Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 210: Revisiting the Montero-Pineda Trade/Your Ticket Refund/Giveaway Ideas

Episode Date: May 24, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss how the Jesus Montero-Michael Pineda trade has turned out so far, then talk about your ticket refund/giveaway ideas....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 A well-timed Montero mash. Is it time for me to go, Ben? It's time. Oh, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach, California, and I'm here with Ben Lindberg in New York, New York. Ben, how are you? Great. So that's my intro.
Starting point is 00:00:24 All right. So that's my intro. All right. So you brought a topic. I didn't really bring a topic, but I brought something to talk about. So what are we going to talk about? I thought we could talk about who has lost the Montero Pineda trade less. Great. Good one. And I'm just going to talk about refunding tickets and the stuff about that
Starting point is 00:00:46 so you go first and we talked a couple days ago about how we don't like to talk about things that we write about and as I was preparing to talk about this it occurred to me that it would be fun to write about so I might write about it that is a warning to the internet
Starting point is 00:01:04 but Jesus Montero was sent down me that it would be fun to write about. So I might write about it. That is a warning to the internet. But Jesus Montero was sent down to AAA. So I thought this would be a good time to look back at the trade from last January and sort of assess how it has gone so far because it has not gone well really for anyone involved in the trade i don't think there is one member of this four-player trade that uh that is in as as good a position as they were then would you agree with that yeah that seems absolutely right so it's fun i was looking back at at all the things that were written about it at the time. And I mean, we spent so much time analyzing it and talking about who won. And really, no one has won to this point. Remember how we all thought Jose Campos was going to be the big wild card? Maybe he still will be. He still might be. He's the closest thing to somebody in as good a position as they were before. And he pitched 24 innings last year.
Starting point is 00:02:11 So if you go by warp, the Mariners so far have lost. And by lost, I'm talking about the results. We're not retroactively saying that one team was stupid to make the trade or both teams were stupid to make the trade or anything like that. What did you think of the trade at the time? My general feeling was that the Mariners were probably more likely to get more value out of it just because I kind of preferred the position player to the pitcher. But I felt like both teams got something that they needed and would probably be good for them. And so it was,
Starting point is 00:02:51 I understood from both perspectives. Yeah. I, at the time thought that both teams, well, both teams, the players that both teams got were so good that in any other trade, I would have declared each one a winner. Michael Pineda was just about my favorite young pitcher at the time, and Jesus Montero was just about my favorite young hitter at the time. I really liked Campos. I had just written the Mariners chapter in the annual, for instance. I was fairly familiar with their system at the time, and Campos just completely
Starting point is 00:03:25 stood out to me as this humongous sleeper candidate. That might have swayed it a little to the Yankees, but I think that I was a pro-Mariners guy because Montero, he was such a sure thing. There was just no doubt that Montero was going to hit. And, you know, there's always doubt about whether Pineda would hold it together. And, you know, there were some warning signs, I would say, about his season. All the concerns then were, like, does he have a good breaking pitch? Does he have a third pitch? And will a fly ball pitcher survive in Yankee Stadium? And now it's like, will he throw a pitch?
Starting point is 00:04:05 Ever throw again, yeah. Could we possibly convert him to a second baseman? Right. So, yeah, just to recap, I guess, Montero, since the trade has not hit as expected, has caught, I guess, about as poorly as expected, and he is now in AAA after a pretty terrible start to this season. Hector Noesi, who I guess the story on him was that he was kind of a back of the rotation guy
Starting point is 00:04:34 who was already at his ceiling pretty much. He was major league ready. He was ready to step into the back of a rotation and be back of the rotation-y already. And they tried that last year, and he was pretty terrible. Didn't really finish hitters at all, just was completely unable to put them away, gave up a ton of fly balls as a guy who was supposed to get grounders, gave up a ton of home runs at Safeco, and was, yeah, just generally pretty awful. And then started this season in the minors. He is now back in the majors as a reliever
Starting point is 00:05:12 and has looked a little better, but not great. Just, I don't know, kind of looks like a generic middle reliever now, I guess, if that. And on the other side of the trade, of course, Pineda got hurt pretty much immediately, had the serious shoulder surgery. His status right now is he pitched five innings yesterday at the Yankees minor league complex, supposedly was around 93 miles per hour, and will begin a rehab assignment after another
Starting point is 00:05:48 throwing session. And then Campos missed most of last season with some sort of elbow injury. It's kind of confusing to read about. He says it was a fracture, and some people say it was a bone bruise, but whatever it was, it was some sort of serious elbow injury. He is now back and pitching in the Sally League. He has a 3.94 ERA in 30 innings or so with about a strikeout per inning. Was Campo's injury caused by throwing or by hitting it on something? I think it was a throwing thing, but I don't know. I don't remember. I don't remember. I'll have to look.
Starting point is 00:06:27 But he has apparently not, his stuff has not looked so good. We ranked him, Jason Parks ranked him, as the Yankees' eighth best prospect coming into the season. But since then, I guess we had a minor league update about a month ago where Zach Mortimer said that his stuff hasn't bounced back all the way. And there was something, I guess, around the same time Keith Law scouted him and said that he showed reduced stuff and an arm action that seems destined for further injuries or a role in the bullpen.
Starting point is 00:07:02 Yeesh. Yeah, he said this was far from an ideal look, but what I saw didn't give me a ton of hope. So he's coming back from injury, and maybe it's too soon to say those things about him, but he's not looking so great either. So I guess my questions are, whose stock has fallen farthest since the trade was made? And if this trade
Starting point is 00:07:29 were proposed again, or if one team proposed to reverse the trade, who would say no at this point? Hmm. Wow. This is a very difficult question. It is. So, I mean, okay. So a fundamental thing has changed about Montero, which is that the letter next to his name has changed. He's not going to be a catcher. That was always seen as perhaps unlikely, but the Mariners didn't necessarily think it was unlikely. They gave him a shot at it and clearly had some vision that it might work out. And that's going to be it. I mean,
Starting point is 00:08:17 he'll probably never catch another game, right? In the majors? Yeah, I guess probably not. In the majors? Yeah, I guess probably not. So, you know, knowing nothing else, you know that something fundamental about him has changed. And so that might be enough. On the other hand, if you ignore this year, which isn't totally fair or smart because he was terrible this year. But if you ignore this year, he's not exciting. But Safeco last year played so extreme,
Starting point is 00:08:54 and we can debate whether that was a statistical glitch or whether, in fact, Safeco really did play extreme against hitters. But his numbers look horrible on the surface. They look somewhat less worse when they're controlled for the park. He was 22 and his first two years he had an OPS plus of 160 in limited time his first year and then an OPS plus of 95 in his first full season. Billy Butler, that was 21-22, Billy Butler had a 108 OPS plus in limited time in his first season at 21, and a 93 OPS plus in his second, first full, second total overall season at 22. So, you know, that's exactly one comp that doesn't tell you anything.
Starting point is 00:09:44 That's exactly one comp that doesn't tell you anything. But coming into this year, you wouldn't have said that he was hopeless. And this year, it's 110 plate appearances. It could have just been a slow start. It could have just been bad timing for him. So I guess if I had to – I don't know, Ben. And then Pineda and Campos, all the things you've said. Goodness gracious.
Starting point is 00:10:08 Goodness gracious. I don't. It makes me not want to write anything about any trade in the future. So whose stock has dropped and who would say no? Yeah. I mean, the thing with Montero was everyone always acknowledged that it was probably unlikely that he would stick at catcher for very long. Yeah, I mean, clearly the Yankees didn't intend him there. So his moving off the position now doesn't change the map at all from their perspective.
Starting point is 00:10:34 Right, because everyone always used to say that it was the Yankees either being delusional or just trying to inflate his value by pretending that they saw him as a catcher. Or just trying to inflate his value by pretending that they saw him as a catcher. But then evidently the Mariners had the same delusion or wanted to convince themselves that he could be a catcher. It gave him a pretty good shot at it. I bet there's at least one other team that would do it right now. Yeah. But so anyway, I mean, that was always the concern with him. But it was always sort of acknowledged that it wouldn't be that big a deal if he had to move.
Starting point is 00:11:06 That he had such a great bat that he could be an all-star type at first base or at DH. I don't know how many people are confident in that anymore. But I agree that it is too early to give up on that kind of potential. Yeah, if I hadn't lived through Brandon Wood, I would say Montero. It takes me a long time before I lose faith in the bat. I would still probably sign Andy LaRoche if I were a team right now because I'm delusional about hitters. Andy Marte.
Starting point is 00:11:49 Never bought a team. I didn't have a team. Of course I would have bought Andy Marte. But yeah, I would have. So in that sense, probably I would bet that Montero is more likely to hit than that Pineda is likely to throw a thousand innings in the next five years. Okay, so then – It's also a one-year – is there a service time issue?
Starting point is 00:12:15 Didn't Pineda – yeah, Pineda started the season in 2012, 2011 with the Mariners. So I think there's also a year of service time to consider. Yeah, I would go with the guy who sucks over the guy who's broken. And even if Pineda is throwing 93, which is encouraging and good for him, and I'm more likely to choose him today than I was two weeks ago, I would still go with the healthy bat over the unhealthy arm. You just would never go with an unhealthy arm, right? I mean, who's the last guy who was injured, injured, injured all the time
Starting point is 00:12:55 who bounced back, who came back and held up? I feel like you mentioned this or something at some point but yeah i was talking about markham yeah you were talking about markham exactly the the all these guys who we think are these great by low candidates because they might give you 170 great innings before they break down they never do they never give you the 170 and they always break down not that Pineda has as long a track record of injuries as Markham but he had a very very serious injury so uh okay so so Pineda's stock has probably fallen farthest I guess um just because of how high it was to begin with and all the uncertainty high it was to begin with and all the uncertainty and and so if and if it were if someone proposed that both teams could reverse it you think the mariners would say no do you think the yankees
Starting point is 00:13:55 well hang on wait i think the mariners would say no right i think isn't that what you were implying no oh i think the i think the yankees. I think the Yankees would say no. The Yankees would say no. You mean if they could have Montero back, they would say no? I think that right now the Yankees would rather have their original. Oh, are we talking about who would turn? Who would? Who would unreverse?
Starting point is 00:14:18 Yeah, I think the Mariners are least likely to reverse. Okay. Yeah. I don't know right i guess there's not a lot of incentive to reverse because both sides are so bad um but yeah that's what we're talking about i guess you've just summed up what you started with and it could completely like you could imagine that completely flipping just over the next few months if if say panetta Pineda comes back and looks like 2011 Pineda for a few months and Campos stays healthy and maybe his stuff picks up a little bit and Noesi just sort of stays Noesi and Montero doesn't hit his way back to the majors,
Starting point is 00:15:02 then by the end of the season, it could be completely different. Oh, well, if Pineda makes two good starts in the majors, it will be completely different. But if Pineda has arm soreness and has to be shut down for two weeks because he's sore after throwing,
Starting point is 00:15:20 then it would be a landslide the other way. I mean, if Pineda has one more injury before he shows us something good, then we'll be a landslide the other way. I mean, if Pineda has one more injury before he shows us something good, then we'll be completely done with him, right? Yeah. I mean, he'll essentially be, he'll carry injury prone with him for the rest of his life if he has one more setback, basically. All right.
Starting point is 00:15:39 Well, it's a fun trade to look back at. It's fun to look back at trades that worked for both teams and i guess it's kind of fun to look back at at trades that really spectacularly have failed so far for both teams yeah it's sort of depressing yeah well we'll monitor the situation uh meanwhile meanwhile nate mcleouth is like 17th in my ranked 17th in my fantasy league. Should have traded for Nate McCloud. If only they had done a three-team trade, they both get Nate McCloud for half the week
Starting point is 00:16:15 and give up their worthless, awesome prospects. It's like these guys didn't learn anything from Moneyball. All right. It's like these guys didn't learn anything from Moneyball. All right. So now I'm going to do a quick rundown of what we learned about refunding tickets if your team loses. If anybody doesn't remember this, an emailer named Mark suggested that if your team loses, you should get your money back and all tickets should cost twice as much so that the team is going to afford this, of course. But there should be essentially a consolation.
Starting point is 00:16:55 You shouldn't leave the ballpark happy and that clubs could go a long way to making everybody happy all the time by setting up the system. So we talked about what wouldn't work about it and we got lots of emails. And also I did some research into the history of guaranteed win promotions. And so I'll start with that. First off, currently, right now, in case you're in Minnesota, this might be actually relevant news to you, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the basketball team, I believe. Yes, I believe so. I always have to be careful with basketball team names because I guess most of them, a
Starting point is 00:17:23 lot of teams have moved to New Orleans. And so teams that I thought existed are actually now the new orleans a lot of teams help yeah i think i think most most of the teams have moved to new orleans uh it seems to me that most of the teams anytime i mention a team i'm told that they moved to new orleans uh so and and i think wasn't there actually a New Orleans team or something that moved to, no, is that football? Never mind. All right. I was going to ask.
Starting point is 00:17:52 Yeah. So the Minnesota Timberwolves have a promotion right now where if you buy season tickets for 20, I guess this actually can't possibly be current. This was probably from a couple months ago, so never mind. But the Minnesota Timberwolves had a season ticket renewal program for 2013-14, where you would get a 10% refund on your tickets if the team didn't qualify for the playoffs this season, which is interesting. The quote from the Wolves president is, we needed to put some skin in the game for our membership, which isn't an expression I know, but I like it. I don't think they did make the playoffs, but perhaps
Starting point is 00:18:36 one of the interns can look that up. That's not exactly the same thing because that's not a refund on a loss for the ticket that you've bought. It's a refund on a loss for the tickets that you didn't buy for the tickets that you did buy. Horrible. Horrible that I just said that. So that's one thing. There are scattered minor league teams that have done this, but it's not cashback. The Frederick Keys, the Orioles' high A team, currently guarantees a victory every Tuesday night, and if they lose,
Starting point is 00:19:12 it's good for a future Monday to Thursday regular season home game. The Buffalo Bisons, a triple A team, currently have a guaranteed win promotion in effect with fans receiving a free ticket on Friday games, I believe. And the River City Rascals, which is an independent league team, they had a promotion which was a win insurance program. And it's hard to decode exactly what this is, but basically you could buy win insurance if you, midway through the game and then later in the game for a higher price, you can essentially buy a discounted ticket or something like that. I think before the eighth inning for $2 you can buy win insurance and then I think before the eighth inning, for $2, you can buy win insurance,
Starting point is 00:20:05 and then I think that you get your money back. And then after the eighth, that goes up to $5. So tickets, I think, for those games cost $6. So it's a portion of your cost you can pay extra, and you get some sort of win insurance, which is sort of basically kind of like what we're talking about, although more confusing, I would say, a lot more confusing. All right, Nolan Ryan, the Texas Rangers pitcher, once had a guaranteed no-hitter game.
Starting point is 00:20:35 And I actually remembered this from then as him actually having thrown a no-hitter in his start, but he actually had, by coincidence, thrown a no-hitter the previous start. So the Mariners actually did a guaranteed no-hitter night when he was coming to town, and he made it into the third inning. His opponent, who also could have thrown a no-hitter to guarantee this no-hitter, allowed a hit in the second.
Starting point is 00:21:00 But you can imagine this was probably pretty exciting for about three innings for Mariners fans, and that was, if they didn't throw a no-hitter, which they didn't, fans got a general admission seat at a specific game later in the year against the Angels, which reminds me that the Angels used to be terrible and that you could just give away tickets when they came to town. Also, if you Google Nolan Ryan guaranteed no-hitter, once you get to Nolan Ryan gear, Google will recommend Nolan Ryan guaranteed tender meats. So there you go about that.
Starting point is 00:21:34 The most relevant thing is that Justin, reader Justin, points out that the Twins did a guarantee, the Minnesota Twins, the Major League Baseball Minnesota Twins, did a guaranteed win promotion in 1999. This was every Tuesday. And if they lost, then you got a free seat to a future home game any day except Fridays and Sundays. And it seems like maybe the – it's hard to say, but there was a, when the AP wrote about this at the time, they quoted Ron Coomer sort of snipping at it.
Starting point is 00:22:13 Ron Coomer was like one of the team leaders and he was kind of snipping at the plan. He said, which guy in the front office is playing tomorrow night? Like, you know, thanks a lot for betting on our ability um and so that went for a year um i they replaced it the next year with uh like some sort of state lottery promotion and had nothing to do with winning or losing uh so they only did it one year i saw assorted references to it uh and i'm not sure how they did in those Tuesday games. I meant to go back and look, but anyway. So there's some precedent for the free ticket, and the free ticket idea was the overwhelming sentiment among emailers who responded to
Starting point is 00:22:57 this. Lots of people recommended that you get some sort of credit either to the team store or to another game instead of cash. Nick was the first to suggest it. He writes, this would mean that money would still come back to the team through people spending on concessions and perhaps upgrading to higher priced seats. The logistical problem would be lessened since you could just hand out coupons as fans left the stadium.
Starting point is 00:23:23 Also, maybe fans would be less inclined to root against their own team if they knew the reward for a loss was to come back again. Who wants to come and watch a losing team twice? Others, Saxon recommended a consolation prize, something small and cheap like a taco. And Sean suggested, well, no, okay. All right, so, and a bunch of other people suggest the tickets. So the problem with the ticket, which isn't necessarily a problem, but, you know, might be a problem, is, A, if you're a team that sells a lot of tickets, like the Red Sox and the Cubs and the Giants,
Starting point is 00:24:01 which I know Mark is a fan of the Giants, you don't really get your free ticket because the games are all sold out. And a team that sells out its games isn't going to give you a ticket. And so that's probably the biggest problem. The other thing is that it would – I don't think you could raise – I think one of the things that's nice about Mark's original idea is that it seems to me that you could theoretically double the price or come close to doubling the price of the tickets without losing your customers because they would know that they're going to get their cash back half the time.
Starting point is 00:24:38 It's pretty simple math and they might understand the doubling of the price. But if you're just giving them a free ticket, they're not going to get their cash back. So you can't really double the price. That would just basically be a way of scamming them into buying two tickets if you raise the prices at all. And if you raise the prices none, then it would just be a loss for the team. So it's not quite the full measure that I would like to take on this. However, it's relevant. And I think particularly for a team that isn't selling out, all these teams
Starting point is 00:25:14 want to have fans in the seat. I mean, it's really good to get fans in the seat because empty stadiums sell worse than stadiums that are kind of half full or greater as the A's have shown they believe in by tarping off the top and making the stadium look more crowded than it is. You want to create some impression of scarcity. It is good to have more fans rather than less fans. If you're not using them, why waste the real estate? If you're not using your seats, you might as well figure out a way to give them away without outright giving them away and basically crippling your sales market. So it's a good idea. It's not a perfect idea.
Starting point is 00:25:54 It's not my favorite idea. But I think there's, primary ticket market. Yeah. Well, yeah. The other thing is that this – I mean if you're giving away a general admission seat to a Monday to Thursday game, it's not that much of a prize. Maybe I'm going to come off as this spoiled, rich snob or something, but if you gave me an upper deck seat for a Tuesday night game, there's a pretty good chance I wouldn't go because I have things to do on
Starting point is 00:26:45 Tuesday nights and upper deck seats are not that good. And, you know, that depends on the game. There are games I would go. And if I had people to go with, I might go. And if I were free, I might go. But like when I was growing up, I was a Giants fan and we had to drive 75 minutes to get to the Giants games. And, you know, it was a special occasion to get to the Giants games. It was a special occasion to go to a Giants game. So if you told me, oh, you can come back in a week, well, that wouldn't really help me because I didn't have the ability to go back in a week to go to these games anyway. So the other thing is that these tickets,
Starting point is 00:27:18 if you are giving these general admission seats, I mean, it's not going to mean much to the guy who spent $75 on good seats. It might mean something to the guy who spent $18 on the general admission seat because he basically gets double, but I don't know how much of an incentive it would be for the other guys. Similarly, for the consolation prize like a taco, I think, or whatever your consolation prize is, I think that what we're trying to do here is to actually change the dynamic where people would not be sad that their team lost or terribly sad that their team lost. A consolation prize would make
Starting point is 00:27:56 them slightly less sad. However, I think it would still feel like a wasted day at the park if you went and your team lost 12 to nothing and your prize was a taco or a chachki of any sort. Some people really like tacos. They do. I think that it needs to be bigger. I think the point – it needs to be a great demonstration that the team is ashamed of their loss. They feel horrible that they gave you a terrible experience.
Starting point is 00:28:20 They recognize that it's not fun to watch a team lose, especially a team lose badly, to play badly. And so the team is falling on the sword. It's not consolation so much as it is a grand gesture of taking the blame, of making things right. And so that's why I think that the cheaper you go, the less you keep this message at the forefront. And I think a general admission seat from Monday to Thursday is closer, obviously, than a taco, but it doesn't quite keep this message strong. What if the losing players give their meal money to the fans?
Starting point is 00:29:09 To buy tacos. Yeah, but it'll be their money. So they won't be able to eat that day. If a player somehow, it would be kind of interesting if, well, this is a totally different idea, but if a player had guaranteed win day and if he lost, then one person in the stands got his salary, that might sway me. But I would say that probably the union would have an issue with making the players give up their salary if they lost. Just speculating.
Starting point is 00:29:40 We haven't done the research on that. I haven't interviewed seven or eight sources, but I'm guessing that the union would be opposed to that. Sean, who lives in Europe, suggests making it a choice that you could buy either the guaranteed win ticket or not. And I like that for a reason I'll get to. But he also notes that in Europe, where he lives, he can actually accomplish this easily on his own by simply going and betting against his team before the game and that way he either gets a win or he gets his money back and in a way I'm imagining myself going through this exercise if I lived in Europe and I don't think I would ever do it I wouldn't I don't think I could ever bet against the team that I was rooting for and so
Starting point is 00:30:23 maybe that goes to the fundamental problem of what this is, which is that maybe it would actually backfire and people would not like this implicit bet that they're making against their own team if they figured it out. My guess is that people wouldn't figure it out, that people are not that smart. And they would just be like, woohoo, we got a free ticket. But it's possible that they would. Frank suggests it should be the opposite, and you should reward fans that stay until the end of a victory,
Starting point is 00:30:52 which is the exact opposite of what we're talking about, Frank. And maybe we'll talk about it another day, but stay on topic. Let's see. And then so then Tom, I think, comes up with a solution that I like the most, which is that you just do it for season ticket holders. And I actually think this solves just about every problem that I had with it, although it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea. It might still be an awful idea. If you just do it for season ticket holders, A, you're really making it for people who have a stake in the team and who are going to be most disappointed for a loss. If you're talking about a guy who goes to one game, well, it's quite possible that he's just going to a game because he wants to go to one or two baseball games a year. He's not a huge fan or he's just looking for something to do that day.
Starting point is 00:31:45 A season ticket holder, though, is really committed, emotionally committed to the success of the team. So apologizing to him when they lose seems to kind of be what this is about. If you were only talking about season ticket holders getting this perk, I don't think that you would have a critical mass of fans cheering against the team or even somewhat cheering against the team in the event of a loss because they would only be a portion of the fans. They wouldn't be all the fans, and I think they would be peer pressured out of any instinct to cheer against your fans. I mean, I can imagine if a season ticket holder looked too happy that his team was losing,
Starting point is 00:32:29 he would get stomped on by a non-season ticket holding fan who's going to be rightfully betrayed by this. I also think that a season ticket fan would be less likely to think short term in that sense and to consider the financial incentive that he has to root against his team because he's a season ticket holder. He's in it for the long haul. He wants to get his playoff tickets at the end of the year, etc.
Starting point is 00:32:58 So I think that a season ticket holder fan would quite easily continue to cheer wholeheartedly and full-throatedly despite the financial gain that he might have and a loss. And a season ticket holder, of course, could be very easily refunded. You wouldn't have any of the refund logistics that you would normally have with refunding large numbers of tickets because season ticket holders have given you all their personal information. Also I think that it could arguably be an incentive for season ticket holders, although
Starting point is 00:33:31 the fact that season ticket holders would have to put up a lot more money upfront might be a disincentive. So I don't know if it would be an incentive or a disincentive, but my guess is that it could be an incentive. So I think this is the plan that I would go forward with. Season ticket holders get refunds for all losses and pay a lot more up front. And so resolved, it's a good plan. Except that I do want to just note that Matthew Trueblood raises the extremely rational and eloquent rebuttal of the idea as a quote, god-awful, horrible, stupid idea. It was a long and impassioned email. It was long and impassioned and I don't want to
Starting point is 00:34:12 read the whole thing, but I do want to read some of it. I love you guys. I bear no ill will toward the emailer who suggested it, but it sucks. Baseball is a game played at the margins. One where the best teams of each decade win two-thirds of their games and the worst win a third. If you go to baseball games just to see your team win, you probably should stop going to baseball games
Starting point is 00:34:31 or only go when your team is very good and playing whomever the Astros of the moment are. I don't get this at all. You're not purchasing win shares. You're buying an experience. You're taking in the game, and a large portion of the beauty of the game is the fact that your team might win or might lose baseball is even more beautiful than any other american sport because uncertainty is greater opting out of the investment of emotion and even of intellect is a miserable idea that would set baseball fan culture back immeasurably if you have no reason to fear a loss you lose the ability to fully enjoy a win um and i don't disagree with any of that. I also, though, think that baseball requires
Starting point is 00:35:08 so much time, and I wrote about this not that long ago, baseball requires so much time in our lives. Basically, you're giving up 10 to 20 years of your life in baseball. I think the only way that we manage to do that is by finding personal gain. We find ways that we profit personally from baseball. And it takes away a little bit of the romance to acknowledge this, but I think that it's true. I think it's a fact for a lot of us. It might not be a fact for Matthew. It might not be a fact for a lot of people who truly do go to the game and love the game because of the smell of the grass and the
Starting point is 00:35:48 experience of being in the sun. But I'm a cold-hearted modern person with limited time and a pretty selfish greed motivating me. And subconsciously, I think that I like baseball more when I feel like it's a sport that I have stakes in, that I actually have tangible stakes in. It is unromantic as Matthew notes. It would probably lessen the fun for some people. At the end of the day, I would like my money back. Sure, me too like my money back. Sure. Me too.
Starting point is 00:36:27 Okay. All right. So that's it. Good summary of all the responses. And we appreciate all of the responses. The discussion was fun. It was fun. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:36:39 So now it's the weekend then. Yes, it is. So I guess we'll be back Tuesday then with 2.11, which causes me pain to say, but we will be back then. Have a nice long weekend.

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