Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2065: Four Shalt Thou Not Count

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Ronald Acuña Jr.’s historic strikeout-rate reduction is as impressive as his historic power-speed combination, the Acuña-Mookie Betts NL MVP race, the enduring defensive excellence of the late Brooks Robinson, Josh Hader’s insistence on one-inning outings and the degree to which players should dictate their own usage, the […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2065 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. How are you? Doing all right. I have a question for you. This might sound galaxy-brained a bit, but I don't think it is necessarily. Which is the more impressive aspect of Ronald Acuna Jr.'s season? Is it the power-speed split, which we've talked about and which has been the centerpiece of the praise that he has received, right? Everyone is focusing on the fact that he's the first 40-70 player.

Yes. He's the first 40-60 player, for that matter. He's the first 40- 50 player, in fact. Can't even say he joined the club. He inaugurated the club. He created the club. He opened the club. It is not a soft launch. It is open. And when we talked about this on a previous Stat Blast, he had the highest Bill James power speed number ever, which recognized the fact that he has so many of each of those stats. But is that more impressive than the fact that he has cut his strikeout rate so dramatically this season? That has not gotten nearly the same attention.

And it's kind of hard to make it sound as sexy as 40-70. I mean, 41 homers, 70s still at bases. Like, he picked up the bag Ricky Henderson style when he stole his 70th. And good for him. He's entitled. He can just walk away with all the bags. He stole them all. And he's the first player to steal 70s since Jacoby Ellsbury.

Remember him? Blast from the past in 2009. Ellsbury. Remember him blast from the past in 2009? But it's really, I think, maybe more impressive to me that he has an 11.3% strikeout rate, which among the 134 qualified batters this season is the fifth lowest. And the guys below him are mostly pretty powerless. Right. Not entirely. Obviously, Luisa Reyes has by far the lowest strikeout rate. And then you have Jeff McNeil and you have Stephen Kwan.

Right. Those are the kinds of hitters you think of as low strikeout guys. Jose Ramirez, who's also amazing and good at everything. He has the third lowest strikeout rate. And then Caber Ruiz is fifth. And then it's Ronald Acuna Jr. And not only has he made this incredible contact relative to the league, but relative to himself, he has more than halved his strikeout rate. Like the power and the speed was to some extent

predictable. I'm not saying that makes it less impressive. It maybe makes it less surprising. Sure. that makes it less impressive. It maybe makes it less surprising. But he's been a 40-40 threat before, right? Right. He almost did that in 2019. I predicted jokingly on my going out on a limb predictions segment when we did that pod before the season started that he might go 50-50, right?

Right. So it was not unforeseeable that he would have a lot of homers and a lot of steals. Maybe not quite this many of the steals. But still, you sort of saw that coming. But I had no inkling that he would be going from a strikeout rate of roughly 24 percent, which he had identical 23.6 percent strikeout rates in each of the past two seasons, which is basically like league average at this point. He struck out almost 30 percent of the time in the shortened 2020 season, but he's consistently been roughly like a quarter of his plate appearances strikeout guy, which is not atypical for a power hitter.

And then to go to 11.3% this season, I don't know how that happened. Happened? Yeah. Like to me, that is maybe more impressive or at least it's it's more shocking to me. It's really hard to not be attracted to the shiny, shiny numbers. Right. Yeah. But it is if you think about what might sustain his production and value over time, at some point the speed will fade for him, right? Because that happens for guys. They get less speedy because they get older

and their backs bother them and their knees hurt and all sorts of stuff. But when you think about what might continue to sustain him and also not that we're worried about Ronald Acuna Jr. He's a phenomenal player. He's an incredible player. But, like, the ability to sort of hone the strikeout piece, we'll have to see how sustainable that ends up being, right? Like, is he able to, even if it's not 11%, is he able to turn the page, really, on how he approaches the zone?

Who knows? But, like, it's pretty spectacular, Ben, you know? Yeah. You know, he's just making so much more contact than he has in prior years. It is interesting, like, he's making more in-zone contact. He's also just making more contact generally, because he's also making more out-of-zone contact. It's really something. It's really something, Ben. It was the second largest strikeout rate drop ever from one year to the next after Mark Belanger from 1968 to 1969. And that was going from the year of the pitcher to less so year of the pitcher.

So there was this, you know, other factor that was driving that. The strike zone changed, the mound height changed. Yeah, the strike zone changed, the mound height changed. So that, I think, is less impressive, relatively speaking, than Acuna doing what he's doing. And also to have cut down on his strikeout rate this dramatically, to have one of the largest strikeout rate drops ever, and to have not lost anything offensively, to be better offensively, to be hitting for more power than he did before, or at least more than he did last season, when he was perhaps not fully healthy. But you usually think of

it's sort of an either-or, like something's gotta give. If you're gonna make more contact, probably you're gonna have to sacrifice a little in the power department, and he really has not done that. And so he's batting 336. I mean, to go along with a near 600 slugging percentage, like that's ridiculous.

And yeah, Petriello wrote about how he's doing it. And it's not like he's dramatically improved his plate discipline, which was not bad before. But it's not like he suddenly stopped swinging. It's, as you said, like he's making just a lot more contact. A lot of contact. Yeah. In the zone and also outside of the zone. Yeah.

And that's maybe the more impressive part of it to me is that sometimes when you swing it more pitches and you make contact with more pitches outside the zone, that can be kind of counterproductive. That can be kind of a bad thing. Yeah, it can be weak contact. Exactly. You're like rolling over to an infielder kind of a thing. Yeah, you're better off swinging and missing at those pitches or not swinging at them at all, obviously. swinging and missing at those pitches or not swinging at them at all, obviously. But you'd rather swing through them than hit one weekly, but he's not hitting them weekly. And in fact, if anything, he's underperforming, right? Like his expected weighted on base is almost 40 points

higher than his actual. That must be one of the biggest gaps in baseball. So he is underperforming his quality of contact, if anything. It's really extraordinary. So yeah, it's not like going to get nearly as much attention, obviously. You know, if he wins the MVP awards, which I expect he probably will, then people are going to be citing the power-speed combo much more than the strikeout rate drop, because doing less of something, I think, is going to be a lot less noticeable than doing more of something. Doing more good things, probably more noticeable than doing fewer bad things. So the strikeouts he's not getting now, you can't really see them. They're just, they're not there. They're not in the stat column.

Some of them are turning into hits instead, whereas the steals and the homers are extremely obvious and salient and attention getting. But I'm just saying like, don't sleep on the strikeout rate reduction, because that is maybe as unprecedented as going 40-70. And he's not getting any boost from rules changes when it comes to the strikeout rate reduction the way he is with the steals. If I had only looked at his zone profile, I would not have expected that he had improved on, say, his barrel rate or his hard hit rate or his max exit velo, which is the highest it's ever been. But he has done all of those things, Ben. He's done all of those things. Those numbers are all higher than they were last year. They're not at his peak, but his peak for some of that was in 2020.

So what does that even matter, Ben? Does that count? It counts some, but we're looking at 555 batted ball events as opposed to literally 100. So it's just so impressive. His season has just been so impressive. And I imagine that if you were looking at the offensive performance of sort of any individual member of the Atlanta Braves, like some of this is likely that like there's just really no, there's nowhere to hide in that lineup as a pitcher. But he's batting leadoff. You know, it's just like a 170 WRC plus, Ben. It's a 170 WRC plus. WRC plus, Ben. It's a 170 WRC plus. If I could ask for one thing, it would be that the, I wish that the tone around this MVP conversation were more celebratory because people are very prickly about it. Jay Jaffe wrote about sort of the Mookie Betts of it all. Cause like, you know, we should talk about Mookie Betts' year. And he was noting that, you know, the versatility that Betts has brought to that Dodgers team is impressive. And boy, did that make Atlanta fans angry, Ben. It made them very frustrated. And I get that.

Acuna is your guy. And I imagine he is going to win MVP. I think that that seems like the most likely outcome to me. But there's a couple of really good seasons. We should feel celebratory. But I'm here to see your excitement at the decline in strikeout rate because it really is something, you know? It's really something, Ben. And I'll be so curious to see sort of how sticky those improvements are year to year for him. Because if this is the new Acuna

where he's only striking out like 11% of the time, I would feel a little comfortable saying that maybe this isn't his last MVP season. You know, I feel kind of comfortable saying that anyway because I don't know if you know this, Ben, but he's pretty good at baseball.

But it's really something. It's something. With the MVP race, which I care less about more and more. More and more, I care less and less about the MVP

and just generally single season awards races because, again, I would rather just focus on everyone who's having a good season and the different everyone who's having a good season and the different ways that they have a good season as opposed to just saying this guy's a little bit better than that guy

and just having 30 people or whatever it is in the BBWA pronounce that one is better than the other. There's no pressure on any of the rest of us to decide that one is better than the other. I guess these are just fun debates to have sometimes, but they're both great. And I don't think you could go wrong with either choice. They're both very deserving. for a couple reasons. One is that probably he just had such a hot start to the season, right? So I think he was sort of the presumptive favorite for that award for much of the season.

And then Mookie just poured it on and was so great. Not that Acuna has really slowed down much, but there was a period where Mookie was kind of coming from behind after the conventional wisdom of, oh, Acuna's got this thing locked up and that's sort of settled in. Yeah. And then it's just the way that he's gotten there, which

if you look at the wars, Acuna is slightly behind Betts, right, according to Fangrafts and Baseball Reference, by such a small margin that you don't really have to read that much into it. But that suggests that at worst it should be kind of a dead heat and neck and neck. But Betts is not a 40-70 guy. In fact, he's not even a 40-20 guy. He's sitting on 39 homers as we speak and 14 steals. And the way that he's gotten to his value, which if anything is perhaps slightly superior, is he's walked a little more than Acuna, which again, it tends to go under the radar. And he's been better at defense, right? Which historically Betts has been better at defense.

And not only is he generally a superior outfielder, but also he has taken one for the team and played middle infield, which, I mean, he wanted to do that also. But he's been playing out of position sometimes, and he's really helped. Like, that has added value to the Dodgers, who were desperately in need of a shortstop when Betts stepped in to do that and was adequate in that role. And so he's having a very unusual season playing the array of positions that he's played and mostly playing them quite well. So you add it all up and like offensively, they have essentially the same WRC plus 170 to 169. Like there's barely any difference there whatsoever. And I guess Acuna has a little bit more playing time, which counts, right? 155 games, 723 played appearances versus 148 games and 679 played appearances.

Not huge gaps, but we're parsing small differences here. But you just, you don't have the same selling point i guess like muki's sort of sexiest like here's the special thing that he did that no one else does is he played all these positions he played outfield and he played infield and he played shortstop whereas akunya, you know, he's the 40-70 guy. He's having the best power speed season ever. And I think that is just much more attention getting, right? So I don't know how it will shake out, but I think the perception at least is that Acuna will win this thing. And maybe he will, and it's fine if he does. But yeah, we shouldn't be talking about Mookie Betts a lot less than we're talking about Ronald Acuna.

But I guess I'm part of the problem because I started the episode by talking about, is the thing that we're all talking about with Ronald Acuna not even the thing that we should be talking about with him? We should be talking about him even more. We should be talking about this other thing that he's doing. He is, by the way, he has like the fifth biggest WOoba minus ex-Woba gap. Yeah. Or I guess the other way around, right? Right. The fifth biggest underperformance if I set even a minimum of 200 plate appearances at Baseball Savant, which gives me many, many more guys than qualified hitters.

So yeah, he stands out in that regard too. So I don't have an NL MVP vote, but I can talk about how I would think about this. than the defensive case. Not that the defensive piece of it doesn't matter, but we just have, I think, greater confidence in the precision of measurement on the offensive side of things. So I think that's fine for people to prioritize. If people don't find the versatility piece of bets as compelling, but I do think it's important context to his case

in much the same way that when we talk about Schwarber's season, like the fact that he is playing an outfield position that he shouldn't be because they don't really have a choice in Philly, like that is something to know about his season as we contextualize it and think about like what value he brought to the Phillies, right? And like Betts is a good defender. I think that it's fine to look at sort of his infield defensive metrics and be not skeptical of them, but aware of sort of the flukiness that can result in the size of inning samples that we're dealing with there. But when you watch him, you're not like, oh, he's a butcher. You know, he's doing fine out there. So there's that piece of it. I think you're right that it's hard to go wrong here i think it's really fun that like

the way that they are each constructing their mvp case has some commonality and that they're both having really superlative offensive seasons but also has fun and interesting divergence where you look at what you know akunia has done on the base paths and it's like, wow, that's really incredible. And you look at what Beth has done in terms of how he has been able to be not just a stop gap, but like a competent defensive player at a time when his team has needed

him. Like that's pretty cool. I don't know. It's just like, they're, they're very fun and I think compelling cases. And so I don't know. I don't think you, like you said,

I don't think you can go wrong here. And I don't think that acknowledging the great season that one is having is meant to sort of ding the other. Like they're in, from a war perspective, like a dead heat. And I'm going to keep saying over and over again, like, please don't get fussed by like tenths of wins when it's this close like that is not that is well within sort of the error bars of

war as a stat so like everyone i know that people have this idea in their mind probably not the people who listen to this podcast but it seems like there's this perception that we, the war people, which like, we should have named it something else because we sound so militaristic, you know, we sound like we're very aggressive. But that we are like, well, you know, it's clear that Betts should win MVP and Acuna shouldn't because his war is higher. Like, I don't know, I don't know if anyone was ever that dogmatic about war or refused to acknowledge the Arab bars, but if they did, let us step into this new era of acknowledging the fudge that is here. There's some fudge factor to this stat, right? And that's fine. I think it does its job, but we don't want to imply a degree of precision that isn't there because that's silly. And we like being silly, but not in this way. Here we like to be humble, you know? We like to be not self-serious because it would be ridiculous. best ben we're the coolest kids um no but i do i do think that like it is a really important thing for everyone in this conversation to keep in mind because i do think that you know there are times when if it's a if it's a two or three win gap like that's that's meaningful but if it's you know

as we're recording on thursday acuna is at eight wins even by our estimation of war, and Betts is at 8.3. Like, that's a distinction without a difference as far as I'm concerned. Freddie Freeman's at 7.7, by the way. Is he really? Way to go for Freddie Freeman. You know, you hike those pants up so tall and good things happen, I guess. Yep. So speaking of defensive ratings, I did just want to say one thing on that subject because Brooks Robinson died earlier this week at 86. And I don't think either of us had a particularly profound personal experience of Brooks Robinson, right? No.

Because our lives post-date his playing career. We're not Orioles fans. So there are probably better remembrances out there from people who actually remember him and have seen him play as opposed to just highlights. But what everyone really raved about was, of course, the fact that he was reputed to be just the nicest guy ever, basically. People will always say, oh, he was one of the good guys.

That's a common baseball saying, I guess, not just baseball, but people really said it and emphasized it about him. And then also his glove, which was so good that it overshadowed the fact that for some time he was quite an impressive offensive player too. But he's a deserving legend and Hall of Famer, largely on the strength of his defense, which I think can be hard to appreciate. Our pal Steve Goldman wrote something for Baseball Perspectives about how with baseball and many other things, if it happened in the past, not the immediate past, but the somewhat more distant past, then it's really hard to appreciate it

after the fact because you just didn't get to see it. Now, obviously, he played during a time when games were televised. And so we have some highlights. There's a six-minute montage at MLB.com of some of his plays at third base, which I will link to. But it's still not quite the same as watching him day in and day out and getting to see the nuances of how someone plays that position. So it's hard to appreciate in retrospect. the highest ever fielding runs total of any one career if you go by total zone, which is what Baseball Reference uses up until recent years when we've had more precise, more granular metrics. So he has 293 total zone runs career, which sounds a little less, I guess, you know, 293 total zone runs.

He has the most total zone runs. That's how you want to be remembered. Like, you know, maybe the fact that he has 16 gold gloves sounds better or just getting to watch some of those plays is better. But this is one case where the defensive reputation totally matches the stats, the best stats that we have and possibly can have, which is nice because sometimes you look back at players who had a great defensive reputation and the stats don't really support that. And so you don't know for sure, were they overrating that guy or are the stats failing to account for something that he was doing that we

can't pick up on with less precise metrics or it could be some combination of both. But the reputation doesn't always match what we can tell. And with him, it totally, totally matches. And I guess that's true with most of the guys at the top of the list, Brooks Robinson, Andrew Jones, Mark Belanger, another mention of him, a Brooks Robinson teammate. Yeah, who was that? Yeah, and Ozzie Smith, of course, right? So generally, the stats match you would want to see at the top of that leaderboard that you would see some guys with sterling defensive reputations. But the most impressive thing to me, statistically at least, is that, again, he won 16 consecutive

gold gloves. And we know that gold gloves aren't always and certainly weren't always that well deserved. That it would go by reputation, that it would depend somewhat on whether you were a good hitter, just whether you were a star overall. And then sometimes you would get a reputation as a great defensive player, which maybe was deserved initially, but then wasn't so deserved later on. But people didn't really adjust their priors. They just sort of penciled in that same name again, because you're just used to handing it to that guy every year. So you would think that if Brooke Robinson won 16 gold gloves, so he won his first in deserving in 1960 at age 23, that he was still the best and the most deserving 15 years later, when you tend to think of defensive skills

eroding by that point in a player's career. And it just isn't the case for him. Like it seems, at least based on the statistical record, that he was every bit as deserving at 38 as he was in 23. If you look at the fielding runs leaders, according to Total Zone, in 1960, Brooks Robinson led the majors with 17. And if you look at the same leaderboard in 1975, Brooks Robinson led with 19. So both times bookending his career, basically his period as a gold glove winner, he was that good all that entire time, which is kind of amazing. Incredible. Yeah. Yeah. You can find some other good old defenders, but sometimes, like Mike Schmidt, I think, was the oldest National League third baseman to win a gold glove, and he was a very good fielder during his career, too, but you look at the year he won his last gold glove, 86, that

was his age 36 season, and total zone has him at zero at exactly average at third. And he was also zero the year before that too. Now he was plus 10 the year after that. So you can build in some uncertainty and volatility with these stats, of course, but you know, age 35, age 36, the stats said he was exactly average as a defender, and he was still winning a gold glove in 86 when he had a great all-around season and won the MVP award, his third. And that, you might think, okay, that was perhaps kind of a reputation award. And they just kind of gave it to him because they were used to giving him awards, whereas Brooks Robertson seems to have been just as deserving at the end as he was at the start.

So, yeah, his reputation, granted, he played a ton of innings. He had, I think, the fourth most defensive innings played of anyone in history. And total zone runs is a counting stat, or it is if you're still adding to your above average total. But that just kind of amazed me. Even though he's reputed to be the best and statistically the best, I expected when I looked at his latter day seasons there that you might see some slippage.

Slippage. Yeah. And nope, not really. No. He was just superlative the entire time, basically. I think that we do a weird thing mentally when it comes to defensive metrics. And I'm probably guilty of this to some extent also where, you know, I think in the rush to—and here I've just spent some time telling everyone, don't think that war is overly precise. Everyone relax, right?

But I think that in the rush to sort of acknowledge the limitations of the stats that we have, there can be kind of an overcorrection. All of the concern about gold gloves being awarded to guys who were really gold bats, you know, or awards being given out to guys who had deserved defensive reputations, but ones that maybe didn't account for the realities of their play as they aged. Like, I think all of that is true. And there are some head scratchers, you know, you go back and look at some gold gloves and you're like, really, is that guy good at that point in his career? But I think there can be a bit of overcorrection too, where I don't want to say that like the eye test is perfect, but we tend to, you tend to be able to watch a guy field and be like that guy's good and and be right about it you know and maybe not maybe not to the degree of confidence that we had previously and maybe you know bias did sneak in and maybe we should have like grappled with Derek Jeter earlier in his career than we did. Like, you know, that stuff all exists. But like the really superlative defenders, the true standouts,

like I think that we actually are pretty good at knowing that when we see it. Yeah. And maybe not in any given year and maybe not every time, but like over the course of a career, like I don't know, man. I think we have a good sense of this stuff

sometimes it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to measure it and I think that we do learn more about the contours of good defense and like what is really good actually really good defense and what is say good recovery from misplays right like we learn about that stuff and it's good that we try to interrogate it and as the the data gets better we do i think start to to round the rough edges of a stat like war down because we have better defensive metrics informing it but like it's okay for us to be like yeah man that guy was really good and and for you and i it's super helpful to have the defensive metrics for a guy like robinson whose career we didn't have the good luck to observe in real time right um you know we're looking at highlights and like you know ken burns right but it is i don't know

man like we can we know some stuff we can we can observe things with our human eyes. Yeah. It's like the Bill James old line about how a good stat should just confirm what you already thought 80% of the time or so and surprise you 20% of the time. Yeah, if it doesn't add anything to the eye test, then it's not really adding anything to our knowledge necessarily, unless we're not watching any games, I guess, to begin with. But it should surprise us. Sometimes it should enlighten us, illuminate what we're watching, and sometimes you can be deceived. But yeah, for the most part. for the most part. But of course, there are fielders who they're just so smooth and reliable and dependable that you just don't notice that they may not get to as many balls, right? Or they just make so many spectacular plays that that distracts you from the fact that they weren't in

great position to begin with. And that's why they had to make a spectacular play that would have looked routine for someone else. But yeah, even though we're not scouts, you watch enough games and you have some sense of the sport, you should be able to define something just with our little eyes and our fallible judgments. Yeah. I think it's about putting the data we have in its proper perspective and acknowledging that observation is going to be fallible both what you're actually seeing the regularity with which you're seeing it the angles you have you know all that stuff but it's still valuable data even if it has it's prone to to error but like you know we mismeasure stuff too so it's not like there's no error on the other side i don't know i was just thinking about that because people you're not the first person

i've seen express like wow he really was that good and it's like yeah yeah man yep yeah one other thing i wanted to ask you about so the padres won a game in extra innings so oh my god our long national nightmare is over. Yep. So they're now off the leaderboard entirely. It's funny. All they needed to do was win one, and they got themselves completely off the list of most extra inning losses without a win. That's a season-long storyline that they just wiped away with one win.

Granted, they're still 1-12 in extra inning games. That's not good. It's not good, but it's not, you know, catastrophic. Yeah, I guess they'd still be on the leaderboard if you said worst winning percentages

in extra innings as opposed to just teams that have never won in extra innings. So the 69 Expos, they're still supreme at the top of that

leaderboard of winless teams with the most losses and extras. But I want to ask you about a game before the game when they finally won in extra innings, because this was another game that turned out to be a one-run loss for the Padres, right? And it led to some discussion of where players' responsibilities lie when it comes to usage and where our sympathies should lie when it comes to players trying to dictate their own usage because Josh Hader, of course, has been a one-inning guy

for quite some time now, at least in the regular season. I know he had a more than one-inning outing last year in the playoffs. I guess in October he will make exceptions. But for the most part, he is very strictly a one inning guy, generally a ninth inning guy. He's going to get three outs for you, and he does that very well. However, he's not going to deviate from that formula, which is odd because when he came up, he deviated very often from that formula. And he was a very valuable bullpen arm because he would pitch multiple innings and he would come in in different innings and Craig Council could just shift him around. And you had a deeper

Brewers bullpen and you had Devin Williams and anything, and you could have other people in sort of the set closer getting saves role and Hader could just be your fireman. And he got a lot of attention for doing that. But then he flipped entirely to never doing that and being very set on never doing that, partly because he felt like it cost him in arbitrationration that there was a year where the arbitrator sided with the Brewers number and Hader said he thought it was because he didn't get as many saves because of the way he was being used and arbitration rewarding saves, etc. So now he is just your typical closer, very rigid usage. And so there was a game on Monday where the Padres were trying to hold a slim lead, and it was the eighth inning. Robert Suarez started the eighth, got in a little trouble, and with two outs, Gabe Kapler, Giants manager, sent up Michael Conforto, left-handed hitter, as a pinch hitter with the bases loaded against Suarez right-handed reliever and

Hader could have come in at that point obviously would have been the better matchup if he was ready to face Conforto than Suarez and instead Suarez stayed in the game and Conforto singled and knocked in two runs and the Padres lost and Hader never actually got into that game. He did pitch a score sending in the extra inning win, I think the ninth. Anyway, after that game, people were questioning why he didn't pitch, why he didn't come in in that situation. He reiterated that he doesn't like to do that. And Bob Melvin, Padres manager, he doesn't like to do that. And Bob Melvin, Padre's manager,

didn't exactly throw him under the bus, but clearly, I think, expressed his displeasure. I can play a short clip of that. You asked Suarez for four outs. Yeah. Hader could have been that guy against the lefty there. Is that just him going three outs? It's what we're doing right now. Yeah.

And why is that? It's because of the way we've handled it here. Is there any discussion with them? Is there any thought? We talked to them some, yeah. That would seem to kind of run counter to the I mean, you were saving them earlier in the season

for later in the year, and here we are now and it's obviously getting very late. That's just the way it happened tonight. Basically, Melvin was very tight- the year, and here we are now, and it's obviously getting very late. That's just the way it happened tonight. Basically, Melvin was very tight-lipped and just said, you know, that's the way we do things here. You know, he all but said, like, our hands are tied. You know, like, we'd like to have had Hayter in that situation, but we can't use him in that situation

because he does not want to be used in that situation. So that led to some condemnation from people who were frustrated that you couldn't put Hader in in that situation. It led to some defenses of Hader from people were saying, hey, this is a labor issue and he's about to be a free agent and he hasn't been used in that way before and therefore he shouldn't be expected to be used in that way at this time and jeopardize his free agent earnings, etc. We should also note that the Padres were technically still in the race, right? They had not been eliminated from the playoffs. In fact, as we record, they still have it, I guess, technically. They're still clinging to a little sliver of life there. They've been the hottest team in baseball over the past

couple of weeks. It's just a little too late. But at that time, they at least were technically, mathematically still in it. And so I think that led to perhaps more people being upset about it because, hey, you know, he said it's the situation that we were at when he was asked whether he would make himself available or why he hasn't. And the situation technically was that they're still in it. He asked sort of rhetorically, are we in the playoff race? And technically they were, right? Although not plausibly, perhaps. Anyway, what do you make of that? Should fans be frustrated?

Should they say, hater's got to make himself available in that situation? Where does the line lie when it comes to what is a player responsible for? What can a team impose on a player when it comes to what is a player responsible for? What can a team impose on a player when it comes to usage? I think about this a couple of ways. I mean, it's hard to know what his reaction to that moment would have been if they were a game up in the wildcard standings or a game behind in the wildcard standings. You game behind in the wildcard standings you know it's possible that he would have said yeah we got it we're in this thing we got to go you know and

it's possible he still would have said you know i we're this is the way that i have been deployed this year and for the last couple and it's you know it's important that I like stick to that routine, especially understanding that his usage in the postseason is likely to have some variation to its regular season shape based on need. You know, we can't know what he would have said in that moment. I don't think we can assume it would have been different, but I don't know that we can assume that it would have been the same. I mean, I think that there is a difference between it being technically true that they were not eliminated from playoff contention and meaningfully true that they haven't been eliminated from playoff contention. I mean, like as things currently stand, remind me, what day did this kerfuffle? This was Monday. Kerfuffle. God, what a great word kerfuffle is.

Yeah, it's a good one. Like, it's just got really good. It's like onomatopoetically sound in some way. It's got nice mouthfeel. So, on Monday, we had their postseason odds at zero. They were at zero. And granted, you know, they have not been technically eliminated, but we at Fangraphs viewed them as effectively eliminated as we are recording on Thursday. No, granted, there's been, you know, wins and losses in between now and then, but they are

three and a half out of the final wild card and they have three teams ahead of them because Miami and Chicago are tied although Miami holds the tiebreaker there so anyway the odds of them seeing the postseason seemed very low then and they seem quite low now Hader has been like I don't think you can look at Josh Hater's season and say that he hasn't been an important and meaningful contributor to a team that has had its share of problems you know he's been worth almost two wins as a reliever he is a as of today he is a 116 era you know 235 fip he is you know if you look at the reliever leaderboards at fangraphs like he is the sixth most valuable reliever in baseball,

and he is the only free agent of the five guys he's looking up at. Josh Hader has been, in his career, again, using our version of war, worth 11.5 wins. And so pick a number, Ben, for me to use in my dollar per war calculation, will you please? Do you want to do seven to be conservative in terms of his value generated? Yeah, I mean, I guess it's probably higher than seven. Yeah, eight or nine probably is, I guess, what people would usually cite.

If we go with eight, you know, he's generated $92 million of value over the course of his career now all that has not redounded to the san diego padres but he has made a little over 37 million you know it isn't a deviation from his usage like i don't know if i would feel differently about it if he had been used in a multi-inning role throughout the course of the season and then on that night it was like nah nah, no thanks. Although I will say, as people have said, like he hasn't been asked to do that before. Right. I think the Padres probably would have liked him to do that before.

It's just that he has said he really does not want to do that. Or he's, I don't know if he's outright refused. Like he mentioned that they've had conversations about this before. So the fact that he hasn't done it before is not necessarily because the team didn't want him to. Disagreement, yeah. Yeah, he has decided that he does not want to be and perhaps will not be used that way. I guess what I would say about this is, like, I understand why it might rankle his teammates, right? Like, I understand why another player

in the Padres' clubhouse might feel a way about this, but I don't feel entitled to that perspective because I'm not one of his teammates. And I think that the idea that he is asserting some amount of control over how he is deployed at a point in his career where he does not yet have any control over where he works, I'm fine with. Right. Because when Josh Hader hits free agency this fall, this fall, we're in the fall when he hits free agency, you know, come November, he's going to be able to take all kinds of things into consideration, right? He's going to be able to have conversations with front offices about like how they envision him being used. And

then he's going to be able to pick. And, you know, at that point, he will have gotten his big payday. And I don't know, man, like maybe at that point, he'll be more open to a quote unquote riskier usage. But I think that he hasn't had that ability to really control his fate. You know, this guy's been traded. Like, and so I think that him, even if it reads as a little impolitic or maybe too honest about where his team's fate really is, I think ultimately it's probably fine even if it feels impolitic. and we should probably, in general, want players to sort of assert whatever control they have.

I don't think this is an unreasonable exercise of him saying, like, no, you know, they're not going to make the postseason. Now, do he and Robert Suarez need to square anything? Because Robert Suarez had to pitch, but Robert Suarez has been paid, And I think the other thing, we are viewing this solely within the lens of haters' decision as it pertains to himself. But getting paid in free agency is good for the player first, but it also does have a benefit to the broader player population when guys are paid well. And I think he's probably right to think that he is the most attractive reliever on the market and that he might do quite well for himself. And if I'm 29 and I've never, you know, gotten my big check, I probably would be keen to cash it, especially if my

understanding of at least part of my career earnings is that they've been held back by the way that a team deployed me, then using that deployment against me when I didn't have any control over it. Like, I think I'd be, I'd probably be quick to assert what authority I had in that moment, you know, so. Yeah. And to be fair, he didn't say like, no, he didn't do like a Derrick Bell operation shutdown. Like, I'm not pitching because I'm about to be a free agent. He said it has nothing to do with the offseason. It's the now.

It's the health. It's the making it through the entire season. 162 games is not an easy task to do. You see guys work overloads. They get injured. And he's talked before about being concerned about having to go up and down, you know, having to warm up and then sit down and then warm up and come in or come in and then sit down during half of the inning and

then come back again, right? I don't know if we have enough data to exactly quantify how much that increases injury risk, but I would buy that it does to some extent. I guess it comes down to there's no set line because generally you sign a contract with a team and then you're obligated to play for that team. And for the most part, you don't get to dictate exactly the way you're used. You don't get to say, you have to bat me third in the lineup every day.

I want to bat second. I want to bat cleanup. I want to bat cleanup. And you don't get to say necessarily, I get to start opening day. I'm the ace. You don't get to say, I'm the seventh inning guy. I'm the eighth inning guy. I'm the ninth inning guy. Historically, that hasn't been the case.

If you're a star, then you can kind of leverage your stardom maybe to advocate for you being at a particular position or at a particular lineup spot or having a particular bullpen role or whatever it is. But ultimately, it's been understood that the manager kind of gets to do what he wants with you within reason once you sign up to play for that team. you within reason once you sign up to play for that team. And otherwise, I guess you can just say, I don't want to play. And then they can say, well, we don't want to pay you. And that can go that way. But otherwise, it's always kind of a negotiation in which historically, at least, most players have only had so much say. So I think there is certainly a line where in the past, especially if a manager was overusing and abusing a player, then I would be even more sympathetic to their plight than I am in this case. Because, you know, asking a guy to get four outs instead of three outs every now and then, that's not like irresponsible you know yeah that's not like out of the out of line totally what what the the standard is you know that's

not like unsafe i mean yeah haters complete reluctance or refusal to do this i think is that's the more unusual thing than the fact that they might from time to time ask him to do that. Right. So, so I don't, I'm not sitting here like, you know, Oh,

Bob Melvin wants to blow out this guy's arm and he's using it every day. And he's, you know, when we talk, when we talk about pitchers in college and some of the pitch counts that seem out of control and we're talking, that's a different conversation than, than this,

you know, if you were getting thrown out there every every outing for two innings that would be a little bit different but and i'm not even trying to be like goose gossage like old school back in my day you know we had two innings outings every time even now in days of reduced usage it's it's still quite common to have your your best reliever come in at a high leverage moment to get four outs from time to time. So I guess I understand from Hayter's perspective why he might not want to do that and if he just feels more comfortable, but it's the age old debate about like guys who just want to come in and save situations versus guys who are a little more flexible.

And as you noted, he's still been one of the most valuable relievers by war this season. But I guess if you went by, say, leverage index when entering the game, he's a little lower. He's only 26th in that metric, despite the fact that inning per inning, batter per batter, he might be the best reliever in baseball, right? So ideally, you probably would want him to have a higher starting leverage index. You would want him to be the guy that you could bring in. of the Orioles, who has had many multi-inning outings this year, almost 10 times he's pitched more than three outs at least. Now, Hader might say, and what happened to him? He got hurt, right? So is there a connection there? I don't know. Possibly. Devin Williams, Hader's old teammate with the Brewers, he's got the second highest starting leverage index. So I think you could say that as good and as valuable as he's been, maybe he potentially could have been a bit more valuable if he had been more receptive to being used at those times. so dead set on that. I suppose you could try to force him to do that, but that might lead to even more

clubhouse discord. And then would he pitch as well if he was doing it sort of against his will or if it was disrupting this routine that he's used to? And if he said coming into the season, hey, like, it's either you use me like this or I'm

walking or I don't know, you know, I don't know if it was an ultimatum. But if they were on the same page about this, however reluctantly on the Padres part coming into the year, then I guess it's harder to fault them for, you know, fault him for it now. Like if they did all agree on that at some point. But I saw some people suggest like, hey, from his perspective, you know, he's going to get paid this winter one way or another. Whether he got four outs in that game or three or zero, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. I do think it probably hurts his earning potential a little bit, right? Like obviously for him to be healthy is the most important thing when it comes to maximizing his earnings. But I'm sure that there are teams that would be less interested in him or would want to pay him a little less than they would otherwise

because he's so insistent on this rigid usage, unless he said, hey, once I get paid, you can use me however you want. I don't really mean that. If he said, you know, know this, if you're going to sign me, I'm only going to pitch the ninth and that's it. Then I think teams would still want him because he's still really good. But I think they would probably want him a little less and potentially pay him a little less than they would if he were as good or almost as good, but was willing to be used. Willing to be more flexible.

Yeah. So you could say it'll cost him to some degree too, and then teams can factor that into their valuation of him. And look, I think that I totally agree with you that what he was being asked to do was not suggestive of indifference to him, to me. I don open to greater flexibility in terms of my usage once I've signed this deal. He is probably limiting his earning potential at least a little bit. But I think that that's his prerogative, right? If that's really important to him him if he does truly feel like i am my best self i'm the player i want to be when i'm used this way and a team is like okay well if you're going to be used that way that's this number and if you're going to be used in a way that has more built-in flexibility it's this number and he's comfortable with the lower number

like that is a choice he gets to make right and he's never really been in a position to do that before i don't know it seemed it seemed like kind of i don't want to say it's much ado about nothing but like i think that him being like well i haven't been used this way previously i don't like to be used that way. And you were kind of fine with it until now. It was like a reasonable thing to be like, so we're going to, it's going to stay the same. And it's reasonable for Bob Melvin to be like, what the can you go get one out?

You know, like it just, I can see both sides of this. You know, I don't think that anyone here is acting like egregiously. I, my instinct is is generally going to be to side with the player when they are sort of like i said exercising the the one little bit of control that they might have in a career that to this point has largely been marked by them not having control but i don't think that you know the padres like you know brought shame on themselves or anything like that i think it's just these are these are the kinds of tense conversations you have when a guy's a free agent playing for a team whose season

just hasn't gone the way they want it to you know and sometimes that's gonna to be uncomfy. And I don't know whether his teammates are frustrated by this. Sure. Some Padres fans are and maybe Bob Melvin is. I don't know whether teammates have complained about it either secretly or publicly. And I think that if I were a Padres fan, I would wish that my team's incredible bullpen weapon could be used a little more flexibly. And if I were Bob Melvin, I would certainly who's getting paid even less than Josh Hader, I might be frustrated that, well, okay, if you're saying I'm only going to pitch three outs and it's got to be in the ninth inning every time the rest of us have to pick up the slack, like we still have to pitch all the other innings. Someone's got to pitch this inning, so it's going to be us instead. And there's something to the idea of being a team player, which I don't mean like

sacrifice your body and your career and your earnings potential, but maybe be willing to be used a little bit outside of your comfort zone from time to time if it's not in a irresponsible way, right? I mean, we all have that in our jobs, you know, where we're making a lot less than Josh Hader, even pre free agency. I mean, you know, I prefer to know when I'm writing and to know that, OK, I'm going to be writing on this day and that day and only within certain hours. And I've sort of set up my career so that I mostly can do that. But when there's some gigantic news or something unexpected happens, I know that, okay, like, you know, from time to time, I'm going to be called upon to do something at a time when I wasn't expecting to do it or right on deadline or whatever. And that's fine, you know, because I understand, you know, when you hire me, like,

you're expecting that I will be willing to do that from time to time, and I am. And so to draw the line just as starkly as he has is somewhat unusual, and I can understand being frustrated by it. I mean, he can do that, and I guess if teams are willing or eager to employ him knowing that and under those circumstances, then they will and it'll work out. But there's kind of a cost to that. I don't know if it's emblematic of like Padre's clubhouse morale issues on the whole or not, because he was this way before this season.

But I could certainly understand why I'd just want to be like, hey, you know, take one for the team here. By take one for the team, I mean get one out right before the ninth. You know, is that asking that much really? So I guess we're navigating these things as like pitcher usage changes dramatically. We were talking about George Kirby recently, a different situation, but not entirely dissimilar. different situation, but not entirely dissimilar. It's like, as the expectations of pitchers go down and down and down when it comes to how many innings and on how many days of rest, etc.,

then I think because there's been such a swift change when it comes to the standard usage, that people who played in earlier eras or grew up watching baseball in earlier eras are probably like, what? Like, you won't get four outs? What are you talking about? Like, that's not much to ask, you know? Things have gone in that direction. So I guess, if anything, we'll probably get more and more players feeling this way. So it's kind of complicated.

I can sort of see both sides. It's kind of complicated. I can sort of see both sides. As you said, I am very sympathetic to people who are frustrated by this as well, because I don't think it's that unreasonable to ask someone to like, we know he can do it. He did it earlier in his career. And I think as valuable as he is now, he was probably more valuable when he could be used at different times and was pitching 70 to 80 innings instead of 50 to 60. So teams will just have to decide if they value him a little less relative to how good he is on an inning per inning basis, because those innings are always the same inning and the same number of innings. You know, the real original sin here was saying, like, I didn't get enough saves, so we should pay him less. Who knows how differently his career looks if that isn't an argument put forth in arbitration. The real sin here happened years ago, Ben. Years ago. Yeah, you know, it's just these are the stories and the problems and the bits of friction

that I think emerge in a season like this. problems and the bits of friction that I think emerge in a season like this. And that isn't to say that, like, when a team is winning, there isn't any, like, labor strafe. But, you know, like, I do imagine that the vibe would be different if they were, you know, in a playoff spot. And who knows? Like I said, we can't know that he would behave any differently than he did. He might have said the exact same thing. He was asked that and he said, who knows? Like I said, it could have been different in a lot of ways. Right. Yeah. So, like, we just don't know, but it's just, gosh, I imagine everyone in San Diego is so ready to close, like, turn the page on this season, even though, as we have discussed,

they're going to be running back a lot of that group. Like, I bet they are so ready to be done. I guess the difference is like, you know, generally, I think we're for player rights and empowerment and generally are siding with the labor over the management when it comes to these things. But this is not a situation where I'm like, rah, rah, cheerleading Josh Hader here, like, get yours, you know? I mean, OK, he can. Like, I'm not saying this is like the worst thing ever to happen or that he should be roundly condemned or anything.

But I'm also not like necessarily in his corner. Like, hell yeah. You know, like you dictate your usage here. Like, I do think that there's some expectation that, you know, you got to be a little bit flexible, but we'll see how teams value him this winter and whether he changes after that. Again, there are extremes that we have seen on field, but like in general, players want to play more and teams want their good players to play more. And it makes sense for both sides for that to be true because you do make more money as a player if you establish a

track record of excellence and you establish that over a lot of plate appearances or a lot of innings, right? There isn't necessarily any need for conflict between those goals. They can be very much rowing in the same direction. But I think that we're probably not done, to your point, seeing conflicts around how these guys are deployed. And there are going to be players who just try to assert any control over a process that feels very out of their control. Because in general, starters and relievers don't have much say over how they're deployed. And they get told, here's what we think the optimal usage

of our rotation and bullpen is. And if it cuts down on your innings in a way that's going to ding you an arm, well, you know, whatever. So I understand, even if in this particular instance what he was being asked to do strikes me as pretty reasonable. I understand there being a kind of wariness and concern over this stuff on the player side

because they do have so little control. I mean, like fundamentally, they don't have control over who they work for. And so, I do get it. I'm thinking of this from like an editor perspective because that's our experience. It's like if you had a brilliant writer who always turned in clean copy and, you know, made good points and found good topics. But that writer were completely unwilling to change their writing schedule or respond to news in any way. You know, like it's the trade deadline and, you know, a bunch of stuff happens and you say, hey, could you do a reaction to this move? And they say, no, I wasn't planning to write today or I don't like to write that

kind of piece or something, which, you know, that can happen. And I know that when you assign like reactive news stuff, you know, you tend to do it with the full timers, right? Yes. At FanCrafts. And you would still want that writer who does good articles and comes up with good topics and turns in clean copy. But it would be a strike against them.

I guess it would be a little bit of a negative, like, I can't ever call on this person if something unanticipated happens. So I'm not saying that a bullpen is exactly the same as a writing staff, but that's our work experience. And that's, I guess, what kind of the analogous thing would be, you know. And then someone else would have to write that trade reaction instead, right? And then that person would be like, oh, that'd be nice if this person would step up and claim one of these things from time to time, right? So, it's sort of the same dynamic in a lower stakes, lower salary way.

Sure, but the big difference is that, like, you know, with a job description that has understood parameters, everyone who works for us chose to do that. You know, that's the big difference. Like, I mean, that's one of the big differences. Yeah. It should be cool if we were all making that league of minimum money over here. But no, but like that's the fundamental difference. There's an understanding at the beginning that like here's what it means to do this job. And you can choose. Do you want to do that or not? And if you don't, I can't prevent you from going somewhere else where they're fine with you not doing reacts. You know, like that's the difference.

Right. Well, yeah. you not doing reacts, you know, like that's the difference. So, right. Well, yeah. In most bullpens, it's expected that when we call down to the bullpen, you start warming up, right? You're coming in. Sure.

Right. Regardless of when I call. Sure. That sort of comes with the territory typically. But again, you know, he's you can kind of write your own rules to an extent if you're good enough. Like if he was not a good reliever and he said, hey, I'm only coming in in the ninth. Well, you would never want him to come in in the ninth, I guess, because you wouldn't ever want him in high leverage. But, you know,

if he wasn't good, then he would have to make some concessions and or else teams would say, OK, well, take it or leave it. We will leave it because your only value to us is that we can throw you in there, you know, at unanticipated times so that you could soak up some innings or if we don't have someone to fill in, you can go in there. And, you know, it can sometimes be a clubhouse issue if like, if it's 26 guys, 26 rules or whatever, like they all have their own usage and things they will and won't do. But that's always kind of been the case that if you're a star or you're elite at your given job in a sport, then

to some extent you have more leverage. You still have to perhaps play for an employer that you didn't choose, but you could exert your will a little bit when it comes to how you were used. And he's chosen to use that leverage. He has a kind of leverage, not the leverage we were talking about earlier, but different leverage. But I do think that this is one of the places where I think that if there were less necessary antagonism between labor and teams, again, I think that the players have a good reason to be skeptical of the ways that they are deployed. And that doesn't mean that it has to override everything all the time, but like, you know, I think that if, if players could feel more confident that there's great care being exercised with some of the really fundamental aspects of

their careers. I am ready to play in the big leagues. Will I be there on opening day? Will I be used to get an extra year of club control before free agency? It erodes the relationship even, and I don't mean in particular with this, you know, between Hater and the Padres, but like, it erodes the trust in the relationship. It dampens your understanding of the care that you show to one another. And like, this is, I think, kind of a consequence of that. It's a small moment. And again, one I don't think we probably even know about if their season was going better. But this is one of the things that happens when you have historically just had real indifference between clubs in general and players in general in terms of how they view these guys' career and how disposable or not they view them as. And again, I'm not saying that's specific to the Padres or Bob Melvin. I don't think he was asking for anything particularly unreasonable here. But that is a patina on all of this stuff, I think. Yeah. By the way, right after the Padres won their first extra inning game of the season, the Rockies lost their 100th game for the first time in franchise history, which is really surprising, right? That they've never had 100 lost season.

Oh, Ben. Now they have 101 lost season and counting. You're right, but whew. It surprises me. I wonder whether they might have been better off if they had lost 100 at some point instead of being in that mediocrity range where they're never like embarrassingly terrible like would would generally winning more games is a good thing sure yeah i mean i guess the fact that they they haven't a it means they haven't tanked the way that some teams has which is yeah both good in the sense that they haven't had any seasons where they were that bad and maybe bad in the sense that they haven't really had a plan whatsoever for a lot of the time.

And so they've never really, they've been bad, but they haven't necessarily been bad on purpose in a kind of intentional way that would lead to them being better at the end. that would lead to them being better at the end. And if they'd been really, really bad instead of just pretty bad, then maybe that would have kind of driven home the lesson that we better do something different. Maybe this isn't working. You know, even the over-optimistic Rockies perhaps could not have talked themselves into just wait till next year. I don't know.

Anyway, it's surprising because they've been bad a lot and they've never won a division title. I mean, they've been around for 30 years at this point. So you would have thought they probably would have lost 100 games one of those years, but no, never. Not till this year. They found other ways to be embarrassing though. Here's another way in which they've been embarrassing. This is the worst Rockies offense ever. And that's saying something because I don't know if this is a park adjustment issue or partly the course field hangover effect going from high altitude to lower altitude and vice versa, or if it's just that they've been this bad. But according to WRC Plus, the Rockies have never had even a league average

offense. 100 is league average. They've topped out at 97. This year, they're at 76. We talked about Atlanta's offense last time. There's as big a gap between Atlanta and the second ranked offenses, the Dodgers and the Rays, as there is between the Rockies and the second worst offensive team, the White Sox. They're 20th in runs scored despite playing in the best offensive park. The pitching has been bad, but the position players are actually sub-replacement level as a group, the only team that's true of. Anyway, sorry, Rockies fans.

All right, so to close, you had some thoughts on a Rob Manfred interview from this week. He appeared on a podcast. He was on the Marchand and Orand sports media podcast with Andrew Marchand and John Orand from Sports Business Journal, Marchand from the New York Post, and Manfred did a half hour-ish interview. And the idea that there would be like a, you know, in the future, he anticipates there being sort of dedicated streams around gambling. You know, the question was put to him, you know, there have been times when other digital platforms have wanted to do dedicated broadcasts where you could like basically bet through the broadcast in real time so obviously quite heavy in the gambling focus and manfred said that like if there is anything like that it is going to be a separate stream for i think he said the quote serious gambler and i was like

oh boy yeah he didn't say the degenerates or anything like that. No, but I was like, that's a nice euphemism. We think we've struck a balance there where we are getting some of the engagement boost without creating the potential for alienating that family audience. Do you think, though, I know when DAZN had the inside pitch or the highlight show, i think one of their ideas was to have sports gambling within the show um you know within the game so you could gamble right off your screen do you see that uh coming i see that at some point coming as a alternate digital product right i mean you're always going to have that clean broadcast. If we get there to the betting off the screen, it's going to be, you know, like a separate digital feed that the true gambler can opt into. That got a lot of attention, and I had some thoughts on that. And then he had some interesting stuff to say about sort of where he sees the local broadcast model going.

the local broadcast model going you know we this season as everyone knows saw mlb have to take over the bally broadcast for the padres and also the diamondbacks i'm generally not in the habit of like handing it to the commissioner because like i i have my issues with the way that he runs things i do think that he is at his best when he is talking about this stuff like not the gambling set that aside but like when he is i do think that they are trying really hard to figure out what the future of of baseball distribution is going to be and that they are more open to a future where you have sort of direct to consumer options in parallel with traditional cable and as exclusivity deals between teams and their rsns expire trying to broaden who can see what where as the default right like i think that if there is one place where Rob Manfred and the average fan are sort of aligned, it's that, you know, he wants you to have to pay to watch baseball,

but it sounds a lot like he wants you to be able to pay to watch whatever baseball you want, regardless of where you are. And that might come in the form of what we saw with the Diamondbacks and the Padres this year, the form of what we saw with the Diamondbacks and the Padres this year, where you do have to pay to have the local MLB TV access, but you are able to do that, right? You're able to pay however much it is a month or for the season and watch D-backs games on MLB TV, even if you don't have cable, even if you don't have cable because they have digital rights that are in parallel with whatever the sort of cable distribution rights are and he said that he expects there might be sort of temporary dips in revenue around that but that like he expects that within a couple of years it's gonna basically be where it was from in terms of the revenue that teams were getting just directly from their RSNs when all you had was the cable option.

So and, you know, he he did acknowledge that the fragmentation around national games is frustrating. Now, the national games that you moved over to Peacock and Apple, those were previously on ESPN. You now got them split up between Turner, ESPN, Peacock, and Apple. And there's a separate economic transaction in there. I appreciate all those. And we put that additional friction in the system because we felt it was necessary to begin relationships and experiment with these digital partners in order to put us in a position to move forward effectively. His explanation for that was that when they're trying to figure out what is the digital landscape going to look like, they were keen to partner with Apple and keen to partner with Peacock. to sort of vet what are the sort of viable digital partners going to be because it doesn't sound like they have an interest in having everything necessarily go through MLB, right? That they don't want to have to do 30 broadcasts, even though I know they bid for the Bally teams when

they had to roll off of Universal or whatever. So I just found it interesting. I think that they are going to find a way to accomplish two things simultaneously. They will find a good way to separate baseball fans from their money so that they can watch their teams. to keep their cable at least for now and let people do digital sort of direct to consumer and how many services you have to subscribe to, you know, might change over time depending on sort of how some of these deals shake out. So I don't know, like I didn't come away being like that Rob,

he's got everything figured out, but it is, you know, this is a question that should be important to fans for the league to answer in a way that's satisfactory, not only for their ability to watch their favorite team, but also they do need to make money in these deals if we want teams to run payrolls commensurate with our expectations. So I found that part. I don't know.

I don't know if encouraged is quite the right word. And like, I think we should look skeptically at the league when they're like, well, you know, we understand fragmentation was like a necessary evil, but we're be frank about that piece of it. But I do think that like, there needs to be an answer and people's expectation is going to be that they be able to log into MLB TV and even if they have to pay for it to watch their favorite team. And I think that if they can do that in a direct to consumer model, but also allow the cable to exist side by side so that we don't have to all explain to our grandparents how to watch the baseball, that'd be great. So I hope that that ends up being true. And like, I don't know, do you have thoughts on that? And then we can maybe talk about the gambling thing really quick.

Yeah, I think he's been pretty proactive on that issue by necessity, I suppose, because it is kind of, I don't know if it's an existential issue, but you can certainly see why it would be. It could become one. Yeah, it could be, and certainly would change the game if the revenue model changed dramatically. And obviously he's responding to the interests of his bosses, the owners and their bottom lines. But this might be a case where it's not necessarily that he's gotten so much friendlier all of a sudden as opposed to prioritizing revenue.

But this might be a case where those interests align and dovetail a bit. MLB wants to make games accessible so that fans can see them and purchase access to them. And fans want to be able to see them and purchase access to them without restrictions and hopefully with a little less hassle and finding when and where they'll be on. So I think it's an area where maybe we generally want the same things that the commissioner, the owners want, or not all the owners, obviously some of the owners, they own their own RSNs and are making bank on that, which came up on that interview as well. The fact that not all teams are going to be aligned with what they want broadcast wise, and it's going to be tough to get sort of like a,

you know, MLB TV type service that has all the games with no blackouts and no restrictions because of those existing deals and the different incentives in different markets. But, yeah, I'm heartened, I guess, at least that whatever the motivations and reasons, it seems like they're largely on top of that because I do want baseball to remain visible and prominent and accessible. And it seems like so do they, you know, for not all the same sort of reasons. So I agree that that's one of his best subjects that he's able to talk about without angering people and distorting things dramatically and putting his foot in his mouth constantly. it probably helps that even if he is presenting like a very, there is like an, like when he talks about the fragmentation question, because it is irritating to have to be subscribed to like a bunch of

different services to watch every game of a team you care about for him to position it as altruistically as he kind of did. Like we had to vet these partners and he's like, and I acknowledge that there's a separate economic transaction. it's like right rob like people don't like that they have to pay for it again like that's part of the the problem here but there there seems to be less like dissembling on this part when yeah he's talking about the streaming and and and sort of cable and and you know digital stuff because he's not telling you that, like, economics is undecided on the question of public financing of stadiums. So, like, that's nice. You're like, even when I

disagree with you, I at least think that you're telling a good version of the truth, which isn't always true with him. And when it comes to the gambling stuff, generally our position is, okay, if you're into that, go ahead. But we're just not interested and we want less of it in our faces, in our eyes, in our ears. So in that sense, the idea of just roping it off and having it be more of an opt-in thing is appealing in the sense that I could opt out and my broadcast could be clear of that stuff. I guess that also means that you are encouraging or enabling people who are perhaps problem bettors and gamblers and have addicting issues. Then you're like, here you go. Here's the fire hose. Like, just lap this up, you know, and then maybe they're going even deeper into the

rabbit hole if they can just watch the all gambling, all micro betting broadcast. And I don't know whether those things will ever be completely separate, you know, whether there's any way to put the genie back into the bottle when it comes to that stuff more and more being pervasive on baseball broadcasts. Like are the gambling betting partners and companies, are they going to want to completely separate themselves from the broadcast that most people are watching? Probably not, right? And most people, or at least a lot of people, even if they're not like hardcore bettors, they might casually be making bets for fun sometimes. And maybe they wouldn't mind a little bit of that on broadcasts. But in general, I would welcome, I guess, having a separate feed so that it would just not clutter up our screens and commentary. I don't know whether I believe that that will happen or not. I'm skeptical that we will have a pure gambling-free feed and then the all-gambling feed. I feel like we're going to have the some-gambling feed and the all-gambling feed. If it manages to arrest the creep of gambling content into the normal broadcast feed, I guess I'll score that a win. Because you're right.

I want to express negative interest in gambling stuff. It's not even just that I'm indifferent to it. It's like I actively resent its presence. And so the less of it there is, the better from my perspective it is funny because you know he positions this in the interview he's like well you know we see the primary benefit of these partnerships is like fan engagement and you know like there's some economic benefit too and it's like rap come on my guy like it i'm sure that the economic the engagement piece of it is actually something you view as valuable. And I think it probably is a way to get eyeballs on baseball as much as it doesn't appeal to me. But it's like, you want the money too.

Clearly, that's a driving force here. And then he says, but we're a family-friendly product and we want it to stay that way. And it's like, well, mean like uh okay i guess but but like it's everywhere rob like it's everywhere it's you know every other commercial on mlb tv it's on most broadcasts and i know they have some rules around like the frequency with which it can be referenced, but I often feel like they are not following those rules. And that's anecdotal, you know, and again, my tolerance for this stuff is like below the floor. So I'm perhaps overstating the prevalence just because of how annoying I find any of it. Yeah, I'm all for more interest in baseball.

And obviously, gambling and betting is a huge thing for football. And so if there are just genuine baseball fans who want to engage with the sport in that way, or if there are people who would become baseball fans through their engagement in betting, then I would welcome that. I don't know whether the people who would be micro-betting and betting on the outcome of every pitch and watching a dedicated betting feed, I don't know whether those would be baseball fans or whether they would be people who— Right, I think they're gambling fans. Yeah, I think they're gambling fans.

And I don't know that they would be more likely to become baseball fans or develop a love of the sport independent of the fact that I could maybe make money on this or probably lose money on this. But enjoy that activity at least unless and until it becomes a problem. But I just – I don't know what the carryover is. There are certainly I think some people who can be fans of a sport and also enjoy betting on it from time to time in sort of like a healthy, responsible way in moderation. And that's okay. I just, I don't know whether it would cause a increase in interest or love of the sport that would be commensurate with the increase in revenue. with the increase in revenue, right? And revenue can be good for fans too, I guess, in the sense that we want teams to be on good economic standing and for them to be able to pay their players and compete and everything.

But yeah, I don't know that the benefits would be like, suddenly everyone loves baseball, or whether it would just be, we like gambling and this is another outlet for that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I know that when they do studies and investigations into like the prevalence of and both the prevalence of sports betting and also how concentrated it is. I think when studies have been done on like the UK and the rise in sports betting there, like something like 60% of the profits are coming from 5% of the users. And that is suggestive of like a deep addiction to sports betting. And not everyone is like that, you know.

But I do think that like we're kind of, we're a little cavalier with with this stuff and i don't want to be like puritanical but i i do think that you know we've plunged so headlong into this as an industry and i do worry that we're not observing important checkpoints to be like how is this going though for like the people doing it and i think you're right like the people who would watch a dedicated broadcast that wouldn't be watching a team somewhere else like are they really baseball fans or are they gambling fans yeah and like yeah you know that might be a distinction without a meaningful difference to a point for the league and its broadcast partners because, you know, it's not like you have to name five of their albums to watch a game. So if you're watching the broadcast, you know, you're watching the broadcast and they get to serve you ads and they get to make money on your

bets because they're mostly going to make money on your bets. They're mostly going to do that. You're mostly not going to make money on your bets, right? Manfred mentioned sending people from MLB over to talk to people with other leagues and other countries where gambling was legal earlier and they went all in earlier. And a lot of those countries and leagues have walked back a bit or there's been more regulation as they've realized sometimes the disastrous effects of these things. And there are now more rules about like, oh, you can't have players promoting it or we're not going to have these ads on your kits that you wear during games or whatever it is. Right. So some of that there's been a bit of, oh, we opened Pandora's box here and we got to try to close the lid or at least make it closer to closed. So I assume he's aware of those things that have happened and hopefully we'll keep them in mind and act accordingly.

Yeah, hopefully. I hope that that is true. And, you know, it's not like Major League Baseball is alone in this project in the U.S. Like, you know, football's back and boy, you're getting so many, you just get so many ads, Ben. It's just, it's overwhelming how many ads there are during a Sunday of watching football. Wow. Wow. I do. I think it is more. I, again, this is just my anecdotal sort of sense of it, but it does, it feels like more ads during football. So I don't know if there's just like existing capture or what, but yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess on that topic in closing, we should note, because some people have asked us about this, this season, the odds on Apple broadcasts, the InVenue odds, the infamous InVenue odds that we devoted an episode

to last May, episode 1853, where we talked to the CEO of InVenue about the ads that appear on Apple TV Plus broadcasts. And we had some questions that were not in all cases answered to our satisfaction. And Ben Clemens of FanC of fan crafts who also appeared on that episode did his study that showed that those odds didn't work very well he did a follow-up so people have been asking us like are those odds still really weird and wonky and seemingly inaccurate and not as much anymore but they're also not good. Good, yeah. So he looked at 12 games from this season, and he did the same thing he did last year,

which was compare those in-venue odds to just the simplest, dumbest model that he could come up with, which is basically just using the league averages depending on the count. So not even taking into account who the hitter is, who the pitcher is, what the ballpark is, just betting that the league average outcome is what will happen regardless of the specifics, as opposed to the InVenue model, which supposedly is taking, I don't know, dozens, hundreds of factors into this complex mix that will spit out this incredibly precise number. And basically, Ben found that the InvenuOdds are now about as good as his very simplistic model. Maybe like a hair better, but that's about it.

Like whatever they're doing doesn't seem to be helping the odds, but they are much less bad than they were last season because the very obvious oddities have been largely eradicated. So what drew our attention to them initially was that the odds would fairly regularly move the wrong way from pitch to pitch. fairly regularly move the wrong way from pitch to pitch. So when there were odds of the player reaching base, the count would become more favorable to the hitter. And it would say that the odds that the player would reach base would go down somehow, which just seems wrong given everything that we know about baseball. And that would happen quite often. Invenu would say, no, this actually somehow made it worse for the hitter. And the CEO, when we talked to her, defended that and tried to justify it and say that actually that was right. It's not like she copped to, oh, yeah, this is a bug.

This is a problem. We should fix this thing. that that was an issue, but they have dramatically like 10 times fewer of that particular error or result happening this season, which as Ben said, we don't know if they improved or changed the underlying model or whether they just put some kind of conditional thing in there that says like, if this really wrong looking thing happens, then make it look better. Just like default to not wrong. So that has been corrected or greatly curtailed. And then similarly, the just really weird odds where it would predict like super high

chances that someone would reach bases or super low odds that someone would reach base. That has kind of been done away with so that things are now in a more normal range. But it still doesn't seem to be adding any insight or accuracy. It's just kind of taking really the bare minimum that you would expect and none of the That you would expect and none of the specificity that theoretically should enhance those odds. Like if you're taking into account the batter and the pitcher in the ballpark and the weather and whatever else, then that should beat the model that knows none of that whatsoever. None of that. Now it's basically fighting it to a sin still. Right. And, you know, I think that it sort of depends, like, what do you want them to be for, right? Like, what is the purpose of these odds to you? And if it's just, like, a point of curiosity, like, them being closer to league average is something, I guess.

But, like, it doesn't really tell you all that much. If you're wanting those odds to like inform micro betting i would feel like the odds of being well i don't know maybe you just maybe it would be great to bet against that model because you would be smart take loose tons of money if you could bet against those odds yeah yeah but they don't even need like a a company or a model they could right they could just say here are the league average outcomes. And that would be about as good as what they're doing. Yeah.

So it's a weird thing. But they keep getting contracts. I know. They do, right? They have a partnership with NASCAR now. And they are getting tech seed booster money or something from the NBA. Yeah, they've done NBA and NFL stuff. Yeah.

So I don't know. I'm sure a lot of it is just like, look, everyone is interested in gambling and micro betting and it's a buzzword. And so if you say you have this proprietary model and you have some experience in other sports, then probably other people are going to be like, oh, we want in on that without necessarily knowing the specifics or knowing the track record. At some point, though, if actual money is at stake, then it's going to have to be more accurate. If it's not just for fun or for entertainment purposes on a broadcast, but it's actual.

I think they have some sort of sportsbook partnership now, too. If someone's going to be putting money on the line based on that model, then at that point, I think they would really want it to actually have to be pretty good at what it does. So I don't know if they will further improve it at some point. So I guess kudos to them for addressing the most obvious shortcomings of it. and acknowledging that at least to themselves, if not to us on that podcast. But yeah, I don't know. Sometimes my anecdotal impression was that it had gotten better just because I was, I hadn't studied it or anything, but I was just running into fewer that made me just go, that's obviously not what it should be. Sometimes people get tripped up because if

it's a hit probability, then sometimes that should go down as the count becomes more favorable to the hitter. The odds that you draw a walk go up. Right, exactly. So yeah, something good will happen that the odds of that are better, but you might actually be less likely to get a hit. So in fairness to them, it depends on the metric that's being used here. But Ben obviously accounted for that and he's looking at the on-base odds and everything. So, yeah, it's progress, I guess. It's qualified progress and improvement. We never did see that study, did we? No, but we never signed the NDA either. That's true. We did not sign an NDA. We signed

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