Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2122: Ballers Don’t Lie

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about surprising playoff odds, the Astros extending Jose Altuve (26:40), the Brewers signing Gary Sánchez (34:57), the forthcoming Netflix docuseries about the 2024 Red Sox (38:49), a baseball equivalent of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift (45:17), and how trailblazing former first-round draftee Carter Stewart has fared in Japan (55:29). […]

Hello and Or a white trout with three arms? Perusing the Playoff Odds, published at Fangraphs.com, just as you promised on our previous episode. You delivered. They are, in fact, publicly available. And I've been looking at them. Anything surprise you when you saw them, presumably before they went to press? Just how normal everything is and how little tension it would inspire. I guess the good news ben the good news for me meg as the person who you know i i promised that they would come but actually had very little

to do with their creation as it turns out was that things were like pretty well in line with what i was expecting and that the differences tended to be matters of, like, degree rather than category. Yeah. I knew, for instance, that we would have a very high opinion of the Braves. Boy, do we like the Braves, Ben, you know? Yes. But, like, that makes sense because they're a pretty good baseball team. I will say, like, I saw the Orioles projection and I was like,

say, like, I saw the Orioles projection and I was like, and, you know, my anticipated consternation proved to be kind of prescient. Yeah. You saw your shadow and you knew you were in for several more months of consternation about Orioles projections. I get it. I mean, look, I think the Orioles are probably better than the projections say too, but I understand why projections say what they say. And so, look, here's the thing, Ben. The reaction to these projections, here's what I've realized. And I want to be clear that I'm not saying this to try to denigrate anyone's reaction to them.

to denigrate anyone's reaction to them. And I also want to be clear that I don't think that we are, like, infallible when it comes to these things. You know, we want to be engaged with the model, I think, pretty actively and make sure that we're thinking about all of this stuff the right way. But I think that a lot of the reaction to projections from fans, it's not about numbers, man. It's about feelings, you know? And I hold feelings in very high esteem. So this is, again, this is not a knock. But there's like a reticence to engage with what projections are trying to accomplish.

So there's that piece of it. I think that there's some genuine confusion about like what quote unquote matters and what doesn't when it comes to the playoff odds. And so like I observed a number of Orioles fans truly trying to engage with this behind the Yankees, who were, you know, pretty bad last year, famously, at least by their usual standards. I would say a number of things, which is that like them winning 101 games last year just fundamentally doesn't matter very much in terms of what they're going to accomplish this year. To say that it doesn't matter at all is sort of silly because like a lot of the team is the same. So like, you know, you have a team and it still has really good players. Right. And people are probably looking at it thinking these are young players. These are particular because of the presence of guys like Adley to some extent, but probably Gunnar to a much greater degree that like we are underrating the project Gunnar Henderson to be like a five-win player this season. You know, we are in on Gunnar. You know, this is not like we don't have a Gunnar take. conservatism of projections as it pertains to young players would be with someone like Jackson Holiday, right? Where 2.7 wins and a 107 WRC plus. And I would just like remind everyone,

like, this is a 20-year-old. This is a young man who has still a relatively short minor league track record, albeit a very good one. He hasn't debuted yet. And he's played 18 games at AAA. And so do I expect that Jackson Holiday is going to be a very, very good baseball player? I do. We have, at least by our last cycle, had a 60 on him. And I imagine, I don't want to spoil Prospect Week, but imagine he'll rate well on the 100 that goes next week. But maybe there you say oh they're they're being a little conservative when it comes to holiday but i also think that this is a team that probably

still could use another starter will probably have a worse bullpen than it did last year we are projecting some amount of regression from some of their guys including bradish and it's a good team it's a good team that last year enjoyed incredible sequencing on the offensive side of the ball, had a really great bullpen performance, things that are not typically repeatable year to year, plays in a hard division, probably has a little bit worse bullpen, has a good top of the rotation starter, but has guys behind him who not like knock down, drag out guys. I get why the projections end up where they are. To be clear, we're projecting the Yankees to win that division and for 88 wins.

You know, that's sort of what their medium projection is like. So a lot of this just comes down to the fact that they play in a, you know, a knockdown drag out kind of division. depress your win total somewhat. And it's not just Fangraphs. The Pocotas standings came out at Baseball Prospectus this week. They had the Orioles in third, the Yankees at first. They really love the Yankees. They have them perfect down for like 95 wins over MVP. Personally, my inclination is that I would take the over on these Orioles numbers, but I also don't particularly trust my personal inclination over the projections. I think in the long term, probably the projections

would project better than I do. So take that for what it's worth, which is quite possibly nothing. But I do think that maybe some guys will get better or they'll add as the season goes on, as the deadline approaches. You can't really project that, or at least it isn't currently projected. Although if and when Baltimore adds additional guys, whether they were to sign someone before opening day or trade for players at the deadline, you know, once that happens, the odds will take that addition into account, right?

Yes, the projections change their opinions as the players change and as their performance changes. But also the Orioles, I wrote about it, I talked about it on the podcast. They've had a historic run the last couple of years with improving by leaps and bounds each year. And a projection system is always going to project a player or a team to come back to the pack a little bit, fall down to earth after making major strides like that. Now, that's what we might have said and the projections said last spring too. And the Orioles said, no way.

We're not taking a step back. We're taking another step forward. And then they did. So maybe they will again. But obviously they had some things go well for them. And whether it was a timing and sequencing and outplaying run differential or just health, which maybe you'd expect with a young team.

But, yeah, I think they will probably be better than this, but I don't think that I would say they're slam dunk division favorites or anything. I think that, if anything, it might be sort of surprising to see the Yankees projected as rosily as the systems have just because people remember last year. as rosily as the systems have, just because people remember last year and the projections, I think, also had them as the top team last year. And that did not turn out to be accurate. Not that they were terrible, but they were not in contention until the end of the season. Then again, you look back at 2022 and I believe the Yankees exceeded their expectations and projections that year. So there's a sense that like, yeah, you might project them to be good, but they're old and they're injury prone. And yeah, that is true. And there's probably something to that. But then again, it was just a couple of years ago that they managed to do even better than the projections thought. And they've been busy. They've made some moves this winter. I kind of felt like they might have one more major move in them.

And for all we know, they still might. But they've done enough that I guess I get it. That was one thing that initially made me go, huh, not that it's like so wildly out of line with my expectations that I think it calls into question the basis of the system or something. But that was just one of the things that raised my eyebrow a little bit, which something should raise your eyebrow. Because if it doesn't, then what's the point of these projections if they just match exactly what we think? Now, we've talked before, I think, about how the projections and predictions that you get at this time of year, they don't really surprise you as much as they used to because we're kind of in a year round projections environment.

We don't have year round playoff odds, but we don't have far from that. And we do have some form of projections that you can look up at Fangraphs, projected war totals, whatever it is, year round. So it's not like it used to be where a season would end and then basically stuff would go dark for months and then suddenly the preview magazines would show up on the newsstands and the checkout aisles. And then you would read them and you'd go, huh, oh, wow, that was better than I thought. We're kind of constantly recalibrating our expectations, or at least people like us probably who are actually looking at these playoff odds and projections and putting some stock in them. You're not going to shock me when these are rolled out because I kind of have a sense of what the ballpark estimate is anyway. And I want to be clear because I feel like I said, I'm not being snarky, and then I sounded pretty snarky, Ben.

Just through a little self-assessment. I really do view these as like of the kinds of teams that we tend to you know maybe underrate a little bit on a pretty regular basis the rays tend to be the the really obvious example of this where it's like we just aren't necessarily dealing with their depth that they often bring with you know with the sort of level of certainty that people would like us to so we tend to underrate them a little bit because they just, you know, they can, they have historically been able to weather injury really, really well because of the depth that they have in their system, right? And we're not always accounting for that perfectly here. I do think that, like, it's worth thinking about sort of what trade-offs people are asking for and how repeatable those sort of additions or

tweaks would be, right? Like you look at a team like Baltimore and maybe you say, to your point, they have the farm system to add at the deadline, right? And so they'll probably go and do that. Well, first of all, they haven't actually taken great advantage of that in the last couple of years, but let's say that they want to do that. How do you model that with rigor, right? How do you incorporate that? This is, you know, we've heard from people who say that, like, organizations that are consistently really good at player development, for instance, like the Dodgers, like they should be getting credit for their young guys and how well they will be able to adapt and change once they make the majors because they have this great player dev apparatus behind them, right? Well, how do you model that, right?

How do you make sure that you're not just doing an eh kind of eyeball thing, right? And, like, putting your thumb on the scale. Yeah. And then if someone leaves and goes to another team, is it like the player development director? Is it someone else? Like what exactly produces that improvement? Is it someone sitting out in Glendale that's responsible for that? Yeah. Is it a GM or a po-po? If someone gets poached, do you then take away that advantage? So, yeah. And it's not like we're projecting everyone for 80 wins or something like that, right?

Like, we do have, you know, Atlanta in these projections. We have the Dodgers in these projections. Houston still, you know, rates pretty well. You know, I was amazed that no one accused me of bias because the Mariners projected the second best team in the AL West. And surely that's Meg putting her little thumb on the scale, right? But we should take these for what they are. They're not perfect. They're not a completely reliable crystal ball. But I think that particularly when judged over time, have done a pretty reasonable job of giving us a sense of who should be good and who should maybe look to improve their roster. And I think a lot of the time when you get dramatic outperformance

of preseason expectation, as, you know, we've talked about on the pod before, as I think Ben Clements has written about, like generally that's an indication of something really cool and special happening. You know, that's not something you're necessarily going to be able to count on year to year. I think that's okay. Like, I want there to be an acceptable degree of error to these, because if there weren't, it would be so boring, right? We would

just know what was going to happen. Why bother playing the games? You know, a couple of years ago, Atlanta's playoff odds were in really rough shape and people noted over, you know, the back half of the season, how dramatically they had changed, right? I think that they went from being like 5% odds of getting in to making the postseason and having a good run. And people looked at that and were like, I can't believe that Fangraphs had it wrong. And I was like, Ronald Acuna Jr. had just messed up his knee. And then they went on like a 17-game win streak. That's going to shift your playoff odds really dramatically one way to the other. And, you know, I don't want anyone to get hurt, but I also think that like it's good for us to acknowledge that sometimes teams just go on a run and they do cool stuff and their odds shift really dramatically. And rather than making it about the model not being able to predict

a really far-tail event, we should just revel in how cool those moments are. So I wish that that was the spirit that we brought to these and not just because it would lead to better twitter menchies we don't hate the orioles dance and orioles fan and his you know his projections feed half of this so it's fine and you know if they were to add a new guy today i bet that these would shift a little bit although given that they still play in the al east i think that like if if we were to be sitting here and news broke uh coming across the transom they've signed blake snell and jordan montgomery i think people would be surprised by like they would move but they might not move they wouldn't be the braves all of a sudden and part of

that is that they play in a freaking meat grinder of a division so i try to talk about these assuming like a lot of good faith from the people asking questions. I want to acknowledge the imperfections in the model, or at least the limitations is maybe a better way of putting it. And I do worry that Baltimore fans are going to turn me into the Joker. So I'm trying to balance all of those things at once. Here I am. I'm the one that's like, we should meet all of these conversations with humility and generosity. And I do mean that. And's not surprising, but it might surprise people that the Braves are above the Dodgers by a significant margin

because the Dodgers have dominated this offseason. They've dominated the discourse. They're hogging all the superstars, and they have. And yet the projections after all that, after the dust settles, say that Atlanta is still going to win like five more games than the Dodgers and their World Series odds are like 10 percentage points higher, which is a lot when it comes to World Series odds. They're like close to twice as high, right? So that the magnitude of the difference there might sort of surprise people again, because Atlanta hasn't been

that active this offseason. They haven't had to be because they already locked up everyone for years and years to come. And so they were kind of tinkering on the margins mostly, which we talked about. And meanwhile, the Dodgers were going and getting Otani and Yamamoto and Glasnow and et cetera, et cetera, right? And yet even after all that, the projections say that they had enough holes to begin with that they're still in second place looking up at Atlanta. So that's just an indication of how good the Braves are, whether you think they're actually that much better than the Dodgers or not.

It's not like the Dodgers are slam dunk, best team in baseball, World Series favorites, even after everything they did this winter. That's one thing that stood out to me. Another, other than the Yankees ascending to the top of the AL East, maybe the Cardinals bouncing back to the top of the NL Central. They have the highest division odds and playoff odds in the Central. And that is, of course, pending any possible Cubs moves that may happen between now and opening day. But the Brewers and the Reds and the Cubs Because they're projected for basically the same record that they had last year.

And there was a sense that, oh, the Reds are on the upswing, right? Like they just promoted all these players. They're going to get better too. They've been somewhat active this off season, whether they went about that the best way they could have, we could dispute, but they have at least made some moves

and made some additions and they'll have full seasons from their younger guys. So might sort of surprise people that the projections see the Cardinals on top after the season they had last year and the progress that some of their division rivals seem to make. Yeah. And I think that that's fair. I mean, I think that they did. Well, did they address their pitching woes, Ben? Like if we were to call it addressing. They acquired pitching. They acquired pitching and in bulk, right? Which was part of the problem last year. So they did that and they play in a ballpark that'll be favorable to that at least. I mean, some of this is that we expect, I believe, reasonable bounce backs from some of their position players who struggled last year. So when we don't love their pitching. And boy, is it hard to like, you know, pitch well in that ballpark. So, that's part of it too. But again, I think it's

fine to be like, that's not what I would think. And then we get to see. That's a feature. I also think that it's useful to remember like how narrow the spreads are on these sorts of things right because you know the cardinals we have projected win winning percentage of 520 and it's like 495 for for cincinnati it's like you know there are four wins behind so i think some of it is also just like these these things kind of can be narrow you know they can be like a skinny part of a, like a peninsula, like a skinny peninsula, like a, or like an isthmus between two lakes, you know, skinny.

Isthmus, yes. Yeah, isthmus. That's a hard word to say too, but I do better with it than replicable, which is impossible to say. Yes, reliably replicable. See, impossible. Replicable. which is impossible to say. Reliably replicable. See? Replicable.

Impossible to say. The only other thing that really stood out to me is the defending champions, the Rangers. Yeah, yeah. This bears some discussion. a 500 projection with a one in three chance to make the playoffs and a one in 10, a little bit better than that chance to win the AL West. So the Astros back on top there and then the Mariners, Meg's Mariners in second place after all the moves they've made this offseason. So that might sort of surprise people because the Diamondbacks, I think, you know, reigning

NL champions, people understood that they were not a juggernaut. They were not a powerhouse. So they got a little fortunate maybe. They remember their run differential last year. Do they remember? Right. Yes. And so people I don't think would be super shocked to see the Diamondbacks certainly in second below the Dodgers in the NL West, followed by the Padres and then the Giants, wah-wah, in fourth. But I think the

Rangers being where they are might be sort of surprising, but understandable, defensible, because it certainly does seem like the Rangers who will start the season may be considerably different from the Rangers who will end the season. So it really depends on how good the start the season Rangers will be because what team, what competitive situation will they be handing their intact, hypothetical, projected second half rotation? And I think, you know, thinking about how not only the impact of sort of the first half of the season, how well they sort of weather that time where they're, you know, just understood to have a weaker rotation than what they hope to have both in the second half and then certainly in October. That matters. our odds for us at fan graphs and i think his point here was well taken where the sort of percentage of overall innings in the back half that that group is going to get is just going to be somewhat variable and i don't know that the playoff odds are necessarily equipped to to account

for exactly how that rotation has been constructed and how its innings are going to be distributed so i think this is a place where i would, provided they are able to sort of keep their head above water in the first half and given the offense that they're going to be able to field, I would have a good amount of confidence in their ability to do that. imagine that those Rangers odds could start to change very quickly depending on the timing of the returns for their rotation guys and how sort of effective they look when they come back. So everyone, it's okay. We're going to see how it goes. But like, yes, this is a place where I think I expect we could see outperformance and, you know, potentially dramatic outperformance there. No, this reminds me of that shocking insight I had the other day where I realized that you can never have too much pitching. That just dawned on me all of a sudden, that original thought.

I should let you run a team, Ben. Yeah, I'm having a similar insight now. Giving these away for basically free. I know, but it occurs to me that really that's why they play the games. Right. Because you do want to look at the playoff odds, but ultimately you do want them to play the games. You want them to play those games. That's why they play them so that you, you know, what actually happens as opposed to what is projected to happen.

Well, and I think that when you think about Texas in much the same way that we are perhaps not giving, you know, like Jackson Holiday all he is due in our projections because we have to, you know, we want to see it a little bit more before he gets big, big projections. You know, the Rangers are potentially in that camp too, because it would not be remotely surprising to me if we see not only Wyatt Langford some but a great deal and uh you know like we're probably being a little light uh on their eventual offense too because we have him projected for about two wins I think we we see some probably reasonable regression coming for Evan Carter but like Evan Carter is also very very good you know there are places where I think you

can look at this stuff and very reasonably say, oh, like that's the pathway for them sort of outperforming these numbers, whether it's the Rangers, the Orioles, you know, some of the other teams we mentioned. And I think that you can create reasonable sort of downside scenarios for a lot of these clubs too. So that's part of why you see a team like Atlanta, just the depth and quality combination

that they are able to bring to bear is part of why you're like, wow, you know, like sure that projection seems right. Cause like, wow, they're, Ben, wow, Ben, wow. You know? Always fun when the projections come out. It's another milestone that tells us where we are and that the season is approaching. So we'll link to it. Go check it out. And I will endeavor to, you know, come up with a more tonally consistent reaction to people on the Internet. I could tell I was spoiling for a fight yesterday. I was like, oh, of transactions to discuss. One, we talked about a bunch of extensions last time or reunions. We went to press, we went to pod, we went to publish before the Houston extension of Jose Altuve for five years, $125 million that will take him through his age 39 season, presumably, maybe through the end of his career.

Career, yeah. He's a forever Astro, as the Astros tweet said. Yeah, very bold of them. Jose Altuve, he has not lost a lot performance-wise. He is still quite an excellent player. Even here at almost 34 years old, he's coming off another excellent season, at least offensively. You know, he missed some time, of course, but when he was healthy, still really ranking.

And, you know, I guess there was every reason for these two to stay together, maybe giving some other opposing fan bases feelings about Jose Altuve or any sign-stealing era Astros. And he's been very successful there. The Astros have been successful with him. Makes sense that they would want to stay together, even if they are committing, presumably, to the downside of his career. I kind of hope, you know, I'm not giving him a pass

for being present on the sign-stealing teams, but I do wonder, by the time this contract is over, by the time Hall of Fame eligibility rolls around at least five more years after that, how much the stigma will cling to him? Because it really is a shame that he is tarnished by this. Now, obviously he brought that on himself to some extent, but it is a shame just because he's such a fun player, you know, and I wish there were no baggage associated with him, self-inflicted or otherwise, because it would be great if everyone could just enjoy the wonder that is Jose Altuve. I mean, lifetime 300 plus hitter in this era of low batting averages, just makes contact, hits for power, does everything fairly well, and is just a little guy,

you know? And I think that endeared him to everyone before we even knew how good he was going to be. I remember Kevin Goldstein and Jason Parks talking about him in the Up and In podcast days when he was still in the minors and he was an object of fixation for them because it was like well this guy he's so small and yet he's so good right and yeah it would be great if we could just appreciate him as a player without all of the stuff that's attached to him yeah not saying it shouldn't be attached to him i think maybe he gets tarnished even more than he should because people think of him as the face of those teams and also there's all the unproven buzzer and tattoo nonsense, right? All the reporting and all of the audio evidence suggests that he didn't really want the signs, that there was less banging going on when he was hitting. Which is, again, not to excuse him because obviously he knew it was going on.

He didn't do anything about it, right? He was not some whistleblower or anything. So, he condoned it tacitly at least, but he was not really a ringleader from all appearances. And if Carlos Beltran gets into the Hall of Fame, it seems like he probably will. Like he had a pretty big bump in his second year of eligibility and he'll probably get there. And he is maybe not as closely associated with the Astros because he wasn't an Astro as long. And yet he had much more to do with the sidestealing per all the reporting. It was, you know, he was, it was the brainchild of Carlos Beltran to some extent. Right.

So he really took a lead in organizing and architecting all of that. So, if anything, he should maybe be stained more by that than Altuve. So, if he is not permanently tarnished by that, then maybe Altuve won't either. Obviously, he will in some minds. But I just, you know, as an appreciator of his talent, I do hope that we get to a point collectively where it's not the first thing that comes to mind about him, even if it is going will will have a lot to to say about it it'll be something of an indicator but he is he does occupy this weird position relative to Beltran as you said because he is so he is so important to that franchise and I wonder if that will end up mattering a good deal more than his involvement really did, or the degree of his involvement. It's really too bad. You know, I think that we were robbed of something that, you know, as we're assembling

sort of a hierarchy of the wrongs around the banging scheme that probably sits closer to the bottom than the top. But having just an uncomplicated understanding of this guy who is, you know, if you were to set that episode and stretch aside is like so easy to root for, you know, he is just a little guy, you know, he's my height and he's a great player and he was signed to sort of just be an org guy you know that was that was really the understanding of him was that he was just gonna be there until someone better came along and i don't think that they really appreciated um for a little while like what they what they really had in him and that's an easy thing to to root for and get excited about so you know i don't want to tell anyone who has a negative impression of those teams and still sort of has a grudge around it that they're wrong.

Like, they cheated, and they did it for a while after being told not to, and it at least corresponded to a season where they won a championship, and I think it's fine to be mad about that, but because I didn't have that experience of it i still think i have a soft spot for him i don't know how advisable this extension is but that's a who cares you know like it's not my money the defensive run saved numbers for him lately have been bleak the oaa the stack cast

base ones not as much but yeah i do wonder how long he will be a viable second baseman but yeah let's see but i i also think that like maybe the real i might be trying to do too much with this so strap in i do wonder if part of the real legacy of someone like el tuve is to demonstrate that you know even even very good players and players who, apart from the cheating, seem like they are, you know, good people and good community members, like, it isn't uncomplicated. And I don't say that to give them a pass, but just to, like, have us have to kind of sit and grapple with those legacies. It's certainly not on the same sort of scale or degree of moral transgression as people who do violence to their intimate partners, for instance, but it is a violation of trust and

a bit of cheating. And, you know, maybe it's good that we have to sit with that sometimes and and sort of figure out what our relationship to those kinds of players and people are going to be in a situation where the stakes are not either as elevated as they are when these guys do harm to their loved ones or as cut and dry as those right so i don't know maybe i'm trying to maybe i'm trying to do too much with that, Ben, but I've been thinking about that lately. Like, maybe it's just okay that it's complicated here. Yeah. If he finishes up at 60, 70 war, if he gets to 3,000 hits, which is within range, then maybe those things will be more salient. It's not quite the Robinson Cano case where he was an all-time great second baseman

and probably is just forever tainted by PDs. Maybe it's not something that will stick to him quite to that extent, but we will see what history decides. Other move, Gary Sanchez is a Milwaukee Brewer. Now, we've talked about pitchers who've turned around their season suddenly going from one team to another.

We talked a bit about Gary during 2023 because he had about as drastic a turnaround as anyone did, right? Going from at the beginning of the season, I remember when we were talking about, like, should the Angels take a flyer on Gary Sanchez when Max Stassi was out? And it was like, hmm, yeah, I guess, you know, maybe it might be worth a shot, right? And then a couple teams did take chances on him. He was with the Mets briefly. He was with the Giants, not hitting in the minors briefly. And then the Padres said, we'll give El Gary a chance. And he really rewarded them.

Elgaria chance and he really rewarded them. He hit 19 home runs in 72 games, 260 plate appearances, like the Gary Sanchez home run rate of old, and also was pretty solid defensively. And so now he has parlayed that turnaround into a deal to be the Brewers backup catcher for one year and seven-ish million. And we got an email from listener Nick who pointed out Milwaukee Brewers have been busy when it comes to catchers this offseason. They've got a lot of catchers in the mix because they have William Contreras. They have Sanchez now. They had already signed Austin Nola. That was a minor league deal, I believe. They signed Eric Haas. They also have a top prospect. Jefferson Caro is a catcher. So they got a lot of options there.

But it is intriguing, this fit of Sanchez and Brewers, because as Ben Clemens documented in his post for Fangraphs, they have a great recent track record of improving catcher's defense, specifically their framing and sanchez he's not a terrible framer or anything he's really improved like he's always had a great arm of course he has become less of a bad blocker and he has become at least a competent framer but if he can undergo that patented brewers defensive catcher transformation and suddenly be a really plus defensive catcher

and keep providing that kind of offense, then it's nice. Then you see why they would want him even in the mix of other guys they've got. Because when Contreras gets a day off, they want to DH him. They can slide a pretty good bet in there and maybe a pretty decent glove too. It's been just quite a career arc for Gary Sanchez, really. The minute that this news broke and it made its way into the Fangraph Slack, Kyle Kishimoto's instant reaction was, oh, God, they're going to make him a plus 15 framer. It is just, it's interesting both in terms of how sticky or not those improvements have been for guys as they have cycled through Milwaukee because some of them have held on to them and some of them have not. guys is they have cycled through Milwaukee because some of them have held on to them and some of them have not. So I'm fascinated by that piece of it because, you know, the year-to-year

variation and what seems like it would be a staple skill I find so interesting. But yeah, they've had very good and consistent luck even if those gains aren't consistently held all the time. So yeah, I'm fascinated to see like what they're able to do with him. You know, it seems like a very good organizational fit and, you know, useful to them even beyond the days he's able to catch. So, if he's able to hit anything like he did in San Diego and have the kind of pop that he did there, I think that that would be pretty useful for them. So, yeah, it's interesting. I find it pretty interesting because he only played in 75 games last year and he hit 19 home runs. So he had quite a little tear there and quite a turnaround from just like a pretty lousy year, at least with the bat in Minnesota. So, yeah. So how interesting do you find the Red Sox being documentary series subjects? That's projected

last place AL East team, the Boston Red Sox. They're going to be the subjects of a Netflix documentary, actually two Netflix documentaries, one of which will focus on the 2004 World Series, but one of which will follow them throughout the 2024 season. Yeah. I've seen people comp this to hard knocks. I think probably the better comp is to other Netflix series like Formula One, Drive to Survive or Full Swinging, the golf docs, or Breakpoint, the tennis doc. It's also executive produced and directed by Greg Whiteley, the guy who directed Cheer, Last Chance U, Wrestlers, all well-received series. This is that, but for baseball. I'm laughing because of the emphasis you are putting on some of these titles.

Hard Knocks, Break the Point. Yeah. I don't know what this one will be called, but it is similarly, it's just going to be a document of their entire season. And it's sort of exciting, I guess, because, hey, I mean, Netflix, a lot of people subscribe to that. A lot of people watch it. Could be a lot of exposure for baseball. You know, were more responsible for the uptick in popularity, which seems to have sort of stalled, which is not a reference to cars or racing, but it seems like more, you know,

the telecasts on ESPN and other factors, but it certainly didn't hurt that people were getting into it via Drive to Survive. And now a baseball version of that, I'm all for promotion of baseball on a popular platform. I guess one question is how well will that model map on to baseball? And are the Red Sox the ideal documentary subjects? I don't know whether they were the only ones that raised their hands or that there was a choice or whether, well, there are a lot of Red Sox fans, whether that was a factor.

Obviously, some teams may not have wanted a camera crew poking around all year. But I see the upside. It's just a question of, well, the Red Sox aren't expected to be good. They're not expected to be terrible. They're not expected to be terrible. So I guess they give you a good sense of here's a baseline baseball season that is not inordinately terrible or great or inherently dramatic. At least it doesn't appear to be on paper on the playoff I guess. Like if I had to draft teams to be the stars of this documentary, I don't think the Red Sox would be high on my list. Did you just pick the Dodgers? I might pick the Dodgers. There are a lot of teams that are both better and maybe have, I don't know, more compelling personalities.

I mean, Tristan Casas, maybe he'll be the the standout he'll be the breakout documentary star right he seems destined to be a breakout star in this yeah I'm very excited for that part yeah I plan to watch this I I don't know how well baseball will work for this like it could work really well because there's just so much baseball and it's such a long season yeah it's different from some of its predecessors and quarterback is another series, like focusing on an individual sport or at least a more individual sport than baseball, right. Or at least focusing on an individual within a team. Within that sport. Yeah. They'll have to probably figure out who are the stars of this or who do we want to focus on to narrow things down.

So it might be kind of a different beast than some of the previous series that it's being comped to. Do we know when they found out that they were going to be the subject of the documentary? I don't. It was just announced this week, but I don't know. I do wonder if they would have done their offseason the same way if they had known about this. But I saw a lot of people reacting to sort of the anticipated mediocrity of the Red Sox roster and being perplexed. And I think that that's, you know, sure, fine. But I don't think that the team has to be good for it to be interesting.

In fact, some of my favorite Hard Knocks seasons have been the ones where the team has been god-awful and watching, you know, it's not fun in the same way necessarily. And, you know, people do have sort of a more dour kind of cast to their their interviews and whatnot but it is still interesting and tells you something about like what it's like to weather that and i would imagine within the context of major league baseball because the season is so long there will be sort of new insights to be gleaned uh there from from a baseball specific context uh that you don't necessarily have in the same way with the NFL. So I don't think that them being bad

is necessarily just positive on the season being interesting. Well, yeah, I'd feel better about it if they were god-awful. They're not even that, right? If it were a truly terrible team. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah, who knows? The fact that they at least project project to be mediocre that is maybe less interesting than either really good or really bad yeah and like that's where the the red socks of it

all i think comes to play where someone at netflix was like yeah but like it's the red socks people are gonna watch stuff about the red socks you know like uh you got to give patriots fans something to do in the off season so here here it is, there's a new Patriots documentary in the works too. Stop it. Is it really? Coming to Apple TV Plus soon, next week. Next week? Yeah.

Do the people at Apple know what kind of season the Patriots had this year? Because let me tell you, it was not an entry into the dynasty. I'll say that. It's called the dynasty. I assume it's not about the 2023 to 24 Patriots. Because they were bent, not very good. They were, in fact. You know I'm always up on my Apple TV Plus programming, even when it's football related.

Yeah, much more so than the NFL. Yeah, because I have been thinking about this in light of the attention Taylor Swift has brought to the NFL. And we briefly mentioned that on our last episode, you maybe cast some side eye vocally, but... I'm going to have to clarify it, but yes, go on. I have looked on that with some envy, you know, just the way that she has made football even more popular, which you wouldn't think that it could have been. I mean, it certainly says something about her singular level of celebrity and stardom that her being associated with the NFL is not a boon to Taylor Swift necessarily.

It's a boon to the NFL. And that has translated seemingly to revenue and to ratings and an increase in interest in certain demographics, right? And so I've seen some people saying like, well, could that happen for baseball? Like, is there some sort of relationship? You know, my colleague at The Ringer, Nora Princiati, just wrote about the wags of the NFL, like the season of the wags, the wives and girlfriends who have sort of dominated this season, Taylor Swift foremost among them. In baseball, you don't get that as much.

And I've been thinking about, you know, like, is there some other star who, if there were a relationship with a baseball player, would produce the same sort of increase in attention? And for one thing, I mean, there's only one Taylor Swift. So, you know, I don't know that anyone else could provide that sort of boost in attention. And for one thing, I mean, there's only one Taylor Swift. So, you know, I don't know that anyone else could provide that sort of boost in attention. But even if there were, I wonder whether it would work the same way for baseball just because of the structure of the sport. Because again, like we always talk about, I mean, local regional interest in baseball is extremely strong, but interest in national broadcasts and ratings, not quite so strong. Whereas people watch the NFL, like people who are not Kansas City fans are going to be tuning in to watch Kansas City play, like not just in the Super Bowl, but also in the playoffs.

Like if you're a football fan, you watch other football teams play. If you are a baseball fan, you might not watch other baseball teams play regularly. And so would there be the same sort of exposure? I don't know that there would be, you know, like, is that star going to be at 162 games or 81 games a year? Are people going to be tuning in to sign up for that many games? That's the other thing. It's like football, you know, 17, 18 games. I mean, you've got playoffs, but it's just not a huge commitment to tune in to watch one game a week if you're not super into football, but you're like, oh, this singer, this musician I really like is dating this football player. I'm going to pay attention to this football team now. It'd be a different calculus in baseball. It's like, I like this person, but I don't know that I like them enough to watch 162 games of this thing that I otherwise wouldn't be watching. So I'm not sure that it would produce just be any player too. I mean, it would be in some ways, maybe more a subject of curiosity if it were like some scrub

who were dating the biggest star in the world. But the fact that Travis Kelsey is a football superstar, I think increases attention because like he's going to be a prominent figure. He's always going to be on the field. He's going to be getting the ball. Whereas, yeah, if it's Cole Tucker and Vanessa Hudgens, if it's, I'm trying to think of comps in the past, like, you know, there have been some celebrity couples in baseball in recent years. And sometimes it's

celebrity athlete couples, like the Swansons, right, currently, or in the past, like Matt Trainor and Misty May Trainor may trainer but it's like how excited are you going to be about matt trainer i mean apologies to matt trader or you know if i guess speaking the red sox like nomar and nia ham would have been a good comp in the past or maybe currently the best comp for that would be paul skeens and livy dunn that might be the closest you can get with baseball right now right now yeah. Yeah, it's happened. But in the past, like there have been baseball stars who have been associated with big stars in other fields.

Like when baseball was kind of at the center of American culture, I think it was maybe more common where you might have Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe or you'd have Ralph Kiner dating various movie stars, or more recently, like you had Matt Kemp and Rihanna. I was just going to say. Yeah. You had David Justice and Halle Berry, you know, so like it has happened. Or Justin Verlander, Kate Upton would be the more recent comp, but Kate Upton didn't have Uptonese, you know, like, I don't know what the Swifty comp would be like for a model. I mean, Kate Upton was well known, but didn't have like a

hardcore Stan culture kind of fan base, I don't think, who are like, we're going to rally behind Justin Verlander because Kate is dating this guy, you know? So it's a little bit, and obviously like Derek Jeter dated tons of celebrities in his day. It is, is married to Hannah Jeter, formerly Hannah Davis. Right. So sometimes I guess it's post playing career. These relationships happen. I mean, like Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. Yeah. A-Rod and J-Lo, right? That was post-playing career, if I remember the sequence, right? I think you do. Yeah. It can happen, but I just, I don't know that you could concoct a couple. I was seeing people like,

what if we put Shohei Ohtani with some kind of K-pop, J-pop star, like someone from Blackpink or something, you know, like, would would that be Otani with some major star? Right. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe that would help. Maybe that would do it. I don't know.

I don't know. You're right that like there is a particular alchemy that is making the Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift coupling more potent culturally. Yeah. swift coupling more potent culturally yeah i don't know if it'd be quite the same um if there were another very famous person dating sort of a similarly talented within the baseball context baseball player we have to factor in the the jason kelsey as potential future in-law effect yeah god i bet he'd be a lot of fun at a wedding um i think it is just a a different sort of thing i also think that like the it would have been a i imagine a big pop culture story regardless um but also like taylor swift is sort of having her own moment that is um i think

amplifying this pretty dramatically like she's in the middle of like a billion-dollar worldwide tour. Yeah. I'm writing about her. Yeah. And the Chiefs are really good and famous and prominent, too. Right. Yeah, and about to play in the Super Bowl. So, you know, I don't know. There is a part of me, I'm not gonna lie, and I want want to clarify use this as an opportunity to clarify my comments from the earlier podcast like i i don't dislike taylor swift's music i have i own taylor swift music um i am so grateful as a media member to not have to do this in our sport just because i'm exhausted by it already and And like some people are being so, so relentlessly weird about the whole, just like, you know, like cuckoo bananas weird about, um, about some of

this stuff on from every conceivable angle. Right. I don't know. Like, I just want to say again, I think it would suck to be famous. Um. I can't imagine having people care who I was dating to the degree that people care about who Taylor Swift dates. Although she, you know, tells people about it afterward through her music, Ben, through her music. Sounds like it'll happen again through her music. I don't know what the equivalent would be here. maybe it would just have to involve taylor swift yeah well or a young a young person's celebrity and i don't mean that like i feel like taylor's primary audience is like people my age you know and so i'm maybe there's a young person celebrity younger than i am you know like i'm like i'm i don't think i'm not technically an elder millennial, but I'm like pretty close to being an elder millennial.

So like there might be very young people, celebrities who are on commercials and I don't recognize who would be like, you know, would be big, big deal. Big, big deal. I don't know. Could be true. Is Olivia Rodrigo single? Can we match her with some young baseball star? It doesn't feel like it's my business. I thought that album was better than After Midnight. Can we matchmaker with some young baseball star? I don't know. It doesn't feel like it's my business. No, but.

I thought that that album was better than After Midnight, but that's just. I did too. I really liked that album. Anyway. Yeah, Guts is great. Yeah. Pro Guts. Way to go.

Okay. Oh, boy. Man. It's just so fraught to talk about, which is weird because I don't have particularly strong feelings about it other than I think we should probably leave people alone more than we do. It's like a weird third rail kind of a thing. I will say, like, I imagine that it is, I mean, like, it seems undeniable based on the data that we have. Taylor Swift's presence has elevated viewership somewhat for the NFL. It is, it has led to an interest. And,

you know, we'll have to see how lasting that interest is. But I will also say it has been weird how like gleeful some have been about being able to like explain football to women again. It feels like some of those guys were waiting. They were like, Oh good. Now we have a,

we have an opportunity. License to mansplain. Yeah. I was like, Oh oh good we have this back again i don't know i feel like i if i were gonna 2080 my um like uh ability to express my thoughts today i don't know that it would be more than a 50 but um i just think everyone should stop being so weird you know be less everyone i mean like be yourself but like be less weird at other people maybe is what I'm hoping for. Yeah. Last thing I wanted to mention briefly. Remember Carter Stewart? Sure.

Carter Stewart, who I thought of this partly because I was looking at the 2018 first round draftees, which included Tristan Casas and also included Carter Stewart, who was the eighth overall pick. And he took an unusual route, which I think was discussed on the podcast at the time. He was drafted by Atlanta and then ultimately Scott Boris engineered an alternative route for him where he went to Japan and he signed with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. And at the time it was speculated that this might start a trend. about, will we see more players do this, more amateurs? Because you could maybe get more money this way. You could get to the major leagues in Japan more quickly than you could get to major leagues in the US. He got $7 million over the first six years and he could qualify for MLB free agency at age 25, right? And so this was looked on as a trailblazing move. And I was reading an article Jim Allen wrote about him just recently for Kyoto News, which I will link to, but he's now starting his sixth season in Japan. And it's been kind of a up and down, twisty and turny long road for him.

So it hasn't proved to be, oh, this is your get rich quick and get to the majors quick scheme that everyone else will be following. He has to this point only pitched like 100 innings or so in the majors in Japan. He has pitched more in the minors over there. He's been good. He's been not so good. Obviously, like the pandemic was part of this. Yeah. That sort of set him back but he talked about it

too just like he had a lot to learn and you know you can't just throw someone in the deep end and say go do it like he had to figure out how to pitch and then there was like the language barrier and the cultural assimilation and just getting used to all of that at a young age. Like it's hard enough to go pro if you're in your native country. And so if you're going overseas and you're acclimating to all of that, then it's an additional challenge, right? So he talked about that. He's had some success. Like he is now looked at as kind of a core part of the Hawks rotation, I believe. And who knows, maybe he could come back to the us at some point and we might see him in mlb but it has not been totally smooth sailing and it has not

always been the easiest adjustment and he spoke sort of frankly about that just interesting in retrospect because it's been several years now and i remember this being talked about possibly on this podcast at the time about like yeah maybe this is something that a lot of people will do. And that hasn't really happened. And maybe it's understandable that it hasn't happened. It's such a hard thing to know how people are going to adjust to being professionals, being in, you know, a foreign country, being sort of on your back foot in terms of language. And then you throw the pandemic in like i i'd like to see another chance of like proof of concept here because i do think that having multiple avenues available to players in terms of how they manage their own development and their own careers and

sort of get to pick where they work at a at a earlier juncture uh is appealing to me but yeah it hasn't been like a runaway success where you have like college guys who are going to be like, oh, I'm just going to do what Carter did and it'll work out great for me. But, you know, like you said, we also don't know,

the tale is not yet told, Ben, you know. The rest is still unwritten like that song. Yes. And Boris is always looking for some end around, some loophole. And found it because, as I mentioned, the Braves drafted him, but then there was a wrist injury. And so they offered him a below slot signing bonus. Right. And they said, nope, we'll just go prove in Japan instead.

So that's an update on Carter Stewart. We have a guest to get to. So as we've been recording or a little bit before we've been recording, Rob Manfred has been given a press conference and he's been saying some stuff. He said some stuff about how as soon as 2025, there might be a direct to consumer in market streaming package that might include half the teams in MLB so that you could sign up not just to stream out of market on MLB TV, but also for some in-market package. But all of that's still hypothetical.

What is also hypothetical that Rob Manford was talking about is the Las Vegas A's. they really should try to pin down where they're going to be playing beyond 2024 in the next few months and that it would be disappointing if they aren't in their new Vegas home by opening day 2028. And that seems very up in the air these days, frankly, because we've covered some of the sources of uncertainty. There's a Nevada teachers group that is suing to block the state from spending taxpayer money to build a baseball stadium for the Las Vegas A's. There were some highly amusing comments by the mayor of Las Vegas on a front office sports podcast who was basically like, I think they should maybe stay at Oakland. Like, maybe that would be better for them. And then she sort of walked that back after the podcast came out, but not all the way back. Like, walked it partly back to say, like, you know, if they don't work things out in Oakland, like, Las Vegas could be a home for them.

But still, like, sort of was like, maybe Oakland's the best place for them to be. So, all that stuff is going on. So all that stuff is going on. Meanwhile, the A's are offering a buy one, get one free plan for opening day 2024, which tells you how dire things have gotten. Because even terrible teams typically have no trouble attracting fans and selling tickets for opening day. And the fact that they are resorting to buy one, get one free for opening day, that tells you how far things have sunk. They drew almost 27,000 to opening day last year. I don't think that's going to happen again, even with this buy one, get one free, maybe.

So that whole effort is seemingly in shambles. It's not clear where they're going to play in the interim. It's not clear where they're going to play in the interim. It's not clear where they're going to play in Las Vegas. If that does actually happen, no renderings, no plans, nothing has been forthcoming. However, there are some plans for professional baseball in Oakland this season and beyond. And it is not Major League Baseball, but it is still professional baseball. It is Pioneer League Baseball, and it's the Oakland Ballers. So if you do not get plan A's, you get plan B's.

You get the Ballers potentially. And so we are going to take a quick break, and we will be back to talk to the co-founder and CEO of the Ballers, as well as another new California expansion team in the Pioneer League, the YOLO High Wheelers, about their plans and how they expect the Ballers to be a big part of baseball in Oakland post-A's. Oakland is ready for a new baseball team. Oakland needs a new baseball team. We're going to have baseball here. We're not going to let anyone else dictate of what we can and can't have here in Oakland.

So what they trying to steal from us? We still have that. Baseball in Oakland, baby. 2024, the Battle of the Bay, the real battle, the Battle of Oakland. If they want to leave, hey, it's the end of an era. But anytime something ends, something begins.

All right. We are joined now by Paul Friedman, the co-founder and CEO of the Pioneer League expansion team, the Oakland Ballers. He is also the co-founder of the Pioneer League's second California expansion team, the Yolo High Wheelers. Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

So for those who have not followed your journey from starting zero baseball teams to starting two, can you tell people how that happened? Because it has happened fairly quickly. Yeah. So, so, so my background isn't sports. I've been a fan my whole life, which is a huge, huge fan, but my baseball career ended when the ball started to curve. But I've been a fan my whole life and lived in Oakland for the last 30 years. And, you know, fell in love with baseball for the reasons why young people do, because the excitement and the ability to watch your heroes and to be able to see what Ricky could do on the field, like just love the game like we all do. But as an adult, got more reflective about why we put so much emphasis on sports in our society and came to

the conclusion that there's a magic of sports in its way to bring diverse communities together. In Oakland, nothing has brought our community together more than the A's. The city colors and the A's colors are the same. And so, you know, when it looked like the A's move was official, like most sports fans, Brian and I were heartbroken. That's your co-founder, Brian Carmel, right? Yeah, my co-founder, Brian Carmel, who I've known since high school, he and I, like most A's fans, were just gutted. It's really tough when a team that's so much part of your personal identity is going to

leave the city that you're in. But my background has been a builder. I've done startups before. And so while I don't know about how to build a baseball team, I know how to build organizations. And Brian and I thought, look, we can probably do something about this problem maybe. And maybe if we got the rest of the Oakland community behind us, we can build something that we could be proud of. And so that was really in June. And since then, we've been working tirelessly, really tirelessly, to put this all together. And as you said, you know, the goal was

to bring a baseball team in Oakland to make sure that the rich and beautiful tradition of baseball in Oakland continues. But it turns out in order to launch one baseball team in a league that has 10 teams, you need to launch two. So we ended up with twice as much work. And we also launched the YOLO High Wheelers and are excited to bring Arrival to the city of Davis in the county of YOLO. And what has the community response to the bees been thus far? How have you sort of positioned it not just as something that is answering the departure of the A's, but as perhaps the start of a new tradition? answering the departure of the A's, but as perhaps the start of a new tradition. Yeah, I mean, we've been incredibly overwhelmed by the response from the community. We wouldn't have done this if we didn't think it was going to hit a vibe. But the level of fan response, the level of excitement, the level of support is just incredibly overwhelming. Within hours of our launch, we had a fan club in Spain with over a thousand members. It's just been incredibly off the charts.

Like we couldn't for a while keep our hats on the shelves because they were being bought so quickly. The local Sports Illustrated writer said the weekend that Atani's contract came out, the number one read article on his site in Oakland was about the ballers. I mean, the response has been incredibly overwhelming. And I think that's because, you know, we were right about what we thought was here. This is the best fan base for baseball in the country. This is a fan base that notwithstanding, you know, recent attendance numbers actually loves this game, is passionate about the game,

is passionate about community. Together, I think we can build and continue the rich tradition of baseball that is Oakland. For those who are not familiar with the Pioneer League and its long history, can you sum that up? What the Pioneer League used to be, what it is today, who is actually playing in the Pioneer League currently? Yeah, so the Pioneer League is a very established league. It's established in 1939. For a while, it was an affiliated league.

In 2019, it was de-affiliated and became a MLB partner league, but no longer the team individually affiliated. There are 10 teams mostly playing in the Mountain West, Colorado, Utah, Montana. We're going to be the first two teams, but not the last two teams in California. And it's sort of positioned itself as an innovation league. And that's really why we were so excited to join it. So it does rules innovation in partnership with MLB. One example of that is instead of extra innings and regular season games, it has a knockout round, which is kind of like a home run derby to side ties. So fun, family friendly, engaging and was a perfect league for us to join for what we were trying to accomplish.

So tell me a little bit about getting up to speed and the learning curve here. It is not the same thing, but it reminds me a little bit of when I ran the baseball operations for a Pacific Association team in Sonoma back in 2015 with my partner, Sam Miller, as we were writing a book about it called The Only Rules It Has to Work. And we thought we were prepared and we were not at all prepared. We were way over our heads and we weren't founding the team and we weren't owning the team. We were just trying to procure the players and help plan the in-game strategy, etc. So what you're trying to do in a short time frame is a heavier lift than that. So what are the difficulties you've run into? What have you had to learn just going from baseball fan to baseball owner?

It's all hard. We should have probably talked before and you could have talked me out of it. I mean, one of the things that's been great, though, is that we've been able to find partnership with folks who know a lot more about all of this than we do. So, you know, that started with Wok, Don Wakamatsu, got connected through a mutual friend, Don Wakamatsu, for those who don't know, had a long history in baseball, 17 years as a player, 18 as a manager.

He was the first Asian-American manager in the history of MLB. He has two World Series rings. Like, you know, a very well-respected guy. And we got connected through a mutual friend. And he's from Hayward, which is a suburb of Oakland. And he was just so into what we were doing that he wanted to be part of it. And he became our Hayward, which is a suburb of Oakland. And he was just so into what we were doing that he wanted to be part of it. And he became our VP of baseball operations. He started

putting the coaching and management team together. And we have put together what I think is an MLB quality coaching roster, you know, most recently, including JT Snow. On the business operations side, we brought in Daryl Washington, who used to work for the A's, used to work for the Warriors, most recently was running the Bay Area of Panthers, which is an upstart football team. And so we've just, fortunately, because of people's excitement about the project, have been able to bring people who are way smarter than we are to kind of help out in the other areas of the business. That hasn't made it easy. We're working constantly and, you know, every day we face challenges, but so far we've been able to partner with folks that have made it easy. We're working constantly and every day we face challenges, but so far we've been able to partner with folks that have made it easier for us.

You have an MLB caliber management team on the playing side, but I wonder about the players themselves and how you're thinking about the process of assembling a roster and how you're talking about what that roster might look like, what Pioneer League rosters in general look like

to the folks who are going to be watching them because for all the jokes that roster might look like, what Pioneer League rosters in general look like to the folks who are going to be watching them. Because for all the jokes that people might make about the state of the A's roster, the talent pool you have access to, I imagine, is pretty different than it would be in affiliated ball. Certainly true. Although, for folks who don't know about the changes in the minor league system, it used to be that there's 60 rounds of drafts. Now there's only 20 rounds. So literally two thirds of the players that used to be on affiliated rosters are now independent and they end up in, you know, teams like ours. And so, you know, and there's famous players and Piazza was a 59th round draft pick. There's a whole litany of Hall of Fame players who

were drafted after the 20th round. And so we have access to all of them now. They're all free agents. And so they get to decide what league that they play in. And we kind of have to convince them that, you know, Oakland or YOLO was the right home for them. That was part of the reason we wanted to invest in an MLB talented manager team so that they can think that their development was going to be in safe hands. And we continue to do that. So for you and Brian and any other investors involved, do you see this as mostly a money making opportunity, a for profit business?

Is it more of a civic duty and responsibility? I mean, how do you see your motivations as it pertains to making money as opposed to giving people a place in Oakland to experience professional baseball? Yeah, the answer to that question is yes. I've spent my whole career on what I consider impact businesses. Like I, it's a core value, the concept that you can do well by doing good. You know, all my previous businesses were in, you know, human capital and education. And so I don't find those two questions irreconcilable. I actually think the answer is both. Like we believe that this is going to be a great thing

for the Oakland community. We think we're reawakening the love for baseball and we can use that love to do good things for the city of Oakland, for the city of Davis. We firmly believe that. And we're investing our own money in this. We're becoming fiduciaries for other people's money because we think it's going to be a good economic return. I think we firmly believe the answer is

both. So the response from the community has been really strong and positive. I'm curious for our listeners who perhaps have not followed your stadium saga, what the response from the A's has been to your announced intent to bring new professional baseball to the Bay? Well, we've had no official statement from the A's. You know, the only interaction that we've had is around our intent to lease the Coliseum. So for folks that haven't been following it, one of the things that we first did was find an off day that the A's were away and work with the folks who do booking at the

Coliseum to see if we can book a game there. Initially, that was approved. We got a signed contract. We paid our deposit. We actually started, you know, calling the local little leagues and the softball leagues to, you know, to give tickets away to folks who, because of the, you know, pricing of MLB games, don't necessarily get to see a game in a place like the Coliseum. And we were really excited about it. You know, the intent there was to be a celebration of baseball, you know, in Oakland for Oakland fans. The Coliseum is, you know, our, I don't know, church, our temple. It's like, we love that place, even with the possums. And it was really important for us that we have an opportunity to celebrate that baseball will continue in Oakland in the place that we love to watch baseball.

And then unfortunately, that was blocked by the Oakland A's who have a exclusivity on professional baseball. And so that's really the only interaction that we've had with the A's. And I guess one challenge is you referenced some challenges, one that maybe you have in common with the A's is figuring out a place to play. So I know that the YOLO club is slated to play on UC Davis's campus. You've had plans for where the Ballers would play that, as I understand it, are still somewhat up in the air. So can you give an update on where you expect opening day for the Ballers to be? Yeah. So opening day for the Ballers will be in Oakland. That's, that's, you know, that's 100%. That's a fact.

We had initially been looking to play at a junior college in Oakland called Laney, which is, you know, the heart of downtown Oakland. It actually has a history with both the A's and a history with incubating minor league teams. It's there's a Oakland based USL soccer team called the Oakland Roots that played their initial games in Laney College. But then the city of Oakland came to us with a very exciting, you know, counterproposal, which there's a park in Oakland called Ramondi Park. Ramondi Park is named after Ernie Ramondi, who was a baseball player who lost his life in World War II. It's where Frank Robinson grew up playing. It's where Curt Flood grew up playing. There was an article in the Oakland Tribune once written about Ramadi that said, it's a little-known secret that more professional baseball players have gotten their start at Ramadi Park than any other place.

And the city of Oakland came to us with the concept that instead of incubating at Laney, we consider playing our first games at Ramadi, and that's now where we're headed. And what upgrades, if any, do you have to make to that? What capacity are you hoping to have? Substantial updates. So we are working with the city of Oakland on what they call a gift in place, which is, you know, we're making a private investment to a public facility, and that'll be well over, you know, a million dollars just to get the playing service, you know, up to pro standards and to have, you know, padding on the wall and a warning track and all the things that you need in professional environments. The current capacity we're looking at for year one is 5,000 seats.

You mentioned the Roots, and a lot of people have pointed to the Roots as a model, a proof of concept for how well things could work for the ballers. So for those not familiar, again, this is a professional men's soccer team in the USL Championship League that has done really well in the area, has sometimes outdrawn the A's, in fact. So can you talk a little bit about the roots? Have you been in conversation with them? Have you learned from their example? We've been in conversation with them since before the public announcement, and they've been

phenomenal. For folks that don't know, the Roots are fantastic. And they were started several years ago. And they have a mission and a vision about sports that's very consistent with ours and that, you know, sports is about bringing communities together. And the games are a vibe. You know, there's drummers and flags. It's all of the great things about Oakland sports. And then for us, you know, they've been kind of like our Oakland sports older sibling. They've been really generous with information and relationships and help and support. And, and really, you know, they had to do a lot of learnings on their own and they've helped us. We're incredibly grateful to them. Can you talk a little bit about what it's like

as your A's fan self, you and Brian, to see this extremely messy divorce that is still ongoing here, to see the A's still seemingly fumbling this in so many ways, the ongoing uncertainty? I wonder what that's like as a fan, but then I also wonder what it's like now as someone who's personally invested in professional baseball in Oakland. You know, what if this all fell apart? What if John Fisher did sell the team and skulked away with his tail and a couple billion dollars between his legs? Would that now be bad for you if the A's were in the area? So I wonder if there are some conflicting emotions there. So the first overwhelming feeling anytime you talk about the A's leaving is heartbreak. It's heartbreaking. It's still heartbreaking.

And we're never said that we think that we are going to, you know, kind of replace the iconic A's. We mourn what was lost. You know, what we're about is saying that the future of baseball in Oakland continues. It's Oaklanders who get to decide whether that continues. That's our mission. As fans first, I think the first reaction to if the A's decided to stay for whatever reason would be to be happy. I think there's plenty of places where you can see major league teams and non-major league teams existing and thriving in the same market. There's a bunch of teams outside Chicago, for example. These are big markets and big communities.

And so I don't think that that would be a bad thing. We're for more baseball. And more baseball is just better. As you're sort of embarking on a new venture, I imagine that you're in a position to think very carefully about how this is priced, the accessibility of it to the community. Can you talk a little bit about how you've thought through balancing those concerns with, you've said, and I think it's fine to say that you do want this to be sort of a profitable venture, but have you, you know, how are you thinking about sort of reconciling those things with one another? Yeah, great, great question.

And we do really think about this. It's not cheap to run a team. It's not cheap to run a team with the level of fan experience that we hope to have with the managerial staff that we already talked about, with the quality of players that we hope to bring to bear. You know, there are costs. And so we have to charge for them. And, you know, we want baseball to be as accessible as possible.

And so, you know, we have worked with fan groups, you know, the Oakland 68s and the last dive bar have been wonderful fans. We've sort of talked to them about what they think about pricing. In fact, when we were, even when we were going to do that, the Coliseum game, we worked with them kind of going through the seat map saying kind of what do we think is fair value. One of the things that we continue to work with the fans on is what we're calling the Ballers Bill of Rights, which is essentially a contract between a fan base and a team for how these kind of issues should be worked out and communicated and what things fans want to be able to, you know,

have a say in and what things they can kind of trust a team to do without their out their control. We hope to have that in place before we have our first game because it's for us, the fans are the thing. At the end of the day, it is the fan experience. It is the being part of that joy and that celebration of the sport in the outfield, like in the stands, that's what it's all about. And so engagement with the fans and having them be part of the ride is, you know, something that we've been doing from the very beginning and the fans understand that this has to be a business as well. And so it's so it hasn't been a hard dialogue to have. You know, we talked a little bit about the pool of players that you have access to, right?

All of these guys who unfortunately don't have opportunities in affiliated ball because of contraction on the minor league side. But how are you going about identifying those players? Is there a ballers cross checker combing the backfield somewhere? Yep. I mean, we got a great team headed by walk and then we got micah franklin who's hitting coach the stars who's our manager and uh ray king was a you know former major league pitcher i mean we got a great yeah i was excited to see ray king

pitching coach i loved rick king he's everybody loves ray king he's great then we got aaron miles and then we got jt snow i mean really like i'm a fan it's hard not to fan out it happens a lot in my day where i'm starting to interact with people who used to be my hero. And my like high school self is like freaking out. But yeah, a lot of relationships can find us players. And then we're, you know, looking a lot of game tape and looking a lot of, you know, data packs and measuring velo and spin rotation and all the stuff that I barely understand. understand. It's actually fun because we have meetings where, you know, Walk and the team kind of lead us through how they're constructing the roster. And Brian and I try to ask smart questions, but mostly we're just having so much fun. And how complete is that roster? We hope to bring a little over 30 players to our spring training. Right now we have, in the mid-20s, signed. Pioneer League rosters are either 26 or 27, depending on whether you take a player out of their draft. So we're well on our way. I think

we're looking at putting together the final pieces before we go to spring training. I got excited when you mentioned Aaron Miles because he was the player manager for the Pittsburgh Diamonds back in the Pacific Association, Stomper's rival. So I remember him playing there. Speaking of rivalries, so you mentioned that you had to start the second team to have sort of a natural rival. I guess this is semantics, but maybe it's tough to have a rivalry when both teams are owned by the same people initially. This was an issue early in the history of Major League Baseball. And then they said, you can't actually own multiple teams in the same league. So what's your long term plan?

Is this just to get this off the ground and then you're hoping to hand it off at some point? Or would you like to continue operating the two? We believe that teams should be owned by members of the communities that they play in and that teams and communities, if anything, need to be more tightly coupled and perpetually coupled. That's our worldview. We feel great pride and responsibility in being the steward of bringing a team to Davis and Yolo County. For folks who don't know the area, there's a huge baseball tradition there. Phil Swimley is an iconic college coach who coached at UC Davis for years and years and years. The field named after Phil Swimley was literally built by hands over 10 years by folks in Davis. It's like an incredible story. We feel honored to be the steward of that story.

We love Davis, but we're not from Davis. And so what we're going to be doing is bringing in people who are from Davis throughout the whole value chain of the team, players, managers, owners. And hopefully we want to hand off full management and stewardship of the team, players, managers, owners. And hopefully we want to hand off full management and stewardship of the team to people who claim Davis. In the meantime, we want both teams to be the best team and we want them to play each other in the championship and we want to bring championship baseball back to Northern California. So what I've read, you really had to overcome some skepticism from community leaders

and people involved in the sell the team movement and that you were able to win over many of them who have become advocates for the ballers now, but they'd just been burned by the whole A's experience by John Fisher. What did it take for you and your partners to overcome that initial skepticism? To call them up and talk to them and tell them who we are and where we come from and what we believe in. We were nervous about the calls. You know, I've mentioned, I've like talked to a number of my like heroes growing up, but the person I was most nervous to call directly is a guy named Jorge Leon, who's the head of the Oakland 68s and grew up in East Oakland and is a fan. And I was most nervous to call because I knew that his support and the support of people like him was the most important

thing for our project. And about 15 minutes into the conversation, you know, I think we became fast, fast friends. You know, we then put together before we announced the team to the, to the media or to anybody else we put together, we'd call it the secret meeting, which was, you know, 30, 40 of kind of the pillars of the Oakland baseball community, the heads of the various little leagues, the other fan groups, some elected officials, and a small number of journalists. And we just talked about what our plans were. And then we just also shared stories of the way that baseball and sports, you know, changed our lives and brought the community together. And then I

think we walked out of that meeting with great energy and a lot of enlisted support. And then we have needed that support every step of the way. Like this is not Brian and I, this is Brian and I helping shepherd the whole community of Oakland to build something that we can be proud of. And how have the other Pioneer League owners reacted to your entry into the league? They were excited to do it initially. And we actually, to be honest, had an opportunity to be in kind of all of the unaffiliated leagues. We chose the Pioneer League. We chose the Pioneer League because of its position as innovation baseball, because of the cool relationship it has with MLB, because of some of the other teams that are out there.

So we were excited to join. And we had to go through a whole application process. I mean, joining any league is sort of similar. They have to vet the credibility of the ownership group. We went through multiple rounds of vetting. And ultimately, the other owners decided that we were kind of worthy of being part of a league that started in 1939 and has, you know, a wonderful tradition. And so I think so far they've been excited. I think they were surprised like we were about the level of response. You know, usually when you announce a Pioneer League baseball team, it's not the number one story on ESPN for the day that you announce it. And so I think they've been excited and encouraged by the response. And I think it's, you know, hopefully they recognize it's really good for

the league, right? I think there's an opportunity to elevate this league to be the innovation league. And I think there's a role for that in the whole baseball ecosystem. go to a game that is not in the majors or is not affiliated. You're not necessarily going to see tomorrow's future major league stars, though you never know. You might. But if you are going to get people to come out, it's going to be in part at least for the community, right? I mean, yes, you can, of course, try to win and you can do innovative things that might be difficult if you're an affiliated team and you're beholden to the player development edicts of the parent club. But also, maybe you've got to make it fun over and above just the hope that baseball is inherently fun. But are you looking to some sort of Savannah Bananas, Bill Vecchian promotion style here? Or have you looked around to see how can we sort of differentiate the fan experience

at Ballers games? Definitely looking for differentiation. But I'll start with the first part of the question. You know, the players are really good in this league. The quality of play is really strong. You know, pitchers throw over 90, the ball goes out of the field. I think you're going to be surprised if you witness the quality of the players and the quality of the play. And we want to win. You know, our games can actually matter. I think one of the players and the quality of the play. And we want to win. You know, our games can actually matter. I think one of the challenges in, you know, affiliated baseball is it's all about player development. You don't have the full control of how you play players relative to trying to win in the schedule. And so it's important to us that we, you know, are in a position that if we're going for the title, we can play whoever we want to play and make sure that we can win.

And the whole point of all of this is to have fun as communities. And so the fan experience and fan engagement is really important to us. We watch the Savannah Bananas, and I think anybody in baseball should. What they've been able to accomplish is incredible. They're getting young people to drag their parents to go see a game with baseball game dynamics. And I think everybody who's involved in baseball at every level should be watching them for inspiration. Our model is kind of, we see the Savannah Bananas kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters. And the Harlem Globetrotters existed in basketball way before basketball got to the level of popularity it is today. And it still exists. And there will be a

role, you know, role for the Savannah Bananas forever. But it wasn't the Harlem Globetrotters that created the game of basketball to be as popular as today. In our opinion, it was the Showtime Lakers. And what they did is they brought a little of that Harlem Globetrotter vibe to the real game. And then they wrapped it in a celebratory and party atmosphere with t-shirt cannons and dancers and all sorts of things that weren't there before. And, you know, I think I love baseball, but I worry that some of the fun of it has been coached out of the game. And you don't see players playing with a smile on their face. And you see players at bat, you know, thinking about all of the analytics they've been told in their head. And it's, you know, when you got that much data in your head, it's really hard to play

with a smile on your face. And so the number one thing that we want to do is make sure that our players have fun, that our fans have fun. You know, the vibe will be fan-friendly and fun and hell of Oakland. Like the Oakland is a wonderful muse. It's a wonderful culture and we have a lot of fun stuff to play with. Yeah. So you mentioned the publicity that you've gotten, which is maybe not normal for someone starting up a Pioneer League team. We wouldn't necessarily be interviewing the owner of every Pioneer League team on Effectively Wild, for instance. But of course, just the way things

have happened in Oakland with all of the teams leaving and the way that the A's have left, in Oakland with all of the teams leaving and the way that the A's have left. There's just so much bitterness, enmity toward the A's, toward John Fisher for how he and they have handled this that I think has helped you certainly in generating support and attention and maybe a bit of wounded local pride, right? Like, hey, we want to show that we still care about baseball. We still have a baseball team in Oakland, et cetera. Right. So I wonder how long you think that sort of surge of interest and support that is stemming directly from wanting to basically, you know, thumb your nose at John Fisher and say, hey, we can have baseball without you. hey, we can have baseball without you, we don't need you, whether that emotion will last or whether you hope to kind of capitalize on that initially and then build this into a sustainable project that is not really related to people's lingering feelings about the A's. It won't last. But, you know, right now, the Oakland fan base wants to prove that it loves

baseball and it's a great fan base. So right now there's some pride in that, and that's probably definitely benefiting the attention that we're getting. You know, right now they want to prove it. We think they will prove it. And if we can have a, you know, Pioneer League team that is setting attendance records for the Pioneer League, that's filling capacity all the time, that's showing that the Oakland fan base will bring the drums and bring the flags and will cheer and celebrate, you know, our team, then I think we will have proved what the haters say about Oakland to be wrong. And we'll prove what we have always known, that this is the greatest

fan base in the country. And this is a fan base that loves and celebrates baseball. And this is a fan base that wants baseball to continue in Oakland and wants to be able to decide that it continues. All right. So for any of our listeners who are in the Bay Area and are interested in the Ballers and or the High Wheelers, how can they support your efforts? How can they follow your efforts? And for non-Bay Area residents, if they are interested as well, how can they keep up on what you're doing?

about to go on sale, you know, pretty shortly. We'd love to have you at games. We're going to do our best to make you proud. You know, one of the things that we want to do also is, you know, have a two-way relationship, not a one-way relationship with fans. And so we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what you think we're doing right, where you think we can improve. You know, we won't be able to address, you know, every comment or every concern. There's only so much we can do and only so much time, but we will promise to listen. May 21st, opening day. Is that right? May 21st is opening day. June 4th is the first game in Oakland. All right. Well, we've been talking to Paul Friedman of the Oakland Ballers and the YOLO High Wheelers. Good luck with everything, Paul. Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. All right. That will do it for today. By the way, we talked about playoff contenders in our segment on the playoff odds. The Rockies have the worst win projection and the lowest playoff odds, but they're not zero. They're 0.1%. So Fangraphs is saying there's a chance. Also, as my colleague Zach Graham pointed out, the Angels are projected for 77 wins, which is as many as or more than they've had in each of the past three seasons with peak Otani on their team. I'm going to take the under on that, but it would be something if they lost Otani and didn't miss a beat. The A's, for what it's worth, projected for 71 wins, which would be a 21-win improvement. It's a more optimistic projection than the White Sox or the Nationals got, or the Rockies, of course. We'll get back to previewing next time. Red Sox and Padres up next. For now, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to

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