Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2111: Insider Fading

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and listener Michael Mountain banter about Michael’s proposal for Effectively Wild listener ballpark meetups during the 2024 MLB season, followed by (7:24) Michael’s guest Stat Blasts about the best non-award-winning players, his all-time player tiers, and Hall of Famers (and HoF candidates) who excelled or flopped at leading their leagues at […]

Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2111 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello.

And we are a trio. We are joined by Michael Mountain, who has been with us a few times before over the years. He is a Patreon supporter. He is a listener. He is an occasional contributor. Hello, Michael. Hi, thanks for having me back again. Happy to have you back. We're sort of doing this episode backwards. We are boldly exploring new orders in which to do stat blasts and interviews. So later on this episode, Meg and I will be talking to Brian Moritz, who is a professor at St. Bonaventure in sports journalism and digital journalism, the author of Sports Media Guy, a sports journalism and sports media substack.

He wrote a piece with the provocative title, A Major Sports Betting Journalism Scandal Is Coming. And so we're going to talk to him about that, why this risk exists, why it's worrisome, what can be done about it, whether anyone will think of the children, which might not sound like the lightest topic, but we had some fun with it. We had a nice, lively conversation about the existential threats facing our industry. But we wanted to start with something a little more baseball-y. And Michael, you are here partly to deliver a stat blast, a rare episode opening StatBlast, but also to propose an Effectively Wild community

meetup of sorts, a group activity, a Hands Across America, not for a good cause, unless the cause is just meeting up at baseball stadiums and watching baseball games, which is actually a pretty good cause. Can you tell us about your plan, your proposal for Effectively Wild ballpark meetups during the 2024 season and what information you're hoping to receive from our listeners? Sure. I mean, I love your commitment to experimenting with the form even after 2000 episodes, just trying to keep it fresh. As you mentioned, I'm a Patreon supporter and the Patreon Discord is a wonderful place to be for anyone who's not currently contributing. It's a really great baseball discussion group and also just general camaraderie. I did not tell Michael to say that, although I do

endorse that sentiment. No sponcon here. But one of the StatBlast channels, which I frequent, I shared a couple months ago an idea for potentially trying to organize a series of meetups across MLB stadiums during the 2024 season. This is a bit of a nod to the road trip that I took back in 2018 to try to actually physically visit a game at all 30 parks in the shortest time span possible. Discussed on episode 1263. Yes, which was a delight. This is a slightly different puzzle to solve, I guess. You know, the way that I think of a lot of these stat bless and schedule finding and everything, they're all sort of puzzles and they're all sort of ways for me to try to explore some new programming challenge or do something else with coding that sparks

my interest. And so for this one, the original idea was to try to find a route between stadiums that took, I didn't care how long it took, basically, in terms of time, whether it took, you know, one month, two months, the entire season, etc., just to try to find the shortest travel distance. So to get the stadiums in as close to optimal a visiting order as possible without regard to how long the total trip would actually take. And that sort of evolved into an idea of what if that was used as the basis for figuring out a schedule to have a series of listener meetups across the league throughout the course of the season.

Sounds fun to me. We've had informal ones from time to time. People just meet up of their own accord. But having sort of an organized passing of the baton type experiment sounds fun. Yeah. And I've gone to a few of the local ones here in the Baltimore, D.C. area, which has been delightful and figured it might be, like you said, a good idea to try to organize something on a slightly larger scale. Now, when I say organize, I want to be clear that this is not something that I'm looking to undertake as a solo effort. And this is where the rest of the listener community comes in.

We really need local organizers to help with contributing and planning and setting up, coordinating ticket purchases, figuring out seating locations and all of that good stuff for their local regions, since I am certainly not planning to attend all of these. So it really is a communal effort. And so what I've done is I've developed a short Google survey, which will be linked in the show notes, and we'll also drop it in the Facebook group and in the Patreon Discord. For people to indicate their interest, whether you'd like to organize a local meetup or just attend, filling out that survey is going to be very helpful to get a sense of how appealing an idea this is for the larger Effectively Wild community and make sure that we can figure out a good way to get it organized since we are only a couple months away

here from opening day. Yeah, sounds fun to me. So please fill out the survey. There's a space for contact info if you'd like to be an organizer or just to share some comments or ideas. And we look forward to having a really great turnout all across the league and maybe sharing some photos or items that folks might want to bring and share and maybe sign or send something to Ben and Meg.

We'll see. We'll figure it out. Yeah, like an Olympic torch will be passed. I don't know. Maybe my old mic that I no longer use to record the podcast, but used to. That could be passed from hand to hand, ballpark to ballpark, ceremonially. Yeah, that may be a little ambitious for our first year here, but if it goes well, who knows? Maybe it'll become an annual event. I would love to see how all 30 parks would interact with that from a security perspective, Ben. Like, what is this? Are you bringing this in?

Maybe that couldn't get past the metal detectors. It's probably also covered with my spittle. Anyway, I think this is a nice thing to think about in the depths of winter. Although I enjoy the depths of winter, many people do not. And they probably like thinking about summer when it will be bright and there will be baseball again. So you've given them the chance to do that. And we'll be busting stat head stereotypes here, leaving our computers, going out into the open air and the sun and associating with others, actually socializing. Maybe I'll show up if there's one in the area. So sounds like a good idea to me. We will put it on the show notes. So give Michael some feedback. And you have also brought a stat blast or maybe multiple stat blasts.

And since we are now playing some listener covers of the stat blast song to introduce this segment, I believe you recorded one a few years ago. And so it would be quite appropriate for me to play the Michael Mountain cover of the stat blastast song to set up Michael Mountain StatBlast. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA minus or OPS plus, and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in Stabblast. in the StatBlast channel, and I know, Ben, you sometimes grab those to share. These were a couple here where I felt like it was a little bit more confusing to actually type out the thoughts about them, so I can just sort of run through these kind of quickly here. The short one, I'll say, was inspired by or a follow-up to an old research topic from Sam Miller in the early Effectively Wild days related to Nick Markakis and the lack of awards recognition, we'll say, that he received throughout most of his career. Obviously that is no longer true at this time, given some of the MVP votes he got, All-Star

appearance, et cetera, at the end of his Orioles tenure. Yes, spoiled by that 2018, his age 34 season, 18th place in the MVP race and also an all-star appearance. Yes, he was so close, but we'll have to settle for just remembering him fondly in our hearts here in Baltimore. But inspired by that research, I was refreshing it and also doing a little bit of breakdown analysis by franchise. So I looked for the baseball reference war leader for each franchise award accumulated for that team. And I generated four different lists, which are sort of related, but slightly different based on how strict I wanted to be with the awards recognition criteria. The most lenient was just to say they never received a major award while they were playing for that team.

And I considered major awards to be All-Star appearances, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, MVP award, or Rookie of the Year. So, did no awards for that team. I had a separate list, which was they never received an award in their entire career. A third list was that they did not receive any award votes at any point during their tenure with the team. So this is MVP votes, essentially, or Rookie of the Year votes. And then the most strict criteria was that they no award votes in their entire career. So I generated each of those lists with those criteria and found the franchise war leader in each category. And it's kind of interesting how it breaks down.

Most of the teams sort of are around the 15 to 20 war mark. For each of those criteria, it starts out a little higher and gets down as you get more strict. The overall leader, the highest war player who appears on any of these lists is Bill Doran for the Houston Astros at 30.4. So that's about as good as you can get without receiving major recognition, at least from the national media, we'll say, during your career. I remember Mark Ellis was a big one too, but I guess he got some rookie of the year support initially, right? But he never got an all-star appearance, never got MVP votes, and he's a 33.5 baseball reference war at least. So he must be on some list, right? Yes. And he is the leader for the Oakland Athletics, both in no awards votes for the team

and also no award votes ever. So on the low end, obviously, some of the expansion franchises haven't had as much time to amass players with this much production. Although on the other hand, there's more players in the league, so maybe there's more chance to spread those votes around. But we'll say the bottom of the list, no awards for the team with the smallest value player there is the Arizona Diamondbacks. player there is the Arizona Diamondbacks. Stephen Drew, 13.2, wins above replacement. No award votes for the team. The trailer is Ricky Nolasco for the Miami Marlins at 10.6, and that's also the leader for no award votes ever. The last person I want to highlight here real quick, the highest war player who never received any major award votes in his career. Belongs to Giants pitcher Jim Barr, who played mostly in the 70s.

He did spend a couple years with the Angels as well, but the bulk of his career was in San Francisco, where he put up 28.4 career war and has nothing in the awards column on his baseball reference page. Nothing to show for it. I put up 28.4 war, and all I got was this lousy stat blast mention. I see Bill Hands high on some of these lists, the late Bill Hands, former Effectively Wild

guest and cold call recipient, episode 964. So some familiar names here, obviously pretty good players toward the top of the list. Yeah, there's a few good ones. When I was putting this list together, I was kind of, again, the idea of being guided by puzzles or interesting prompts. I was kind of thinking about who are the fun underrated players that you might feel like you got some good street cred if you had one of their jerseys, let's say. Okay, we will link to the full list if you want to peruse them on the show page, as always. What else you got? All right. The other one I have is a follow-up to StatBlast from episode 2060. Love a follow-up. This was one that you shared previously that I

had done, inspired by a Bill James Q&A response. I don't remember exactly what the context was, but the general idea was you could generate more Hall of Fame discussions or debates if you had sort of a career tier list. So not just, are you in the Hall of Fame or are you not in the Hall of Fame, but sort of a number of different tiers for players with all different sorts of career trajectories. And then you could have discussions about, you know, does this person belong in tier two or tier three, et cetera. And I had done an initial stab at trying to categorize players with that, but I wasn't really happy with how it had worked out. So I had taken that to my dad who inspired my passion for baseball and he had some really good suggestions that I thought made it a little bit better. The first thing I did was actually cut down the number of tiers because originally it

was at 10, and that was just too many. And also the high tiers were so small that they weren't really very meaningful, given that having a tier of one, sure, when it's Babe Ruth, that might mean something, but it's a little bit more helpful to define a tier with a decent number of people in it. The other thing that I did to adjust that was I changed the multiplier. So the way that I set up the tiers was I said there's basically a maximum size for each tier. It has to be no more than x times the number of people in the tier below it. So you sort of have this graduated size. And I can go through that real quickly here just to talk about the size of the tiers. But essentially, the first time I did, I had a multiplier, I think, of two and a half,

and it wasn't quite working out right. It was suggested to me that a very natural value to use here would be E, the mathematical constant E, which is a little more than 2.5. It's about 2.72. And that actually made some of the math work out a little bit better as well. So not only is it a natural value to use for this type of exponential growth, it also does make some of the tiers work out a little bit better. So switch to that. And then the last change I made, which is kind of an unfortunate change, but with the retirement of Adam Durowski's work at the Hall of Stats website, which was just shut down about a couple weeks ago. And that was the metric I had used for the previous iteration of this. I just switched over to using the career fan graphs for. So, obvious some caveats apply with that. There are data issues around some of the Negro League stars who had major league equivalencies defined for some of their stat values at the Hall of Stats, but are maybe

appearing in a slightly different position on this list. But, you know, it's kind of the best we have with the data we have at this point. So the tier list now is down to seven tiers, and I assigned a label to each tier to sort of describe kind of how you would think about it, and what sort of general type of player would be in there if you're just sort of thinking about where to slot somebody in. And just to reiterate, this is a listing of every player who has ever appeared in Major League Baseball, right? It's not just who are the Hall of Famers. It's a seven-tier system for basically everyone who has a baseball reference page, more or less. Anything else is slacking, really. Just try to be ambitious. Rank every single player.

You've got to be comprehensive when you do this type of project. So the first tier, which has just made it to the show, this tier has 14,492 players, including about 1,000 active people. Obviously, if your career is completed and you're in this tier, you're pretty much a cup of coffee guy. Maybe you played two to three seasons, but not particularly well. If you're an active player and you're in this tier, you're probably a rookie. Maybe you've contributed modestly, or maybe you're a quad A player who's just fighting for playing time. For example, the active player who's at the top of this tier is Tomas Nito. The active player who's at the top of this tier is Tomas Nito.

And he actually got bounced down here last season by putting up negative 0.7 Van Graaff Soir in 61 plate appearances for the Mets. So this is essentially replacement level players. It's roughly about 0.8 wins above replacement as the cutoff to make it out of tier one into tier two, which I've called positive contributors. This is 5,331 players, including about 600 active players. These are guys who hung on for a while, but not usually longer than about five or six years. If they did play longer, they were close to replacement level most of the time. And then active players in this tier are mostly pre-free agent guys like Keston Hura, David Bodie, or maybe journeymen who have some limited value

like Bradley Zimmer or Brian Shaw. This is essentially Fangraph's War between 1 and 10. And the active player who is the closest to being promoted out of this tier is Manuel Margot. Oh, okay. New Dodger, rooting for him. He needs 0.05 wins above replacement. Oh, he can do it. He can make it very easily up to tier three, which I've called notable careers. This is a Fangrafts War between 10 and 25, okay. like Yasiel Puig or Brett Laurie. And active players in this tier have generally reached free agency or signed early extensions, obviously.

Players like Steve Stone, Chris Hoyles, John Lowenstein, some of the Orioles who are at various points within this tier. And the closest to being promoted is Kevin Kiermaier, who is 0.2 war shy of the All-Star tier, tier four. I've labeled it All-Stars. Most players in this tier have made an All-Star game or are of that caliber. 80% of guys in tier four have played at least 12 seasons. This is a Fangrafts War of between 25 and 45 or so. It's got 721 players, including about 60 active players. You could say this is the Hall of Very Good tier.

And actually, a couple of guys who are in the very top of this tier are BBWA selections to the Hall of Fame. Guys like Catfish Hunter, Lou Brock, Rabbit Moranville, Bob Lemon. Marginal Hall of Fame guys, potentially, if you want to be uncharitable. But yeah, the closest to being promoted out of this tier is Giancarlo Stanton. A little less confident in that one. Yeah. Well, he needs 2.6 Fangraphs War. And, you know, of course, if he has a Pujols type of treading water or maybe moving slightly backwards, you know, might take a little more time.

But 2.6 feels doable, potentially. The following tier up from that, tier five, I've called Hall of Fame candidates. This is Fangraphs War between about 45 and 65. There are 265 players in this tier, including 16 active players. And that's Garrett Cole, Jacob deGrom, Josh Donaldson, Jose Ramirez, Bryce Harper, Chris Sale, Francisco Lindor, Nolan Arenado, Manny Machado, Andrew McCutcheon, Jose Altuve, Evan Longoria, Paul Goldschmidt, Joey Votto, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts. So this is basically, you get a sense of what this tier is. It's pretty much impossible to get here without playing for at least 10 seasons. And we'll say most of the Hall of Fame debates that occur are about players in this tier, obviously depending on how big a hall you prefer. But Mookie Betts is near the top of this tier, and he's about six and a half wins above replacement from moving up to tier six, which I've called Legends.

This is 97 players, including six players who were active this past season. That's Cabrera, Granke, Scherzer, Kershaw, Verlander, and Trout. You forgot Rich Hill, I think. Wow. Well, podcast legend versus career legend is two slightly different criteria. We need a special designation on BRF pages for that. Yes. We really do.

changing the multiplier that I used for these tier sizes had the sort of coincidental happy accident of making it such that this tier plus the seventh tier combined is almost exactly the same size as the number of players that the BBWA has selected for Hall of Fame induction. So that kind of gives you a sense of the general caliber of player who are there. And then tier seven, which is now the top tier, which has a decent size of players in it now, is the all-time greats. I've called it Fangrafts War of 95 or more. These are essentially the inner circle guys, and it's most of the people you think of.

I'm not going to name all of them because there's about 35, but they're on the list here. I will call out Burp Lyleven just because my dad doesn't think he's that good. But I suspect he's not alone in that assessment. But Fangraff Swarovski is, so. Yes, there was a campaign on his behalf, which was successful, ultimately. Well, I like this tier system. It was, I think, an interesting proposal by Bill, and you have taken it and run with it. Will you be maintaining this? Will it be available for people? I know it's in a spreadsheet, which we will link to. Hall of Staff's website, but I've been trying to increase my ease of use, my comfort level with some of the Fangraphs leaderboards. And so I've been trying to do more sort of data aggregation

and export and messing around in there. So I think I'm feeling a little better facility with some of that now, and I may try to keep this updated at least sort of for end of season stats, maybe going forward at least for a couple years. So we'll see how that goes. Cool. Hall of Fame related. I don't know how tired we are of that discourse yet. But this was inspired by a conversation I was having with a friend of mine who was dismissing Chase Utley as a compiler and disparaging his Hall of Fame resume, not even out of a sense of NLE's rivalry, but as a genuine argument. And so that sort of inspired me to try to look specifically for, you know, Hall of Fame peak discussions, because again, that's a perspective you hear often from some potential, not necessarily from Hall of Fame voters, but from people who care about the Hall

of Fame who talk about the idea that enshrinement is reserved for sort of the best of the best or people who are clearly the best in their league or at their position for some period of time. Utley didn't play long enough to be a compiler. He should have been. He should have compiled more. It probably would have helped him. Yeah. So that's why I found that perspective a little confusing and not wanting to simply argue on feelings and emotions. I always like to have some stats to back me up. So inspired by the seven-year peak component of JAWS, I did some stat head querying. I did a breakdown per league and per position, basically a rolling seven-year period. So for each position in each league, in each seven-year

span, consecutive span of years, I found the player with the highest baseball reference war who was primarily a player at that position. And I did that for every year, every span of years, going back to 1901. I did pitchers as well. I did the top five pitchers and then assigned points basically to players who showed up on that list. That was used to generate sort of a leaderboard of points for basically appearances in this seven year leader chart, we'll say. It was not particularly detailed breakdown. I just said you get one point as a position player for each time you appear on the list. And for pitchers, I did something similar to Cy Young votes where it's a one through five,

and I did seven points for first place, four points for second place, three points for third place, two points for fourth, and one point for fifth. And then I just put everybody in a list and looked at how many points people had and what sort of rate of Hall of Fame induction there was for players with various numbers of career points. So I've got a spreadsheet for this too, and I've highlighted the players who are actually in the Hall of Fame. So you can sort of see as time goes on for various periods of time where the Hall of Famers were playing. Interesting to note that in the American League and in the National League, basically in the late 20s, early 30s, you have a Hall of Famer leading the league at every single position. And that doesn't happen that often. Normally,

there's at least one position where there's some guy who had a short peak but was showing up there for a couple of years, let's say, as the best to do it. But partially maybe due to the higher percentage of plate appearances taken by Hall of Famers in that time period, they did actually get everybody in. And some of those are maybe not the best selections. But the other interesting thing I found is that practically everyone who's in the Hall of Fame actually does show up on this list at least, you know, to get one point. You know, you think of some of the Hall of Fame cases that it's like, maybe this guy wasn't really the best selection, but for the most part, they all show up on here at some point. Now, there's a few who don't, and they pretty much fall into three categories,

right? Certainly for position players, there's only 15 Hall of Fame position players who are not on this list. And when I say Hall of Fame position players, I'm referring to players inducted by the Baseball Writers Association during their regular balloting or special elections for guys like Gehrig and Clemente or the regular Veterans Committee process. So this is not, again, due to the limitations of the data sources, this is not accounting for the various Negro League committees, other special election processes that were used to induct folks. But I was just looking at essentially the Veterans Committee and the era committees for players, as well as the regular

BBWA election process. So there's a handful of guys who aren't, and like I said, they basically fall into three categories. There's five guys who were just blocked by like inner circle hall of famers who happen to be playing their same position in their same league at the same time um so this is richie ashburn uh in the national league center field blocked by willie mays and duke snyder uh unfortunate yeah hank greenberg american league first baseman blocked by lou gehrig and Jimmy Fox. He's one of the two BBWA inductees. There's Joe Tinker, who was blocked by Hannes Wagner. We have Chuck Klein, National League right fielder, who was career overlapped with that of Mel Otts. And then you have Sam Rice in the American League right fielder, who was blocked sort of around the same time as Chuck Klein by somebody named George, I think. Yeah, George Sherman. So that's one category. Those

guys just were just unfortunate to play at the same time as a few legends. There's another few guys who don't show up here just because they changed leagues. And so the way that I was doing it, they didn't really get partial credit for either league. They just sort of got shut out. So that's Ted Simmons, who changed leagues around the same time as Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk were doing their things. You got Vlad Guerrero Sr., who changed leagues around the same time that Sammy Sosa and Ichiro were being very productive. And then you have Fred McGriff, who changed leagues while Eddie Murray and Don Mattingly were taking the AL crowns and Jeff Bagwell was doing his thing in the National League.

And then the third category is there's just a few people who are, they're all Veterans Committee picks, and they are some of the ones who, again, you might charitably describe as marginal. If you were feeling uncharitable, you might describe them as a misguided. This is Heine Manouche, Rabbit Moranville, Lou Brock, Harold Baines, Rick Farrell, who I was not very familiar with, but he was a catcher for the American League in the 30s and 40s. Lloyd Wainer and High Pockets Kelly. But his brother, Low Pockets, totally deserving. Yeah. Well, I think Rick Farrell's brother, actually, Wes Farrell, was excellent, right?

Yes. And Lloyd Wainer's brother, Paul, as well. But Wes is not a Hall of Famer. Rick is unjust. Must have made things difficult at the family gatherings. Yeah. Exactly. And for pitchers, it's even more simple.

Obviously, there's the relievers who don't get any points in the system just because of the way the system is set up. But then there's just three pitchers. There's only three pitchers who don't, non-reliever pitchers who don't have any points in the system. And that's Waite Hoyt, who changed leagues. There's Catfish Hunter, who we'll say maybe more of his Hall of Fame resume depends on his postseason performance than other players,

as well as his perfect game. And then there's Jesse Haynes, who, again, you'll be forgiven for not recalling because he's mostly in the Hall of Fame because he was teammates with Frankie Frisch. Yep. A lot of people can say that. Those are the shutout guys. But what I found even more interesting was to look at among the players who are currently

on the ballot where they fall in this rating. Again, you know, primarily-oriented, but what kind of guys show up here that you might not think were as high as they were? So for position players, if you look at people who are retired, they're already off the ballot, and whether or not they're in the Hall of Fame, you basically, if you have, we'll say, six to eight points in this metric, people with that many points are roughly 50-50 to make the Hall of Fame. If you have nine or more points, it's more like 90% that you're in, especially if you account for some people who would be in clearly on the basis of their on-field performance but have some other concerns keeping them off, like Barry Bonds, for example. Who is the position player leader in this metric by the way he has 19 points which is more than anyone else so basically 19 different seven-year spans and obviously those seven-year spans overlap with each other a lot but basically every year in the national league from

you know uh in 1985 through 2009. And just recall that that span includes a number of years where he was not playing. But if you looked at the span 2003 to 2009, for example, for that span of time, no National League left fielder amassed more Winslow replacement than Barry Bonds, even though he, you know, was retired for two of those years and not particularly good for a couple of them. So he's at the top, but there's a few guys who are on the ballot who are in that sort of six to eight range that is

sort of marginal Hall of Fame or, you know, 50% Hall of Fame case. Chase Utley is actually at nine points. So he pretty easily clears here. Justified this whole exercise for you. Absolutely. So this was completely worth it. And thank you for indulging me on that. The other guys in the six to eight range currently are actually Sal Perez is there. He's at eight right now, even though he's still active. Guys on the ballot in that range, Andrew Jones has eight points. Nolan Arenado has seven points. Joe Maurer has seven points. His peak is very much in line with this criteria. Adrian Beltre has six points. And it's interesting that he's, you know, obviously his peak is not going to be the reason why he makes it into Cooperstown, but he's right there too, as well

as a few other active guys who are in that range as well. Buster Posey and Ryan Braun, you know, not active, but pending ballot appearances. Andrew McCutcheon is at six points. Miguel Cabrera is at seven points. Nolan Arenado, I think I mentioned, is at seven points. Ichiro and Albert Pujols each have eight points. And the active player with the most points, of course, is Mike Trout at 10. And on the pitching side, it's roughly similar. I mean, there's been so much conversation around what the Hall of Fame induction standards are for pitchers now and kind of what that means. But pitchers' numbers are a lot higher in this metric just because the number of points available is a lot higher. So the leader, for example, now remember this is seven points for each time that you lead the league. Roger Clemens is the leader, all-time leader with 106 points.

You know, most guys who get sort of in the 25 to 35 range are kind of, that's kind of the 50% bucket. And some of the players on the active ballot who are in that range are, actually, there's not a lot of guys on the ballot in that range mark burley's at 23 points andy pettit and bartolo cologne are both squeaking in with the two points each but some of the other active guys who we expect to get in are up here you know justin verlander has 70 points clayton kershaw has 60 points max scherzer has 35 points. So Chris Dale has 29 points. And again, obviously his peak is what it is, not necessarily going to get him into the hall on its own merits, but it's sort of in line with what a lot of other Hall of Fame type players have had. Well, very topical. We will get the actual results a little later this month, but you already got one result you wanted with Chase

Utley's ranking there. So well done. And we will share this and we will share the survey that you can fill out to help Michael organize and figure out what the Effectively Wilds ballparks across America fan activity is going to be in this upcoming season. Michael, thank you very much. Absolutely. Always a pleasure, Ben. Thank you. And Meg and I will take a quick break and we will be right back with Brian Moritz, who predicts a major sports betting journalism scandal is coming. I predict Brian Moritz is coming up on Effectively Wild. Mark, I heard the same thing from us. Every series I've been to, there's been some rumor about a fix just to shake up the odds. You hang out in Bosnia, you have a lot of screwy things. on Effectively Wild. let's keep separate scorecards.

You circle every play that smells fishy. I'll do the same. We'll compare them after the game. Probably nothing to it. Yeah, nothing to it. Well, you may remember that when we did our bold preseason predictions last year, one of mine was that there would be some sort of sports betting scandal in baseball's minor leagues, which did not happen. At least the scandal didn't happen.

We assume the betting didn't happen either. And to be clear, I am happy that it didn't happen, even though it meant that my prediction was wrong. However, undeterred by my failed bold prediction about a major sports betting scandal, Brian Moritz has made his own for 2024, although his is specific to sports media. He published a piece in December at Nieman Lab, a major sports betting journalism scandal is coming. He is here to discuss it with us today. He is an associate professor at St. Bonaventure University, where he directs the online master's programs in sports journalism and digital journalism. He's also the author of Sports Media Guy, a newsletter about sports journalism and sports media. What kind of odds did you think people had

on us inviting you onto the podcast today? I'm going to go at about 14 to 1 with the over-under on 128 minutes. I actually don't know how long we're going to be, but I appreciate you guys having me on. I'm always happy to talk about stuff like this. I think it's a really, really fascinating topic, not just the journalism angle, but the whole kind of rise in legal and accessible gambling is really changing so much about how we consume sports and about sports itself. I'm always happy to talk about it. Yes.

In so many wonderful ways. Yes. Meg and I have stubbornly resisted even understanding how odds work, I think. Okay, good. I'm glad you say that because in my previous life, I worked at newspapers. And when we would do the the page, which is for anybody under 40, is the page where you would have all the standings and the box scores and everything. And you would always have the latest line, which was the betting odds for the day. And I mean, that was along with the comics and the obituaries were the three things you could not leave out of the paper or you would just get inundated with phone calls and angry people.

And I swear to this day, I don't know what baseball odds mean. Do you guys? Because I have no idea how to read a baseball odds. No, unless you mean the Fangraphs playoff probabilities that I can read. But no. Those get mistaken for betting odds sometimes, which boy, let me tell you how fun it is to explain that difference one further. Yeah, I think I understand probability. I hope I do to some extent.

But when it comes to the actual odds, I always have to remind myself what they mean because I'm not a betting man. But you have sounded the alarm here about possible betting people in our ranks in sports media. Could be any of us. Look to your left, look to your right. Could be the next sports journalist who's going to do a scandal. What is the vulnerability that you have identified here? So I think the main vulnerability, it's kind of a twofold thing that I see it. One is, you know, like we kind of already hinted at, you know, the Supreme Court legalizing sports gambling or saying states could legalize it, I should say. And so becoming

much more widespread and becoming more accessible, which is kind of the I think the other important piece of that, you know, it's legal, but now you don't have to drive to a sports book. You don't have to drive to a racetrack or a casino to gamble. You can just do it from your phone as you're watching a game during a game. And so I think that that's made gambling and betting on sports and sports adjacent sports media here is the lack of professional guardrails that are in place around gambling and sports journalism. When you look at the ethical guidelines that govern journalism, and I say govern loosely. This is not like law. This is not like stock trading. This is not like medicine where your codes of ethics carry legal and professional ramifications, right? They're best practices. They're voluntary codes, the guidelines, not rules, so to speak. And you look at them and

there's nothing directly related to gambling in any of them, especially the sports ones, which I found interesting. And you can kind of like, especially the sports ones, which I found interesting. And, you know, you can kind of like if you read creatively, you can you can, you know, apply certain ones to to gambling. But, you know, the APSC, the American AP Sports Editors Ethical Guidelines has nothing about gambling, but it has a whole section about the ethics of sharing notes with other reporters. And, you know, it just struck me that it is a scandal likely. Like, I think it could happen. I might have overblown it for the added to the hyperbole a little bit for the sake of the prediction piece. I don't think that's I think I basically acknowledge that in the piece as well.

But I think without those kind of specific guidelines, I think what happened in sports journalism and around sports media is gambling became legal. Gambling became accessible. All this sponsorship money flooded in. All this opportunity, all this stuff started happening. And nobody has had that pause, right? No kind of leaders in sports journalism have had that collective, hey, how should we handle this? How do we deal with the fact that gambling is legal now and people are using our reporting

to make bets? And now we're maybe sponsored. Our company may have a partnership with a gambling organization or a sports book. And how do we deal with the perception of that? And that's kind of where I see the opportunity is ripe for something to happen. I don't have a specific idea. Oh, we can talk about this. I don't have like a specific inflection point or like a specific thing that's going to happen. It's just, it just feels like something's about to blow in this area. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. If I can offer you some reassurance, although I share your broader concern, I mean, I can't speak to what the then also specific guidelines, particularly for awards voters. Because, boy, are people interested in what your rookie of the year vote's going to be when they want to place a bet in Vegas. on the part of some of these professional associations that this is a point of potentially

very real vulnerability for us, both from an actual betting perspective, but then also just a credibility perspective. But I'm curious whether you think that will be sufficient because you can have ethical guidelines, you can have rules in your constitution that give you the ability to expel members if they run afoul of those guidelines. But, you know, it puts you in this position where you basically have to get caught before there are any repercussions. Are there, what are your ideas around sort of how this can be monitored and sort of verified on the part of these associations? Because you'd have to, someone would have to know, right, that you had leaked what is essentially material non-public information or that you had gone and placed a bet.

But, you know, that requires discovery on the part of understaffed and under-resourced professional associations. Yeah, that is a great question. First of all, Megan, I want to thank you for letting me know about the BBWA. I had heard that right around the time the piece, I wrote the piece and the piece came out that this was going to be voted on at the winter meetings. And I kind of heard it like in conversation. So I didn't know like how public that was. So I'm glad that it's going to be, it's being adopted. I can't wait to see the language. I think that's super important.

It's a twofold problem. And I think the enforcement thing is a really difficult challenge because you're right. You don't have there's not an investigative arm of the BBWA that's going out there and examining, making sure everyone's acting on the up and up. And there's no inspections of your information sharing or all of that. information sharing or all of that. The flaw in my grander argument, which I firmly acknowledge, is that these writers, the writers guidelines from the journalism organizations or from the writers organizations, they don't have I mean, they have some power, but you get kicked out of the BBWA. You don't get like stripped of your journalism license or whatever that would happen in medicine that would happen in law or something along the lines of that. And also you have the challenge that, you know, let's say you get 100 percent following of the of the letter in spirit of the law by BBWA members. Well, not everyone who tweets or writes or bets about baseball is a BBWA member. Right.

And so they can act with, you know, ethics rules, schmethics rules. And I think that that's a that's a challenge that we, you know, in broader journalism you face as well. It's more just kind of like professional norms and best practices and not rule of law. So it's an unsatisfying answer because I don't know, I don't know about enforcement and I don't know, like it really does have to kind of come down to basically individual reporters to act ethically and individual editors to to kind of maintain that expectation. And, you know, reporters gambling certainly to that. I think one of the things that can come from this is adding thoughts on gambling and however it's however it's laid out to that ethical discussion on the same level of you don't make up quotes. You don't take money from a player from a player to write their story. to write their story, something along those lines, those kind of established ethical violations that we know about in journalism and kind of adding gambling into that category. I mean, it's an

imperfect first step, but I do think it's a first step that needs to be taken. ESPN did something similar right ahead of the launch of its sportsbook, its branded ESPN bet sportsbook. They told staffers that they can't do this and that, right? And again, who knows if this has teeth or if there's any monitoring involved whatsoever, if it's just honor system. Well, I can say really quick, Ben, if you don't mind, I can say I have friends who work at ESPN and who have worked at ESPN, and I've talked to them on and off the record. And there really is, at ESPN, there really is a very strict, almost firewall between the ESPN bet, which is basically just a branded, like they put their name on a sports book. That's all it is compared to the actual operation in Bristol.

You know, I think all eyes are always on ESPN because of its enormous power and influence in this space. I tend to think any scandal that's going to happen isn't going to happen at ESPN just because, A, that firewall is in place. And for all we can say about ESPN and could say about ESPN, they do take that journalistic integrity part of their business very, very seriously. And I think they've got that. They, as a company, have a lot to lose in this. And I think that they would be I would be stunned if anything happened with ESPN. I don't see it happening. Smaller outlets are kind of more – that are more integrated with sportsbooks or the sportsbooks themselves reporting news.

I think that's where – and again, that gets into another muddled area here of the classic age-old who's a journalist debate. We're not going to relive the blogger wars of the early 2000s. But I do think that there is this idea – there's this notion that as a consumer of sports news, you're getting stuff on social media. You're getting stuff online, on your phone, on push alerts. And journalists and sports books and they're all kind of – you all kind of get them in the same place. And so it can very much bleed together where you don't necessarily stop to think, oh, this is an independent journalist for a news organization reporting this versus this is somebody who's partnered with Valley Sports and making that distinction. And so I think those blurred lines are part of what makes this such a challenging area. I'd be happy not to have another ESPN scandal because I've had a nice fill of other sorts of ESPN scandals lately. And it's only January 11th. My goodness. In your piece, you lay out a couple of theoretical ways that this could happen to different routes to the possible sports journalism scandal. Do you want to describe the different ways that you

imagine that it could go down? The first one is kind of like the sports media version of insider trading, right? And so this is actually laid out to me by my friend Tim Graham, who works at The Athletic and who I've known for years. I used to work in Las Vegas as a reporter back in the late 90s, I think. And the insider trading scenario is basically you're covering a basketball team practice and you're the reporter, you're the beat writer. And you go and it's the day before a game and star point guard comes down, lands on his ankle, twists it. Obvious pain, like it's bad. Can't put weight on it. You know, he's like no chance he's going to be able to play.

He or she. You go to your phone. You got two apps next to each other. One is the app formerly known as Twitter, where you would go on and say, just saw player X hurt their ankle, doesn't look good. Next one is FanDuel or any number of the sports books where you could go. And because you can bet on literally anything in sports, you could place a bet on the game knowing information that nobody else knows yet. What do you do as a sports reporter? That's kind of like the Death Star scenario, I think.

And what's funny about that is when I started looking into this topic about almost a year and a half ago now, that was kind of like the primary thing I think we all thought of as the potential for, you know, sports, you know, the insider trading, the you're profiting, you know, Meg, you mentioned this earlier, you're profiting off of, you know, unreleased news. And when I talk to people like that doesn't really seem to be likely, especially at the highest levels, the pro levels, you know, and it's basically because the way the media, the sports media ecosystem is, I mean, scoops last for seconds. You're not going to take the time to place a bet and let somebody else break the story by five seconds.

That five seconds matters to people. That is professional currency. That absolutely matters, whether it's kind of ridiculous or not. It does matter. And so I think, and then at the lower levels, you know, let's be honest, at the lower levels of Division I men's and women's basketball and baseball and all that, you probably don't have reporters covering practices anymore because there aren't sports writers who are covering these teams at that level anymore.

So that's potential, but it's unlikely. I think one of the more likely ones that we see is, you know, it's what happened with Shams over the summer with the NBA draft when he reported a change in one of the players draft status. And he was hearing somebody might go number two. And Shams has a partnership with, I believe, FanDuel. I don't remember. I'm pulling that off the top of my head. So please correct me if I'm wrong. And that affected the betting lines on who would go number two, because again, you can bet on literally anything. And it ended up the player wasn't

taking number two, but it raised a lot of questions. Well, Sham's reporting that to move the betting line to make the company he has a partner with more money. He's denied it. There's been no evidence of that. But you see the problem with all of this is that when we deal with ethics and we deal with gambling and reporting, it's a matter of perception, not necessarily reality. The perception is what matters. That's what these journalism ethics rules are all about. You know, it is a guideline against, you know, improper, improper behavior, but it's much more about how the public reads and perceives our reporting and the news that's being reported. Do they take it as it's being reported and it's independent and it's correct and it's verified and it's fair and accurate and

all those things we love in journalism? Or is it meant to drive you to maybe place five bucks on a draft pick or a game? You know, one thing I was thinking about before we recorded today, I was trying to think of a baseball-related example. And, you know, you can think back to the weekend when Shohei Ohtani was maybe going to Toronto for like that hour and a half before he ended up signing with the Dodgers, right? So think of it this way. You know, you remember the reports that came out that he was headed to Toronto or something like that.

But now imagine that tweet, the post, the whatever that had that, instead of just like, you know, Shohei Otani is headed to Toronto, my sources tell me. Now imagine that there's a link to DraftKings in that tweet or take 20% off your first bet on the MLB season link in the tweet. And it takes you and you could bet to Toronto winning the AL East or the American League or something like that. All of a sudden now that changes the nature of that reporting, right? Now it's not just Shohei Otani might be going to Toronto and oops, the reporter goofed up for however.

Now it's like the reporter, the perception of it changes, right? Now it's not the reporter goofed up for however. Now it's like the reporter, the perception of it changes, right? Now it's not the reporter goof. Now it's like he was trying to change us to get us to bet, to put money on Toronto. And that totally changes the nature of how we see, how we, the audience, see and interact with the information. And I think that the partnerships that exist, like I know why they exist. It's capitalism, money talks, sports books have the money. But I think there does need to be kind of care to make sure that it's clear when a news outlet or a sports outlet is reporting news that it's not directly linked to and now bet on it. Because that can call the information into question. Like, are you reporting it because it's accurate or are you reporting it because this is going to move the line and we can

make an extra $100,000 from people betting Toronto or whatever? Yeah, that opera singer in Toronto who tweeted out the rumor about the Yusei Kikuchi sushi reservation potentially left a lot of money on the table there. It really did, yeah. Yeah, there was no link to a sports bet in the tweet, so I took it as gospel. Well, opera singers are well-known for breaking baseball news, as you guys well know. I think there's like a third category of concern, at least that I have,

and I wonder what you make of this. There's the potential to act on what is essentially material non-public information. There's the sort of blurring of the motivation for reporting a piece of information about a player's status, a team's outlook, a transaction, what have you. And then, you know, it strikes me that there's this third category of sort of failure to, potential failure to report at all. I mean, I think that when you if you're a consumer of sports media and you are going to either, you know, DraftKings or FanDuel or any of these sites directly, which have, you know, sort of sports related content,

some of which is explicitly gambling related, some of which is a little bit broader in its scope, or you're going to an outlet that has an established relationship with a particular book, I think that there are going to be a number, a lot of readers who are savvy enough to understand that like, you know, the water's sort of been muddied in terms of what master you're serving. The thing that I worry about more is, and I don't want to pick on ESPN because I think I agree with you that they seem, you know, like they have the appropriate measures in place, at least when it comes to their scoops folks, their newsbreakers. But we don't know yet what the ramifications for sports betting are going to be on the team side. We've gotten some insight into that in the last 12 months, right, where we've had a number of scandals related to team personnel, whether it's professionals or in the

college ranks, sort of betting on what we assume to be information that they had that other people don't. We don't yet really know what the full sort of ramifications are going to be for bettors now that they, as you noted, can just bet from their couch rather than having to go to a sports book, right? I don't think we have a great sense yet of what the potential addictiveness is, how that conversation changes when it's in your pocket versus not. And those are sports stories, right? Betting scandal in the sport is a sports story. The impact on bettors is a sports story. And I wonder what we make of the incentives that outlets that have a tie to a that it's not influencing games or leagues, that it is, you know, ethical and above board. And I think that that's an open question in some instances. So even if there isn't a direct monetary link on the part of the reporter, what do you make of those incentives when these outlets are tying themselves to sports books? It's kind of a leading question. Yeah, no, that's a fantastic, for a leading question, it is a fantastic one. And it has a lot of layers to it, I think. I think one of the,

when you see now a gambling scandal, like the college baseball ones that happened in spring and summer of 2023, when they happen or when a player gets in trouble for betting in any sport, what's one of the instant reactions you see from people? This suspension sponsored by DraftKings or whatever, right? And I think that there is this weird kind of place where sports media has taken, collectively as an industry, has taken a lot of sponsorship money

and a lot of that from gambling. And so it does become harder to report on the social harms that can come from gambling or the potential downsides of it, whether it's from a team aspect, a player aspect, a sport aspect, or just the individuals, you know, who are doing this. I think you see a lot of yay gambling or at the very least, you see a lot of, well, we've been doing it all along. We might as well just talk, we're just talking about it openly now. You know, I do wonder, and your point on the stories about gambling and the addictive nature and the challenges of it, you know, these are important

journalism stories. And will you see them? Will you see them covered by an ESPN? Will they be, you know, something on in the athletic about it? And, you know, I think there are two kind of points on this. One is, I think one of the fears I have about sports journalism and gambling and how the twain meet and all of that going forward is, you know, you speak of incentives. What are media outlets incentivized now to focus their journalism on, on their news, on their content, on? It's going to be probably stuff that leans toward actionable betting information. And again, this is getting away from including links or partnerships, but it's going to be probably stuff that leans toward actionable betting information. And again, this is getting away from including links or partnerships, but it's going to be a lot less

stories about social aspects of sports or, you know, not just gambling, you know, race relations, gender relations, LGBTQ stuff, all of that, because what gets covered? What, what are people interested in seeing? Who's going to play? Who's hurt? Who's getting traded? And a lot of that is information that you can gamble on. Gamblers are sports journalists' best customers, right?

They crave information. They want more. They can never have enough information on the games because information is power in this world. And I do wonder what gets lost in a sports media landscape that's so influenced by the popularity of gambling that you follow the incentives. The incentives are going to be toward that game-to-game lineup stuff you can bet on. You can't bet on Simone Biles' battles with the twisties and what it means for mental health and athletics and that kind of thing. You can't bet on that. I doubt, maybe you can, who knows what they've come up with. I would bet against being unable to bet on anything at this point. At this point, you're right. But I think that that is,

At this point, you're right. But I think that that is, you know, I think that's one of my big fears is, you know, what gets incentive, and you know, I wrote the thing about the scandal that something bad happens and it's a flashpoint, a situation. But I think the long-term kind of ramifications, like you pointed out, I think that's interesting too. And I think that's kind of more of a potential of a slow burn scandal

if there is such a thing, where it's not just maybe that one eruption, but this kind of very slow loss of something in sports media. Yeah, and it's so impossible to avoid the tendrils of this if you're in sports media, right? I mean, in some senses, it's the thing propping up much of sports media and maybe not doing it so well because it's a pretty ten you know, tenuous existence, right? And lots of layoffs in all forms of media, right? And so you're kind of in this relationship where you're uneasy about being dependent on those sources of revenue. But then if those were to go away,

things might be even worse for many of the people you know and like, right? And even if you have no personal interest in this whatsoever, you create no gambling content, you still have a hard time avoiding any kind of connection. I mean, speaking for myself, right? I work for The Ringer. The Ringer has a partnership with FanDuel. One of the two sponsors we've had on this podcast is Topps.

We obviously don't do gambling ads and we never would, but Topps' parent company does also do sportsbook stuff separately, right? So it's so hard to avoid any of these entanglements to maintain complete sportsbook purity at this point, right? Right. sportsbook purity at this point, right? And, you know, I can testify to not ever having had that affect my coverage in any way, but you are sort of indirectly dependent on it, whether you want to be or not. I mean, and that's kind of one of those things where you get into ownership, you know, in any kind of corporately owned media environment, you get, I mean, like you said, you start going up the chain and who has partnerships with who and who works with who. I mean, you drive yourself crazy and, you know, conspiracy theorists have, you know, make a living because they can do stuff like that

and they can tie that all together. And, you know, I do think, you know, kind of tying it back to our initial conversation, you know, I think that's where those kind of guidelines from writers organizations and from journalism groups, they help. Are they perfect? No. Will they do away with everything? No. But they do, again, it's much more the way I kind of view it is it's kind of like putting in guardrails or, you know, the bumpers that you blow up when you take your little kid bowling and it keeps the ball out of the gutter. You're not going to fix everything, but as long as you kind of have the guardrails up that can kind of protect the reporters, protect the fans,

protect the readers, protect everybody as much as possible, then I think that's, at some level, that's the best you can do. You know, there are always going to be potentially bad faith actors who do bad things. They're going to be greedy people who do greedy things. And you can't legislate that out of existence, but you can kind of provide those guidelines and those rules to kind of help the industry as a whole understand what should and shouldn't happen with it in this space. Is there any, this is sort of a fatalistic question, so I apologize in advance, but like, is there any path out of the influence that sports betting has

in the industry now? Like, do you see this as an issue that sort of has a natural saturation point and then we can kind of take stock of where we are and it might the sort of enthusiasm for sports betting might slack? Or is there do you think that this is just the beginning of increased influence within the industry? Because it's it's hard to watch a baseball broadcast. It's hard to watch an NFL broadcast it's hard to watch an nfl broadcast without you know hearing about a betting line at least a couple of times and we always sort of got the like the al michaels tongue-in-cheek you know this might be interesting to some parties but now it's just now when a guy misses a late field goal like you're hearing about

what it means for the over-under on the game, right? Like what the spread was. So I think I used some of those terms correctly. You know, I think that's an interesting point, you know, and I wrote about this, geez, over almost two years ago, I think. The language of sports and sports itself and gambling have always been, the Venn diagrams, a circle, right?

Like it is a it has always been intertwined right down to think of your favorite sports movie. What is it most likely an underdog story? What's an underdog? You see where I'm going with this, right? Like it's always been gambling and sports have always been interconnected. And, you know, what what has happened is, yes, we've gone from the Al Michaels, this might be interesting to some people, or Jimmy the Greek saying, I like Cincinnati by a lot this weekend because he couldn't say the point spread, to now being just more openly saying it.

And so I think that's always worth pointing out is that gambling's always been a part of sports and always been a part of sports media. And now we're just kind of now we're just saying all the quiet parts out loud or saying the the the the euphemisms are gone and now we're just straight up saying it. I actually would not be surprised if we're getting close to a saturation point in terms of in terms of a lot of these sites in sports gambling from the standpoint of growth. Like I think those gambling will always be obviously a very big business and I think it will always draw a ton of money, but what has kind of fueled it I think lately

has been, we went from, I think the Supreme Court was in 2018, the decision. So we've gone from zero to ludicrous speed in that time. And so it's kind of given us whiplash. And obviously, if you're in the sports media space or listening to the sports podcast, you were over kind of oversaturated with it because every other podcast was sponsored by by them or every ESPN thing was, you know, every game is sponsored by them. or every ESPN thing was sponsored, you know, every game is sponsored by them. But I do, it is interesting as you say that, because I think we are kind of reaching the point where it's becoming almost just a part of the landscape and not this big new feature

that we're all shocked is here and trying to figure out how to deal with it. Like we are still trying to figure out how to deal with it. But it would not surprise me if like in a year or two, in general, it just kind of feels like it's always been there. And maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just around it so much that I find myself, I should say,

noticing it a lot less than I did a few years ago. And that's an N of one. I don't know if that means anything, but, but it does, it does feel like, you know, we are hitting that, that point where sports gambling's just here. And, you know, maybe, you know, maybe on some level, the ESPN bet thing was that, that plateau, you know, once ESPN had that partnership, however it is, with a sportsbook, that was the last big thing it felt like to happen. And now that it has, it's kind of like, okay, this isn't just a new reality anymore. It's reality.

And now we deal with what we have instead of trying to fight. Does that make sense? It just kind of feels like we've hit, I don't know if saturation, but it doesn't feel as new and weird and funny anymore. It just kind of feels like, okay, it's here. Now the grownups have to start talking about it. Yeah, you develop a tolerance to it, right?

It's just the steady background noise. It's not a new stimulus anymore. Right. There have been forecasts of, say, a sportsbook advertising bubble, right? For sure. The way that the cable bundle bursts once the ROI is reduced because you've acquired all of the customers that you can acquire or you've carved out all the market share that you can carve out, then you won't be just splurging enormous amounts of

money to advertise anymore. And then we'll see if there's some sort of sports media crash that comes from that. So either way, we've got it great here. But I wonder just because media members like to talk about the media and journalists can get a bit navel-gazy at times. And maybe some people might be saying, does this matter to me as a non-media member? Why should I care? Why would I even know if someone secretly placed a bet before they reported a rumor or something, or they learned something that was true, but they lined their coffers before they brought it to everyone's attention? I think you gave good reasons. You want to have faith in the coverage and you want to know that it's motivated by good motives, not money-making motives for the person who would be profiting off of them.

But I guess in the grand scheme of potential pitfalls of the legalization of gambling, everything from the bottom of the scale and hierarchy, just the general annoyance of being constantly exposed to sports betting stuff if you're not interested in sports betting stuff, to the top of the scale, people having their lives destroyed by gambling addiction, right? And everything in between, which could be match fixing, let's say, where would the sports journalism scandal potential rank is that that one of the is that lower on the ladder I would say yeah it's definitely lower than you know match fixing or something along those lines

and by the way you describing journalists as being quite navel-gazing you've literally described my entire academic career. Subscribe to my sub stack, sports media guy. Yeah. So, you know, I think, you know, when somebody reported something is so far down the level of concern for the average fan, the average person, you know, you know, not just in the sports world, but, you know, take it in the world at large. Like this is, you know, not if I falsely report that somebody is going to get drafted second in the NBA and they end up going fourth. And I make and I did that knowing that I was going to make drafted second in the NBA and they end up going fourth.

And I did that knowing that I was going to make my sportsbook an extra million dollars in bets. At the end of the day, that is a very media scandal. And you can say who's really hurt by it, but the people who bet their money on it, they lost their money. That's a loss. They are hurt by it. lost their money, you know, that's a loss. They are hurt by it. And I think if you extrapolate it out to the larger issue, I think it becomes, you know, it's all part and parcel of the greater trust that people have in media and in journalism as a whole and in news media. And, you know, when I said sports journalism is such an interesting way to study it, way to study journalism, it's because, yeah, what happens in sports journalism is far lesser important to society than reporting on the 2024 election and the aftermath and everything that's going on with all of that nonsense. Right. But at the same time, people view media the same way. And it's all the media or it's all the news or it's all journalists and that.

And, you know, I think that how people view sports media can affect how they view news media or media in general. And I think, you know, kind of at a, you know, at a time when trust in media and all institutions, but in media and in news media and in journalism, I don't know if it's at an all-time low, but it sure feels like it's at an all-time low or it's very low and it's not like super, I don't see like a boom coming. You know, I think that anything that happens that hurts any journalist's credibility hurts all of us, you know, whether that is a scandal on the political side of journalism, whether that's, you know, somebody fudging around with the timelines to make a couple extra bucks on a women's basketball game where they saw somebody get

hurt in practice. You know, I think it all leads to credibility and to how people see how the news is reported and how they believe how things are reported. And that has really wide-ranging conflicts. So I think that would be my answer to that would be just if we're looking at the credit. I think the sports journalism gambling question slash scandal, at the end of the day, it's a credibility scandal. You know, do we do we believe in what we're reading? Do we believe that the journalists that we're reading are presenting us fair, accurate information, that's something else coming in is, you know, that potential for influence, for ickiness is just it's really high. And I think that's something that that's why I think we're it's important for all of us in the industry to kind of be talking about it. I'm glad the BBWA is and, you know, I'm glad that these conversations are happening. And I think it's just because at the end of the day, it is about the credibility of not just sports journalism, but the media in general, that we've got to do everything that we can to protect.

They're always going to be, like I said earlier, always going to be bad faith actors, both in the media and outside the media who are doing who are acting in bad faith. But as an industry, we don't need to give them any unforced, we don't need to commit any unforced errors. We don't need to give them any ammunition for hurting our credibility. And I think that sports journalism and sports gambling, the potential is there for the incentives

to line up to do something that damages credibility and that just hurts journalism as a whole. Now, if we all made much, much more money. That would solve everything. Absolutely. Then we wouldn't have the incentive. So the only way you can stop me and Meg from going down the dark road of creating a sports

journalism scandal is by supporting the podcast on Patreon. You can keep us on the straight and narrow. Oh, no. It's like ethical black no such a thing as remotely possible i mean like i'm just in favor of much more draconian rules around all of this stuff i realized that in in the industry writ large my my view even among the many many people who are concerned about this from an ethics perspective might be sort of a, you know,

like a left-tail view, but I just, I just don't think we should be allowed to bet on any of it beyond baseball or, or in baseball. Just cause like, why, why introduce the ambiguity to your point? Like, I just don't think that there's much upside there. Yeah. And I think if I can jump in, Mike, cause I think that's an interesting point. You know, I have friends who work in Division One college athletics and have and, you know, they never do any of our NCAA men's and women's basketball pools. And we never play even the ones that we don't play for money. We just play to make fun of each other and the team names and and then the results. They don't play because they can't. It's against it's against the rules.

because they can't. It's against the rules. And I think when you get into, I think that one of the challenging things that this brings up is what's gambling? So yes, gambling on a game, betting on a game. Yes, betting on who's going to have the most carries in the Bill Steelers game this week, whatever, all these prop bets and everything else.

But an NCAA, now if you say no gambling, you mean no NCAA tournament pool, even among your friends and family. You mean no Super Bowl squares. When you don't cover the NFL, that could be at school teams in my community and school teams and they do those as fundraisers, five bucks for a Super Bowl box. Fantasy football, is that gambling? How is that that, well, what's gambling? What can I do? What can I do? And then, you know, it's just kind of it gets so focused on that little aspect of it, which is, again, I guess one of the advantages of the no gambling at all because it takes that off the table.

But I like bigger picture, I think, is much more important than the individual. Oh, you bought a square for my kids raffle. So therefore, you're you're reporting on high school sports is illegitimate. Like, nobody really thinks that. But but again, it gets muddy really, really, it can get muddy really quick. Sure. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't have an issue with like people being in a fantasy sports league with their friends and there being, you know, a $500 pool at the end of it, especially since presumably those friends know that they're in a, in a league with a reporter who might have information that they don't have. But my level of disinterest allows it allows me to be very ethical right it's like quite easy for me because and i've said this on the pot before it's just not the way that i interact with sports or sort of enjoy it right um even in a in context where i don't have a professional interest like i've never felt compelled to bet on the nfl and that's not the way that you know the seahawks

make me crazy so you know i i understand that i am operating from a perspective that's not the way that, you know, the Seahawks make me crazy. So, you know, I, I understand that I am operating from a perspective that might not be the majority one, but, um, it's just, uh, like too bored by it to be tempted by it. Yeah. Yeah. I like a parlay. What? No, thank you. I, I'm already anxious about, you know, events that occur in sequence. I don't need to be anxious with money on the line, you know, it's just not necessary for me. I cannot imagine. I'm a lifelong Bills fan. I cannot imagine the bravery it takes

to put your money on Josh Allen. Sure, yeah. Because riding play-to-play with that water buffalo. I love him to pieces, but I cannot imagine putting money based on what he's going to do. Or the stress of, oh oh my gosh i'm watching this game and there's money involved in it like that is that is a level of of bravery that i do not uh

i do not aspire to nor will i ever get to yeah i feel like all you have to do is watch college kickers to be like what are what are any of you thinking exactly We are all just so humble, he said humbly, that we don't think we would be any good at this. And so why would we wager? Oh, no, I think I could be very good at it to the extent that anyone is good at it, Ben. But the way that I would be good at it would be like. But no one is good at it. Right. But what I mean is like it would require me violating, you know, ethical, professional ethics I hold quite dear.

So, yes. violating, you know, ethical, professional ethics I hold quite dear. So, yes. What helps me out is, what helps me out is not only, not the ethics, but I can unequivocally say that I am terrible at all of this fantasy football, gambling, all of it. So that is just, I will, I will, I will gladly not put, throw my money away that I would do, that I did endlessly in years when I did play fantasy football until I realized this was foolish of me. Yes, the few people who are good at it, we probably never hear from them. And also, the sportsbooks ban them from betting as soon as they figure out that they're the ones who are good at it.

But it's, yeah, if you have no ethical quandaries or compromises or gambling problems, then I support your right to have fun in a low stakes way. I guess I would prefer if maybe not quite so many people wanted to, but if they do want to, then I support their right to do that. And on the topic of, I think you can bet on anything, absolutely anything. I recently learned that you can bet on the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I get Game of Thrones, but Curb Your Enthusiasm, I mean, I am interested in Game of Thrones. And so I could imagine. Well, I imagine that would be Who Dies, Who Lives.

Sure. Yeah. That was a big thing, of course. Right. But Curb is not really that kind of show. It's my kind of show. But yeah, you can bet like Larry comes out as LGBTQ plus at plus 2,500, whatever that means. I think those are long odds. That sounds unlikely. Cheryl gets pregnant plus 600. I mean, Cheryl Hines is almost 60.

That seems like free money, you know? I'm almost tempted here. But that just kind of shows you the depths. I mean, that's maybe the last show I would think of as, like, got to get some action on Curb. Well, and to take it and to be that guy who takes it back to journalism, now we take it away from sports journalism. And if you're a TV critic and you get an advanced screener of the series or you get advanced screeners of, let's say, three episodes or five episodes of that. Well, now are you going to,

now you could conceivably head over there and bet on what's happening in the season because, again, you have that advanced knowledge. Now, is that ethical? Is that right? I can't imagine, that would be the kicker, wouldn't it? The sports gambling scandal actually happens over betting on the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. There's something so exquisite about that actually happening. those. I mean, yeah, I hope I can restrain myself. So you can follow Brian on all the various platforms, including his Substack, which is sportsmediaguy.substack.com. He also has a

introduction to sports journalism issues and practice textbook coming out. That's coming out. That got rewritten a lot in the past few years. But yeah, that should. I think we're expecting it to come out later this year. So looking forward to that. There's a little bit from me in there, apparently. I don't know how many of our listeners are in the market for a sports journalism textbook. But if you are, Brian's your guy. And we hope that you will prove not to be prescient on this subject.

So thank you very much, Brian. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks for having me. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. Hope you made it through arbitration deadline day without getting deked by a deal. Just a constant stream of signings and you're going, oh my gosh, so-and-so signed such-and-such. And then you realize, oh, it's just a one-year deal to avoid arbitration. The worst is when you come across a tweet or a headline that doesn't say that. You start seeing, Yankees signed Juan Soto.

Oh my gosh, emergency pod. Oh, you mean just to avoid arbitration. Well, that's nice for Juan Soto, but a slight letdown for me. However, there was at least one notable signing, and it did involve the Yankees. Marcus Stroman, Long Island native, which you should get used to hearing often, signed with the Yankees. And if you've been paying any attention to my narrowing lead in the free agent contracts over-under draft, which we talked about last time, it has narrowed still further. MLB trade rumors predicted $44 million for Stroman.

I took the over. He got the under. Two years, $37 million with a club option for a third year that can vest if he pitches enough innings in 2025. Thought he was going to do better than that. He opted out of one year, $21 million. Wonder if he thought his market would be more robust, but I guess the injuries late last year kind of torpedoed his earning power to some extent. Anyway, seemingly solid addition for the Yankees who have been in the running for just about every remaining high profile starting pitcher and still are. It's quite a high variant staff as currently constituted. It's only

a $7 million loss for me for over under draft purposes. But still, Meg creeps closer. Of course, this is all amusing because of the old war of words, Brian Cashman saying Stroman wasn't a difference maker back in 2019. Stroman firing back in 2020 saying, besides Cole, there's no current Yankees pitcher who will be anywhere in my league over the next five to seven years. Their pitching always folds in the end. That lineup in payroll should be winning World Series left and right, yet they're in a drought. Well, the lineup has been part of the problem lately, but he's not wrong that they needed help. In a sense, what better person to sign than the pitcher who pointed out you need pitching help?

The jury's still out on his five to seven year prediction. But Marcus Stroman's 8.3 fangraphs war from 2021 to 2023, higher than the total of any non-Cole Yankees pitcher, excluding Jordan Montgomery, who was a Yankee at that point. He's put up 10.2 fangraphs war over those three seasons. But more than half of that wasn't with the Yankees. Generally, I think when there's beef like this, we probably blow it out of proportion. There's not really that much juicy drama off the field and on social media in baseball compared to some other sports. So, hey, it's been a few years. Money talks.

People put these things behind them. I did an article years and years and years ago where I looked at whether going to arbitration, where you have to sit there and listen to your own team badmouth you, basically, is associated with lower rates of resigning with that team down the road. And I couldn't find any evidence that it was. Sometimes you hear, oh, they're going to burn a bridge. They're going to drive this player away. Or why lowball him now? You're going to lose him later. And I'm sure that does happen sometimes. But I don't know how many players let that grudge be the basis of their decision years later. Though Stroman in New York with extra scrutiny on his social media use seems like it could be a combustible situation.

But it probably won't combust if he pitches well. Maybe Cashman can eat some crow and call him a difference maker now. He has with his actions, if not with his words. You can be difference makers for us with your actions by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. As have the following five listeners who have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. William Figge, Zachary Gima, Mark Haber, Matt Wine, and Robert Goldstein. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group that Michael Mountain spoke so highly of, monthly bonus episodes, prioritized email answers, discounts

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