you got signing those guys into the roster, well, okay. You know, then you're still spending money. Which wasn't an option, quote-unquote, in Oakland, but, like, you think about a team like, you know, the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Dodgers, right?

You find guys, you assemble a roster of dudes. Some of them are going to be on league minimum contracts because you know they're good or you know you can fix them and other teams don't, and then you take that money and you pay mookie bets and it's like okay okay great but that wasn't the fork that all teams took some went down cheapskate lane you can come up with a sassier you know a quippier name for it than that. I'm all worked up today, Ben. Yeah. I'm all, I'm all, I'm all worked up.

Part of the reason why that book was so successful and that story appealed to people is that Michael Lewis is extremely talented and he is a great storyteller. And I was surprised, actually, I heard him say on Rob Nyer's podcast that he met Billy Bean in spring training in 2002. And the book came out in June of 2003. So he very much just did parachute in there and turned around that entire book in a year, basically, maybe less when he had to turn it in. And it had such an impact. And I haven't gone back and reread it recently, not very recently at least, but it remains extremely readable. The last time I picked it up, I had a hard time putting it down even though I knew everything in there. And obviously, like the things that if you go back and read it, like the things the A's front office was doing and the things they were talking about and the innovations and everything were extremely basic and rudimentary by today's standards. You read that book and it's like on base percentage is valuable and certain types of draft picks and everything.

It's very simplistic stuff compared to the cutting edge things that front offices are working on now. But I think it's still a good introduction to a more objective analysis about baseball or sabermetrics and the history of studying sabermetrics because michaelis did get into that he didn't pretend that billy bean had discovered these things himself he acknowledged the legacy that existed there so it was such a good introduction to those ideas and concepts and probably still is even even though it's outmoded in some ways when it comes to the specifics now. And obviously, like, there was a focus and a narrative of that book. And, you know, you focus on Chad Bradford and Scott Hatterberg, and you don't talk about Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson and Miguel Tejada. You know, like, obviously, it's a...

Who pitched for the A's that year? Yeah. Time, it's lost to the Sands. Chad Bradford, I think, pitched all of their innings that year. Yeah, all of them, every single one. Yeah. So you tell a story, you frame it around certain characters who sort of serve your story. It was not an untrue story in many respects, but, you know, it was, you pick your focus as a storyteller, obviously, so you could critique it on those grounds. But it's a really good book. And Michael Lewis,

he's found himself with his finger on the pulse many times, as he does now with FTX. He just is at the center of these things, and he finds the right stories to tell and the right characters to frame them around. And that was a big part of why that book was so successful that he had Billy Bean as a compelling character at the heart of that story. It's interesting now that, you know, Billy Bean is still with the A's now. He doesn't get a lot of flack for what's going on with them. And I don't know how much he deserves or doesn't. Like he supposedly is no longer involved with baseball operations, right? Like I guess it was before this season. He, you know, was at least nominally the head of the baseball operations department for a while with David

Force kind of running the day to day. And then Billy Bean just sort of handed over everything to Forrest. And now he is an advisor or assistant or whatever to Fisher, which could implicate him in this whole thing or could not. Who knows? He has an ownership stake in the team, but not a big one. So whether he has been all for this whole endeavor that the A's have done or whether he's been along for the ride and has opposed it internally, I have no idea. But he becomes the golden boy after Moneyball, and I don't know if he's tarnished at all by his continued association with the team as it exits Oakland the way that it is. But he's obviously still a part, not nearly as visible a part of that franchise as he used to be day to day, but still associated with it, still very tightly involved with it. So I wonder if we ask the question, how different would baseball be if baseball were different? If we ask that about Moneyball, how different would baseball be if

Moneyball hadn't been written? I don't know. I think a lot of those trends, we were on the path to those already, and it would have continued without Moneyball. I think it certainly springboarded and accelerated a lot of that stuff. So the timeline would have been different. And maybe here in 2023, we would not be where we are. Maybe we'd be where we were a few years ago if there hadn't been that accelerant sprayed on the process by Moneyball, which just concentrated so much attention, both the book and the movie. But a lot of that was happening as it was and would have happened anyway. I think with or without the book, it just would not have been a nationally known story the same way that it is.

I think that it certainly accelerated the trend would probably be the way that that it is. I think that it certainly accelerated the trend would probably be the way that I put it. I think you're right that like for as complicated as analytics and the data sources and the sort of expertise one needs to really wrangle them as complicated as that has gotten now, like it, you know, we were taking baby steps at that point, but we were taking them. So, I am confident we would have gotten there eventually, but I do think that it sort of, you know, threw gasoline on the fire, as it were. the sports executive that, again, probably also would have happened to some extent. But obviously, like turning Billy Bean into the face of this bestseller and then having him be played by Brad Pitt, like that was probably a big part of fans sort of seeing themselves as the front office and thinking of things from the GM's perspective, which

again, like fantasy sports has played a big part in that. And I think that would have happened anyway. But, you know, breaking things down that way, I think it opened doors for people in baseball. Now, a lot of those doors, it turned out they were white guys going through them, but white guys with different backgrounds, I guess, at least initially. And more recently, maybe people with, at least initially. And more recently, maybe people with, at least in some cases, more diverse backgrounds, but people who were not

baseball people, baseball lifers, obviously found a place in the game. And maybe we are people like that, even though we're not working for a baseball team. So a lot of writers and media people were inspired by that book and that story to tell stories like that or to be a part of those stories and people who otherwise would have gone into finance or some other quantitative field. switched over or they were in baseball and then moved over to that field. But people saw an application for those skills in baseball that previously had not existed really, right? Which is that I can use these skills and these skills will be valued and in demand. And I can do something that I find intellectually engaging and I can pair it with baseball and I can find a way to pair those things, which has been very rewarding for a lot of people. And I think that's good. So there's good and bad that's come of the book. And it, it's still like, whenever you look at a list of like the bestselling baseball books now,

you know, whatever the, the new release might briefly leapfrog, but you just see Moneyball, leapfrog, but you just see Moneyball never falls far down the list of Amazon baseball bestsellers. And as soon as the new book buzz goes away from whatever the hot release of the day is, Moneyball just inexorably will climb back up to the top of that list even 20 years later. So its legacy is in some ways probably exaggerated, but in other ways pretty extraordinary that it has had the impact that it had. You know, a story about the Oakland A's in 2002 who won 20 games in a row but didn't win a World Series or anything. And yet it resonated the way that it did and had the impact that it had. Yeah. So the A's no longer the Oakland A's as of quite soon.

I have serious doubts now that it's almost a reality about the Las Vegas A's for reasons that we have discussed, like just whether this is a good idea. You know, you could say that Rob Manfred is doing his job for one of his bosses, John Fisher, in helping orchestrate this and get the public kickbacks. But I don't know that we won't just find ourselves in this situation again several years down the road because, I mean, Ray Ratto for Defector, he already wrote a speculative piece from the future about the Las Vegas A's looking for a new home and starting relocation talks. It's not hard to envision that.

Even though the Golden Knights just won a Stanley Cup, it's just, it's going to be different and it's going to be much more challenging. And a 30,000 seat park, if you draw 30,000 every day, fine, that's viable. But if you can never draw more than that, it's going to be really, really tough. Like, that's a low capacity and the media market there and the competition from other sports teams and the idea that they're just going to consistently pack the park in the middle of summer with tourists, with visitors coming to Las Vegas and deciding, I want to go to a Las Vegas A's game. I don't know. And especially because the team, when it moves, presumably will still be bad. And where will they even play?

Will they be playing in Reno? Will they be playing in a minor league ballpark for a while? When you would be getting that new ballpark love and new team love and people coming to check you out and you won't be able to fully capitalize on that because you won't have your ballpark ready. And you won't be able to fully capitalize on that because you won't have your ballpark ready. I just don't know how you could look at that situation and say long term that you're really better set up to thrive as a franchise there in Las Vegas than you are in Oakland. But that is probably not going to be John Fisher's problem, I imagine, long term because he'll get out. And I don't know why you would want to be in business with that ownership group, seeing

how they've treated Oakland, why you would say, yeah, we want to give those people a good deal and have them come to our city. You got to imagine that they'll be looking for a way out of there, whether it's moving the team again or just offloading that team in the not too distant future. But it wouldn't be a bad thing if they just decided to sell because I can't imagine any ownership group could be worse, although dangerous to say that. Yeah, I mean, like, the monkey paw curls.

Well, that was an uplifting discussion about baseball. Started with the most disappointing teams and then we talked about the Oakland A's. So that doesn't really... And the Las Vegas A's. And Rob Manfred. And Rob Manfred. Yeah.

Well, we can end with a pass blast, which will also be... Oh, no. It's for 2020. Yeah. Oh, God. Maybe we should have just skipped the 2020 Pass Blast just to memory hold that year. I mean, most of that year is memory hold because of trauma.

Jeez Louise. Well, here is our 2020 Pass Blast from David Lewis, architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston, who writes, teams and fans get creative without baseball during the pandemic. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted most aspects of life, professional baseball included. The MLB season was shortened to just 60 games and the minor league season was canceled outright. In the wake of these changes, fans and teams alike, seeking a sense of normality and perhaps trying to recoup some financial losses, had to try to get creative in order to keep baseball in their lives.

As reported by the Associated Press on May 30, 2020, one such example came from Rhode Island, where the AAA Pawtucket Red Sox served ballpark food to fans at their home stadium, albeit without a game being played. The event, called Dining on the Diamond, allowed fans to visit the ballpark in a COVID-safe environment. Picnic tables were aligned on the infield a minimum of 14 feet apart. Diners were required to wear masks except for when they were eating, and all attendees had to pass a self-screening symptom check before entering. Furthermore, reservations were required and all food had to be ordered and paid for in advance. The night featured two seatings with a half-hour break in between so that each table

could be properly disinfected. With five people per table, up to 200 people could attend each night, far from the 10,000-plus McCoy Stadium could fit at full capacity. Fans jumped at the opportunity to be back in the ballpark in any way they could selling out reservations for the initial two nights in less than an hour and a half showing enough demand that the pa socks stretch the event to a third night for a baseball romantic this is the best restaurant in the world said team president charles steinberg reflecting on fan interest pa socks vice president dan ray continued i think people are just excited to come out to a ballpark. They're excited to socialize under the correct conditions. This is an opportunity for us to do something a little bit unique, a little bit different, but something special. Steinberg was excited about what the event might mean for the team in the future. You're happy to take a bow and let baseball resume its center stage, but you may have created something that you just may be able to do when the team's on the road. It has a chance to become a positive innovation in baseball that arises from this difficult time. And David concludes, unfortunately for the dedicated fans who showed up to the stadium when no game was being played, baseball would never return to Pawtucket. The Red Sox AAA affiliate was moved to Worcester, Massachusetts for the beginning of the 2021 season.

Oh, I thought we were going to end on a slightly less downcast note, but no. So we ended on another note of another team moving. I guess it was appropriate at least. Oh, Ben, that year. Like, you know, and like we, you and I, we both, we both escaped relatively unscathed, you know, in the grand scheme. Yes. But even just thinking back to it makes me. Yeah.

Oh, my God. It was so terrible. What a terrible. Anyway, everybody just treat each other while it's best we can do right now. I mean, it's not, but it is an important thing to do right now. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Okay. Maybe I'll find some silly emails for next time. Yeah, can we please? Change the mood. Send us some wacky hypotheticals that we can discuss on our next episode.

Well, after we recorded, Nevada's governor, Joe Lombardo, did sign the bill for $380 million in public funding for the construction of Las Vegas ballpark. That was the last governmental hurdle that the A's had to clear. And now they just have to formally apply to MLB for relocation and get approved by the other owners, which seems like it's just a formality. Condolences to all the A's fans out there, including one who messaged me on Twitter earlier and said, hey, Ben, you didn't ask me, but not sure what to do with this outrage. Been listening to Effectively Wild for years and been a fan of the A's for much longer. With them leaving, I was wondering whether this was the end of MLB for me, and I was undecided. Manfred's comments, of all things, put me over the edge today, and I'm gonna let this hobby go. I understand that MLB is just another corporation, but the amount of disdain this person has for baseball, its fans, its history, its players is just too much. I don't need another over-advertised, dehumanized, corporate, immoral product in my life.

F. Rob Manfred and MLB, love your show and your whole cast through the years. Sorry to lose you, Jack, if you do cut MLB out of your life and if this podcast goes with it. There must be many A's fans these days questioning their baseball fandom. I would certainly understand if they needed a breather or a permanent break. But I hope that some fans who are fed up with this whole saga are able to retain some attachment to baseball as long as it continues to give them pleasure and enrich their lives, whether that's rooting for another team or rooting for players, studying the history, talking to other fans. It's a really great game, but there are times when the people in power, the people in charge make it much

harder to enjoy. I didn't even see while we were recording Manfred's comments on Pride Nights. He talked about leaving the decision about whether to hold Pride Nights up to the teams instead of making it a league-wide standardized thing. Of course, every team except the Rangers has decided to have one. But Manfred also said, we have told teams in terms of actual uniforms, hats, bases, that we don't think putting logos on them is a good idea just because of the desire to protect players, not putting them in a position of doing something that may make them uncomfortable because of their personal views. Putting aside the fact that MLB does encourage or mandate logos and patches for other events and causes, Armed Forces Day caps,

for instance, not encouraging players to wear these things or even actively discouraging teams from doing so even if they want to. Well, as Pete Campbell said, not great, Bob. As Meg tweeted earlier, I know it isn't new, just being laid bare in starker terms, but the A's relocating, the bungling of pride, the talk of capping baseball ops, contracting the minors, it all feels like the game shrinking to only serve the few while leaving the rest of us behind. Before I finish, one much lighter bit of news. We've talked a couple times recently about warm-up throws between innings, what purpose, if any, they serve from an entertainment standpoint or from a game preparation standpoint. One thing I don't think we discussed is any cost that comes with them. Well, here's one.

This is, I'm sure, not unique, but unusual. Angels shortstop Zach Netto went on the injured list with a left oblique strain, which he sustained on Wednesday while making a warmup throw in the first inning. Doesn't sound like a serious strain, but yes, a young guy, a great fielder, can hurt himself making a routine warmup throw

between innings. Also, if you're looking for more me elsewhere, I was on Rob Nyer's podcast, The Sabercast, with Sam Miller and Theo Fightmaster, former Sonoma Stompers GM. We talked about the only rules it has to work and reminisced a bit. It's the most recent episode. I'll put it on the show page. And also, for those of you who are into video games or just supporting my other endeavors, I'm now doing a regular video game podcast again. It's on the Ring Reversed feed. I'm co-hosting it with Jessica Clemens, who is also from Seattle originally and sort of a Mariners fan like Meg.

We just did our first episode together on Diablo 4 and Gollum and the Lord of the Rings games and Street Fighter and the future of fighting games and new trailer announcements. It's a pretty packed episode. Again, you can find it on the Ring Revers verse feed where i often pop up talking about other topics too i will link to that on the show page as well and you can support this podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild we did get some signups after our most recent episode when we talked about the challenges facing sports media not that that discussion was intended to be a funding drive, but thanks to those of you who responded that way.

The following five listeners have signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay virtually ad-free, and also get themselves access to some perks. Michael Fazio, Alexander Stedman, Ziad Yagi, Daniel Howland, and Daniel. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. I highly recommend joining me in the group. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams and expedited email answers and merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and so much more. Check out patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site and everyone can contact us via email at podcast at Fangraphs.com. Send us your questions and comments. You can 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 find Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod and on Reddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance.

We'll be back with one more show before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Effectively wild, effectively styled, distilled over chilled beets, effectively mild. Follow the plot, Sam's in his garage bed with a reverb at 20 in his menage. And after 2000 episodes, we got more inside jokes than Carrot Top's prop box before he got yoked. Lab League, Banging Ski, Planted Trees and Trampolines, Minor League Free Agent Drafts, Stat Blasts and Pass Blasts, Minimum Inning, Hall of Fame Donation Shaming,

Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward, The Rot Slog to Rigor Mortis, Answer a couple of emails, Do a Play Index, Call Ned Garver, Eddie Robinson, Johnny O'Brien, Ron Teasley, Slaw, DeRigor Mortis Answer a couple of emails Do a play index Call Ned Garver Eddie Robinson Johnny O'Brien Ron Teasley

Charlie Maxwell Bobby Shantz Kiki Hernandez Shit his pants Dilly I'ma make a swear Too late? Fuck it, no one cares

Chris Davis 247 Tattoos are the new mnemonics Scott Boris nautical analogies Are tragedies Keep them honest Vroom vroom Here's your primer I'm Beef Boys Baseball's in Roger Angel and Super Pretzels Bipolaris nautical analogies are tragedies. Keep them honest. Vroom, vroom. Here's your primer.

I'm Beef Boys, Baseball's End, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels. Williams asked to deal in Mike Trout hypotheticals. Waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction.