Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2086: Eyewash, Greenwash, Sportswash, Tell ’im Wash

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss MLB owners unanimously approving the Athletics’ move to Las Vegas, new time-saving measures slated for 2024, the respective salaries of David Stearns and Craig Counsell, and private flights as a potential perk to entice MLB free agents, then examine an upstart Dubai-based baseball league called Baseball United (55:07) and […]

If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunts your dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben and Meg have to say. Philosophically and pedantically, it's Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2086 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? Viva Las Vegas, I guess. Sorry, Ace fans.

Man, I want to make a fart sound, but... I know it was mostly a formality that the MLB owners were going to approve the Ace move to Las Vegas, which they unanimously did at the owners' meetings this week. That was not seen as a major hurdle among the many hurdles. And there still are some hurdles remaining. There's that teacher-led group that is objecting to the public funding for a ballpark there and some at least remote possibility of a referendum. So it's not a done deal. And obviously, there are just countless questions about where the A's are going to play and whether anyone's going to come see them and support them in Las Vegas. But this makes it feel official, maybe, or people who haven't followed it super closely maybe would have assumed that this was a huge hurdle that had to be cleared. But ultimately, MLB owners usually not going to stand in each other's way

unless someone wants to move a team into their backyard, I suppose. I just am so skeptical of the success that this is going to have in Vegas. I feel like they just assume that we, and by they, I mean MLB owners generally, but John Fisher in particular, just assume that we, I don't want to reference one of my own tweets, but I'm about to do it, like, have no object permanence. Like, we don't remember what has been said about Oakland as a market, what he has said about his own experience of this and how things are just so much harder for him than they are for the fans. And it's like, you're a billionaire. Like, that's just on its face a ridiculous thing to say. And also, like, read the room, have any amount of feel, like, just, you know, pick whatever your favorite way of interpreting. You know, social care is for others. I'm not surprised, I guess. We kind of

knew that this was coming, obviously. And I think that owners in general are pretty keen to defer to one another when they're behaving badly because they want their fellows to kind of like have their backs if they decide to behave badly, right? Like you can't, you know, you can't draw a line in the sand around relocation for the A's if you want to extort your own municipality for, you know, public money to build a ballpark. Like, what are we going to do? Have principles? I'm feeling pretty down about this. I don't know if you can tell. So, it's like, it's not surprising, but it still sucks. And I just feel really bad for folks in Oakland. They deserved a lot better than this. And I think

the sport deserves a lot better than this. And it feels like you're gonna end up with a team in the middle of the desert with a lot of competing distractions around it and like also where are they gonna play after next year yeah question mark i mean like i guess enjoy your triple AAA ballpark? What are you going to do, alternating days with the Giants? Yeah, timeshare with someone. There's no great solution, especially if the team is completely terrible still. So it seems like maybe some owners were gung-ho about it because they just want to get this sorted and settled. Maybe they're pro-expansion. Maybe they want those expansion fees. And so they want to get this out of the way,

even if it leads to problems down the road, right? Just kick the can. Maybe that'll be the next owner's problem. It does seem like there's considerable skepticism even among the owner ranks. Not enough to vote against this. But based on some of the reporting, it seems like people were questioning the presentation that was given here and the viability of Las Vegas as a baseball market. And apparently the numbers that the A's shared to try to persuade other owners were very dependent on tourist revenue. Right. And, man, that just seems like a lot to expect. Just, it's Las Vegas. There's so many other reasons to go there

and to be a tourist and so many other entertainment options. And the nightlife, it's competing directly with going to a baseball game. And there are other sports teams there now too. It's just, it seems like it's gonna have a tough time breaking through more so than the other teams that have moved there of late, especially if the A's still stink when they weather concerns and just who's actually going to go to these games. And is there going to be a ballpark big enough to pack the park if you actually can drum up interest? And so I wonder whether we'll be right back here again, come several years from now, whether we'll be talking about maybe like initially just the curiosity factor, it could get a bit of a boost. But after that long-term, are we just going to be talking about this franchise

withering on the vine and needing to move somewhere else? I wonder if, I don't want to overtax the Vegas metaphor because that's lazy, Ben. It's lazy. But like, is the understanding that he's just going to be a completely different guy once he gets to Las Vegas, right? Suddenly he's going to be a guy who invests in his team and puts a competitive product on the field. Like I know that we are in an era where the quality of the on-field product and revenue have become increasingly

decoupled from one another and if he's gonna get a big pot of money to build a ballpark there like maybe he doesn't care but it just this isn't a person who has seemed at all interested in spending money on his club and there's like you know there's like cheap and good and i don't mean that being cheap is good, but that you can be cheap and size of that staff and what it has what it looks like stacked up against say a team like tampa where they might not be spending a lot of money on payroll but like have an army of people working for them who are trying to make the team better every day. It's just like, what is convincing us that this is going to go super different there? And so what, you're going to have a kind of lousy,

big league roster in the middle of the desert when it's a million degrees? And if you're bored, you can just go play craps? Like, what is the plan here? Yeah. I don't doubt that this could somehow artificially inflate, pump up the franchise value in the short term, and that maybe this is a pump and dump thing for Fisher. His statement on this ended with the sentence, we will continue to work hard to bring home more championships for our fans and our new home in Vegas continue to. I forgot when

that was happening recently. It didn't seem like that was an ongoing effort on their part. But speaking of overtaxing, it doesn't seem like this is something that the other owners have forgotten about how Fisher operates, because very amusingly, they built in sort of an enormous flip tax here, apparently, where if Fisher attempts to sell the team shortly after moving it to Las Vegas, then there will be a huge penalty that the other owners will share in. So it seems like they fully expected him to just get there and say, OK, my job is done here. Let me cash in. And maybe he still will.

But if he does, then the owners, other owners will get a cut of this, which maybe they're hoping for. Maybe that's why they approved this. Yes, give us the nice cut of the revenue that you get after moving your team. Yeah, it's all, you know, and like, I wouldn't be surprised by that.

I don't think you have to end up being like particularly galaxy brained to believe that to be true. But, you know, just none of it surprised by that. I don't think you have to end up being like particularly galaxy brained to believe that to be true. But, you know, just none of it puts the emphasis on either building a competitive roster that is going to challenge for championships or delight its fans. And like that, I know isn't the purpose for a lot of these folks, but it is the purpose that the league should prioritize. And having a perpetual loser in an expensive ballpark that a municipality paid for. Like that's not a story that improves with time.

You know, maybe I'll be wrong. Maybe it'll be a new day for Oakland Athletics baseball. Vegas Athletics, are they still going to be the athletics? Well, that's the question. They have to work that out with the city of Oakland, which has said you don't get to take that name with you unless, right, there might be some conditions imposed there. So I'm sure they will want to to maintain some sort of at least brand continuity here. But it's not a guarantee that they'll be able to remain the athletics. It's just like this is a team that had like Ricky Henderson and Catfish Hunter and Eckersley.

And like, there's so many dudes that are like important to the sport. They're not just important to Bay Area baseball, although they are important to that too. And it's like, you know, there's just no respect for any of that. The whole thing feels very cynical to me because it is. It feels lousy. And and it's like we do remember things like i i understand that as a like society we are perhaps not great with like historical literacy one could make that argument and i think make it convincingly but it's like have you been to a ballpark if there is a guy on the opposing team who did one annoying thing 15 years ago.

He's going to get booed every time he comes up to the plate. They think we're going to forget this? Like, what are we doing? Anyway, I'm grumpy. I can tell. I get it, though. Yeah, Joe Sheehan wrote a great piece this week in his newsletter, which is open to all now, I believe. And I will link to it on his website, joshian.com. repeated and people's expressions of gratitude and approval for Seidler and basically said,

what do you want people to say about you after you die? Do you want them to say nice things about how you lived your life? Or do you want them to say the things that they would say about John Fisher if he were to die today, which would be different things, right? And maybe it doesn't matter to you because you're dead at that point and you don't get to hear what people would say about you anyway, unless, you know, sometimes there's news that you're not doing so well, or even maybe there's a fake report that you met your demise. And then sometimes there's an outpouring of appreciation before the person actually dies

and they actually get to hear that, get to preview what it would be like. Or sometimes people will have like celebration of life type things before they die so that they're like, hey, I don't get to attend my funeral in spirit exactly. So I want to see what this would be like in advance. But you could say, as Seidler said, you can't take it with you, referring to his money. I guess you could say that you can't take the praise with you either.

But which legacy would you want? If when you go, which you got to go at some point, then what legacy do you want to leave behind? then what legacy do you want to leave behind? Is it that you've slightly increased your franchise value or something at the expense of everyone just hating you and feeling like you ruined their attachment to the sport? I just, I don't get it. I mean, you know, you could marvel endlessly at why people who are already just extraordinarily wealthy will do anything to increase that wealth even further. And I know that with a lot of people, it's that mentality maybe that aided them in assembling that wealth in the first place. With Fisher, you can't even say that because he inherited it. He was born with it. It's not like he had some cutthroat money-grubbing impulse that enabled

him to build a vast fortune. He was just gifted that fortune by the circumstances of his birth. And you would think if you were in that situation, you'd just be like, you know what? I don't need to sweat every cent here. I could make people happier. I could make people praise me. But that just does not appear to be important to him. Or if so, he's certainly not going about it in a unnecessarily because we do a lot of that. That's what TikTok is for. But I'm really on one today, Ben. You know, I'm really, I'm on one. But I do suspect that, sure, maybe when you have not built up a fortune yourself, and like I say that acknowledging that like no one does that entirely themselves,

but like when you haven't had a hand in it, when it's really just an inherited thing, like sure, maybe we would expect you to say like, I'm going to be magnanimous. But I think what it often just leads to is entitlement. I'm entitled to these riches. I'm entitled to do what I want with them. They're about me and mine and they're not about any of the other people. It does kind of boggle the mind that you would be so indifferent to what other people would say about you. I can't imagine not caring what people think about me, and maybe I care too much what people think about me, but it is weird. It's a weird quirk of a lot of these folks. It's not true of everyone, but there are way more of the fishers of the world, even if they're not also penny pinching than there are say like the Middletons or the Seidlers, right? Where it's like, you know what? I don't think I can really buy love, but I can come very close by just saying, here's this thing that delights a lot of people. And I'm going to say, I care about it and mean it and like try to make it better and try to make it delightful because I want to be, you know,

one of the people on the float when we have a parade, you know, that's a better way to live your life. And like, I'm not going to say with confidence that like, you know, and I'm not trying to speak ill of the dead here. Like, it seems like everyone who encountered Peter Seidler came away thinking that he was like a deeply humanistic person who cared about other people. But like, I'm sure, you know, he wasn't perfect. And he probably did things that, you know, he would look back on and say, I wish I'd done that differently. I'm not saying John Middleton. Private equity guy. Yeah. Right. You know, like we can be aware of the realities of this stuff, even as we're sort of grading them on a curve. But what else do you need to buy? You know, what else do you not have access to? You know, for most very wealthy people, the answer to that question is a sports team. So once you have one of those, it's like, why not be the person who's like, I'm just going to spend stupid money on this thing because I want to have a ring, you know, I want to have a trophy. And I want to be the kind of owner where, you know, Meg doesn't feel like she wants to just keep calling me the Crypt Keeper when I'm up there after the team has won. Like, that's a better thing to aspire to. And I don't say that to say they're perfect or, you know, to dismiss things about them that I probably would object to. But like, I don't know, man, like, go get a different widget if that's not a priority for you. There are plenty of them. Like, go buy art no one cares about. I don't know, man. Like, go get a different widget if that's not a priority for you. There are plenty of them. Like, go buy art no one cares about. I don't know, man. Like, it's important. Art's important. I'm not trying to, you know what I'm trying to say. Like, these are institutions that should have, if they're going to inspire public reverence, they should treat the public with reverence. You know, they should treat that relationship and trust with reverence. And they don't so much of the time. They're not always as egregious an example as this, but we are we are let down more often than we're like, you know, relieved and delighted by the people who enter this space. that the league cared more about that piece of it because it just suggested to me that whatever

else they might say publicly they don't think very much of fans at all you know they don't think very much of us and you know and i'm obviously not just a fan but like they don't think very much of the people who consume their product and that's that sucks so yeah yeah i wonder whether cider being the grandson of walter o'malley who moved the Dodgers to the West Coast, I wonder whether that was instructive at all in seeing what legacies are like and how you're remembered or how he wanted to be remembered. Because he was essentially the same age that Fisher is now, but Seidler had stared down death repeatedly, right? He had cancer, he had diabetes. And I wonder whether you need that brush with mortality or whether some people do to put things in perspective or change your priorities or whether any of these guys have kind of deathbed conversions or regrets when it comes to these things,

when that time arrives or not? Like, do you need a visit from the ghost of Jacob Marley to make you change your ways? Do you need various ghosts to visit you to show you how things could be different or better or not? I don't really know. Is it just the way you're wired or what? But yeah, John Fisher's name is mud right now and that is putting it kindly. So we will see if that changes at all. And condolences to A's fans. I'm sure some of them,

it's just such a toxic relationship at this point. Maybe they just want it to be over if there's no positive outcome here, except that they have to continue to cohabitate with their soon-to-be ex at least for one more season. So it's extremely awkward. So yeah, your heart goes out to them. And I just hope that we're not talking about another debacle for baseball a few years down the road once the team is settled in Las Vegas, if and when that actually happens. Well, I guess we can shift to some other news that surfaced this week,

maybe with a little less import, but more on-field immediate impact, which is that the pitch clock potentially getting trimmed slightly more. So if you thought that the pitch clock couldn't be any tighter, it can. It probably will be. So as we know, it has been 20 seconds with runners on base, 15 seconds with the bases empty in MLB in 2023. And MLB is seeking to trim just two seconds off of that bases occupied time. So going from 20 seconds to 18 seconds, keeping the 15 seconds with bases empty. So I guess maybe they have decided that we haven't pushed as far as we could, that players have not been pushed to the breaking point here, even though they objected to this initially and then objected to it being in the playoffs and seemingly have some objections to this initiative as well. But as we discussed, things slowed down

slightly as the season wore on and the pace was a little bit slower. Game times went up by a minute or two per month, essentially. They went from two hours and 37 minutes in April to two hours and 44 minutes in September, I think three hours in October with longer ad breaks, of course. And so MLB says that it's trying to stop that backsliding a little. You know, once players got a feel for the clock, they just took a little more time. We talked about that. They realized how much time they had and they were a little less hurried and urgent and the game times got slightly longer again. So personally, I have no problem with this. There would come a point where I guess I would say this is too fast, but this is not that point for me. Do you have any thoughts one way or another on this? I think two things simultaneously. One, I don't think this will end up mattering that much.

And so I'm unbothered by it. But also, I don't know that it was necessary. So I'm wondering why we had to do it. You know, like, I think everything was still really nice and zippy, even toward the end. I think that if you're concerned about, like, backsliding around enforcement or whatever, you can just, like, tell the umps in the offseason, like, hey, don't do that. Yeah, I don't know if it was enforcement so much as it may have been, but I assume it's just partly inevitable once players get a feel for how long they have. They can go a little closer to the wire. Right, yeah. And so, like, it was fine.

Were we feeling like it wasn't fine? I think it's fine. I think if you want to say it's fine, then it's fine. I'm fine. Maybe I've worked myself into a lather too fast with John Fisher, and now I have no more outrage left. I mean, I might give me a minute, you know, like a pitcher trying to throw max effort.

I might be able to be restored with longer rest. But I think it was fine. I think it's fine, Ben. I think they have targeted two and a half hours as their ideal length. I guess that's what they have found people want or they have said that that's what they found that people want. So I don't necessarily need it to be that zippy. But I have no problem with this

because I thought it was fine at the start of last season too. And so if you want to keep things closer to that than where it was at the end of last season, that works for me. Again, it's two seconds in some situations. It's not going to make a big difference. And they have tested it this way in the minors. So this is not unproven. In fact, most minor league games, I think below AAA this past season had a 14 second clock with the bases empty and 18 seconds with runners on.

And then I think the last month of the AAA season, they just had a universal 17-second clock. And then, as you know, in the AFL, it was 15 and 18. So they've done this. It's worked. And violations were quite low by the end of the season, too. So that's not a big deal. Jeff Passan's report about this said,

On average, pitchers began their deliveries with 6.5 seconds remaining on the 15-second clock and 7.3 seconds left on the 20-second clock. I wonder how that changed over the course of the season. But there was a bit of a buffer there that I don't think we're going to see an explosion and violations or anything. So, yeah, I'm kind of in favor of just holding the line and not getting lax about this because I think it is so easy to get backsliding. It certainly was in the pre-pitch clock initiatives when it was more about enforcement and some subjectivity was into it. And so you'd see some gains and then you'd lose all the gains. And I don't want that to happen. I don't think that would have happened.

But I'm also completely okay with this. And I haven't seen any compelling evidence that this has increased pitching injuries or anything like that that you sometimes hear. So it sounds like this will happen because MLB could just unilaterally enforce this. They don't need the players' approval to do this with enough notice. So I assume that this is what we will see next season. I think that you are probably right. And soon we might just not have any baseball at all. They'll just make the pitch clock one second long and then the game will be over. And then poof, poof.

And then it won't matter if they're playing in Vegas or not because like really, how much baseball are you even talking about? Yeah. They're also proposing to cut the mound visits down from five per game to four, which will be even less noticeable. Again, I'm fine with that. I'm fine with eradicating mound visits entirely. I don't know. You're an anti-mound visit person in a way that doesn't. It's like really intense and weird. It is.

I just, I'm against all mid-game, in-game coaching visits. You go back to the dugout all the time. Just wait, you know, just talk before you go out there or after you go out there. It's fine. We don't need you running out onto the field constantly. That usually doesn't happen in most sports. Yeah, I just don't even think that it like especially matters if there are five. So it's like just leave it alone, you know, like I'm pro tinkering. We've covered that. I think it's fine to tinker, but it's like, tell me why.

Like you need to explain your theory of tinkering, you know? Like, I feel like I'm in a grad school seminar again, where it's like the empirical political scientists would be like, this is the thing. And I'm like, yeah, but what's your like theory of democracy? And they're like, I don't know. And I'm like, and you're telling me I'm not rigorous, really? I'm the one that's not rigorous. So, like, what is your theory of mound visits that you need, you know, four is better than five? Like, explain why. And they're not going to have a reason, Ben. They're not going to have a real reason.

No. No, that doesn't. We're going to get weird emails after this episode and it's going to be my fault. You know, I'm sorry about that. That's the most marginal of changes because, as Passan noted, teams averaged 2.3 mound visits per game and exceeded four visits in 2% of games, 2% of games. So we're trimming those 2% of games that had more than four man visits for a team. So yeah, you won't even notice that this is the case, but they're just trying to like lower the, you know, change, spin the dial, right? Just like a little bit, bit by bit, so that maybe then it goes from four to three

and three to two, and then suddenly no man visits at all. It's just like, I don't, but why? You know, but also, but why? You know, like, because Ben, why? You just had this big, here's the thing about it. Here's what I would say to Rob Manfred if he were to ask me, which he won't,

but if he were, I'd be like, hey, Rob, so here's the thing. You just had this like big victory from a rules perspective, you know, and I just spent the first 20 minutes of our podcast being pretty nasty about your losses this year. But in the rules arena, really top notch, doing great. So just let it be, you know, you don't have to make any more changes you can just keep these changes in place leave leave it alone and you know refill your rules tank for when you want to bring the challenge system to the big leagues because like you know this this is people are going to be like but why it's fine you know it's just like why and they're not going to care pretty much probably i could see his position being the other interpretation would be, yeah, we're coasting, we're riding this wave of success right now. Everyone's pro rules changes strike while the iron is hot.

Right. While I have this vast approval for my initiatives, this is the time to get my agenda passed. Yeah. Right. And so he might think, okay, capitalize on that. I guess you have to calibrate because you push too far too fast, then there's going to be a backlash. But right now, everyone's feeling like that was a huge success. Then maybe you can use that to get other things passed. And as you're saying, I think the big one is the ABS system, robot amps. And so he does have to keep his powder dry, save some political capital for that. But maybe he also wants to normalize the tinkering, right?

That the tinkering is not just every few years you do something and then there are always going to be people digging in their heels about it and getting their hackles up. out it and getting their hackles up. But if it's just a kind of a constant tinkering, that's just a state of ever-present tinkering, then there might be less resistance to any particular tinker. Maybe. That could be true. But also, like, but why? I'm okay with it. I almost respect the attention to detail. One of the other proposed rules changes is that a pitcher who warms up must face at least one hitter. So you can't wait for the first hitter of the inning to be announced and then make a pitching change, which is actually something we talked about on episode 2033. Listener Nick proposed that that be outlawed. But as Nick acknowledged, this is rare.

In fact, according to this rules committee, there were only 23 instances last season where a pitcher who warmed up between innings was replaced before throwing a pitch, adding approximately three minutes of dead time in each instance. So like an hour in the entire season. It's almost not worth doing anything about that, but then why not do away with it? Who likes that hour of dead time? Doesn't hurt anyone to snip that out. It's like adding or removing a hyphen when you're editing an article. A few readers might appreciate it. Anyway. All right. So one other thing that I guess is not new news, but was news to me because I must have missed this report. Did you see how much David Stearns' contract from the Mets was when he signed to be their pobo? Metz was when he signed to be their Pobo. So he, according to, I believe, John Heyman of the Post,

he got five years, 50 million from the Metz. And I thought this was interesting in light of the Craig Council contract, which was five years, 40 million, or in some quarters was reported as five years, a little more than 40 million. Others said exactly 40. But it's kind of an interesting experiment here or maybe revealing because you had on the market at more or less the same time the consensus maybe best manager in baseball and also, I don't know if you would say Stearns is the best executive, but most desirable executive in baseball, certainly on the short list. It's really hard to quantify front office people and managers for that matter. So I don't really know that they are the best, but certainly seen as the most coveted, the most wooed, right? And so both of them coming from the same franchise, right?

So they had the same kind of track record, like for the same team. And so it's hard to say, well, how much of that was Stearns? How much of that was Council? But having both of them sign five-year contracts at the same time for not vastly different amounts here. Stern's got more, but not that much more, a couple million more per year,

which actually sort of surprises me, I think. It was seen as a surprise that counsel got as much as he did because he got a lot more than any manager was making in 2023. He got a lot more than any manager was making in 2023. But there has been or it seems like there's been or that maybe there should have been kind of an inflation in executive salaries, GM and POBO salaries in recent years. And not so much in manager salaries that those have stagnated as things have gotten more front office centric. So what does it mean that those two guys coming from the same team in the same market, being on the market at the same time, having lots of people interested in them and courting them and bidding on them? And the contracts were quite similar. Like, would you have predicted that they would be that close?

I don't think I would have. I guess maybe not quite that close, but I'm not surprised that there is a general sort of flatness in that salary structure because I think even though, you know, when you have proven guys, and I'll just say guys because for the most part that's been the yeah correct term but they clearly add significant value i think they are still they still have the headwind of you know not really being in a particularly strong negotiating position because you know you don't have any institutional force that's like really pushing those salaries upward. And I would imagine that even if it's not like what we would understand to be like real collusion, it's probably a place where owners aren't necessarily like feeling like they have to

compete on salary as much because the prestige of the role is so significant. They're such a, salary as much because the prestige of the role is so significant they're such a you know there's so few of them that like you know even the oakland a's have a gm ben you know and the person who has that role is like pretty stoked on it because uh there's not very many of them right so you know it strikes me as a place where you're just not going to end up having that much deviation um front office to front office because they can say like, well, do you want to be the po-bo or not? You know, and I think that particularly when you have inflation within the titling, owners are probably keen to leave room for like the senior most and best regarded VP to get like a slight title bump and pay increase to stay in the org and for them to be able to keep that person in line. And so you probably don't want like runaway salaries at the top so that you have room in your budget for that, like would probably be part of it. I mean, like, I don't know. I'm not, I don't think I'm not shocked.

Yeah, I guess it's not like either contract broke the scale, historically speaking, It's not like either contract broke the scale, historically speaking, because Joe Torre made a ton of money as a manager. And the role of the manager was a little bit different even then, 15 years ago or so. Theo Epstein, when he signed his initial contract with the Cubs, it was another five years and a little less than 50 million. It was reported at the time. So roughly the same. And, you know, there's been inflation since then. So it's not like it completely recalibrated things.

It's more about the difference between them because David Stearns was not long ago Craig Council's boss, right? And so I don't know if in most industries, the salary disparity between the boss and the person, I don't know if you would say like the managers, the next rung down on the ladder from the GM or POBO. It's kind of a different department, but also the GM POBO is the person who hires and fires the manager. Because the impact that a POBO can make on your organization is probably greater and more sweeping than the managers can potentially be just because, well, A, you hire and fire the manager, but you also just are responsible for putting the entire team together and drafting and developing. And the manager can certainly sink your fortunes by being completely terrible, I guess, but probably isn't going to just completely reshape the organization in one

way or another. So if I thought that I had a truly transformative front office person, I think I would be willing to pay a good deal more for that person than I was for sort of equally transformative relative to their peers manager you know it would be a bigger percentage difference than these deals reflect i guess i guess that is what i'm saying yeah yeah no i i would i mean like i've just said that i would be like um an owner who wants to spend stupid money and this would be a place where i would do it. But yeah, I'm just not surprised that things are a little flatter just because like where is the upward pressure coming from, you know? There's downward pressure generally. Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, one last note about the pitch clock topic. Last note about the pitch clock topic. In Jeff's piece, he noted that of all of the pitch clock violations in 2023, 14% came with runners on base. 14%. And if I've done the baseball savant query correctly, I think 43.2% of pitches came with runners on base. So 43.2% of pitches with runners on base, but only 14% of violations with runners on base, even though the clock is more restrictive with runners in base, which I guess would mean that it's just that it's costlier to have a violation when you already have runners on, right? And so pitchers just must be more conscious of the clock and more diligent about avoiding violations. So maybe that would also suggest that further reducing the clock with runners on base won't make that much of a difference in violations because it seems like pitchers are already paying even closer attention to the clock with runners on that you have a disproportionate number of the violations coming when the bases are empty and the stakes are a little lower that's interesting yeah that is interesting all right I have one last thing to

say before we transition to our interview for the rest of this episode i guess this is kind of a whole episode about ethics and morals and sports and ownership and the things you just have to get used to feeling uncomfortable about if if you're a fan of major sports. And this was one that I actually hadn't thought of until we got this email. And then I did a little research that I wanted to share. This email was from Sarah, who asked, and this could be relevant to some free agents this offseason. Sarah said that she's a fan of the Mets. She's hoping that the Mets will sign Yamamoto. And she says, if I were Yamamoto, the main downside to signing with the Mets would

simply be travel time. Flying is a pain. Airports are hell. Could I blame the man for wanting to sign with a West Coast team so he could fly back to Japan in less time and with more ease? Not at all. But I have a theoretical solution to this problem made possible via Steve Cohen's Scrooge McDuck-esque fortune. Would it be possible to include a clause in a player's contract that allowed for their personal and unlimited use of a private jet? Could Steve Cohen simply say, hey, we'll pay you tons of money and we will give you use of one of my private jets whenever you want to leave the country? Sign with us and you'll never fly commercial again? If so, does the cost of operating that jet have to be factored into the player's salary when determining luxury tax liability? She continued, from what I can determine, there's precedent for this in college football, where coaches are often given a certain number of flight hours on a private jet as one of their contract perks.

But I've seen nothing of this sort regarding MLB. Is there precedent for this? Does the CBA have anything that would not allow for this sort of perk? Do I hate myself for asking this question? Yes, I absolutely do. Like any anxious millennial girly, Sarah says, I am deeply concerned about climate change. You'll never catch me at a grocery store with my own shopping bags. I'm also deeply jealous of my Cubs fan friends who have adorable selfies they took while sobbing after their team finally broke the curse and won the World Series. I need that selfie for me in my lifetime. And Sarah says, well, I'm horrified by my moral failings. I'm willing to overlook the use of one singular private chat if it gets me a

World Series win. Lord willing, this will not be necessary to become a regular trend with international free agents, because if it did, I would feel somehow responsible and certain that I was damned to the bad place. So if it does become a trend, I don't think it will be Sarah's fault, because as I have determined, there is precedent for this in MLB. This has happened, in fact. And I said to her via email, it reminded me of when Scott Boris a few years ago complained about the Nationals not chartering a jet for Juan Soto when he was going to the Home Run Derby and some other teams had apparently. So there is some norm of teams chartering jets for players at times. But also we've seen this with free agents. In fact, those very Cubs, Theo Epstein's Cubs, that title was powered by private jet because John Lester's deal with the Cubs included 25 hours of private plane use

for him and his family annually. And I don't know how far back this goes or who the first trailblazing free agent was to get this kind of clause. But I did find that the December 1998 deal that the Dodgers signed with Kevin Brown included 12 private flights a year for him and his family. And evidently, that was the deciding factor for Brown as he was picking between the Dodgers and the Rockies. And Brown's agent, of course, Scott Boris at the time. And maybe the Dodgers regretted extending that perk because Brown's tenure there wasn't so successful. And a few years later, there was a Bill Plaschke column I found headlined, put him on the first private jet out of here. According to an article I found from 99, there was at least at the time, this was several

CBAs ago, but there was a luxury tax cost associated with those charters. So this CBS News story said, the pitchers' private planes are being treated as plain old cash as far as the commissioner's office is concerned, and the team will have to pay an extra $204,000 in luxury tax this year. The commissioner's office has proposed adding $600,000 to Brown's listed salary in each season of his $105 million seven-year contract. That's because his contract contains a unique clause allowing the use of a private jet at the team's expense 12 times a year so his family could travel from Los Angeles or Macon, Georgia. And according to a letter sent to the Dodgers from the commissioner's expense 12 times a year so his family could travel from Los Angeles or Macon, Georgia.

And according to a letter sent to the Dodgers from the commissioner's office, the price of the Brown family's upgrade from first class to private plane is estimated to be worth $50,000 per round trip. And it was assessed at a 34% rate. So if a free agent were to do this now and it were well publicized, there'd probably be a bit of blowback associated just because there are more climate concerns now than there used to be. Even Taylor Swift's private plane, that got her dragged a little bit, right? And, you know, in Taylor Swift's case, I'm kind of willing to give her a pass more so than a professional athlete while she's traveling around the country,

you know, putting on her heiress tour and entertaining millions and generating a ridiculous amount of revenue and, you know, bringing goodwill to the world. Hopefully, I guess, from a utilitarian perspective, you could perhaps say that it's a net good that Taylor gets to hop around the world and entertain people, even if they were critiqued on Twitter for it, I think they would probably just ignore those complaints while they were, you know, up in the sky jetting across the country. Yeah, I have a hard time believing that it would necessarily like matter that much.

I think people would be surprised by how many players players even if the team isn't paying for it are flying private now yeah you know all you have to do is like go look at these guys instagrams to be like oh you're you're not on the charter today you're you're flying private and normally they have a couple of other teammates with them when i've noticed this, but I think a lot of, a lot more of them sort of take advantage of that than you would necessarily guess. It's not great, you know, like I, I get it. I don't love the, um, the brevity of the trips that Taylor Swift sometimes flew private for. I do understand when you're- Or at least her plane was used was used for those trips by someone.

Yeah. When you're that famous, I can imagine being able to justify to yourself the idea that it would be legitimately unpleasant to try, even if you're flying first class, to navigate an airport. Yeah. It'd be a mob. I mean, you might interfere with other people's travel just because your level of fame is so stratospheric. Yeah. And so like, I don't love it, but I get it more there. But like, with very few exceptions, one of my favorite players, like John Lester,

could have flown commercial and it would have been fine. No one's gonna, like, people are gonna leave John Lester alone. People aren't, most people aren't gonna recognize John Lester. I think where possible, we should try to, you know, pool our travel and get the most carbon bang for the buck. And like, you know, the charters are nice. Most of them are on the charter for stuff.

But I realize that's not going to be the case when you're like going home or having your you know family come and meet you somewhere and do a thing so i i don't know like i think it's fine for it to be considered part of the the payroll hit because if we we didn't include that stuff like i am sure that there would be a number of kind of expensive perks that teams would sort of lard up contracts with and probably do it in a way where they're like, well, don't you want that instead of salary? And it's like, no, just pay them cash, please. Yeah, there are all sorts of perks.

Just, you know, suites on the road and, you know, yeah, lots of stuff. But not normally charter flights, so definitely first-class tickets and everything. But it does happen. Otani took a private jet from spring training to the WBC this spring and like thousands of people were tracking his flight info and greeted him when he landed. I had forgotten this, but Masahiro Tanaka rented an entire Boeing 787 to go to New York to sign his contract in 2014 when the Yankees signed him. It was a whole 787 for six passengers. Tanaka, his wife, who was a pop star and a personal manager and a toy poodle, also was listed as a passenger. But he just like, I guess he wanted

to avoid there was a snowstorm. He wanted to get there in time for his press conference. So rented this plane for an estimated $200,000 for this flight, which even if you're making Masahiro Tanaka money, that is a lot. Didn't he just postpone it a day? Yeah, and the Yankees didn't pay for him to do that. The Yankees in some ways are kind of cheap, right? Wasn't it reported that it was like them and the Reds were not paying for free Wi-Fi on flights or something this year? But Tanaka's contract included a certain number of first class tickets between Japan and the U.S. And so the Yankees reimbursed him for the equivalent of the price of a first class ticket, but not for the price of renting a 787.

And I would imagine that that's probably even worse for the environment if you're taking an enormous passenger plane like that for five people in a poodle or whatever it was. So, yeah, it's honestly like I had to do a cross-country flight to go out to L.A. for work recently. And I don't make that trip often. And I was struck yet again by just, you know, it's pretty easy. I mean, we have it pretty easy these days to be able to go from New York to LA in depending which direction you're going, like, you know, five, six hours, less than five. Like, it's really, you know, I take a nap and suddenly I'm somewhere where it's warm and there are palm trees. It's like, wow, that was easy. I mean, I've been doing-

You're a plane sleeper. Yeah, I can sleep on planes. I envy that. Yeah, not super comfortably, usually, obviously. But yeah, it's more about the position that prevents me from sleeping, I guess, than anything else. But yeah, we have it really easy

compared to when I'm watching Taylor Sheridan shows and seeing how hard it used to be to cross the country. It's a little bit easier now. And so even if you have to fly to Japan, that's a longer flight. But if you're in first class and you're not an Otani-level celebrity, I guess Otani would be the closest to Taylor Swift, although it's quite a gap between them in fame. But how many times a year are you making that trip? Not that many, right? Like you're not doing day trips. You're not going home for the weekend. You're probably, you know, like spring training and,

you know, beginning of the season, end of the season, potentially all-star break or something. Granted, I guess your family might fly back and forth more often, but it's not like you're going back and forth constantly that you would need charters for that, really. Wow, I have some thoughts on flying. I mean, like flying is pretty unpleasant. You're right that it's better than like a covered wagon. Yes. And certainly more efficient than having to drive. But it is like a deeply human thing that we took this miraculous innovation of being able to fly and just made it like as unpleasant as possible. I thought you were going to say I flew private from New York, D.A. and I was like, is Patreon money different than I think it is?

Ben! No, that makes more sense. It can be a nice thing. And, like, if you get into Economy Plus or business, first class. I don't fly first class. It's expensive. That is one of the things that I would do with, like, insistent regularity if I won the lottery, though. the lottery though because back in my former life as a person working in finance like over a certain mileage we we would get to fly like business or or even first class and let me tell

you um it's really nice ben you know it's a really it's a better it's a better time um they've made it really uncomfortable for us back in steerage and they made first class sure nice and so if i won power ball i'd be like i'm flying first class all the time you know this is a place where i would splash my cash but like economy plus is fine do you ever pay for wi-fi on flights i've decided to take this in a slightly different direction for very rarely i i have on occasion when i've just had to like i was in the middle of writing or editing or something and I could expense it. But I prefer not to and I know you do too. Yeah, I don't.

And if someone asks me if I will, I will lie and say it's broken. Yeah. Because, you know, what happens up there, it's like Vegas actually. That's between me and the flight gods, you know. That's none of your business. And I love being able to be like, I don't know, it's just like six hours where I couldn't, sorry, it wasn't working. It's so weird. Like, I, you know, and I just read most of a book. And sometimes they'll give you, Ben, you don't, you're not really much of a drinker. And I'm not

on flights either, because you get dehydrated and it's uncomfortable. But they have these, you know, you can like have a Bloody Mary in the air. And they have these little packets now that mimic the taste of wine. So it really does do a good job, you know. Anyway, so I like to do that and read a book and pretend that the Wi-Fi is broken. What were we talking about? the Wi-Fi is broken. What were we talking about? I was going to say that this travel is, it has come up as a consideration at least for MLP as it weighs realignment. I don't think that this is why it would decide to do some radical realignment or not, but it has been pointed out

that if you were to align things more in line with how geography actually works, right, that you could potentially reduce travel and thereby reduce emissions, which is becoming of greater concern. You know, it's such a drop in the bucket when it comes to just the global carbon emissions. And yet, I guess you have to start somewhere or stop somewhere and you can only control your little fiefdom. And so there has been some writing about how, yeah, there would be less travel. Now teams would like less travel for other reasons too. Players would prefer to travel less certainly and have less jet lag and everything. I would prefer to travel less, certainly, and have less jet lag and everything.

But also there could be, I guess, a green benefit from realigning and having less travel. And, of course, there are always offsets and things like that, although sometimes those are just greenwashing, I suppose. Greenwashing. Speaking of different types of washing. I was just going to say, this is such a beautiful transition. Yeah. of different types of washing. I was just going to say, this is such a beautiful transition. Yeah, because the rest of this episode will be about sports washing a little bit, but also about whether that is as big a concern about baseball as perhaps we've thought. So this is prompted by the soon-to-be sort of existence of Baseball United, a startup baseball league, or at least it's hoping to be a baseball league, that is in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

And I think this came to a lot of people's attention during the MLB playoffs when there was a draft for some baseball United rosters and people were like, wait, Bartolo Colon and Robinson Cano and Didi Gregorius are going to play baseball in the Middle East somewhere? What is happening exactly? Well, what's happening is that there is a league that aims to begin play next year, actually, that it's about a year away from coming to fruition, supposedly. But it's going to be in the news over the next week or so because there is what they're calling

an all-star showcase on November 24th and November 25th. This is going to be the first time that we get to see something like this league in action at Dubai International Stadium. And it's going to feature two baseball United all-star teams playing a two-game series. And I just have questioned, what is this exactly? What is happening here? And so there are some details. We know some things about this league and I'll share what we know, what they have put out there. been on Shark Tank promoting his other business, which was called Be Somebody,

which was founded, I think it was like to book sessions with trainers and instructors and motivational speakers. Now he's the person who's kind of the public face of Baseball United, and he is aiming to make this the number one international baseball league. So he's got these other leagues in his crosshairs here, NPB, KBO, CPBL, ABL, the Latin American leagues that play in the Caribbean series, and says that there's a huge opportunity here in the Middle East and South Asia. And here's a quote from him.

We did a lot of market research over the last two years, met people face-to-face, and we found out there are a ton more baseball fans in this region than we ever imagined. In Dubai alone, there are 450,000 baseball fans. In the UAE, there are about 800,000 baseball fans in a country of 10 million people. I'd love to know how they're defining baseball fans, right?

It's just like people who've heard of baseball? I don't know. But there is a big cricket fan base, obviously. Whether that will translate to baseball, I don't know. But they're putting on this showcase next week, seemingly as a proof of concept, but also to attract investors because it's taking

place in this 25,000 seat stadium, but selling tickets to this event has been difficult. I'm reading from this Sports Not piece that just came out. Shake admits, the majority owner, chairman, CEO of the league, that selling tickets has proven difficult since the region is not known for massive crowds consistently flocking to athletic events, especially for a sport that is not a tradition in the area. On a one to 10 difficulty level, this one is a 47 for us, he said with a laugh. I was just looking at a board of our ticket sales and I'm like, holy expletive, guys, this is not moving as fast as we need it to move.

And what I'm realizing is it's different than what we're used to back home in the United States. We're used to people going in droves to sporting events. But out here, it's not necessarily like that. So I don't know. This doesn't sound like the greatest sign that he's having such trouble selling tickets to this thing. But people have been interested because a lot of MLB legends are either playing or investing in this league. So Barry Larkin is a big guy behind Baseball United and Mariano Rivera, Albert Pujols, Felix Hernandez, Ryan Howard, Adrian Beltre, Hanley Ramirez, they're all co-owners of the league's eight teams, four of which have been announced thus far, and they're investors in the league. Nick Swisher will play a role as an analyst on broadcasts.

So I really don't know what's going to come of this, but we were curious, right? And Shaq says the MLB system has contracted in a significant way over the last few years. They cut the draft in half, they cut the minor leagues in half. So you've got a lot of guys who would have had opportunities to play at the big league level that don't anymore. Now we have an opportunity with Baseball United to offer that. What do you make of the prospects of this leak, if anything? I mean, I guess like, it's hard for me to know, in part because I have the same questions about sort of how they're gauging existing interest in something like this, and how reliable that data is, how passionate the quote-unquote fandom is. I do think that when you look at some of the projects that have emerged in that part of the world, like, you know, whether it's this league or others, when you have a government that is sort of invested in the project of sports as part of its long term strategy for prosperity in the region, you know, there's so much money there that even if it's not them, like if someone decides like, hey, we're willing to operate at a

loss for 10 years to try to build baseball in, you know, the UAE or Saudi Arabia or wherever, like the money is there to do that on some sort of scale, presumably, right? So, am I confident that, like, this particular league is going to become anything? I mean, like, really, I'm not. But one could imagine that with enough sort of political will and money from a sovereign wealth fund that, like, it could happen on some level somewhere if someone really wanted it to it's a fraught conversation because like i don't want to be indifferent to i think the very justified and real concerns over human rights abuses in the region i am conscious

of like we kind of get into this a little bit in the interview like are we really in a position where we're like feeling great about domestic respect for like the lgbtq community for instance and like it's it's importantly and meaningfully different and so i don't want to like collapse these things to the point of being obtuse but like i i do think that there's like a it's a complicated conversation right and i think it's one that i hope inspires us to like think really critically about our own commitment to human rights. And so there's that piece of it. And like, also, is Robinson Can about some of the names that have sort of bought into the successful ventures, sports ventures in the Middle East, like they tend to be better now, you know, like, than like some of the names associated with this. But I think that like, all it takes is will and a willingness to operate at a loss for a while. And when you look at like the contracts

that, you know, some of these endeavors were willing to give to like Tiger Woods, like they, somebody could do it sometime. I don't know if this is the one that's going to do it, but, you know, it seems like the option is there. Yeah. Another goal that they have expressed is to promote unity in the region through what the CEO has called baseball diplomacy. So I don't know. Look, they're aiming high here and they are also courting investments from the royal families in the area, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund that owns Live Golf, et cetera, et cetera. So supposedly this season will run from November 1st to December 30th, 2024, that there will be 65 games spread over

three major cities with these eight teams. We'll see if that all comes together. In theory, I want baseball to be played in more places. I want there to be more interest in baseball. I want there to be more money out there for players. I mean, that all sounds nice, but this is part of a larger shift and trend in the sports landscape. And that's why we are bringing on our guest, Rick Mace of the Washington Post, who has been one of the authors of this series that they've recently run called The New Kings of Sports that has explored this massive influx of funding from the UAE and Saudi Arabia, etc., and what effects that it has, good and bad, and whether this is nefarious and whether we should be suspicious of the motivations here and the ramifications that this has caused, because really baseball is kind of the last big sport to feel the impact of these investments,

because this has been all over the place in golf and tennis and basketball and on and on and on. And now that it has come to baseball and we are a baseball podcast, And now that it has come to baseball and we are a baseball podcast, we want to talk about it and let people know what has been going on and how Baseball United fits into it. So we will be back in just a moment with Rick Mace, who will explain that. With the fourth overall pick in the Baseball United inaugural draft, Falcons select Pablo Sandoval, infielder, out of Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. At the wall, another! Pablo Sandoval with a three-homer game in World Series game number one. All right, we are joined now by Rick Mace. He is a sports writer for The Washington Post, and he's one of the lead authors of a new package that The Post has published called The New Kings of Sports, a series examining how investments by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar are upending global sports.

Hello, Rick. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So we laid out a few of the details as we know them about Baseball United. But before we get a little more into that league, can you sort of sum up, this is a lot to ask you to summarize in one answer, it can be a long answer, but can you sum up how this fits into the larger sports landscape and the overwhelming investments that we've seen in other sports in this region. Yeah. I mean, I think what we're seeing right now, and it's really been so pronounced the past six months or so, is just an influx of money that's coming in

from the Middle East that is really kind of reshaping the sports hierarchy, the global sports power structure. It's kind of an import-export business. We're seeing money coming out of these oil-rich countries, and we're seeing it invested in other areas, whether it's English soccer. We're starting to see it trickle into American sports. And then it's also, you know, they're trying to grow sports in their backyard. And we're seeing that with Saudi's professional soccer. We're seeing it with, you know, Qatar hosting the World Cup and UAE trying to grow the sport of baseball right there in their backyard. So it's really fascinating. We are seeing it change just in almost fast forward fashion. Just the money is just so pronounced. And it seems like every single

sport is being impacted. Baseball isn't one you would think would be touched on because it's not a popular sport. It's not well known across the Middle East. And yet here it is. It's one of many sports that has got huge money behind it. And they're testing to see if there's an audience in the UE and across the region. I think that a lot of people are probably familiar with the conversation around this within the context of the World Cup and sports washing. This idea that trying to be a participant in an owner of a player in the international sports space is a way to divert attention away from sort of unsavory policies that some

of these governments might have in place. That certainly seems like it's one of the motivations, but I think your work talks about how it is a more complicated question than that. Can you kind of lay out for us what you understand to be sort of the goals of these different governments and sports leagues and what they're trying to accomplish both within the Middle East and then internationally? Yeah, I think you put it well. I think sports washing almost became like an easy go-to shield for people to discuss the topics and the motivations. It was certainly something used by members of the media.

We hear it by politicians, by some people within the sports universe itself. And really, I think the more people we talk to, the more we realize that the issue is a lot more nuanced than that. You can't just point to any one thing and say, this is why they're investing in sport. It's part of it. It's one of the reasons. And it's been successful on some level. We're seeing countries throw money into sport, and it's normalizing some of the behaviors and activities that are taking place in that region. But it's bigger than that, right? It's more nuanced. There's a financial component. These are countries that have long-term plans, and they've long subsisted off of just oil revenue, and they don't think they can do that for decades to come. So they're looking for other revenue streams, and they're trying to diversify their economies. And things like sports and tourism are major cornerstones of those plans. So that's a big one. They're not just throwing money and watching it disappear. They expect a return on these investments, maybe not immediate, but down the road.

There's a lifestyle, an entertainment component for the people in these countries. These are cultures that are changing in very rapid fashion. They're embracing more entertainment options, and they're trying to give their populations more things to do and more things to see. And there's a public health component. A lot of these countries are traditionally not particularly healthy. Their obesity rates are high. They have very low activity and exercise rates. They don't have a lot of outlets for some of these things, you know, gyms and public spaces and parks that maybe we're more familiar with here.

So I think it's all of these things. I think sports washing is an important one. It's a huge part of the discussion, certainly a worthy part of the discussion, but it's not the whole thing. And it's hard for me to see how, you know, the folks behind Baseball United feel like, you know, launching baseball in an area

where it's not traditionally been popular is really going to do much to change the reputation or the way we view that part of the world. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, to the extent that sports washing is the goal, how can we assess whether that's effective? Because in my media bubble, it almost seems as if there's a Streisand effect where it only calls attention to the human rights abuses and the other concerns about the region, right?

And you just hear more about those things. And you did, the Washington Post commissioned a poll for one of the pieces that you wrote about where you asked American fans how they felt about these countries potentially investing in their sports team. And the reaction was pretty strongly negative. So what can you tell about whether this is working or could work or whether it's worked in the past with previous rounds of what might not have been termed sports washing at the time, but may have had the same goal? Yeah, well, what I would say is it kind of normalizes activities and business. You know, maybe the first ones out of the gate produce some of that shock, some of that awe. But then

over time, people get kind of used to it. They become accustomed to us talking about these countries in a business context. And then other people line up and they're eager to take the money. Let's just look at, you know, Live Golf and the Saudis. You know, when Live Golf launched, there was a lot of backlash. As time passes, the biggest detractor, the PGA Tour, is suddenly willing to partner with them. And not only that, but, you know, they're more normalized in a sense. Suddenly, Live Golf has a television contract. They attract some of the big names, some of whom, you know, were adamant that they would never jump over there. And then the Saudis are able to use that Live Golf relationship and show what they can do with money and show how they can change a sport. And suddenly, they're also having the same

conversations with other sports leagues, whether it's the UFC, whether it's the tennis tours, whether it's, you know, the women's golf world. You know, once they kind of get their foot in the door and they show what their money can do and can provide, other people are eager to have those discussions. So they know that there's going to be the sports washing conversation. They just have a longer view of it. And they think that they can outlast that discussion. There's also a lot of people that feel like there is some good that can come out of that sports-washing discussion on both ends of the spectrum. If you look at the World Cup in Qatar, you know, you're right. There was this echo effect, and it did shine a huge spotlight on

a lot of human rights concerns there, whether it's labor issues, whether it's gender issues, whether it's gay and lesbian issues. And it actually brought about some change. Maybe that change would have happened otherwise. Most people agree it wouldn't have happened at the rate and the speed that it ultimately happened. But to host the World Cup, the country and the government in Qatar had to make huge changes that they'd resisted for years and years. You know, we're only a year removed from that World Cup, so maybe it's too soon to say. You know, we're only a year removed from that World Cup, so maybe it's too soon to say, you know, this was a major success. You know, you want to see if those changes last, if, you know, they're actually systemic in nature. But there are some signs that hosting these events can produce some major society and cultural change

in some of these areas. Is there any concern about sort of too quickly oversaturating these markets within sort of the region itself? You can imagine something like UFC or golf or tennis having not only an audience there, but also internationally. And I know that the NBA's preseason endeavors there have been broadcast across the world. But, you know, the NBA's preseason endeavors there have been broadcast across the world. But, you know, we have a lot going out at once to really allow any of these concerns to thrive? Or is it just that there's so much money in the region that they can sort of sustain that maybe uncomfortable growth period and not have to worry about making a profit right away? Yeah, I suspect the latter.

I mean, I feel like all these entities right now are almost just kind of putting a toe in the water and trying to see, you know, what the money is like, what the money can do, and also what the fan reaction is going to be. So the NBA is going there for exhibition games. UFC has been going to the UAE for essentially, you know, one major card a year for the past several years. Whereas the UFC is going to Saudi Arabia for the first time next year. So we're starting to see the growth kind of not just start, but ramp up a little bit. And I think it's really time's going to tell us whether or not whether it's sustainable, whether some of these American based leagues want to go there more, feel like they need to go there more.

And, you know, it's because it's the economics in the States become more unsustainable for some sports teams and some sports leagues? Do they have to look, you know, abroad to sovereign wealth funds and things of that nature to kind of keep their business operations afloat? Yeah, I was wondering the same thing when I read in your piece about Tiger Woods reportedly being offered more than $700 million to join Live Golf and Ronaldo reportedly earning $220 million a year to play in the Saudi Pro League. There are only so many stars at that level of fame and accomplishment, of course, but you'd think that's maybe to get attention,

but that that would not be sustainable on a widespread basis if everyone were suddenly getting that kind of money. Yeah, but there is so much money to go around. I mean, I think of, you know, you mentioned kind of money. Yeah, but there is so much money to go around. I mean, I think of, you know, you mentioned some of the big stars, but, you know, it's teams and leagues that are really standing to benefit in a huge way. You know, one of the pieces we spoke with Ted Leonsis, who runs Monumental Sports. They own most of the Washington, D.C. teams. And he was the first sports owner to take on Middle East money. You know, it was against the rules in a lot of spaces.

It still is against the rules in the NFL. But Ted Leonsis went out there and had the rules changed because he saw a benefit to that injection of money. And he ended up taking on $200 million for a 5% stake, which, you know, might not sound like a lot of money. But you got to remember that many sports teams are not economically viable. You know, you have small market teams that are struggling to make it, big market teams that are looking for ways to, you know, improve their cash flow. We've seen some of the biggest teams of baseball, the Dodgers, the Red Sox, take on private equity stakes. So there is that need for money at all levels in sports. And as valuations of these teams skyrocket, the number of people that can actually step in and buy these teams, even if it is a minority stake, is shrinking.

I'm in D.C. Here in D.C., the NFL team just sold for $6 billion. It's hard for anyone to cut a check for $6 billion, right? The guy who bought the team had to bring on 20 other investors in order to pay that amount. So I think Ted's Ted Leonson's biggest point was, you know, you almost need this injection of money in the sports universe to keep the economic underpinnings afloat. Ben mentioned some of the names that have been associated with the activities in the region from other sports. And one of the things that I'm struck by, you know, especially when you compare it to what Baseball United is maybe able to offer at this particular moment, you know, Tiger Woods is not the golfer that he once was, but he is still understood to be quite good. Ronaldo is obviously very well regarded. And then we have like an aging Robinson Cano, you know, we have Bartolo Colon. So I guess part of what I wonder when you think about the viability of baseball in particular is, you know, do they have a problem or a challenge insofar as the guys that they are rolling out in this initial round are understood, at least by American audiences, to be sort of pretty far past their prime? Do they, you know, do they need to be throwing bigger checks at, you know, more notable players in order to generate interest?

Or are they just, you know, you know, Canoe is still a name brand, even if he's not been a good player for a while now. So is there an issue there that you see? Look, I mean, this showcase that's coming up later this month, this is not the product that I think they're hoping to roll out next year. I think for the showcase, maybe they're trying to generate some excitement in Dubai and across the UAE for the sport, but I almost think they're really just going to roll this out for potential investors, whether that's private investors, you know, locally owned

corporations or the sovereign wealth funds. I think they're trying to kind of a proof of product to say like, hey, this is a viable product and we have something that you should get behind. So for those purposes, I think it made sense for them to bring in some big names, to bring in, you know, guys that were once all-stars, that were once, you know, had legitimate major league careers. And so, you know, you got guys both on thestars, that were once, you know, had legitimate major league careers. And so, you know, you got guys both on the field and in the dugout. I think some of the co-managers are like McAltahada, Chris Sabo, some names that we recognize. And the investors are certainly very formidable.

I mean, Barry Larkins in the Hall of Fame, Mariano Rivera, Albert Pujols. These are big, big names in the baseball world. And I think if you're trying to sell people on a product, you want ambassadors out there that are going to get them excited. So maybe having, you know, the single A, double A player isn't really going to do that. But I think long term, if you want to be competitive and I mean, I'm not sure they're going to be competitive with, you know, the minor leagues, but maybe they're kind of like a 4A stop. Maybe they're competitive with the Japanese leagues where or some other Asian leagues where they're getting those guys that maybe ran their course and realized the majors isn't their future, but they still want to play baseball.

They still have something to give. And they don't need to be a hot prospect to actually put out a good product and put on a show in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It almost reminded me of some precedents like in the 30s when the dictator in the Dominican, Rafael Trujillo, put together a baseball team of stars and Lord Satchel Paige and others down there and then, you know, spent so much that the team was great. But then the foreign players left and the league was bankrupt, right? figure who kind of wanted to entertain the masses with baseball, maybe as a distraction from some other things that were going on. Or even in the 40s when the Mexican league kind of raided MLB and was able to lure some real stars down there by just paying higher salaries. I think that would be very difficult to do now. And obviously, Baseball United is a long way away from being able to compete for prime baseball talent. But yes, as you're saying, it seems like they're at least aiming to compete with the other well-established popular international leagues, which in itself, they have a long way to go to get to that level. Could it be maybe just a winter league that is an alternative, a better paying alternative to other existing winter leagues.

I could see that happening. But just reading essentially some of the almost press releases that they've put out, it sounds like it's going to be tough just because, you know, they claim that there are a lot of baseball fans in the region, that they have done surveys and such, and they hope to convert cricket fans. But it is obviously far from a baseball hotbed. And it sounds like they're having trouble selling tickets to these showcases, which, as you say, may not be the primary goal, but still isn't a positive ringing

endorsement of the interest. No, no. And I like in these showcases even more to like, do you remember going to like an old-timers day game? I don't think they still do those, but, you know, kind of a one off thing where there's some some names and faces you might recognize. Clearly, Bartolo Colon at age 50 is not the picture that we all, you know, loved, loved watching 20 years ago. But, you know, maybe there's some nostalgia element there for an expat in the stands or, you know, an investor who happens to be there. But you're right. I think they realized early on that their business plan probably couldn't be solely to attract the expats and that they feel like they have a big bat and ball audience in that region. If you think of India or Pakistan, you know, we're talking about billions of cricket fans. If they convert some percentage of those cricket fans into baseball fans,

you know, then maybe there is a future there. I'm not sure how likely or possible that is, but, you know, clearly they're banking a lot of money on that right now. Yeah. And this isn't just a sports phenomenon. It's in other areas of entertainment and not even just entertainment. I cover video games and there's a Saudi fund that has invested in a lot of video game companies, as you mentioned in your piece, or you even had to disclose that Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has had investments in Amazon, of course. And so there's always going to be some kind of ethical compromise, whatever you're talking about. And if you're not getting investments from the Middle East, then maybe you're getting crypto investments or maybe you're getting sports betting investments, right, or other things that you would be wary of.

So I don't know if it's better or worse or makes people feel queasier or less queasy, but that's just kind of a fact of life when it comes to these big industries. Yeah, I mean, everyone has to decide where their line is and what they're comfortable with. And there's certainly an ethics to investing and accepting money. And, you know, it could be a blurry line and it could move. And these countries could change the way they operate and function

and the way they, you know, treat their people and outsiders. And I think there has been major changes. The UAE, one of the pieces we explored is just a very fundamentally different place than it was just 30 years ago. It has changed in an amazingly fast amount of time. And not just the skyline, not just the architecture, but the culture and the day-to-day living and what's acceptable and what's permissible there. And I think people are looking ahead and saying,

well, what's it going to be like 20 or 30 years down the road? And maybe it's okay to get in business with them. And certainly, UAE is a little bit more palatable than some of the other countries, you know, Qatar or Saudi Arabia. They were in this earlier. They opened their doors to tourism earlier. They've partnered with places like the Louvre and major universities, NYU, Georgetown.

Everyone's got some kind of connection to there. So I think they've already kind of established that, hey, it's okay to do business with us. We're not as bad as the others. And the others are trying to change and put on a good face, too. I don't want to downplay the human rights abuses that have gone on in the region, but it does also inspire you to ask the question, like, what is the U.S. landscape going to look like in 10 years, you know, might go in a different direction that we're not particularly proud of. I am curious in your reporting if there's been any conversation, this is something I think about, you know, as a person who covers baseball and lives in the American Southwest, you know, if there are any sort of environmental sustainability questions that have arisen as leagues have looked to push into that region,

you know, surely you can build dome stadiums in the Middle East just like you can here in the U.S., but it is a place where I would imagine that is a consideration that might end up being a pressing one if, you know, we're going to end up with big facilities and expansive leagues. We did not go down that road. It is a very fascinating topic. Obviously, Qatar just built a bunch of soccer stadiums seemingly overnight to accommodate the World Cup. And those are things that had to be prepared for the elements, the heat, the wind, the sandstorms. I'm sure there's certain lessons to be learned there. And I'm sure the money that's available could also benefit aid teams

and leagues here. I'm not sure there's any kind of specific plan because most leagues are still trying to, they're just starting to figure out how they can take advantage of this money and these relationships. Yeah. And some of these countries have gone greener themselves internally, but at the same time are lobbying elsewhere to try to slow the global process of everyone weaning themselves off of fossil fuels, which obviously is a big source of revenue for these countries. And as you said, I guess they're trying to diversify to fend off some kind of crash if we actually do have more renewable energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. So I guess it's partly just that this is a way to future-proof these countries. But I also wonder whether if there is a shift away from fossil fuel, if that accelerates, then will the money still be there?

Will we get into a situation where this is kind of a bubble or where all of these leagues and teams are owned by this region or, you know, depend on investments from them? And if those investments dry up, then we'll have some kind of reckoning to come. dry up, then we'll have some kind of reckoning to come. Yeah, there's always seems to be like a huge gap between, you know, paying someone paying lip service and their actions actually reflecting that. And I think that's something you see in this space quite a bit. But, you know, for now, these countries, the same ones that are so dependent on oil are also, you know, hosting global climate change summits. And they're putting a foot forward like they want to be leaders

in some of these conversations. So whether that's really the case or not, certainly I'm not qualified to answer that. But the conversations are at least happening. And hopefully as people partner with them, they force them to be major components. I guess what I'm thinking there is like, you know, Qatar hosting the World Cup forced FIFA to take on a human rights code.

And FIFA said, OK, we will adopt a human rights code and that will be a component in all future, you know, World Cup bids. So it sounded great at the time. But here we are talking about Saudi Arabia has basically been given a clear path to host a World Cup. And you're not hearing FIFA talk at all about this human rights code. So they were eager to pay lip service and kind of quiet critics when it served their purposes. But now as it's becoming clear that the Saudis are, you know, handpicked to host a World Cup, you know, I'll be curious to see what kind of accountability they do there and if there's some real follow-up. And if Saudi Arabia will actually allow human rights watchers to come in there and report to the rest of the world what's taking place. So just one paragraph from your piece I wanted to read here, because I think for a lot of MLB-only

fans, some of these trends are unfamiliar, whereas people who follow other sports closely have been used to this for years now. But you wrote, those well-versed in the economics and geopolitics of sports say this is just the start when the NBA and NHL allowed Qatari investment in the Wizards and Capitals in July. Analysts and key stakeholders said the move signaled a new age of foreign investment, and they anticipate that oil money will continue to flow freely into American sports. The NFL is the only major U.S. league that still prohibits sovereign fund investment, though a special committee has begun exploring potential changes to its strict ownership rules. So that implies that MLB does permit this. Do you know whether there's been interest or whether any teams have, I guess no teams have gone down that road yet, or you would have included that in your piece, but do you think that that will happen in MLB or

are these Middle Eastern countries just less interested in MLB as an entity? So I think you're kind of right in multiple places there. There is not a specific rule that bars sovereign wealth funds from investing the way there is in the NFL. But I'm told just because

there isn't a specific rule doesn't mean the MLB would allow it or would disallow it. I think it'd be a case-by-case basis. I think, you know, their committees would meet and decide if that's something they wanted to do. So they're open to it. And, you know, as I mentioned before, they've taken on private equity. I think it's Arctos Sports Partners and Dial Capital Partners. These are the entities that have injected private equity funds into many teams, not just the Dodgers and Red Sox, but across several sports.

And MLB decided that was okay. And I think oftentimes that's one step removed from them allowing sovereign wealth money to come in. So I think people are expecting that conversation to come up. I think it's only a matter of time before MLB has to decide if they're going to take that on. But you're right. The other question there is, well, do these sovereign wealth funds want to get involved with baseball? It's not a popular sport there. It might not bring the attention that them investing

in an English Premier League team brings them. Now, from a strictly investment standpoint, they could do it for that reason, just to have a return on their investment to make some money. But it's not going to maybe bring the same amount of attention

they would get by investing in a more global sport. Yeah. And I think there's a rule against foreign ownership, like a controlling interest in MLB teams. And we haven't really seen that yet in the major North American sports leagues. I mean, I guess there's MLS, right? But in NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, do you think that we will see that where, you know, I guess you could always have a domestic front for one of these foreign groups that's really the controlling interest, but would that be a bridge too far or might we see that sometime too? That would seem to be a little ways off. This is just my opinion. I think it would seem to be a little bit ways off. I mean, right now, when we look at some of these private equity investments, they're usually capped at like 20%. And that's specifically because the leagues don't want to have, you know, a faceless, nameless person owning the teams. They like having owners that are connected to the communities, that are accountable to the communities, that people can, you know, actually identify as a steward of that team and that

franchise. So it seems to me that that is clearly their preference. I know that from the NFL to the NBA, that's what they want. Now, down the road, as valuations skyrocket and maybe fans aren't looking for that as much, I guess that could change. I just feel like we're a little ways away from that. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like Rob Manfred or MLB owners are eager to say no to more money when it is offered to them, even if it comes with some strings and caveats. So we'll see.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear more about this at some point. Well, especially as these teams negotiate with local, negotiate with local governments and, you know, put their hands out for funding for stadiums or infrastructure, parking lots or whatever. You know, it helps to have someone who's actually

a part of that community or at least actually serves as a face of the franchise to be the one doing the asking. Yeah, it's true. And I wonder whether as the cable bundle bubble bursts, right,

and as that source of revenue is withdrawn or reduced, whether that makes it more likely that this alternative source of funding could come in, right? If MLB isn't able to replace the money that it was making from the sweet cable bundle arrangement recently, then, you know, if owners are more willing to accept funding from sources that they might have turned up their noses at in the past. No, you're exactly right. And I think that's why a lot of people end up turning to some of these alternative funding sources over time. It's not like the owners are going to want to take, you know, less money. And it's not like the players are going to want smaller salaries. So it's really a matter of how do you replace some of these revenue streams as they not necessarily die out, but as they shrink or wither away. And RSNs are, you know, such a huge part of that conversation right now.

Well, if you had to make a prediction, do you think a year from now or a little less than a year from now, Meg and I will be doing a Baseball United inaugural season preview? Or will we be saying, remember that league that did that showcase a year ago? Yeah, what happened to that? I don't know that you're going to have to go on the ground and do it from the parking lot of the Dubai Cricket Stadium. I suspect they would give it a go. I mean, there's just so much money and people are so eager to see what sticks that presumably has enough money to get it off the ground and can go at least one season. I think he's got at least four teams ready to go, and he's probably trying to add another four. But we'll see how the showcase goes.

I mean, all you've got to do is impress the right investor and have him write you one check, and you can get through a season or two. So I'll be curious. And as a baseball fan, you know, it's good to see the sport embraced in other parts of the world. And you don't want it to be viewed as strictly a regional game or something that's enjoyed and played in small pockets of the world.

So it'd be great if somehow it spread out and not just grew new fans, but grew new players. You know, there's obviously there's got to be some great cricket players that could have been, you know, key contributors to baseball teams over the years. Right. So it'd be fun to see, you know, how the game can branch out and expand. All right. Well, we will see. And you can see Rick's coverage of all of these issues at The Washington Post. Check out the new Kings of Sports package.

We will link to those pieces. You can find him on Twitter as well, at his name, Rick Mace. Thanks so much, Rick. Oh, thank you guys. All right. One follow-up for you on a stat blast from yesterday. We got a question from listener Anthony, who said in your most recent episode, 2085, you were breaking down the winning percentage increase for teams that scored first during the postseason and how it spiked post 2011.

I was curious, do you see the same type of increase during the regular season in more recent years? And possibly that the increase in winning percentage for teams that scored first is due to some other factor beside the expanded playoffs, but maybe due to an increase in bullpen usage or how the bullpen is deployed or something else entirely. And the answer, nope, not really. There's no major increase in the winning percentage of teams that have scored first in the regular season over the same span. Rob Main sent me the data on this. The average winning percentage in the regular season from 98 through 2011 was 657. And from 2012 to 2023, 671. So only 14 points higher.

Whereas the winning percentage for teams that have scored first in postseason games has skyrocketed over that period by 80 points. So it may be due partly to bullpen usage, but specifically October bullpen usage when you're using the same good relievers over and over, whereas you can't really do that in the regular season. You'll wear them out. But in the post season, teams have figured out, hey, we got to give a higher percentage of our innings to better pitchers and you can really concentrate them in October. So it could be that. It could be bigger mismatches in the playoffs that have been caused by a more watered down playoff field, or at least a playoff

field that permits bigger differences in team talent, or maybe other factors or just some random variation. But yes, to Anthony and anyone else who is wondering, that has been mostly a postseason specific phenomenon. We're going to do a draft next time and we'll have coverage of a Shohei Otani documentary and a Shohei Otani dog. But for now, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay almost ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Amos Crawley, Anna Creech, Alan, Jeremy Raff, and Oliver Williams. Thanks to all

of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potentially appearances on episodes, and so much more. Including discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, just check out patreon.com slash effectivelywild for all the options. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but our inbox is open to anyone. Send us your questions and comments at podcast at fancrafts.com. 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 effectivelywild. You can follow Effectively Wild on

Twitter at EWPod. You can find the Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can register for the Effectively Wild Secret Santa. Deadline is December 10th. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Effectively Wild

It's the only show I do Hosted by Ben Lindberg and Megan Riley I wanna hear about Shohei Otani Or Mike Trout with three arms