Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2140: Don’t Bet on It

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

After a brief preamble about the betting scandal surrounding Shohei Ohtani and interpreter Ippei Mizuhara, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the first game of the regular season, whether gloves have gotten more permeable, the odds of a DH-only Ohtani MVP season, Ohtani’s lucrative endorsements, whether the addition of in-app gambling info to NBA […]

Hey folks, Ben here. Don't you just love our little chats before the episode even starts? When there's a pre-intro intro, you know some s**t went down. As it happens, we were just wrapping up the episode you were about to hear. When news broke about a confusing, dismaying, murky story about Shohei Otani's longtime interpreter, constant companion, and close friend Ipe Mizuhara, big sports gambling debts and payments to a bookie under federal investigation, and Otani's knowledge of and involvement in those debts and payments, if any. Mizuhara has already

been fired by the Dodgers for whatever part he played in this nebulous but serious scandal. Later on, you will hear the real-time reaction that Meg and I had to this news. We were blissfully stat-blasting when it surfaced, not suspecting the storm that was about to be unleashed. We didn't have all the details yet, and it seems like we're still far from having all the details now, but you'll hear our brief episode-ending reaction in the moment, which kind of captures the WTF-ness of this entire saga. After that, in the outro, I'll provide a few clarifications based on subsequent reporting. Ironically, this episode starts with some conversation about Shohei Otani and about the potential pitfalls of betting on sports. We did not yet suspect at that point that those threads would be woven together in some way by

the time we were finished speaking. However, the revelations that came out during our recording are kind of case in point for why our initial banter about sports gambling and the omnipresence of the marketing surrounding it took the tone it did. You'll hear what I mean. I think it's too soon to draw any firm conclusions about what went down among Mizuhara and Otani and the alleged bookie Matthew Bowyer, other than the fact that however it's resolved and whatever else we learn, it's not a happy story. And it's not a good thing for baseball or for anyone connected to this story that we're talking about this instead of the excitement and anticipation surrounding the start of a new season. All right, enjoy the episode.

It should be an interesting lesson given what we know now. And I'll be back at the end to supply some updates and a few further thoughts. Hello and welcome. But here I've found my kind Of all Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2140 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanCrafts presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanCrafts. Hello, Meg. Hi. You sound bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just like last time.

I feel like I'm in that Wallace and Gromit gif, where he's laying shack in front of the train as fast as he can so that the car doesn't go off the tracks. Is that Wallace or Gromit? Which one is Wallace? Is Wallace the human? Gromit's the tracks. Is that Wallace or Gromit? Which one is Wallace? Is Wallace the human? Gromit's the dog.

Okay. So I am a human dog. Lay track as fast as I can in front of the wonderful words of my Fangraphs colleagues. I do want to give a little shout out to Matt Martell for editing literally everything else that's running at the site this week. Thanks, Matt. You're doing a great job. I appreciate your

colleagueship so much. So you're tired for positional power rankings related reasons, not because you pulled an all-nighter to stay up and watch the Dodgers-res. I didn't do that. I did put it on when I got up. Like I put the replay on, but sometimes you think to yourself, I'm going to be ambitious. You know, I'm going to hike the extra 10 miles. I'm going to drink a four loco, you know, but that's a young person's game. You know, that's a 21 year old's ambition ambition because you can eat Tupperware at that age and probably weather it just fine. But I am going to be 38 in a couple of months and I am doing the editorial equivalent of two prospect weeks a day for like a week and a half. And so when the young person who lives in the back of my brain thought, maybe I want to set an alarm for 3 a.m. The person who is trying to survive some very busy time at work is like,

no, don't do that. You sleep until 6, please. And so I did. Yeah. If it had been 3 my time, I think I would have watched easily. But 6 was just about the worst possible time. That is so funny. You and I are so different.

For most people, 6 would be better than 3. For me, not three. Yes. For me, not necessarily. Yeah. Because I was up till five-ish just for non-baseball related reasons. And then it was like, do I want to just stay up one more hour? And I would have, except that I had to be awake and doing other things at 10. And so if I had stayed up just for one more hour to watch that baseball game, then I would have just been committing to zero sleep, which I do on occasion,

but was not willing to do on this particular occasion. So really like the idea of setting an alarm to watch one individual baseball game would seem silly to us later in the summer. And so I was trying to just have that mentality. I mean, it's special because it's the first one. And yet once you've seen hundreds or thousands or had the opportunity to, at least later in the season, the idea of any one particular regular season game being appointment viewing would seem sort of strange. So you know what? We'll wait. The games are coming, but I'm glad that that one was played and people had fun and I had fun catching up on what happened while I was catching a few hours of sleep. I agree. I think that people who got up probably

had a great time. I mean, like, I think a good thing for us to keep in mind with this sort of thing is that we are not necessarily like the target audience for those games, right? Like, I know that they are real games. They count in the standings. They will inspire Jake Cronenworth to perhaps buy a new glove. Is that happening more often or is that my imagination? Oh, yes. This was a question I was going to ask you. It's like, you know, it's like with Boeing. Stay with me. Although the lack of structural integrity maybe makes this an obvious analogy. I am Gromit, the human dog with words. You know, he was asking the question of, are we dealing with an actual uptick in airplane events, right? Unsafe things happening on planes. Or are we just noticing them more?

You know, like when, you know, you have a shark attack and then local news is like, sharks are going to kill you. They're coming to land. Of course, yeah. I mean, they're vastly fewer plane crashes than there used to be when we were younger it's almost unheard of at this point so yes does maybe make it more salient when a door pops off or a window or whatever right and so and so is it like that where we are just we noticed the one time and now we're like on the hunt for for glove malfunction like this or we're paying so close attention to the the jerseys that we're aware of

the transparent pants those pants are different they are different ben i'm i'm back around on i didn't mean to return to that topic but no i i had thought this even before this notable example for anyone who wasn't awake and didn't catch up on the highlights or low lights depending on your perspective there was a ball that just went right through the webbing of jake cornyn worth's glove at first base and it was a costly error feels harsh to charge a player with an error for that but you know i guess they're they're responsible for their equipment maybe okay wait i'm sorry i don't want to get us off track because i think we started this by saying we weren't the target audience for this games and these games and now we're on a totally different subject but i i think that i don't think it's reasonable to charge him with an error there

because i it had it's a fluky freak thing he is not he has no incentive to not maintain good equipment on the field right so something had to have gone wrong there had to have been a catastrophic weird failure of leather or webbing or both and so i don't think it's you know i don't think it's fair to charge him with an error there i want i want a clarification in the rules and we're going to get emails about it. And here's what I'm going to say. I'm too tired to read any of your emails. So don't bother. You know, just hold them. For the next time I say something goofy, there's precedent. Don't worry. It'll come back around. There's no mechanism for a team error, really. That's

something that has been suggested before. But yeah, maybe there should be. But as it is, I guess you're only going to give it to the guy who's gloving it. You can't give it to anyone else if you have to assign it to someone, I guess, unless you can assign it to Wilson or whatever, like whoever manufactured the glove. But yeah, I have noticed this, there have been examples. There were examples of this happening last season is it something going on with the manufacturing of the webbing of the gloves is it some sort of player upkeep issue it's not even like it's late in the season and the glove was worn down from use it was literally the first regular season game though i assume it's not a new glove i don't know but

if it's a case where someone is using a glove that they've had forever and it's super worn down and they are just fond of it or attached to it and they can't part with it, then I guess you could say, well, it's your fault. You didn't ensure the upkeep of your glove. You didn't renovate your glove sufficiently. But yeah, if it's just kind of a freak thing, I don't know. But it does seem like I've just, I've noticed it happening more than I used to notice it happening. That doesn't mean that it's actually happening more often. Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe it's just a fluky thing. When they assign errors like that, I should know the answer to this and I just don't. Do they make like a little note, you know, when you're the official scorer? Like, do you describe the nature of the error? Like, does that log exist somewhere? Just like, well, it's an error on him, but it wasn't really his fault. I mean, like, you know, like more what I'm envisioning is like, you know, you're sitting there, you scored and, you know, you're like, ah like ah you know e2 throwing or whatever right like do you describe the nature of the error in some captain's log that gets beamed up to

starfleet i'm doing so much today i'm so sorry for how weird i'm being the mlb box score just says cronenworth parentheses one comma fielding parentheses. If you have the ability to do that, then you should add Glove so that we can track it. I mean, just like track more stuff. Put those arrays to work, you know? Make it stack as problem. Field. That's what it was. It should be just parentheses hole in Glove.

Parentheses webbing failure. Structural integrity of the glove. Yeah. We need a whistleblower at the glove factory that will come forward and then something will happen to them. Mysterious circumstances that there'll be silence just as they're testifying. Anyway, I'm sure it was not heartening for Padres fans to lose in a weird, unlucky, fluky way after what they went through last season.

Though, you know, maybe they would have lost anyway. I think the Dodgers out hit them and out on base them and capitalized on the error as it was. But yes, that went the Dodgers way game one. And, you know, I was going to share with you, I hate to pile this upon you as you were already burdened and worn down by the world. But this week's sign of the sports betting apocalypse, there is a new transgression. There's a new progression in the infiltration of sports betting in broadcasts, specifically with NBA League Pass. But I'm guessing that it's a sign of things to come, that this might be a vision of MLB TV future.

So I was reading about this, quoting from a Mike Borkunov athletic piece. The NBA is infusing betting into live games on NBA League Pass. That is the basketball equivalent of MLB TV. The League and Sport Radar, a global data company, are rolling out a new option for League Pass viewers to be able to track betting odds on NBA games as they watch them on the app and then offer the ability to click over-unders, and then viewers can pick a bet and be taken directly to some sportsbook where they can place that bet. You can see odds during games in every state, but you can only actually follow a link to place the bet if it's a state where mobile sports gambling is legal. So it's not fully, fully integrated because it is opt-in for now. It pops up once you choose the odds overlay.

So you can opt out of that. You can choose not to display that. And it's only on mobile for now, but it sounds like it's just the next domino falling here. It sounds like it's just the next domino falling here. And the NBA has partnered with our pals at InVenue to work on micro betting stuff. And so that is probably the next step. This is not quite micro. It's just in-game. They did not close the door on this leading to in-game betting or micro-petting through League Pass without even having to go to some outside sportsbook, but just place your bet

right in that platform as you're watching the game. Don't even have to leave the app. They said that's something to consider for the future. And it's a really good first step, depending on what your goals are, I guess. And finally, there was a quote in this piece about how this experience can serve as a model for other media platforms, such as perhaps some media platforms that we frequent more often. So, seems like it's kind of inevitable. Seems like it's kind of a slippery slope from it's an option and you have to go somewhere outside the app to do it to you will be inundated with this whether you want to or not. And also there's even less friction, even less of a barrier between wanting to place the bet and doing it.

I don't find myself surprised, right? No. surprised right like this seems like it was that the inevitable well inevitable implies that we've reached the end of the line with the integration which i don't think either of us believes to be true um believe to be true neither of us believes it to be true we don't believe i don't know uh i promise all the copies good though can i tell you wait i hold on let's finish the gambling thought then i have to admit to an embarrassing mistake that I made yesterday. is that dumb little doesn't like involve hurting other people but i think that the extent to which it might do some real lasting harm to them is just enough of an unknown that we should spend a little more time thinking about it before we make it so easy for these companies to part you from your

money and it just makes me very nervous. I feel like there's a real disregard here for people being able to understand what is a good limit for them and how sticky psychologically this stuff is going to be. And when it's on a league broadcast, this might be an overwrought way of thinking about it, but if you see it on a league broadcast, this might be, you know, an overwrought way of thinking about it, but like, if you see it on a league broadcast, you're gonna assume that that's like a reasonable recreational

activity for you to engage in, right? Like, and I know that there's precedent for other stuff where taken to excess, it's a problem, but consumed in moderation, it's fine, right? We allow companies to advertise alcohol on TV, although we don't allow them to advertise cigarettes. And, you know, I think that like a lot of other things, it's like the dosage makes the poison, right? But I just, I feel there's a lot of disregard for people's well-being here, which isn't to say that there isn't a version of sports betting where if that's like interesting to you and it's a way that you want to engage with the sport and it gets you excited about stuff that you can't do it in a way that like won't you know get your family evicted from your home but um when there's been reporting on the percentage of bets that are being placed by a very small percentage of the users suggests like this is a highly addictive activity for a lot of people and i don't know i feel like we should we should care about that a little bit more and we care about it in part because we find betting boring and don't like really want to do it but i think we do care about that piece but these leaks sure don't seem

to so no and the nba has been even more betting forward than MLB has. And do you remember a few years ago, Rob Manfred shared an anecdote from a time he was talking to Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner? And Silver said to Manfred, hey, stop talking about the time between pitches being a problem in baseball. That's going to benefit you guys down the road because there will be so many more wagering opportunities for you. That will be a boon to baseball. And when Manfred shared that anecdote, it wasn't clear whether he would take that to heart or not.

I guess, to his credit, to some extent, he didn't do an about-face and say, actually, we love long gaps between pitches. He continued to go after them and to try to trim them down with the pitch clock, which was obviously popular. So MLB has not fully gone to the dark side, I guess, and tried to make as much as it potentially could have at some cost by doing that. But that doesn't mean that it won't still look for other ways to try to capitalize on this.

So I would not be surprised to see some gradual creep happen and this being kind of a harbinger. Yeah, I just I feel trepidation about it. you know it's clear that this is lucrative which is why they're all rushing sort of head first into to doing it without really you know worrying about the long-term ramifications but you know you could just take a little time with it to study the phenomena and see like is is there an appreciable difference in sort of how psychologically sticky it is when you can bet on your phone versus going to the casino. That's how I perceive it to be just in observing people I know who have done sports betting. But like, that's anecdotal. I don't know if that's true. I could be totally wrong. It could be that there isn't really an appreciable difference between those things. And I'm overreacting to this. But it seems like a reasonable question

to ask when the interface through which you place the bet is just like sitting with you on the couch as opposed to you having to like get dressed up think about what do you wear to a casino like will they be smoking there does that bother me do i still want to go how far away is it you know versus just like well i don't have to pee this commercial break so i guess i'm gonna place some bets and i bet some people do that at the same time yeah or even have to call your bookie or whatever people did instead of going somewhere in person. But yeah, I was thinking about this because I was alerted to the fact that Shohei Otani had the third best odds to win the NL MVP award this year. And initially I thought that sounded unlikely, that sounded off because of course he is DH-ing only this year, or at least he's going to primarily DH. It sounds like

there's some chance he might actually play a defensive position at some point later in the year if his rehab progresses to that point, but he's not going to pitch. And so there has never been just a primary dedicated DH who won an MVP. Otani did it, but he was pitching at the same time. And other people have spent time at DH but weren't just exclusively DHing when they won the MVP, say, third likeliest to do it. He's 14th in projected position player zips in the National League, which sounds about right, I guess, except that then I refresh my memory. He led the American League last year in war just as a DH. Like, if you throw out his pitching contributions, he had the highest war in the American League purely as a DH. Like if you throw out his pitching contributions, he had the highest war in the American League purely as a DH. That's for something. It is. So I guess maybe it is actually more plausible than I thought. I mean, he is obviously behind Acuna and behind Betts in the odds. But then I was looking at all the other people between those two and Otani on the Zips projected or depth charts projected war list. And I don't know, maybe they're better than Otani as a DH only, but maybe not if he continues to rake the way he did last year.

Though I kind of think like even if he put up the same season he did last year offensively, he would have a higher bar to clear maybe because he's already won two and come close to a third and this wouldn't be his best i think in order to do it it would have to feel like he leveled up somehow like yeah he was even better offensively it would be hard for him to be better offensively than he was last year, just because he's doing it like in some sense, literally with one hand tied behind his back. So I feel like it would just not match the sensation that he's generated as a two-way player if he were just to repeat his DH only performance from last year. I don't think that would do it for him unless there was no other credible candidate. Yeah. I don't know that anyone would necessarily admit

to it in those terms, because in theory, like as a voter, you should just be looking at the year as it is constituted. And if he's the MVP, even if it's down from what he's done in years prior, like you should just vote for that guy. Right. But I think that there is sort of a baked in bias where you have to be meeting or exceeding you have to be like you said sort of leveling up in some important way even if your overall like war number ends up being relatively constant like you have to be like and now he you know he stole 70 bases you're like oh well i guess like you know he might not 70 bases. And you're like, oh, well, I guess like, you know, he might not be pitching, but he did that. Like, that's incredible. I think that there is sort of a baked in bias for voters. He stole one in game one. So maybe that's his goal here. And like, as we've remarked, he

has, it's not surprising, like he has been a very good base runner at points in his career. And it seems like a place where he could, you know, eke out a little extra value this year because he's not on the mound. But I think that you're right. People, you know, especially when you've been a two-way guy, like people are going to be like, well, you know, I think that they will look at it as this is an opportunity for us to award the MVP to someone who isn't Otani. So we should take advantage of that because next year, if he's back hitting well as he, I imagine, well, this year, and he's pitching again, well, he's just going to win the MVP probably.

Yeah, then it's fully operational Otani returns. He'll have another shot at it. But yeah, the fact that he would even be that high as a DH only or that he led a league in more as a DH only last year. That's, I think, impressive. That's a sign of just how his skill sort of lapsed the league, but not nearly as impressive as something I saw today, which was Sportico released its updated estimates

of the highest paid players and also the players' endorsement deals. And that is just ridiculous because, course he's, he's making 2 million bucks from the Dodgers this year, you know, with all the deferred dollars to come, but he is easily the highest paid player in baseball this year, even with his $2 million base salary, just because his endorsements are so preposterously more enormous than any other player. Are they ginormous?

I would go so far as to say they are ginormous. Yes, it is. There's no one anywhere near his orbit. Apparently, he's up to 20 endorsement deals, according to this piece, and estimated $65 million in off-field earnings. Yeah, which is 60% more than the rest of the top 15 players combined. Combined. Bryce Harper second in estimated endorsement earnings at $7 million. Like, 65 versus 7.

It's nowhere close. He's, like, up there with LeBron and Steph Curry and Ronaldo and Messi, like these stars from other sports. And no one else in baseball is even close to that. Like his social media footprint and imprint also laps the league, but not by quite as much. But really, like we talked about the endorsements as a factor in his taking that deferred contract or even suggesting it. But the fact that he would be the most richly remunerated player, even though he's making $2 million this year, it's just a different sort of sensation. So I know we talk about him a lot here at Effectively Wild, but he's just on an island

in terms of this sort of fame. Not that that would help him with MVP voters necessarily. It might even lead to some Otani fatigue and backlash. And as you said, like, let's give someone else a shot here. Right. This is the chance we have to award it to somebody else. Can I tell you the embarrassing thing that I did? Oh, yes, please. Okay. So a little behind the scenes peek at the positional power rankings, you know, like they take a while to write and then they take a while to edit, and so what will inevitably end up happening is that writers will write their rankings, and then I edit them, and then we refresh the rankings because Jason is keeping such careful track of position battles and who's expected to do what and injuries and what have you, and we have to like make edits because some of the playing time has moved around and then uh i begged jason to please please lock them unless somebody breaks in half and then he goes okay and i go thank you and then we schedule them and then and then ben they decided to play a real baseball game last night yeah and

so i was like oh i guess there is the unlikely but possible reality that could unfold where, you know, someone in this game gets injured and then it like affects the rankings that are supposed to go live today. And I knew that Matt Martell was going to be watching these games. And so I said, hey, Matt, I have a weird and specific favor, which is that I said, hey Matt, I have a weird and specific favor, which is that if Corey Seager or Ha Sung Kim breaks their leg in the Soul Series game, will you please unschedule the shortstop PPR so that we can update it? And Matt goes, Seager? And I was like, yeah, he doesn't play for the Dodgers anymore, famously a Ranger. anymore like famously a ranger yeah and then i had a brief moment of panic where i was like did i edit the pprs right and then i i went back and read some and i felt better after that but my brain was just like you know gory seger famous dodger sure if he breaks in half and it's because he's at the top of the rankings but for the the Texas Rangers. Anyway. Yeah.

They can't have all the superstars. That's one thing they don't have enough of, arguably, is shortstops. Not a problem for the Padres, as we will discuss later in this episode. But yeah. Well, crisis averted for you. Crisis averted. And also for anyone who might have broken a leg in that game. Right. There was one other prediction, projection that I wanted to mention because I saw this quote in an athletic article about Aori Perez.

Now, along with the rest of baseball, I'm waiting to find out the state of Aori Perez's elbow. Yeah. I'm nervous. The fact that we haven't had any updates for a few days as we speak doesn't seem great no an update would necessarily be great either but he had elbow problems and issues and then he was sent for some imaging and an exam and we have not yet received an update but you know that they're going to continue to treat him with kid gloves as he is basically a kid. And so whatever it is, presumably we won't see him for a while. And the Marlins have a whole rotation on

the shelf basically at this point. Anyway, Uri Perez is mentioned in this athletic article about MLB aces and who is an ace right now and who might be an ace at some point. Andy McCullough is always involved in sort of defining the aces every year. And there's a quote in this piece about Perez from an anonymous scout who says, we'll be shocked if he doesn't win two or three Cy Youngs before he's 30. Wow. Two or three. Shocked. Wow.

Yeah. Now, this was three. Shocked. Wow. Yeah. Now, this was presumably before the latest elbow issues. Sure. But put that aside, that is an incredibly rosy expectation for him. Like, does he have the potential to do that? Sure. Sure. He's among the most talented young pitchers in the world.

But two or three Cy Youngs before he's 30, famously, Nolan Ryan never won one, and Bert Plylevin never won one, Mike Messina never won one, Kurt Schilling never won one, Juan Marichal, lots of great contemporary pitchers have not won, Chris Sale never won one. I mean, Zach Wheeler, he's never won one, and he's arguably been the best pitcher in baseball over the past several years. So a lot has to break right or not break right health-wise for you to win that award. You could be the best pitcher years or over any span for that matter. That would not shock me. Would it mildly surprise me if he never won one? Maybe, maybe, but not really. So to say that you'd be shocked if he didn't win two or three, I guess that's an extremely strong endorsement, but I can't imagine ever saying that about anyone. I'm shocked by that.

I mean, I think that he is incredibly talented. Oh, yeah, he's great. And if this turns out to be a minor injury rather than something serious that requires surgical intervention, I guess your confidence in it goes up. intervention i guess your confidence in it goes up it would be you know like i i think it would be a big it would be a big thing to say that you're confident he's gonna win two or three in his career yeah before 30 that's a that's so much pressure to put on the young man i just i mean he's very good but like you said there are a lot of good he's not the best pitcher in baseball we've already decided that spencer strider right yeah now i guess if he is going to rack up some cy young awards it would probably be on the younger side of 30 more likely than the older side but no i mean i wouldn't

even be shocked if he never won one because it's hard to win one you can be a great pitcher for a while and not win one so but look but look, I hope that he does. And I hope that he's intact. And if he's not, if this is a serious elbow problem, then I don't know what you do about handling young pitchers carefully. Like it's not just, hey, take off all the bubble wrap and just do whatever because look,

they tried to protect him and limit his innings and look what happened maybe it didn't matter but it does just kind of go to show the futility of really trying to protect any pitcher which is not to say handle them all like a young doc gooden or something like right there's a middle there, but it's the sort of thing that we saw with Steven Strasberg and the shutdown and the Perez mini shutdown last year, which was maybe partly motivated by service time stuff and partly by workload concerns. There's just only so much you can do. Like don't abuse their arms, but when it comes to just turning their elbows into the bubble boy and just saying that they will never pitch and we've got to keep them within these strict limits,

like at a certain point, I wonder whether it's counterproductive because A, you're just leaving innings on the table for the limited time that those pitchers are healthy. And then also maybe they're less prepared to adopt a heavier workload at some point when you finally decide to loosen up the limitations a little bit. So that would just be the latest sign of the UCL apocalypse for me now that we've done the latest sign of the sports betting apocalypse. If Perez goes down, I was really looking forward to just getting to see him with less of a leash this year. So that would be a big bummer. I know.

I feel you. I hate all these competing catastrophes. Often life is terrible. On that note, let's answer a few emails here. I have one from Nick who says, just listen to your discussion on Blake Snell's pitching aesthetics. May have missed an earlier banter on the topic, but what actually makes a pitcher's game

aesthetically pleasing to watch? Lots of strikeouts like a Spencer Strider, having a diverse pitch mix and great control. And why not? Blake Snell haven't seen many of his games due to West Coast hours. So I'm left a bit wondering, would love to have more clarity on the topic, having never pitched myself.

Well, it's not something that depends on pitching experience, necessarily. I mean, we sure hope not. Right. And this is subjective. As I said last time, I don't know that everyone finds it unpleasant, relatively speaking, to watch Blake Snell. Everyone finds it unpleasant, relatively speaking, to watch Blake Snell. But what we say when we say that Blake Snell can be a bit of a chore, at least relative to his performance, which is usually quite strong, is that he nibbles. He wastes.

He induces chases or attempts to. He walks. Tons of batters. So many guys. Rarely throws pitches in the strike zone. And so even though he often escapes the jams that he gets into, it's just a very high number of pitches per inning. of frustrating because you want him to go after guys it's like blake you've got good snuff like you could live in the zone a little more often we talked about that recently whether this approach is by choice or whether it's just a inherent attribute of his but you kind of do like to see someone just go right after guys like don't just throw meatballs but there has been more of a trend toward teams just embracing like pitcher stuff is so good now that they really can just kind of aim for the zone and just let the pitches go and move where they may. And it's hard to hit.

And so when it's just like, no, I'm not going to give in. I'm just stubbornly going to keep throwing around the periphery of the zone. And my stuff is good enough that I can get chases, but I'm just never going to actually go right after anyone. I don't even need a guy to be like an extreme strikeout pitcher for me to appreciate what he's up to. Like, I think that I do think that pitch execution and having a lot of different pitches and being able to get guys out a variety of ways like that is super fun

and i don't i you know depending on the quality the defense behind him i might not even mind if he's a guy who's like a little more dependent on balls and play going his way right because sometimes that's fun because it gives your gives the guys behind you something to do and they're really good back there a lot of the time right right? Yep. But he just, he walks so many guys. He walks so many guys. He led the majors in walk rate, in walks per nine. You know, it's just, and I know that this has come down somewhat because of the pitch clock and him having to. But, like, you know, he's slow, feels slow sometimes.

Yeah, slow to the plate, slow between pitches. Between pitches. Right, yeah. Right. Because that's another way pitchers can vary if they're slow to the plate. I don't know if people mind that. I do think that the spectator experience with pitchers varies less than it used to just because of the pitch clock and so you don't have the super slow pokes out there who are just

dragging their feet and dragging us behind them anymore because that could be an extremely frustrating experience and now even the relatively slow guys are a lot speedier than they used to be there's just a lot less variation in pace. So that's not so much the differentiator. So it could be the aesthetics of the stuff or the delivery and maybe even wind-ups. There aren't even that many wind-ups anymore. You got pitchers pitching out of the stretch all over the place. I do sort of miss that or at least I miss the wackier deliveries that you used to get more often.

And so even that has become more kind of conformist and standardized. And so really it's Snell is almost like singularly frustrating to watch at least for me. But your miles may vary. very and just like think about you know the the thing i think about with him quite often when i'm watching him is that my experience of him is that way and he like to talk about what he did last year like among qualified starters he was second only to strider in terms of his strikeout percentage so it's not like he's not striking guys out he's striking guys out but he's just hogging so many of them that it like it dulls the effect of of the strikeouts i just it's just not for me but again like he you know he's a good big leaguer and as we discussed i think he will be a good big leaguer for the giants like i think

he will help them a good amount but i just it's not my preferred look in terms of like, oh, I got to sit down and make sure I'm watching that Giants game because Snell's on the mound. It's like, who else is starting in that game? This might bother fans of the team he's pitching for less than it does us because their main motivation is, I want to win this game. And Blake Snell is a pretty good pitcher who gives you a pretty good chance to win the game. And so if he's your guy helping your team and he's effective, however indirectly he goes about that effectiveness, then I think you, I don't know if you learn to like it, but you learn to

live with it for sure because you're getting something in the bargain. And actually that walk-prone nature of Snell, that leads into the next comment I guess we got from Rob, Patreon supporter, who was listening to us talk about Snell and said, I can't get over how Blake Snell is pretty much the epitome of being effectively wild, yet both hosts of Effectively Wild greatly dislike how he pitches. I'm sure you've been told this before, but it struck me strongly enough this time to prompt a message. And you know what? I'm not sure I agree. I'm not sure I agree that he is wild. He's obviously effective and he is prone to not throwing strikes, but is that the same as being wild? Because Effectively Wild to me, that's like, no one knows where it's going. He doesn't know where it's going. The batter doesn't know where

it's going. And so maybe it leads to an uncomfortable and unpredictable plate appearance. Whereas with Snell, you do know where it's going. It's just, it's not going in the strike zone. And so he's wild in a sense, but it's kind of a controlled wildness. It's an intentional wildness. This is what we talked about. Like, is it a command issue? Is it a control issue? Is it on purpose? And I think to a large degree, it is on purpose. He's just decided, I'm not going to give in and I'm not going to just lay it in there. And obviously he's fooling hitters because his breaking stuff is good and they think it could be a strike and then it's not. But I don't know that I would quite call it wild. He's actually kind of consistent probably in his locations. That's exactly right. So you were prepared to like argue the point and I was just going to be like,. And we often talk about that on the hitting side,

or at least it seems like that's the way our conversation has trended over the last couple of years, right? You want guys who can hit for big power, but we also want guys who, you know, have a speed element to their game who maybe are more contact oriented and are getting on base that way. And so maybe for me to put my money where my mouth is like, I need to embrace Blake Snell, But my favorite team employs George Kirby, so I don't know. I just don't like this big walk lifestyle, I guess. But yeah, I agree've discussed. But when I think of a guy who's like effectively wild, Snell is actually really not who comes to mind for me,

but maybe I'm just trying not to think about him very much. Yeah. That could be the problem. He's going to, he's going to find out about this and he's going to be like, we're from the same place. Why are you so mean about me? Seattle native.

Yeah. He should be your guy. He's not from Seattle. He's not from Washington. He's from Washington. He's close enough. He's on the I-5 corridor, but it's not Seattle. It's just fine. You know, it was a cool area, but I'm just saying.

Okay. Sorry. Didn't want to get into the minutia of neighborhoods and suburbs. It would be like if someone was like, oh, I'm from New York. And you're like, where? They're like, Poughkeepsie. And you're like, where? They're like, Poughkeepsie. And you're like, that's not New York City. That's a different place entirely.

He went to Sherwood. He's like, he lives, you know what? He's from like up near where my dad's side of the family all lives now. So, it's a part of the state and the greater Seattle area I have great affection for. But it's not entirely there. I used to think of Kyle Bearclaw as being kind of an effect of the state and the greater seattle area i have great affection for but it's not yeah i used to think of kyle bearclaw as being kind of an effectively wild avatar because he was very effective for a while there with the marlins and he was walking at least as many guys on a rate basis as blake snell and striking out maybe more anything, like his 2016 season when he walked more than five per nine

and struck out 14 per nine and had a sub three ERA. And he struck me more as like, who knows where this is going? Or I guess like the ultimate would be like a Austin Adams where he might just plunk you and he really doesn't know where it's going and no one does. And that's kind of uncomfortable. He was, I guess, moderately effective when he was that wild, but probably not enough to take the title there. Man, Marlon's pitcher, that just reminded me of Uri Perez again. He was like fifth, I think, in baseball on Inoseres' Stuff Plus ranking this spring with what limited data we had there. Guy's good. I just, I hope we get to see him.

Although, you know, Sixto Sanchez apparently is back. All right. What's that? A football for me to kick, Lucy? I know. I want to be clear. I'm rooting for the guy. I feel so, I feel bad for what has happened to him in the course of his career. And I hope he can figure it out.

But I am firmly in, like, need to see it for more than a couple innings at a time, territory to believe it, because the velocity was definitely a big problem, like, post-TJ rehab, and, like, where he was sitting was really a problem. But that was not the sum total of six-dose issues, to put it that way,

in terms of, like, the fastball shape and the rest of the repertoire and conditioning and the whole deal. I hope he can figure it out, but him throwing hard for a couple innings isn't going to be enough for me to kick that football. Lucy's kind of the worst. Yeah.

She gives good advice, though, for a reasonable rate. Kyle Bearclaw's name always makes me want a donut. Yeah, that's understandable. All right. Daniel says the following is a quote from Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner about how he can better devote his attention to the entirety of the Mets pitching staff. Now that guys like DeGrom, Scherzer and Verlander are no longer in New York. DeGrom, Scherzer, and Verlander are no longer in New York. You attain a certain level of excellence and you want to make sure that excellence in that standard is kept, Hefner said, referring to the

former Cy Young Award winners. Sometimes that requires more. It could be time, it could be resources, whatever the case might be. That part of it has changed a little bit. I feel I have more of me to spread throughout the entire camp. And Daniel says, I thought this quote was pretty surprising. I probably would have thought guys like Scherzer and Verlander would require less work on Hefner's part. Is he taking a shot at the departed pitchers? Is he simply just creating spin considering there is just less talent on the Mets pitching staff? And he's trying to make it seem like that's actually a good thing. Is there any way that what he said is actually true? I don't know. I can't imagine

Hefner actually spending more time with Scherzer than someone like Tyler McGill last season. What do you two think? I don't know. I mean, so I guess the thing that would make me open to the notion that he would have to spend more time with them potentially has less to do with resume and pedigree and more to do with the fact that both of those guys have been like only been healthy for stretches over the

last couple of years and might be approaching a period of their career where they need to start thinking about like how they adjust and adapt their repertoire to remain effective given their age? I do think there's probably some amount of needing to get to know new members of your staff, right? And spend time with them so that when you have to make your little trip out to the mound to be like, you don't have that today, let's think about what else you can throw. That you are well positioned, not only in terms of having a good sense of them as players but having developed a relationship but this does sound very snippy as a quote a little bit at least in print yeah i probably would have guessed the other way as daniel is saying it is somewhat

surprising to me yeah to make it make sense, I guess you could say, yeah, those guys, because of their advanced ages and or injury histories, maybe require more maintenance than the typical even top of the rotation pitcher. I don't know if this is like implying that they're divas or something and that they just want more attention. But there is a certain status that comes with being a star and a future Hall of Famer and the team's hopes hinging on you. And of course, you're being paid many multiples more than a Tyler McGill. And so maybe you do expect some sort of personally tailored coaching time. You know, you don't have to wait in line to get FaceTime with Jeremy Hefner if you're Scherzer or Verlander. Those guys, I guess, in particular, they are very intense about their preparation and are interested in information to their credit. So maybe they are just particularly the type who were going to him and saying, hey, I want to know this and what can I do? So that might not even be a slight.

It might be a compliment in a sense and that they're still hungry for all this information even after all they've accomplished. But I would have probably said that, yeah, once you get to that point in your career and that level of accomplishment that you kind of know what works or you can self-correct

and you might not need Jeremy Hefner to tell you what to do. Whereas some other pitchers on the staff who are younger and less established might not need Jeremy Hefner to tell you what to do, whereas some other pitchers on the staff who are younger and less established might not. So it does somewhat surprise me. But yeah, maybe it's just you're a star, you expect star treatment, or you're just given star treatment because you're so important to the team's fortunes. Maybe you're watching the same TV and you just need to talk to somebody about it. Yeah, that could be too. I'm behind on Shogun, but I am mostly caught up.

Okay, good. Boy, really liking Shogun. Maybe we can do a Patreon putt. All right. Cody says, I was falling asleep to the sounds of a spring training game when I was startled awake by a loud commercial break thanks to another pitching change. Now I love the chess game of pitching matchups, so I don't want to get rid of that. In fact, I don't want to change the game at all. What I want to do is move the bullpen to underneath the field. So when a pitching change, I don't want to change the game at all. I just want to move the

bullpen to underneath the field. That's all. So when a pitching change is made, the new pitcher simply pops out of a trap door behind the mound and is immediately ready to go. No more slow walk to the mound. Let me answer this question. Well, we did have a hypothetical where the mound was raiseable, where you could raise and lower the mound, right? And that was even like a pitch clock suggestion, right? It was like if you run out of time, like the mound lowers, it's like sinking as you go. Launches you or whatever.

Yeah. But this is purely for pitching changes, not for in-game. And this is not a movable mound. This is just some sort of access to the sub-basement here below the field where the bullpen now is. So that the pitcher pops out of the trap door behind the mound and is immediately ready to go. No more slow walk to the mound and more ads. Just a spring-loaded launcher beneath the turf to shoot out Edwin Diaz to a crowd going wild. Gotta be careful with Edwin Diaz and leaps and landings because sometimes that doesn't go so great for him.

Like Garth Brooks or the Backstreet Boys, is the comp Cody has here. This would effectively and wildly decrease the break in the action between pitchers. Plus you could add even more fanfare to big time closers coming into the game with flames that shoot up at the same time or something. I'm not sure exactly how much time it would save,

but probably a significant amount if every pitching change mid-inning is a few minutes. This is probably the easiest way to shave those few minutes off without altering our great game even more. think it's nice for the bullpens to be sort of on the field so that like when the broadcast wants to cut to them they're like outside and there's energy you can like you know hear things in there like some of the you know the wriggly bullpens are like under the bleachers now or whatever right like they're they're right yeah there are some that are more obscured and and the players hear things that maybe they would rather not hear sometimes as they're warming up in the bullpen. So they might not even mind, though. Probably they'd prefer to be out in the open air and just to be able to follow the game, not on a monitor, maybe, at least solely.

I do kind of like the image of the jack-in-the-box pitcher who just pops up. Although I think I disagree that it would enable more fanfare. I think it would be less, right? Because that's a big, like the closer entrance music, you wouldn't even need entrance music if they're just there. I mean, the whole Edwin Diaz entrance with the cameras following him in and the song and all the rest of it, you don't get that if he just appears. So I would say there's actually a bit less fanfare. It's a little less dramatic.

And yeah, you save time. But I think that that's why this would never happen, because Cody was startled awake by a loud commercial break. Well, the teams and the league want there to be commercial breaks. Yes. That's the thing. I hate to break it to you but uh and ultimately the players do too because they want to make money and so for them to make money there has to be revenue and thus there have to be ads so this would be nice

for for us if we made baseball more like effectively wild no ad breaks great but also unless major league baseball becomes patreon supported i don't know how that's gonna work Ad breaks, great. But also, unless Major League Baseball becomes Patreon-supported, I don't know how that's going to work financially. So that's probably a non-starter, probably a deal-breaker there for MLB, I'm guessing. Yeah, I think that there are reasons that aren't just us being worried about the vitamin D of pitchers that won't make this palatable. I don't know. I like it when they come in from the bullpen.

Plus, Ben, if we have them under the field, then what happens when there's a fight? Those guys have to help. Oh, yeah. But they're going to be close, and then they're actually going to get out there in time to do something, and it's going to cause an even bigger ruckus. So I think for riot control purposes,

you've got to have them out so that they have to run in and like look ridiculous, you know? They already enter so belatedly. Imagine how late they would be to the fray if they had to come up from underneath.

I guess unless like the entire bullpen can pop out of this thing. If it's just capacity of one pitcher and they just have to come out one by one, then it's going to take them a while to deploy themselves. So yeah, it's just capacity of one pitcher and they just have to come out one by one, then it's going to take them a while to deploy themselves.

So, yeah, it's a problem. Plus, there's still going to be warm-up time because even if you're warming up underneath the field, they might have places to throw down there. And batting cages certainly where, say, hitters stay warm if they're DHs or they're going to pinch hit. But they're still going to need to familiarize themselves with the major league mound that they're DHs or they're going to pinch hit, but they're still going to need to familiarize themselves with the major league mound that they're stepping on. And so they're still

going to need to throw their warmup pitches. There's still going to be some delay there. So yeah, but it would be amusing to see at least once. I mean, then we'd never see a bullpen cart again. Not that we really see it much now, but you could at least theoretically see it. So there's a nice tradition to the run in, the jog in. All right, two more questions. One from Reggie, Patreon supporter, who says, as much as I hate to write this question, would it not make more sense to let both the Athletics and White Sox move? Chicago has never had two teams in any league besides baseball since the Cardinals moved to St. Louis for the 1960 NFL season. The NFL has never had more than two shared markets per season in its history, and it has 32 teams in 30 markets. The NBA has the same

story with its 30 teams in 28 markets. Same is also true for the NHL, albeit with New York as a three-way market since 1982, 32 teams in 29 markets. MLB has 30 teams in 26 markets, and it has had four shared markets since the A's moved to Oakland in 1968. What are your thoughts on this? So in an efficiency sense, if we're distributing teams and not doubling up and trying to maximize the potential audience here? Would it make more sense to have just more single team cities and fewer double team cities? Our double team cities as they currently stand are New York, biggest media market in the United States, right? Yeah. Chicago.

I don't know exactly where it falls in the league tables, but it's a sizable media market, particularly when you take into account the entire Chicagoland area, right? And then we have, well, for the moment, San Francisco and the Bay, but soon to just be. So just the two, right? I'm not missing. L.A. L.A. Also a huge media market. I mean, they're not really in L.A. They're in No, they're not.

Right. L.A. Chicago, New York, L.A., Bay. We have four for now, soon to be three in theory. And so like from an ideal efficiency perspective, even though particularly Los Angeles and New York are very sizable media markets, maybe you make the argument, yeah, it would make better sense to spread them out. But I'm famously from Seattle. And one time the NBA decided that we didn't get to have an NBA team anymore, and it made people mad for generations. And so I'm not generally of the opinion that we should take teams away from cities and fan bases. Like, you know, the two New York teams are making plenty of money.

Their games are well attended. You know, the White Sox being bad is why stuff's not going great on the South Side, but not because, like, there aren't baseball fans who care about the White Sox being bad is why stuff's not going great on the South side, but not because there aren't baseball fans who care about of those new teams pay for their own ballparks and then realign the divisions so that they make more sense. And then I think you call it good. That's my opinion of the matter. Yeah. I could see an argument if you were starting the league from scratch today. Yes.

Yeah. Totally. I have 30 teams. Where am I going to put them? Then you'd still maybe want two in New York. Yeah, I think you might. I've seen credible arguments that maybe you'd do better with a third team in New York than you would putting a team in Nashville or wherever, right? And so I don't think you would want to take away from there.

And maybe this is just a product of baseball having such deep historical roots and the fact that that league is just older. roots and the fact that that league is just older. So you used to have even more multi-team cities when there were fewer cities in the country that would support a sports franchise or when travel was not as easy and you just hadn't really unlocked the whole continent for sporting events and leagues. But you used to have Boston and St. Louis and Philadelphia also had multiple baseball teams. And New York, of course, had three for quite a while until 1958. So the fact that Chicago has two teams, well, they've both been there since 1901. I mean, those are deep roots. So you're really uprooting teams that uh have laid those down and so i think that does

set mlb apart from the other leagues to some extent but also yeah mlb is just so overdue for expansion it's just been such a long time that yeah this wouldn't be the most pressing solution i don't think you just just add a. Just add markets. Don't necessarily subtract from them because I don't think any of these markets you would say could not support the teams that it currently has. Some of these teams haven't done as well for reasons that may or may not be directly related to the market. That's obviously been a contentious topic with the A's, but with some of these, there's no question about can they support multiple teams?

It's just, can you run those teams well? Yeah, you've got generations, you know, families who've been fans of these teams for so long at this point that it would be quite a blow to lose them, as we've learned with Oakland. And that only goes back to the 60s. I agree. I will stand up in defense of the White Sox. And I mean, like, how would you even pick a team to get rid of in New York? You know, how would you? I mean, you definitely would just get

rid of the Angels. But they don't play in LA. They play in Anaheim. It's fine. Yeah. All right. Last question comes from Jesse, who says, I'm listening to the Rockies and Mariners do a joint broadcast of their spring training game, and I find it absolutely delightful. The regular Rockies broadcasters are joined by Mike Blowers, and they're having fascinating back and forth about the players on each team. It probably helps that this is two teams that have nothing even resembling a rivalry. Couple of thoughts.

One, do you like this? Can you use your platform to make this happen more? Almost certainly no to the second part of that question. Do you think any teams would ever do it in the regular season? Which teams do you think would never do a joint broadcast together? Is it because of the teams or the broadcasters? My bold claim is that my two favorites, Jason Benetti and Aaron Goldsmith, could do a broadcast with any team regardless of rivalry. I really like it when they do this.

I don't know if this is how it currently stands given the universal DH and the balance schedule and all that. But there was a while where the Rockies were the Mariners' quote-unquote natural rivals. And I think it's because we all get stoned a lot in both places question mark Eddie Vedder finally picked a side and we couldn't play the Potters anymore it's like Eddie how many teams are you a fan of this doesn't make any sense but I think it's a lot of fun and I you know I think

it would be great during the regular season but I think the place I'd actually really like to see it is as an alternate broadcast in the post season like I think it would be so fun and interesting to have the broadcast teams of the two teams playing, sitting in a booth together trying to broadcast a game in a super high-stakes environment.

Because I think there are a lot of really talented national broadcasters, and it's a hard job, so I'm not trying to get on anyone's case except maybe Smoltz's. But, you know, there is a there is a remove that exists when the national crew comes in to broadcast a game. And there are arguments in favor of that. Right. Especially maybe during the postseason where if you are not a fan of one of those teams, you might appreciate a more neutral look than you would necessarily get if it was, you know, the club's broadcaster in the booth. But I think that forcing them to kind of sit together and experience a postseason game together and talk about, you know, their players and, you know, their impressions of each other over the year, because now they will have seen each other every year, you're going to just have seen every team every year like i think that would be so cool and i know that they won't do that because you know the the the networks that broadcast postseason action pay a lot of money for the privilege but i think it would be really neat i think it would be a fun development and yeah like you know bring them in a couple times a year there are teams that just like genuinely at least in terms of the teams and

the people who play for them seem to just super not be into each other at all like um i don't know if it would go super great if you were to put, say, Mariners and Astros in the same booth and be like, call a reasonable game. But maybe, maybe it would be fine. You know, maybe they're more mature than the guys on the field. I think that if you're a player and you have a paired broadcast booth, you're almost obligated to get in a fight, though, because you want to see how they handle it, you know, just for funsies. Well, sometimes broadcasters in the same booth get in a fight though because you want to see how they handle it you know just for funsies well sometimes broadcasters in the same booth get in a fight didn't that happen with the pre-binetti tigers and mario and pemba they had that whole scandal like a fistfight between broadcasters forgotten that but yeah i think you're right i think there was a you want to keep them separated

yeah you you want to bring in like maybe it would be helpful in that case if there's bad blood between the regular partners, then you bring in like a Billy Preston to the Let It Be sessions and you have someone else in there kind of jamming on the keyboards in the back and everyone else gets along a little better. They're on better behavior, right? But there is precedent for this. I knew that this had happened and I put it to our Patreon Discord group for examples. And what I was thinking of, I think specifically, was the Peacock broadcast on Sunday. They have done this over the past couple seasons, at least at times, the MLB leadoff, MLB Sunday leadoff. They will have joint booths. I think they kicked this off in 2021. They had

a merged booth, a broadcast team where it was like a Giants-Phillies games. And so they had John Miller and Mike Kruko with John Kruk and Jimmy Rollins, I think it was. Yeah. And I think they've done similar things since. It's kind of like a cultural exchange program of sorts. So I like it in theory. And someone else pointed out in the group that probably for money-saving reasons, if anything, the Masson crews used to merge for Orioles-Nats games. Oh, sure. Up until about 10 years ago, that would happen because, you know, same kind of conglomerate anyway. And I guess in spring, maybe it's easier because not every team broadcasts its games or all of its spring training games.

And so maybe broadcasters are just available. But this happens, I think, also more often on radio where people will join each other for part of a game or they'll switch booths like the even the red sox and yankees had something like that where it was like joe castiglione and and john sterling switched radio booths for an inning a few years ago that sort of thing has happened and yeah in theory i like it In fact, Michael Mountain pointed out there's a very distant precedent and a famous one and a postseason one, which is when Vin Scully became the youngest broadcaster still to call a World Series game. He was doing the NBC broadcasts with Mel Allen in 1953 on TV. And the idea was it was a gimmick. It was like, let's get one Yankees broadcaster and one Dodgers broadcaster. And Red Barber passed on the opportunity because of some salary contract sponsorship dispute. And so it was Vin Scully and Mel Allen. And that was a big break for Vin Scully. So yeah, there's precedent for this.

I like it, at least in theory. I'd be in favor of more of this. I think it would be fun. I think it would be edifying. Yeah, yeah. I could see fans, though, this might be another like Blake Snell situation where fans are like, we're fine with Blake Snell.

He's good. Sure. And fans also might not love're fine with Blake Snell. He's good. And fans also might not love this idea, I would think. Because if you're listening to the same broadcast crew every game, you get attached to them, right? It's like your extended family, your pals you hang out with for a few hours a day. And then would you want interlopers coming in? Like, that's why people get so pissed about the national broadcasters. One reason at least is that they're not as familiar with the ins and outs and they rehash all the storylines and they're like introducing you to things that if you're a local fan of that team, you know already.

Right. And so. They throw fish in Seattle? Yeah. Yeah? What? So if you're used to your booth and you like your broadcasters, do you want that rhythm to be interrupted by visiting broadcasters coming in and asking questions or saying less informed things? And I guess you can't guarantee that the chemistry would be as good as it is with the broadcasters who work together constantly. with the broadcasters who work together constantly. So maybe this is, again, more of like neutrals would like this,

but everyone else not so much. Because I was reading about when Massen discontinued this in 2014, and apparently it had not been particularly popular with fans that they did that at times. So, yeah. Yeah, but it would only be every now and again. You know, you got to try it. I think that we should be, I know, again, I know that they have to sell advertising and there's all this work and it can cost money to do these special one-off broadcasts. But I think that we should be willing to use the length of the season to try different stuff out, you know.

And I think that this would be a good thing to try out. different stuff out, you know, and I think this would be a good thing to try out. And maybe you try it in spring and if it goes well, then, you know, you say, ah, when we have our regular season series, like we'll do a game and we'll do it with, with a representative or two from each side so that, you know, you don't talk about fish throwing for instance. And then, um, and then you have a good time. I want a donut and i want to watch get back now so it gave me quite a list this episode probably where this would lead is just like arty moreno and some other cheap owner being like what if we just have one broadcast crew and everyone just shares somehow i don't know how that would, especially we were just talking about two team markets. It's like, okay, let's just consolidate here. Oh, you're redundant. Sorry. We only need

this one crew for both of these teams. Then again, I mean, the teams in the same market typically are not playing in the same market at the same time. One is home, one is on the road. So I don't know how that would work, but I'm sure they'd find a way to save some money and use this to be cheaper somehow. Okay, let's end with a stat blast. Take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OPS- Then they tease out an interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, analyze it for us in amazing ways Here's today's stat blast. It's time for stat blast.

It's time for stat blast. It's time for stat blast. Stat blast. This stat blast is in honor of the opening soul series between the Padres and the Dodgers. I actually wrote about this this week, but this will be the audio version for Effectively Wild listeners only. I focused on two aspects of these two teams, one apiece. aspects of these two teams one a piece. The fact that the Dodgers have an incredible, possibly historic, possibly unprecedented run of three incredible hitters who bat back to back to back or back to back to belly as we decided at some point. And the fact that the Padres are just an entire team of shortstops, just nothing but shortstops, which is ironic because,

again, the Dodgers don't have enough of those. But I wanted to look into whether these teams will make history. Like, is Betts, Otani, Freeman potentially the best trio of hitters who have ever batted consecutively regularly for a team, particularly at the top of a lineup. And also just how weird and unusual is it that the Padres have a shortstop at almost every position at this point, because we've been joking about that for a while, but they just keep leaning into the joke

and find you someone who loves you like AJ Preller loves shortstops because that man, he just— And loves moving them off position. Yeah, well, only one can play shortstop at any one particular time. Unfortunately, I guess that's the flaw. But, yeah, it's just the strategic shortstop stockpile over there is extreme. So maybe we can start with the Dodgers top of the order here because both of these qualities were on display in the very first game. Betts, Otani, Freeman, they batted 1-2-3, and they were all good. They all reached base multiple times. Betts and Otani each had multiple hits. They all drove in runs, I guess, except for Freeman. So just a little preview of what's to come with those guys. They're just going to be raking all season long. And the way I did it was to look for

three hitters in a row in a lineup who qualified for the batting title and had a WRC plus of at least 140, 40% better than league average because Beto, Tani, and Freeman, each of them was projected in the fan graph step charts for a WRC plus slightly above 140. And some projection systems had them considerably above 140. And you might think that's kind of a low bar because they were all a lot better than that last year. So they might blow by that mark, but you never know. Luck and age-related decline, etc. 140 is still pretty darn impressive. And I wanted to see how often that has happened, that a team has batted three 140 WRC Plus guys in a row like that. How many times have they done it? What are the records here? And got some help, as I often do, from frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson. And he determined that only 43 teams in Major League history have featured three consecutive hitters in a starting lineup who wound up qualifying for the batting title and

finishing the season with at least a 140 WRC plus. So we're talking full season here, not like they were qualified as of that game and had a 140 WRC plus as of that game. But at the end of the season, they hit those two marks. So 43 teams have done it. And a lot of great teams didn't do it because it's hard to have three hitters who are that good. Like, the Murderer's Row Yankees didn't do it because they had Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but they didn't have a third guy who was quite that good. They had good third guys, but not someone who was up in that rarefied air there. So the all-time leader is the 1942 Yankees, actually a different edition. They had 145 games that season where they batted three 140 WRC plus qualified hitters in a row. And it was typically Joe DiMaggio. Joe DiMaggio started every single game for that team that season as the cleanup batter. And then it was usually Charlie Keller and then Joe Gordon. Sometimes they were flipped. So 145, that is the number to beat.

The number to beat for the post-war, post-integration era is 137. That's the 1953 Dodgers. integration era is 137. That's the 1953 Dodgers. And they had an embarrassment of riches because they had five guys who qualified for this. They had Duke Snyder, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Carl Firolo. And at times, those five guys batted consecutively. I pity any pitcher who had to run that gauntlet. No kidding. The third team on the list and the most recent to do this with regularity, the 2015 Blue Jays. They did it 132 times with Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, and Josh Donaldson. So there are only 10 teams of the 43 that have ever done this in any games. Only 10 of them have done it in more than half of their games.

So it was the 42 Yankees, 53 Dodgers, 2015 Jays, the 37 Yankees, DiMaggio, Gehrig, Dickey, the 76 Reds, Rose, Griffey Sr., Joe Morgan, and George Foster. They had four. The 63 Giants, Mays, McCovey, and Cepeda. The 2004 Cardinals, Pujols, Edmonds, Rowland. 2001 Indians at the time, Roberto Alomar, Juan Gonzalez, and Jim Tomei. 96 Mariners, A-Rod, Griffey Jr., and Edgar. And finally, the 2011 Cardinals, Pujols, Holiday, Berkman. the 2011 Cardinals, Pujols, Holiday, Berkman. All of those teams raked, unsurprisingly. So just knowing that you have three guys that good, that typically is enough to guarantee that this is going to be a great offensive team because all 10 of those teams either led or tied for first in ALNL WRC Plus in that given season.

And the average win total among these teams was 96.4. Your 96 Mariners, actually the worst of the bunch with a mere 85 wins. Because, you know, you have to have pitching and other stuff too, in addition to the hitters. Sorry. But basically, if Betts, Otani, and Freeman can start more than 145 games in consecutive spots in the order, or if you want to go with the post-integration, post-war record, more than 137, then they would set a new record. than 137, then they would set a new record. And even if they could do it in half their games or more, that would bode very well given these historical precedents and also given what we know about the Dodgers, which is that they're just generally very good at everything. It's not like the rest of their lineup is a slouch. It's not stars and scrubs the way the Padres is. The Dodgers' regular lineup against righties, at least in theory,

all of those players project to be at least average offensively. So even the weak spots are not that weak, though I guess you could say that the depth is somewhat suspect. But the really extraordinary thing is that they're at the top of the order because historically, the heart of the order has been the likeliest location for having three of these hitters in a row. And so Ryan sent over just how common it has been to happen for it's been like more than 2000 total games in the database that I think 2400 something that you've had three hitters like this batting three in a row, but it's happened 156 times with the 1-2-3 hitters. I guess it's up to 157 now. So that's fairly rare. 2-4, it's more than double that, 346 times. By far the most common the three to five hitters 1,402 times then it starts to get less common again the four to six hitters 453 times five to seven has happened 75 times and six to eight has happened three times but it has never happened with the seven through nine hitters

no one's ever been so stacked and so deep that they could put three hitters at this caliber, seven to nine. The three times that has happened, six to eight, were two of the 53 Dodgers examples, Campanella, Hodges, Furillo, Hodges, Campanella, Furillo. And the Red Sox in 2003 had David Ortiz, Bill Miller, and Trott Nixon back to back to back one time in July. Bill Miller and Trot Nixon back to back to back one time in July. And again, some of these guys, you might not have figured Bill Miller and Trot Nixon for 140 WRC Plus guys. That was the only year that they did that. So one thing that makes the Dodgers particularly

impressive is that they project to do it. This is like the true talent of these guys. It's not like a fluke or a career year. This is like you expect. It's like the baseline for them that they're going to get there. So only 10 teams have ever batted hitters of this caliber 1-2-3 in any number of games. And two of those teams, including Freeman's 2020 Braves, played during the pandemic-shortened season when it was easier to do this in a shorter

schedule. Only one team has ever pulled this off with any regularity, and that is the second champion of the Big Red Machine era, the 76 Reds. They had 110 games where they started off Pete Rose, Ken Griffey Sr., and then either Joe Morgan or George Foster. So they did it 110 times, and the next highest is the 2020 Braves at 16 with Acuna Freeman and Ozuna. So the Dodgers should easily surpass that to move into second place. And if they can do this more than 110 times, then I think you could say this would be the all-time top of the lineup. then I think you could say this would be the all-time top of the lineup. Because, you know, Mookie Betts is actually the best leadoff hitter ever, if you look at the splits, for like 3,000 plate appearances.

Because historically, like, your leadoff guy was going to be, you know, sort of speedy and lighter hitting and bat control, just like the number two guy typically was. And Mookie does all those things, but he also hits for power he does everything well so that has changed where now you have some power guys at the top of the lineup Acuna is the best leadoff batter ever if you lower the plate appearance to 2500 career so we're in the era of these powerful leadoff hitters Betts and Acuna. But yeah, this is something special to see a 1-2-3 like Betts, Otani, and Freeman. Obviously, this could not happen.

The Dodgers could fail to satisfy this because any one of those three could just have a down year and not make it to 140 or could get hurt and would not qualify for the batting title. Or I guess they might reshuffle the lineup if something's not working. It's hard to imagine them not batting consecutively.

You could flip-flop Otani and Freeman or something maybe, but they're all going to be close together. I think you sort of want to stack those guys. You can't go wrong with any order, but I guess might as well put the greatest speed up top, even though Freeman is a great base runner and base stealing threat at this point. And also, like, Otani is a little more free swinging than Freeman. So you get him some protection and people will throw strikes to Otani. That was Roberts' rationale anyway. But yeah, I pity the pitchers who have to go through this lineup because it's got to

take something out of you also, I feel like, to start a game or to face those three guys consecutively. And then, you know, Will Smith is up. I mean, it's not like, oh, I can relax now. They still have got good hitters there. Will Smith is going to drive in a zillion runs this

year unless Freddie Freeman just clears the bases himself. Which he's capable of for sure. He is. He did that once in spring training this year. But yeah, I almost wonder if because like there's no breather. And maybe if you if you psych yourself up, if you reach back for a little extra as pitchers actually do against really good hitters then like are you worn out by the time you get to like the cleanup guy it's like oh man i i survived i finally got past these three and now it's easier but it's not easy i still gotta face like smith and muncie etc so yeah that's that's a meat grinder that's's tough. A tough meat grinder. Unless Corey Seager breaks his leg.

That's a callback. Yeah. All right. Now, finally, we transition to the Padres here. And why don't they just build the whole defense out of shortstops? That is the philosophy that AJ Preller has pursued here. And it does make a certain sort of sense. You're better off building your entire team out of shortstops than like the Marlins. Why don't we get all the second baseman and quarter the market on second baseman strategy?

Because, yeah, you can only play one shortstop at shortstop at any particular time, but shortstops are good. And so you can put them somewhere else. You can move Tatis to right field and he'll immediately be an incredible right fielder, right? And so they have the flexibility, the versatility to do that though i guess you have some handedness concerns potentially in the lineup because you know you're you're not gonna get a lot of like lefties in your lineup if it's entirely short stops so that could be a bit of an imbalance issue unless you got some switch hitters. But other than that, you know, it's just Preller's love of shortstops run rampant. And so in game one, the Padres had seven players with pro shortstop experience playing in the field. It was everyone except catcher Luis Camposano.

Wow. the field. It was everyone except catcher Luis Camposano. And we've been joking about this for a while, but they've never taken it to quite this extreme, I don't think. And J.J. Cooper wrote about this for Baseball America recently, which was kind of what got me to write about this because he wrote, the Padres' reliance on shortstops is extremely unusual. If Jackson Merrill makes the team as a regular center fielder, which he did, the Padres could regularly field a lineup with a converted shortstop at every position other than catcher. So that's what they're doing now. And I wondered, OK, it does seem extremely unusual, but how unusual? Has anyone done this before? Has anyone done it more than the Padres are attempting to do

it? The thing about the Padres here is that, as JJ pointed out, these are all like legitimate shortstops, you know? These aren't people who like moonlighted at shortstop or played shortstop in an emergency situation or just played a handful of games there. All of these guys were at some point like either regular everyday shortstops in the majors or were primarily shortstops in the minors. Like these are shortstops. These are, you know, you could put anyone at shortstop. Albert Pujols played shortstop for a couple innings when he was young. But these are real shortstops

who projected to be shortstops in the majors at some point. And most of them were shortstops in the majors other than Merrill, who hasn't been in the majors up until now. So you have, at least for now, Tyler Wade, not Taylor Ward. He was starting at third base because Manny Machado is still coming back from elbow surgery. Presumably he'll be at third at some point, but he's been a shortstop as well. He was a minor league shortstop primarily and played shortstop regularly for the Orioles and Dodgers for a while in the majors too.

And Tyler Wade, he's played more than 100 games at shortstop in the majors and was primarily a shortstop in the minors also graham polly made the major league roster for the padres which was uh more surprising i guess in that uh he has leapfrogged uh leaped a lot of levels here which is kind of a padres tradition too but he's come up from double A, as did Merrill with even less experience, Pauly did. And Pauly, he's not really a legitimate shortstop. He's played like one game there professionally, but it kind of counts. So he might play some third two before Machado comes back. We'll see. But whatever happens, whatever alignment they go with, whether it's Pauly, whether it's Wade, whether it's Machado eventually, they're going to have a shortstop at every position except catcher.

And really, it's a shame that Austin Nola is not still on the Padres because he was a minor league shortstop for quite a while. So they could have had all eight, but Nola's on the Royals now. So that's sort of sad. The Padres catchers now are not former shortstops, unlike everyone else. But got some help here from Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference, a semi-frequent stat bus consultant. Baseball Reference has great minor league data. And so we were able to look to see whether this has happened before. The first thing we looked at is just to see what percentage of major league

hitters have ever played shortstop professionally. And that's counting major league games and affiliated minor league games. And it turns out that 38% of all major league hitters ever have played shortstop for at least one game professionally. 34% have played it for multiple games and 28% have played it for at least one game professionally, 34% have played it for multiple games, and 28% have played it for at least 10 games. And it turns out that that follows the defensive spectrum fairly loosely. So like the easier the position is, the higher the percentage of major leaguers who have played it at some point. Maybe that's intuitive. I had thought it might go the other way because like if you've been a shortstop at any point, you can play almost anywhere else. And so maybe there'd be more shortstops, former shortstops spreading around like they are with the Padres. of major leaguers ever have played at least one game in left field, for instance, and then it's

right field, then it's third base, and then it's first base, second base, center field, shortstop, and catcher. Only 25% of major leaguers have played even one game at catcher. And this is just looking at position players, by the way, not pitchers. Although 20% of non-pitchers have pitched in at least one game, it's just that only 3% of non-pitchers have pitched in at least one game, it's just that only 3% of non-pitchers have pitched in at least 10 games. Anyway, that established that, yeah, it's hard to play shortstop. It's rare to play shortstop. And that does make it more special that the Padres are pulling this off. So we found that almost the same number of teams have had seven defenders with pro shortstop experience in a game, 44 teams as the number that have batted three qualified 140 WRC plus hitters.

So by coincidence, 44 versus 43. about 2,300 total team games with 140 WRC Plus hitters batting three in a row. There have been only 428 games in the Baseball Reference Database, 429 now, I guess, that satisfy that seven shortstop condition. So it is pretty rare, and only 15 teams have done it more than five times in a season. So if the Padres can do it even five times, they will have joined a very exclusive list of only 15 teams. The record is the 1933 Brooklyn Superbas, the precursor to the Dodgers. They did it 82 times. So some of these early teams, I think there was a little more fluidity maybe with the positions. The 93 Reds, they're the modern example third on the list after the Superbas teams. They did it 41 times.

And then you had the 88 Tigers 38 times. The 89 Tigers, they did it sometimes too. 2008 Marlins, they did it seven times. 2012 Orioles did it six times. The 2018 and 2019 Royals did it 11 times combined. But again, that was like in part because Alex Gordon played like six innings at shortstop once, you know. So it's kind of like technically, yeah, but it's not like the Padres are doing it where it's real shortstops. Not meaningfully true.

Right. short stops not meaningfully true right so if we require at least 10 games of short stop experience for each player that already small sample of 428 total games dwindles down to 55 and only two teams those 1903 superbas and the 88 tigers managed more than four such games apiece so it certainly seems like the Padres are going to just blow by the record for most games with seven pro shortst experience has as much as the Padres. Because I think Jackson Merrill, who had 178 games in the minors as a shortstop, he was the least experienced shortstop on the field for the Padres in game one. And that is an unprecedentedly high minimum for the weakest shortstop link on a seven shortstop team. The only one that comes close is the Orioles lineup on June 1st, 2012, when first baseman Mark Reynolds, who actually played shortstop in a ball or below 135 times, he had the lowest

total of any of Baltimore's past or present shortstops those days. And that was just a one-time thing. So the Padres will be doing this regularly. However, last thing, there is one way in which the Padres have been or will be surpassed in their shortstopness. And that is that, as I said, he's missing one component here.

He's missing an ex-shortstop catcher. I don't want to dare AJ Preller to go out and get Austin Nola back or someone else with shortstop experience, which is fairly rare. You're a catcher who played shortstop. I wouldn't put it past him. But there have been 203 major league games in which all eight non-pitcher defenders had pro shortstop on their resume.

And again, the 1901 Superbas lead the way with 75 games with eight pro shortstops and then the 1903 Superbas. But the 1988 Tigers, they did it 37 times. Mike Heath, I guess, was helping out there. And you've had the 2008 Marlins. They did it one time. But again, it's extremely rare, but it has happened. So Preller and the Padres have been surpassed. And I hate to tell Preller this, but there have been 43 big league games where even the starting pitcher was a former shortstop. So all nine players in the field were former shortstops. So all nine players in the field were former shortstops. All of those games were for either the 1901 or 1903 Superbas or the 1902 White Sox. So it's been a while. You had more two-way players back then, and there are very few pitchers with pro shortstop experience, much as Zach Greinke would have liked to become one. So there's still something for Preller to aim for here, his measly seven shortstops. It might be the all-time leading seven shortstop team,

but until he manages to get eight or even nine, then there will still be shortstoppier teams in baseball history. Ben, my goodness. Yeah. My curiosity is satisfied. I was going to say. I hope yours is too.

You know, look, it's not the worst strategy in the world because the Padres were a pretty good defensive team last year and they might be again. Shortstops, shortstops everywhere. It's not efficient, maybe, to sign Xander Bogarts to an 11-year contract to play short and then a year and a half later you move him off the position. But, you know, I guess it works out in a way. tenure. I probably didn't originate this theory, but Padres shortstops were like among the worst in the majors for a few years after that. And ever since then, it's like, not going to be caught

without a shortstop anymore. I'm going to go get all the shortstops. He even tried to sign Trey Turner and then pivoted to Bogarts when that didn't work out. So, you know, he's just, even since he was with Texas, he has expressed a preference for up-the-middle players and shortstops. But to me, that's the thing that haunts his dreams. I could have had Trey Turner. I traded him. I'm just going to go get all the shortstops and I'll show them. Yeah.

He's like Ron Swanson in that episode of Parks and Rec. Like, I want all the eggs and bacon. Yes, exactly. Where you misunderstand me and will only bring me some, but I want all of them. Okay, Meg, while we've been stat blasting here, some truly wild and dismaying news has broken that is still very much developing. episode talking about betting on sports and also Shohei Otani. I guess we got to bring it back to a confluence of those two topics because breaking news for us, not for people who are listening to this, it will have broken quite some time ago, but Shohei Otani's interpreter, Ipe Mizuhara, who has been with him for years and years, dating back to the NPB and has been seemingly a close associate and friend of his. in alleged theft of Otani's funds to place bets with an allegedly illegal bookmaker who is under

federal investigation. And Mizuhara, who was interpreting for Otani as recently as like the first game of the season and was pictured in that couple's photo recently that we discussed, there was no hint of this that I was aware of. And you know, I follow the show base. And was pictured in that couple's photo recently that we discussed. There was no hint of this that I was aware of. And you know I follow the show base. This seemingly must have just happened or at least has just come to light in this LA Times account. Apparently, it is lawyers of Otani who have accused Mizuhara of this massive theft of Otani's funds to place these bets. This is a bombshell. Yeah. I don't really have anything else to say about it other than this is this stinks um yeah and the fact that

he was dismissed so quickly seems not great it seems not great ben no it seems pretty bad no yeah this is uh i don't want to speculate about anything because we're just finding out about this as we as we read about it but of course you you don't want to speculate about anything because we're just finding out about this as we read about it. But, of course, you don't want any sort of sports betting story associated with your sport. I mean, this sort of scandal, that is, as opposed to having odds appear on broadcasts and such, which is apparently part of the plan. It's not like the NBA has ever had any sports betting game-fixing scandals in its history. Nothing to worry about there. But you don't want anything associated with your sport like this and certainly with the face of your sport,

who is squeaky clean and presumably hopefully still is. Hopefully Otani is not implicated in any way by this. But it would be a shame if he were taken advantage of by a trusted associate. If this is in fact true, that would be quite dismaying and sad. Yeah. Wow. I just like very, this was just very strange. Like he was in, he was in the dugout like hours ago. Right. Yeah.

strange. Like he was in the dugout like hours ago. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess however this came to light, there's this investigation that's going on of Matthew Bowyer is the guy's name. And presumably LA Times says Otani's representatives looked into the actions of the interpreter in response to the Times' queries. So I guess this surfaced with the Times' reporting, and then they talked to Otani's reps about it. And I guess, I mean, this is so potentially toxic and inflammatory that you want to put as much distance between it and you as you possibly can. So this is not a case where you can, I guess, afford to wait and see if you're Otani. where you can, I guess, afford to wait and see if you're Otani. And this is potentially reputation damaging. And you're playing in games that are going on, obviously. So you want to act swiftly, presumably.

But it's got to be painful on a personal level for him, I would imagine. So I'm sure we'll find out much more about this. But that casts a bit of a damper on this opening series and the enthusiasm about Otani and all the publicity surrounding him for mostly positive reasons these days. This is more of a say-it-ain't-show sort of situation. Yeah, geez. Oh, boy. All right. Well, we will have updates as available.

Okay. Well, we will have updates as available. Okay. Well, Ben, back again with some updates. Still marveling at the fact that this all happened immediately after we were talking about Shohei Otani betting odds, the pervasiveness of advertising for sports gambling, and how people used to have to call their bookie to place bets. I guess some still do. So after our initial reaction there, ESPN investigative reporter Tisha Thompson published the most thorough story yet, which managed to muddy the waters further through no fault of ESPN's, but through some inconsistency in the stories of Ipe and Otani's reps. According to ESPN, at least $4.5 million was wire transferred from Otani's bank account to this alleged illegal bookmaking operation. It's illegal because sports betting, while legal in most states, is still illegal in California. So if you want to place bets on credit, you got

to go to an illegal bookmaker like, allegedly, Matthew Bowyer. According to sources ESPN spoke to, including Mizuhara, Otani wasn't doing the gambling and never met or spoke with Bowyer. It was Mizuhara who dealt directly with Bowyer and placed bets on international soccer, the NBA, the NFL, college football, but supposedly not baseball. However, that money to cover the debts came from Otani's account. ESPN saw Otani's name on two $500,000 payments sent in September and October. So how did that money get from Otani's account to Bowyer's? Well, that's the weirdest part. On Tuesday, ESPN spoke for 90 minutes to a seemingly not-lawyered-up Ipe in an interview arranged by Otani's spokesman, in which Ipe claimed that he asked Otani last year to pay off his gambling debt.

Obviously, he wasn't happy about it and said he would help me out to make sure I never do this again, Mizuhara said. He decided to pay it off for me. I want everyone to know Shohei had zero involvement in betting. I want people to know I did not know this was illegal. I learned my lesson the hard way. I will never do sports betting ever again. Mizuhara said Otani had sent the payments himself because he didn't trust Mizuhara not to gamble it away. But then on Wednesday, the story changed and pretty dramatically. At that point, Ipe told ESPN that Otani had no knowledge of his gambling debts and that Otani had not transferred money to Boyer's associate. Initially, the story says, a spokesman for Otani told ESPN the slugger had transferred the funds to cover Mizuhara's

gambling debt. However, as ESPN prepared to publish the story Wednesday, the spokesman disavowed Mizuhara's account and said Otani's lawyers would issue a statement, which was that, in the course of responding to recent media inquiries, we discovered that Shohei has been the victim of a massive theft and we are turning the matter over to the authorities. The clear implication there being that Otani was unaware of the debts, unaware of the payments, and presumably that Mizuhara appropriated those funds and sent them himself. So what to make of those conflicting stories from the same sources on consecutive days? Well, I don't know. And I don't know that anyone knows. MLB is in fact-finding

mode. The Dodgers are in fact-finding mode. Reportedly, the league had not been contacted by the feds and wasn't aware of this until ESPN inquired. It's kind of inconceivable to me that Mizuhara talked to ESPN for 90 minutes about all of this without legal representation. He's working on getting some. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. One reasonable interpretation might be that Ipe told Otani about the debts. Otani wanted to help out his friend. He paid off the debts. But belatedly, someone in Otani's camp considered that saying Otani had made the payments himself might implicate him in some way. and thus it was decided that it would be better to pass this off as a theft, it's also very reasonable to think that it was a theft, and that Ipe was fabricating the first story he told. Just hard to square that with the fact that

Otani's spokesman seemingly corroborated that account at first. Of course, I've seen some people leaping to some suspicion that Otani himself might have placed the bets, and that Ipe is just taking the fall for his friend, though that is not suggested by the reporting we've seen so far. There's also no suggestion that there was any bet placed on baseball. Ipe obviously isn't an especially credible source at this point, but he said, I never bet on baseball. That's 100%. I knew that rule. We have a meeting about that in spring training. Must have missed the meeting about not placing bets on other sports illegally. Obviously, betting on baseball is the bright line for baseball players and MLB employees. There's no coming back from that. It is not illegal or

against MLB's rules for players or employees to bet on sports other than baseball. If there were no bets placed on baseball here, then the only problem, and it is still a problem, is that the bets were placed illegally because California. And ESPN notes the league rulebook states that bets placed with illegal bookmakers are subject to punishment at the commissioner's discretion. It's certainly clear that someone, presumably Ipe, had a serious gambling problem. The very sort of serious gambling problem that we talked about earlier on the episode. Mizuhara told ESPN he met Bowyer at a San Diego poker game in 2021 and started betting with him on credit later that year. He estimated his losses mounted to more

than $1 million by the end of 2022 and ballooned from there. Quote, I'm terrible at gambling, never going to do it again, never won any money. I mean, I dug myself a hole and it kept on getting bigger and it meant I had to bet bigger to get out of it and just kept on losing. It's like a snowball effect. It's a sad story. It's not an unfamiliar story. Remember earlier this month, the Jacksonville Jaguars financial manager who pled guilty to stealing $22 million from the team to fuel his gambling addiction was sentenced to 78 months in prison. This is a sad story for any number of reasons, foremost among them that Ipe's life was seemingly consumed by this gambling habit, that whether Otani was stolen from or got himself enmeshed in this mess with good intentions, this may be the end of what has been described as more of a brotherhood than a friendship between

Otani and Mizuhara, that we've gone from delighting in Otani's dog and then his surprise marriage announcement and wife introduction to fretting about this sordid story, and if Otani's reputation is tarnished, fairly or unfairly, in any way by this story, well that's sad too. Because up until this point, there's been nothing negative to detract from the joy that his play has provided. And it's hard to imagine his play not being affected by this hanging over his head. So, it's a big bummer under the best of circumstances. I hope we get some clarity. I hope that the evidence is exculpatory. And I hope that the league will learn a lesson

from having its biggest star and golden goose even tangentially tied to a problem that's exacerbated by the wholehearted pursuit of sports betting revenue with perhaps less than sufficient concern for the effects that can have and has had elsewhere in the world on the people most susceptible to that temptation. Unfortunately, more to come on this subject, I'm certain. For now, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon.

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and John Fairfield. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only. That place was buzzin' today, let me tell you. Monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but even if you aren't, you can contact us via email, send your questions and comments to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe

to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back before the end of the week with our penultimate preview pod. By the way, we still have a Dodgers preview to do. We will talk to you soon. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation.

You're all about the stats we've compiled because you listen to Perfectively Wild With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley Come for the ball And the banter's free Baseball is a simulation It's all just one big conversation Effectively Wild