Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2168: The National (TV) Pastime

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the Orioles’ sweep-less streak, Oneil Cruz’s mismatch between top-tier tools and pedestrian production, the Phillies’ strength of schedule, Steven Okert and the etiquette of tipping one’s bullpen-cart driver, Kyle Hendricks and the decline of the 2016 Cubs’ core, and some Shohei Ohtani real-estate news. Then […]

Did Richard Love, Lady Everstrike, or Taylor Teagard, and who had more war? Jason Kendall or Russell Martin? What if Shohei Otani's dog was also a good lawyer? What would you do if Mike Truchas showed up in your foyer? Or is it foyer? Find out on Effectively Wild. Find out on Effectively Wild. Find out on Effectively Wild today. Hello and welcome to episode 2168 of Effectively Wild today. Hello and welcome to episode 2168 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Limburger, the ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing well, but I am mourning the end of the Orioles' sweep-less streak. It's been a long time coming, the end of this streak. Mm. It's been a long time coming, the end of this streak. And I really enjoyed following it. 106 consecutive series without a sweep in the regular season, which was third all time. And it went on for so long that it was something you could keep checking in on.

And I would not follow it obsessively every single series. But every now and then, I'd see an update. I'd see them climbing the leaderboard. It was the rare streak that you could track over the course of months or years. And I'd see an update and Cardinals team, a wartime Cardinals team. The 1942 to 44 Cardinals went 124 consecutive series without a sweep. And then, of course, the 1906 to 09 Cubs, they went 115 consecutive series and the Orioles were up to 106. So they were closing in, but the Cardinals swept them and now it is over. It was kind of a weird streak. I didn't know what to make of it exactly or what it meant or what the significance of it was, but it was fun that it went on so improbably long. Yeah. I don't know that it means anything, but it is improbable.

And that makes it interesting, even if it ultimately isn't all that meaningful a streak, I think. Right, because you don't have to be the best team ever to do that. Or if you are the best team ever, you might still not do that. Like the Cardinals won the World Series in 42 and 44. And then the Cubs, of course, lost the World Series in 1906 and won in 1907 and 1908. So these were great teams. And the Orioles have also been a good team. I mean, when this streak started, they weren't a great team, right? It was the 2022 Orioles when they were kind of getting back in the saddle, but they weren't great yet. And then last year's Orioles were good. They did get swept in the division series.

I don't know if that mars the streak for you. This is a regular season streak. But, of course, the Rangers swept them out of the ALDS. So maybe that tarnishes it somewhat for you, but past teams in earlier eras wouldn't really have had as many opportunities for postseason series. Yeah, I think that it's fine to set it aside as a regular season phenomena and not really consider the post-season part of it. I don't know. Maybe that makes it, diminishes it for some.

Certainly when you say something like, well, the only time they got swept was in the post-season, it's like, oh, well, this really doesn't mean anything because that's the most important time to, arguably the most important time to not get swept is when it could advance you and deeper into October. But we aren't saying it means anything, Ben. You know, we're not asserting that.

That's not, we're not making that claim. So it's fine. Yeah. And usually we do kind of disregard postseason performance when we're talking about streaks at least. So it's consistent at least. at least so it's consistent at least but it's just a weird one because they could have easily gotten swept at any point and it really have changed our evaluation of how good the Orioles were I mean one of the nice things and weird things about baseball is that you can easily have a better team lose or even

get swept chasing an inferior team and so it is just kind of a random distribution of wins and losses. You just happened not to get swept. I don't know whether it says anything about the resilience of your squad or the heart of your players or the construction of your team that you never would get swept. It's not like they've had, you know, a couple aces throughout this whole run that would be stoppers whenever they lost a couple games in a row or something. But they had a lot of opportunities to get swept. And each time they would win the game that they had to win to preserve the streak, which, again, doesn't really mean that much. But they had 14 previous regular season finales in which they were facing a sweep, and yet they won.

So each time they would evade the sweep. And then I guess the Cardinals were kind of a funny team to do this because the Cardinals were 0-9 in their last nine opportunities to sweep someone. They had not swept anyone since last July 17th to 19th. So, it was kind of improbable in that sense too. The Cardinals have not been great over that span, obviously, and the Orioles have been pretty darn good. But yeah, it was just kind of a weird, long-lasting streak that I will miss now that it's over and will continue to be somewhat flummoxed by. Well, maybe they'll start a new one for you, Ben. You know, maybe they'll start a new one. But if they do, it will take years to get back to the point where it would be interesting to follow. That's the

other thing. It takes years to build up this particular kind of streak. You could have a historic hitting streak in a couple months, but a historic sweep-less streak for a team, that's going to take you a couple years, and it can all be undone in the span of a few days. Well, but that's convenient for you, right? Because you're a busy guy, you got work to do and a kid to raise and so much media to consume. So, you not having to keep an eye on it, I think, is useful to you because then in a couple of years, you can be like, oh, hey, and maybe you'll be less busy, you know, who could say? Yeah. Yeah.

While we talk, I'm going to try to figure out where the Orioles ranked in wins during that sweep list streak to see how close they were to actually being the winningest team in baseball over that period. How do you feel about the word winningest? Is that okay with you? I think it's fine. I'm not flummoxed by that period. How do you feel about the word winningest? Is that okay with you? I think it's fine. I'm not flummoxed by that one. If you are, then I think that's also fine, but it's not one that registers for me as displeasing to the ear. I think it's okay. Okay. It's useful. Otherwise, what would we say? Most victorious? I don't know. There are

some alternatives, but they're not quite as satisfying. There was also some history made by O'Neill Cruz of the Pirates. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. The man hits baseballs hard. We've known that for some time, but he hits multiple baseballs really hard in a single game. And as noted by Sarah Lang's first, he became the first player with 220 plus mile per hour batted balls in a game in the StatCast era since 2015. He was also in the same game, the first with three batted balls, 115 miles per hour plus. So he totally tattooed a few balls in the same game and he got a couple doubles and a single out of it. And I believe he still holds the record for the hardest hit ball

in the StatCast era. 122.4, which he hit in August of 2022, topping John Carlos Stanton, a couple of John Carlos Stanton batted balls by two tenths of a mile per hour. So he is sort of the stat cast king when it comes to exit speed, not in quantity. Stanton still certainly has him beat there and others might too, but in quality, at least when it comes to how hard you hit the ball, individual batted balls or batted balls in individual games. And maybe he's the guy now, not Eli De La Cruz. Maybe it's O'Neill Cruz, who is kind of the poster boy for skills and tools, not totally translating into value yet, at least. Because we had that conversation about Eli earlier this season. Like, gosh, he's off the charts, top of the scale in everything. And yet, is he even good at baseball?

Are we sure that he's good? Like, he does all these spectacular things. Right. Yet, overall, he just has so many raw areas of his game still unpolished. And you put it all together, and maybe he's just not all that great yet. To this point, though, he has been quite good. He still certainly has some holes in his game, but he's been worth a couple wins, just a little more than a quarter of the way through the season here. So even if it's not a fully mature game yet, he's still been quite valuable. Whereas O'Neal is crushing the ball and yet not really

hitting all that well. After an offer on Thursday, just before we recorded, he has a 102 WRC plus now, 250, 299, 424. So basically he's been a league average batter despite his unprecedentedly hard hit balls. He's got seven homers in 48 games, 193 plate appearances. He doesn't have the spectacular stealing that Ellie has shown. He struck out 35% of the time. He is, I don't know, how would you describe his defense? Not great, I guess, would be one way. He's definitely in the red, whatever metric you look at. I would, and I don't want to stir controversy or be contrarian. I'm not rooting for this outcome,

but to me, it looks like the defense of a corner outfielder, you know, and the thing about it is that he's playing shortstop. So a little tricky. I want him to continue to play shortstop. I do too. And I do too. You finish your thought, and then I have a thought about this

that will address all manner of things, Ben. Well, that was the thought, more or less. I want him to keep playing shortstop. I mean, he's obviously, like there's been lots of conversation about him having to move out to the outfield. And I don't doubt that he will at some point. I just want to delay that eventuality.

I'd like him to become a competent shortstop if that were possible. I would like that also. I think that you're right that, you know, maybe he is the guy who most brings to mind that sort of profile. the guy who most brings to mind that that sort of profile and perhaps it has as much to do with the fact that the the paint isn't quite as dry as it were on him as it is with ellie because you know like o'neill only played in nine games last season you had 40 played appearances in 2023 and so perhaps there's more of an adjustment coming from him, perhaps. Although on the other hand, he is like three years older than Ellie. Yes, there is that piece of it. 25 going on 26.

Right. And so it's one of those things where it's just like how dry is the paint really, right? And how much might the profile kind of move around for him a bit? Is he going to settle into something that takes better advantage of the very obvious and sort of thunderous in-game power? But I think it's also useful to remember that last year, Eli De La Cruz ended the season with an 84 WRC+. And now he has a 130 WRC+. So even construction cranes can change their shape. I don't even think I'm like goofing up an expression so much as making up a bad one, but

you know, I don't know that we should look at his, his game or his profile is sort of fully fleshed out. Cause there might be change coming for him, but that might be optimistic on my part and I just want to see it see it being true because when a guy can do that and can do what what crews can you want him to you want him to like assert himself as a no-doubt stars if for no other reason than having constant discourse about exit velocity is kind of exhausting and I prefer that we not have to do it. Yeah, you look at O'Neill Cruz's savant percentiles, and he's at 82nd percentile sprint speed, 97th percentile arm strength. So he has those defensive tools, at least, and then 99th or 100th percentile in average exit speed bat speed barrel rate hard hit rate etc right but he's also quite low and just about everything else sweet spot percentage chase

percentage whiff rate strikeout rate etc so he does have like all the physical tools like he hits the ball super hard i mean other, other than contact, I guess, and the ability to hit for high averages, maybe. But he's big, he's strong, he's fast, he throws hard, he hits hard. And yet, overall, yeah, it's kind of lacking. So maybe he is the exemplar for that profile of player now. And I guess, you know, with the Pirates, we've talked a lot about their pitching and Jared Jones and Paul Skeens, and it was just Skeens day again today.

A little less spectacular, but he got through it. He gave up a run in six innings. It was effective, if not quite as impressive. But on the position player side, I guess the news has not been quite as great for the Pirates because I've been all excited about, oh, the Pirates present and future and the future is here and look at all these great guys and the young rotation and this is super exciting. And yet you have O'Neill, who's still sort of scuffling and tantalizing. And then you have Brian Hayes, who I thought was going to be like MVP candidate this year, because he was

playing at that level late last year after he seemed to unlock something and he was elevating the ball. And yet he has not hit well. He's been significantly below average, and then he's also been on the IL with back issues. And then you had Henry Davis not hitting at all and getting demoted. So Jack Swinski got optioned after not playing so well. Brian Reynolds has been kind of meh. He's been okay, but not looking like a star or anything. So on the position player side, I guess things have not been so encouraging. So maybe the Pirates are kind of like O'Neal Cruz writ large.

He is quite large himself. But there's a lot of tantalizing talent there, and yet the roster hasn't fully come together with that core yet. I can't believe that you would disrespect Joey Bart like that. I mean, honestly, how do you even live with yourself? Joey Bart revenge game, right? Didn't he hit a grand slam? Am I correct to understand the Joey Bart? Do you think that Joey Bart will get to a point where he's like, it's Joseph now. Joseph Bart. Yeah. Joseph Bart. I mean, still Joey Votto, right? Yeah, I guess that's true.

Some people are Joey for life. But yes, I think the broader point is a sound one, which is that there seems to have been less both consistent and persistent development on the position player side for them. Joey Bart's spectacular 65 plate appearances aside, it's been a little more hit or miss. Emphasis on the miss, I suppose, a lot of the time. It doesn't mean that they aren't

exciting, and it doesn't mean that they aren't potentially rounding into some kind of form, but I think it does behoove us to sort of hold our horses. I mean, not me, I made bold predictions related to them, but other people should hold their horses. Like, don't go to school on my shot, you know, that might not be a good one.

So, I have looked up the Orioles record and every team's record during the time that the Orioles' sweep list streak was active. So if we go from the day after they were last swept in 2022, so May 16th, 2022, to May 20th, 2024, which was the last day that their sweep list streak was intact, almost exactly two years. They were third in the majors in both wins and winning percentage behind the Dodgers and the Braves. So even though they were sweep list, they were not the best team in baseball over that period, which again is why I'm saying it's sort of a weird streak. It tells you only so much. It doesn't mean you were the best. It just means you were good and you were also the best at aligning your wins in such a way that you didn't lose a bunch of them

in a row to one particular opponent in the same series. It's just, it's weird, but fun. Yeah. Weird, you know? Weird. Yeah. The Phillies, by the way, who we talked about and praised last time, they just finished off a sweep of the Rangers. Yeah, they sure did. And they are red, red hot. They won 29 to 35. They're 37 and 14. They're off to the best start in franchise history. One factor I didn't mention when we talked about them last time is that they've had the weakest schedule in baseball, which— Did you feel that you didn't need to mention that because it's impossible to go through Philly's Twitter without someone being ruffled about it?

Yeah. Is that why you felt like you someone being ruffled about it? Yeah. Is that why you felt like you didn't need to mention it? Yeah. I mean, yes. Maybe it's you kind of don't want people to take away from their accomplishment. Yeah. And you shouldn't really because it's still pretty impressive. Strength of schedule only matters so much, right?

So much, yes. This probably isn't updated for their latest game, but through whenever ESPN last updated its strength of schedule, they had a 465 opponent winning percentage collectively. And at the top was the White Sox at 524. 24. Now, I guess probably part of that is that those opponents have faced the White Sox and the Phillies, respectively, right? Like, that's going to affect the strength of schedule of those teams because those teams have been so good in the Phillies case and bad in the White Sox case that if you're going, I don't know what ESPN is doing here, if it's just going by the actual wins and losses of their opponents. Sometimes MLB will do it in terms of 500 or better record today. And there was a defector piece recently about, no, how they should do it based on whether they were a winning team when they played them as opposed to today. So there are all sorts of ways you could do strength of schedule and you could even kind of update it retroactively and be like, well, here's what their record is now. Or you could do

some sort of projected thing too, without even taking into account the actual records of those teams. But, you know, the spread isn't that great and it's not that many games in the season so far. So a 524 for the White Sox strength of schedule versus 465 for the Phillies. And once you adjust for the fact that that's because the Phillies have beaten a lot of those teams, the White Sox have lost to a lot of those teams, it's not that big a factor. But it should probably be mentioned when you're talking about reasons why the Phillies have just been running roughshod over everyone. To be clear, I wasn't trying to get a hit in against Phillies Twitter. I just know that it is a source of constant consternation because I think others are pointing to the relative strength of

schedule to suggest fraudulence. I think that that is the purpose of that that gesture is to point to fraudulence uh i think that some of those people might be fans of say the atlanta braves but uh you know they are like a little bit over their pythagpat and bass runs record but it's not crazy it's not it's not some wild number you know they not the Baltimore Orioles of old, meaning last year where they were like 12 wins above their base runs record. And everybody in Baltimore Orioles was like, why doesn't Fairgrounds respect us? And I was like, I mean, what would you like me to do, friends? friends. Anyhow, I think that they're a good baseball team. And rather than focusing on strength of schedule, people should focus on the healing power of a little kiss. Yeah. The Braves at 503, according to ESPN's accounting. But the projected strength of schedule, according to fan graphs on the playoff odds page, the Phillies have the eighth hardest, it looks like, which

I guess makes sense if they've gotten some of the easier portions of their schedule over with that they would have some of the harder portions remaining. But no, they are not a schedule-induced mirage. No. They are a very good baseball team. They're a good baseball team. You know, they're just a good, they're a good affectionate baseball team with a bunch of little kisses. who was a visiting player. And in Nationals Park, the bullpen cart driver, I'd love to interview this person or persons

because the poor bullpen cart driver drivers, they go out there, hopefully, every time there's a pitching change. They park out by the bullpen just in case someone wants to avail themselves of their services. And they don't always. Yeah, they almost always don't.

And so they make the drive out there and they just sit there, you know, waiting for a fare. And then the reliever just jogs in, ignoring them entirely. I wonder whether they say no thanks or like give them a little wave, not today or anything, or just ignore them entirely. But, you know, you have to be ready if you get the call. And yet they so rarely get the call. And Stephen O'Kurt, this is not the first time that he has flagged them down and he has taken the ride. He has done this quite often, just about every chance he's had lately. However, this is his first time tipping and it's the first time that anyone

has tipped to anyone's knowledge, according to the reporting I read. So now the bar is set, I suppose, that anyone else who takes the bullpen cart really has to tip or they'll look like cheapskates compared to Stephen O'Kurt. Now he tipped five bucks. Does that sound like the right amount to tip? Like how much do you tip someone who drives you about 300 feet for 30 seconds? That's probably a pretty good tip by that metric, right? I think, oh gosh, I feel like I'm setting myself up to get me in trouble here.

I would be open to any argument related to the appropriate amount. I think that regardless of the conclusion that we reach, he gets a pass, right? the conclusion that we reach he gets a pass right he is grandfathered in under the current um tipping structure because he is the only one who is thought to do this which is i think a nice i think a nice little thing to do it strikes me as a a kind gesture so uh i think that like okra you you relax we're not gonna we're not gonna whack you with any of this. But I feel like five bucks for a little ride just across the field, that seems fine. I think that you could develop some sort of complicated, potentially arcane tipping structure related to

how much more over the league minimum is an individual bullpen resident like should josh hater tip more were he to take advantage of this because he signed a hundred million dollar contract i mean one one could make that argument i i think that the nice thing about this is that it's not really i don't think about the money you know in in the strictest sense it's not really, I don't think about the money, you know, in the strictest sense. It's about the gesture of it, right? Because it's not a circumstance under which one typically tips. I don't think within the ballpark kind of ecosystem, clearly. And so, like, a little something to say, hey, I appreciate you doing that for me seems fine.

And the nice thing about putting it at a reasonable number, I don't think you want the baseline expectation to be over $20, not because it's so unreasonable to ask Josh Hader. I'm just picking him because of what his contract looks like, not because I'm picking on him in any particular way. But if you say, oh, for Josh, it should be $100. Well, then he has to like have $100 in cash. The most remarkable part of this is that he had cash on him.

Well, that's the thing. He had to plan for it. Yeah. And I would sympathize with someone who is like, well, what am I going to carry cash with me? Because a reliever doesn't know if they're going to get in the game, right? And so are they going to bring their wallet out there and just keep it on their person just in case they get the call, which is what Ockert did. But there has to be some forethought there unless you seek out the driver later or something. Like, Okert said he was carrying the $5 bill the whole

series waiting to get in and, of course, didn't know if he would have the opportunity. But he had to think about this beforehand. I could see a lot of people, if they took the cart just on the spur of the moment, being like, oh, I'll get you later or something because, you know, I don't carry cash on me as a reliever in the bullpen. I don't carry cash on me as a reliever in the bullpen. I don't carry cash on me really very much at all. Although I will say that the times when I have cash, it's when I know I'm going to be in a circumstance where I might have to tip, but not like on a card. Like if I'm traveling, I try to make sure I have cash that I can like leave a tip for housekeeping, right? But otherwise, I housekeeping. But otherwise, I don't really carry cash with me very often. And so, yeah, I think you want it to be...

A certain amount of planning is going to be required regardless just because of the way that a lot of people do commerce. Not everyone. Some people need to use cash. I'm not advocating for cashless. I think that's classist and gross. But you need to need to use cash. I'm not advocating for cashless. Like, I think that's classist and gross. But, you know, you need to plan to have cash. And so having more readily available isn't the right thing. But like even people who carry cash don't tend to have 100 on them20s. Like, you know. But I wonder if there is a way to incorporate this little gesture into sort of the broader. Because, like, clubbies get tipped and stuff, right? Like, there are other folks who work, again, in sort of the general little ecosystem. And so maybe there's a way to do it there.

But I don't know. Like, $5, $10, like something, a 20 or below denomination, I think is a's hard to calculate the appropriate amount. And Okert, I mean, he's a major leaguer, so he's making good money, but only, quote-unquote, a million point oh six this year, right? So he's not among the more well-heeled, better-heeled big leaguers, and yet he's the one to do this. Yeah, so, I mean, the card's been there since 2018. Right. And Sean Doolittle used to take it sometimes. Often, I think. Yeah. But really, no one takes it these days. I think Okert is the first player from any team to take it this season.

And Okert says, I tried to get everyone here to take it, but nobody wanted to do it. He started doing it in 2022 because, I'll quote him, we were here early in the season. It was freezing. I was walking in and like, I'm not taking it. There's no way. Then he pulled up to the gate and I was like, shoot, I'm taking it. So I took it for the first time and I threw good. So I just continued to do it.

So, you know, baseball superstition. Some guys, they want to wear the same underwear forever. O'Curt, he just wants to take the bullpen cart in when he's in D.C. So good for him. Seems to be working. And his manager, Rocco Baldelli, approved of it. He said, you've got to tip. Yeah.

He threw down the golly. You've got to tip. Unless there's a major issue, you're going to tip. Rocco Baldelli said, we like to do things right here. Treat people good. that's it, do it right. I'd be disappointed if we didn't. So, if any other twins reliever takes

the card, they basically have to tip now or they'll be in Rocco's doghouse. Etiquette has been established. Yeah, and I wonder whether that will even further discourage bullpen cart usage now? Because now that O'Curt has upped the ante here from $0 to $5 and Baldelli has basically said, like, to be a respectable person, you got a tip. Now, if anyone else is aware of this, then that's going to be in the back of their mind. And if they don't have cash with them out there, they'll be even more reluctant to take the bullpen cart. I don't think I would take the bullpen cart personally, probably for some of the same reasons that most relievers don't. I mean, I think I might kind of enjoy

the jog in, you know, just look at the Vista laid out in front of me and, you know, enjoy my entrance and warm up a little with a little jog out there, not stretching, but, you know, enjoy my entrance and warm up a little with a little jog out there. Not stretching, but, you know, a little dynamic jog out to the mound. Not static stretching, that is. So I think I'd probably enjoy that. Although I guess maybe you're getting booed potentially all the way in if you're a visiting player. So that might be a reason to take the bullpen cart. But I think probably people also

consider it somewhat embarrassing like what they need a ride they can't go under their own power like does it look less intimidating to your opponents if you have to get a ride out to the mounds but then again it could be like i'm just conserving my energy here so that i have maximum energy to go after hitters here so So maybe it would be advantageous. I just think it's fun, you know? I don't think that it needs to be the sort of thing that becomes a broader statement about want or effort or masculinity. It's just like a fun thing because Ben, they make them, they give them like little hats you know like the bullpen cart it has a little hat it's like a

you know it's got it's fun it's fun to have a little hat so I also think it would be fine if this becomes sort of a more typical process where one does use the bullpen cart like I think it

would be fine to uh play a series and like get them on the way out you know like you not trying to like say anything with this comp but like when you travel and you tip housekeeping you tend to do it at the end right you do it as you're checking out you like leave a tip for them there, you know, there is precedent within the world of tipping for it to not be like an instant single use thing. Like you get them, then you don't have to worry as much about having cash on you in any given moment, right? You're like, well, I don't have any today, but I'll hit the ATM. There's going to come a time where people are like, what's an ATM? You know, we're not there yet, but like it's coming, Ben. It's coming for us.

And sometimes there are no tipping policies. And, you know, you don't want to get into the whole tipping etiquette and tipping culture. And for all I know, you're not supposed to tip the bullpen cart driver. Maybe they'll have some anti-tipping rule or something. You know, we'll see now that he's broken the seal here. I don't know whether anyone else will follow in his footsteps, but it was a considerate decision. It was a bold move. It was something clearly he had contemplated beforehand. And I think it was a nice gesture. So I appreciate

it. I hope others take a cue from him. Yeah, I think it's nice to show appreciation for people. And like, I know there's a whole, seems like every couple of months, no offense, Europeans, some European gets all bent out of shape about tipping because they don't tip. And look, would it be better if we were not, if certain industries were not dependent on tipping? It would be better. But guess what? In the meantime, you just dip people. And I don't think that the bullpen cart guy is necessarily falling into exactly that category. But when you're given an opportunity to show appreciation for someone who's helped you out, I feel like you should do that. So there you go. Also, Kyle Hendricks was moved into the bullpen by the Cubs. So he might have the opportunity to take some bullpen carts sometime soon if he wants to. And that was sort of sad because Kyle Hendricks,

he's not been good this season. He was good in his return from injury last year and the Cubs picked up his option and he's not performed very well this year. And everyone roots for Kyle Hendricks because he does it in an unorthodox way. He doesn't throw super hard. And he made that work really well for a while because he had incredible command. And yeah, not everyone can be Kyle Hendricks. And if we say, oh, why doesn't everyone else try to do what Kyle Hendricks did? Well, it'd be nice if they did or they could, but not everyone else has his talent for hitting his spots. But that talent maybe seems to have slipped and his stuff has slipped further. And when you do it the

way that Kyle Hendricks did it, you know, you're kind of on a knife edge there, right? Like you can't lose a lot from either your command or your stuff and still have it working so well. So they put him in the bullpen for now, and they'll see how that goes. And he's the last link on that Cubs team to the 2016 championship team. That's wild. I know it is. And I was just thinking that that championship Cubs team, which was obviously seen as a culmination, but also not seen as an end of anything. It was, if anything, seen as a beginning. People were hopeful, oh, this would be a dynasty and this won't be the last World Series

this team will win or at least will contend for. And of course, all of those guys are gone now, just about. And the Cubs took some criticism, certainly, for jettisoning or allowing those guys to leave. And there were people who were upset, oh, you should extend them all. You should kind of keep this core together. And there were arguments for doing that in some cases. But looking back now at how that team's core has aged, it's pretty bleak. Yeah. that team's core has aged, it's pretty bleak.

Yeah. And I get that 2016, it doesn't seem like so long ago, but that was eight years ago. Famously. Yeah, right. So in the span of athletic careers, that is kind of a long time. So if you looked at most championship teams or many championship teams, a lot of them would be a lot worse to eight years later or there would be a ton of turnover. So that's not really that unusual.

But you look at a lot of those guys who were not old then and you might reasonably expect to still be performing at a high level. And gosh, a lot of those guys went south for various reasons. I mean, Chris Bryant, it's just, ooh, man, like it is just not going well at all for him with the Rockies. He has a 44 OPS plus as we speak in his 15 games. He has a gallowsque batting average. Like it's just been bad. He's kind of completely fallen off the star radar. He's nowhere near that now. And then Javi Baez, we've talked about on recent

episodes. He's just sort of slipped across the board and that's been bad. Anthony Rizzo, he's been okay. It's good to see him playing and hitting decently after the concussion issues he had last season. But he's basically been like a league average hitter, and he hasn't been a really great hitter. I mean, he had a pretty good year in 2022, but he hasn't been peak Rizzo in quite a long time. And he's almost 35. So, again, sort of to be expected, but still. And he's almost 35. So again, sort of to be expected, but still. And then like Jake Arrieta, just one of the strangest careers, right? Just like bad to totally dominant to bad again, and then gone, you know, and was out of the league after age 35, and maybe should have been out of the league even before then, right? So he didn't have a long tail of performance after 2016. And Addison Russell obviously left for other reasons, non-performance related reasons, although I guess there were performance issues as well. Like he

didn't blossom as a baseball player before he was, you know, kind of drummed out of the league for off the field issues too. So like, who do you look at from that roster looking at, I mean, Wilson Contreras was, was on that team. He, he wasn't, I guess the starter, but you know, he was young then and was kind of in a timeshare and he has aged pretty well, notwithstanding his recent injury. But everyone else, you know, they're gone, like John Lester, Dexter Fowler, Ben Zobrist, obviously, like all those guys. I'm just kind of remembering some guys at this point. But, you know, the youngish core at that time, they're not young anymore, but they're young enough that you'd think, oh, they could still be productive players. And they're just not so much anymore. So that team just kind of splintered pretty quickly. Like, you know, I know they made the playoffs again in 2017. They made it to the NLCS and then they were in the wildcard game in 2018. But that was kind of that for them. And then most of them were off the Cubs.

And no sooner were they off the Cubs than they were just kind of off the radar just when it comes to like good prominent players. It's a wild, weird thing. I think that their inability to really develop pitching at a time when their position players arguably would have been you know not yet in their decline phase is really what did it because you're right like that was a long time ago we would we would expect some of these guys to be if not you know well into their uh declines then starting to to show it a little bit right like that's not so unusual but they really didn't wedge open that window as long as they ought to have. And, you know, they were willing to bring in outside arms. Like they were,

they met with good success doing that, but it's a place where you can see what it costs them that they couldn't really develop internal pitching all that well at that time. So. Yeah. And it was an old pitching staff. So that's part of it. Like they had the second oldest average pitcher age that year and they had great health. Like Lester made 32 starts. Arrieta made 31. Hendricks made 30. Lackey made 29.

Hamill made 30. They barely had any starts from anyone outside of their top five, which is certainly a formula for success in addition to the incredible defense that they had that year. But they had the fifth youngest average age for their batters. And yet those guys, they got old pretty fast. Yeah. But look, I mean, even if that was their crowding achievement, it was a heck of an achievement to win a World Series. So even though that turned out to be like as good as it got, that's about as good as it gets to do that. So, you know, it disappointed that all they got was one. But boy, that's an important one to get. I think it's always important when you win a World Series, but particularly given the history of that team,

like getting over that hump was, I think, a pretty important thing for them. And lastly, we got some Shohei Otani real estate news. If anyone was worried about his financial situation post being swindled by Ipe, seems like he's doing okay. He just bought a mansion about a 20-minute drive from Dodger Stadium for almost $8 million. He actually bought Adam Carolla's mansion, of all people. Weird. Weird. Yeah. people. Yeah. Yeah. He also over the off season, it was reported that he had bought or acquired some expensive real estate in Hawaii on the big island where he'll be spending his off seasons.

So a big mansion going up there. I saw some reports that it was like a $17 million purchase, but it wasn't clear if he was maybe getting a deal because they were using him to promote their new properties at a gated community called the Vista. And so maybe it was just sort of a promotional thing to give him a place there. But his statement at the time said that that location would be his own paradise. But I guess this will be his paradise away from that paradise, Costa Dodger Stadium. So he's putting down stakes, putting down roots. And, you know, surprisingly, I guess, given its previous occupant and also given some of the mentions that you see ballplayers purchase, where you look at the listings and they're enormous and they have

all the amenities, but they're just kind of McMansion-y and garish. Gaudy. Yeah, gaudy. This one, it looks pretty tasteful as these things go. Now I have to look. Yeah. The only concerning thing is that in the LA Times, in their report, they published a Google Earth photo of the place. And you can see this

big compound and several thousand square feet crammed onto an acre. But, you know, it's got a big swimming pool and everything. The only concerning thing is that there is a very prominently placed trampoline out on the yard there. Yeah. And if Jeff Sullivan were still here on this podcast, Oh, boy. with the house and that this will go with Corolla, that Otani will not venture onto the trampoline that he has potentially purchased here. So the movie theater, the swimming pool, the basketball court, the six and a half bathrooms, the 7,000 square feet, all of these things are yours. But the trampoline, let's keep that off limits for sure. Let's not take any undue risks. I have a feeling that he will not be, that doesn't look like a permanent structure.

You know, that looks like, I think it's fine. I think it's going to be fine, man. Do we like this style of house? It's everywhere now. Like whether it's a mansion or not,

boy, at least this isn't as like depressingly gray as a lot of them tend to be. But goodness me. No, it looks – I was surprised by how nice it looks. All told, you know, Otani, he's got taste. Sure. He got himself a nice house. Anyway, he's doing just fine.

If anyone was worried about him, you know, almost $8 million. I mean, that's what, like if anyone was worried about him you know almost eight million i mean that's uh what like four years of salary for him i hope he can hope he can afford to make these payments do you think he paid cash up front for the whole thing probably not right well he probably could if he wanted to what with the endorsement deals all right let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with our pal evan drelic Athletic, who has just been in the presence of Rob Manfred at the owners meetings. And the future of MLB broadcasts and whether we might nationalize MLB broadcasts and whether everything will be on one big package and whether we'll do away with blackouts and how all of this will shake out financially. It's all very uncertain and up in the air now. But Evan's been all over this and knows as much as anyone does.

So we will be back in just a moment to know about baseball. Presented by Patreon supporters of Effective AYL. All right, we are back and we've got company. Good company. Evan Drellick is here, senior writer for The Athletic with its fancy new newyorktimes.com URLs. Also, the author of Winning Fixes Everything, How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess. Hello, Evan. Welcome back. Hello, guys. Wow. You sound cheery. You just energized by your audience with the commish? Yeah, there's nothing more thrilling than spending my Thursday afternoon at Major League Baseball headquarters. But you know what? There was actually a lot to say for himself

today. So why don't you give us a brief rundown? You already wrote this up and we will link to your write-up, but what were the high points of the commissioner's comments? Yeah, let's see what I can get through without forgetting. There's going to be one thing I forget at the end and then I'll remember it and I'll tell you. He talked about Nike coming by and talking to the owners and Nike said, hey, it's our fault that these uniforms are terrible, which is kind of notably a departure from the stance Manfred took in spring training when this first became an issue where he was like, oh, they're great. And or over time, we'll realize just how great they are. It's

underappreciated art. He talked about pitcher injuries. The one thing that seems to be concrete in their mind are the two things are, A, they happened earlier in the season, and B, they've been on the rise since 2014. I don't know if either of these are particularly surprising. He had talked at the World Series about possibly limiting rosters to 12 pitchers down from the current 13. Yes. Yes. That's me and the sickos meme saying yes on the other side of the window. So he said,

there's kind of two ways to think about this. You could kind of go the route of I'm quoting him. Now we're going to limit the number of pitchers and force people to essentially pitch more in order to cover the innings. Or you could try to come up with a set of rules that creates a softer incentive for people to go deep. And he said, they're not sure which of these two routes they're going to rules that creates a softer incentive for people to go deep. And he said they're not sure which of these two routes they're going to take yet.

So, if they're going to go to 12 pitchers, it's not anytime soon. Yeah. By the way, with the uniforms, I don't know whether he was pressed on this or was just generally expounding. But no self-reflection or apologies there. Just kind of a Nike did it thing. You know, the knives were not out on that one. There was not a follow-up of have you yourself looked in the mirror in one of these dry fit uniforms, Rob? And seen too much of your underwear. Yeah.

You've ruined it. You have been, you ruined it. Oh, no. Oh, no. I just got that. Now I understand. Oh, no. Oh, no. I just got that. Now I understand. Oh, dear. There was talk of, you know, MLB at one point was experimenting with Dow, formerly Dow Chemical, on a pre-tacked ball substance.

Yeah. Right. They are no longer working with Dow. Manfred kind of comedically said Dow is kind of cried uncle. So, they're out. Now MLB is trying with Rawlings. They could not make a sticky ball that was satisfactory to everyone, even though they had this internationally, right, overseas. And every now and then, an MLB player uses one of those

pre-tact balls and says, oh, this is good, right? And yet, it seems like nothing ever works domestically. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but it seems to be really hard. If you look at the history of what Dow has been able to make, it's kind of surprising that this would be the thing that throws them for a loop. That was about it. There was a lot of RSN TV talk, which I think we're going to get to separately. There was a lot of RSN TV talk, which I think we're going to get to separately. He was asked about the All-Star game. Didn't really give much. Why is it going back to Atlanta after previously taking a stand?

His answer was, one of the things we've learned over time is that the more we stay out of political issues, the better off we are. So, you know, whatever. Yeah. And he did a little John Fisher talk, too. Yes. He was asked if it would be necessary for the sale or partial sale of the team for Fisher to be able to finance the Vegas stadium, whether he needs that money to come in from selling a minority stake. And he said that was not the case. And he also rattled off various improvements they're planning to make in Sacramento,

including maybe the most interesting one was a detached home clubhouse. They're building a separate building adjacent to the stadium for the home clubhouse and a new artificial turf, yada, yada. Wait, so like when I had to take French and a portable because there were too many kids at my middle school like that? That would have been a good follow-up. I did not ask. I asked the original question. I did not ask that follow-up, though. Wow. That's like Sonoma Stompers style. That's kind of what we had, I guess. But it is going to be a bit Bush League, almost by definition. Well, what did he say about the RSN stuff? Because that's been your beat lately, which is why we wanted to talk to you today. Yeah. Well, there's a bit of news on that today, which is that we were all thinking,

or it was per the court, that Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of the Bally RSNs, was going to have its, you know, basically the verdict read in June when they had this confirmation hearing on whether its plan to come out of bankruptcy was going to go forward. And then today there was a court filing that pushes that date back to the end of July. So that's more time for Diamond to fight it out with Comcast and see if they can reach a deal with Comcast because Diamond has 12 MLB teams and any Comcast customer right now cannot get those Diamond channels. So they can't watch those 12 teams. You know, the big question is whether baseball or really any of the leagues will object at some point here, formally object. They've expressed their displeasure with Diamond and

this Comcast carriage dispute in court, but they haven't gone to the level of actually objecting. And so that's still to be determined. And what Manfred said today was, we need to actually see what the plan is. They haven't gotten enough information to say whether or not they plan to. I kind of suspect there will be a formal objection, but that's just me speculating. in his ideal world, if this is going to be part of his legacy and he wants to just sort of ride off into the sunset when his current term is up, which he has said will be his last. And this could be a boost to his legacy if he were able to sort of steer MLB through these uncertain times when it comes to broadcasting and how sports are going to survive and thrive post cableCable Bundle, how would he set things up if he could just sort of strike all the current contracts and get all the stakeholders in line?

What would be the most advantageous arrangement for baseball? The thing he wants most simply is always the thing he wants, which is money, the most amount of it, and a promise of it. And in television these days, there are arrangements you can make that don't have as much a promise of it. The beauty for the teams, for the club owners of the old RSN model, and the one that's still going but is now kind of crumbling before our eyes, is that it promised an annual amount of money every year, and it was guaranteed. And they were big dollar amounts. And so trying to find some formula that replicates that, and I think that's part one.

Part two is Major League Baseball has been beat up over and over, rightly so, for the blackouts, for the inability and the difficulty people have in watching games. It should be much simpler than it is. And I think that would probably be a feather in his cap. I mean, you know, kind of lurking in all of this, in this question of whether MLB might try to nationalize the rights, which really there's two components of that. One meaning, in the most basic sense, it means MLB determines what the teams do with their local broadcast. So instead of the Yankees saying, I'm going to partner with the YES Network, forget the fact that they own it, just roll with me on this.

Instead of the Yankees saying that, it would be the commissioner's office controlling that. To make that work, to make the economics of that work where you're keeping the big market teams happy because those rights are so valuable, Rob Manfred probably wouldn't mind a salary cap. But that's kind of a distant, attached topic to this. So I think the real answer is he wants money. And right now, what does he think is going to produce the most money and the best path forward? It would probably be the league brokering some of these television rights, or eventually all of them, directly with a major streaming partner. But that can't happen overnight. The quickest way it could happen overnight is if Diamond doesn't come out of bankruptcy because MLB gets the last couple of years is one that I would describe

as fractured, right? So you have some Amazon games over here, you have the Apple games over there, we now have Roku games. We've got all of these different entrants into the space. Do you think that, you know, when we're talking about sort of the ideal model from Manfred's perspective, it's money and guaranteed money. Do you think that his preference would be also sort of consolidation into one platform? Because I think one of the things that you hear about the current landscape that frustrates a lot of people is that in theory, you might need multiple streaming subscriptions. And a lot of people have some of those on board already because they're cutting cable, which is why we're in this position in the first place.

But they don't necessarily have all of them. And so to watch every single game might require a pretty significant financial outlay. So do you imagine that sort of the ideal version of this for the league isn't just all of the money and knowing they're going to get it, but being able to say, hey, you can just sign up for one thing in theory and see all your games? Yes. And look, he even said this today. We're really focused on the strategic part. How is it that we respond to the changes in the local media environment in a way that increases our reach and fan access to our games? We'd like to get into a model where, whether you're

a dinosaur, cable person, digital person, there's a frictionless opportunity to watch the game that you want to watch. I am reading that off of Otter, the transcription website, so I am not sure that is a perfect transcript. I haven't gone back and listened to that myself. But yes, they're not blind to this. And look, you can even, I don't mean to be too cynical about this, but you can tie that to money as well. Sure. A frustrated fan, a frustrated customer is not a happy customer of maybe somebody who's going to spend less money. There are people, and I'll count myself in this, who want to spend money to be able to watch games with a greater ease and would spend that money and cannot because of their setup. So, yeah, it's absolutely part of the issue.

And I do think there is a real, on an earnest level, a desire to make baseball more accessible to expand reach. Because if you don't expand reach, like, there's a lot of entertainment options out there. You don't need baseball. I mean, that's just the reality of it. Yeah, and as you noted in your piece, there's such disparities when it comes to the local revenue that teams bring in from their games, right? And as you note, the commissioner's office, the MLB office already controls the out-of-market games.

That's why you can watch MLB TV and you can check out all the games for a team that are not blacked out in your local market. But this would be bringing everything under that umbrella and doing away with blackouts. And so you have the Yankees, who you note received an estimated $143 million as a rights fee in 2022. And of course, they have a stake in YES, so who knows what sort of revenue there. It's probably hard to even come up with a figure. And then you have the Rockies who are at 57 million for the same year. And you already have Hal Steinbrenner raking in all that cash and saying that the Yankees current payroll is unsustainable. Who knows if that's posturing for negotiations that are going to go on here? What will he be saying in a world where he is forced to make the same, let's say, as every other team instead of making many multiples as much as some other teams? So what, if anything, in theory, could be given to the owners who are the haves relative to the have-nots or have a little less? At least they all have a lot in the grand scheme of things. But it's like the age-old story of baseball is the smaller markets,

the somewhat less wealthy owners versus the big market, extremely wealthy owners, and just one group having to placate or outnumber the other. Yeah, he harped on this today, that the act of assigning over the control of the rights, of the local television rights, is a separate decision. I mean, obviously, they have to figure out the back of the house here, but you say, okay, we want to do this. And then what they do with the money behind the scenes, it's a different variable. And that does appear to be on its face to me true. They could

decide to essentially keep the economics the same today. Now, would that be politically viable? No, probably not. You'd have the small market saying, no, we want more of this money. I think for it to be an equal split or something much closer to that, the only way you would get agreement to that from the big market teams would be if they are compensated fairly in some form or fashion, what they believe is fair, right? Randy Levine, the president of the Yankees, or Tom Ricketts of the Cubs, the big market teams are going to stand there and say, our rights are worth a ton of money, and you better be paying us the same way we would be paid if we were shopping this independently. Now, this is why I mentioned the salary cap idea before, right? Because that might be the way you placate everybody and get everybody on board internally amongst your owners is you go to a cap.

Now, whether you could actually get that cap, that's going to be a very long work stoppage with the owners want to fight through that work stoppage. I think it's a whole other episode, not to invite myself back, but that discussion is a separate discussion in a way. Okay. So let's assume for a second. We'll definitely have you back when you're taking pictures of Rob Manfred walking across the parking lot again, come the next CBA negotiations. I just started sweating. You got your tripod ready i know you do there was no that was that was all the uh that was all arm work there um so let's put that aside let's assume that they're not going to go for gold there so to speak and and they they agree on some sort of lesser change. There's variable approaches they could take. They could say, okay, we're going to give you the Yankees 10x or whatever x it would be.

I'm making up a number, right? But you don't have to necessarily split it equally. And to the extent that it would modify revenue sharing, the players' union would have to get involved in bargaining, right? So this all does kind of point us toward 2026. Is there a way that MLB could do it so that it doesn't even involve a material change to revenue sharing is an interesting question. I kind of doubt it, but it's an open question, right? Like what will Rob and the owners propose and

or settle on here? And look, at the end of the day, it might be politically untenable. It might just be that there's too much money for the big market teams wrapped up in the current system. They're not going to change it. And it was a lot of talk for not nothing, but for little result in the end as possible. And if it does come down to wrangling some contingent of owners to do something that they don't really want to do, is that a strength of Rob Manfred's? That was sort of seen as a strength of his predecessors, right? Bud Selig, who was, of course, an owner himself and could kind of cajole other owners into doing things sometimes. Is that something Manfred is capable of doing or skilled at doing, achieving some sort of consensus or laying down the law a little? And does his lame duck status affect that? I mean, I guess he could always just say, it's not actually my last term, I'll go again. But since he has said it is his last, I wonder whether that makes it easier or harder for him to come up with a consensus, politically speaking. Yeah, I've wondered that too. And I don't have a firm answer for you on it. I think you could read it both ways where

he's saying I'm walking away. So it's all right, guys, let's focus on what we're trying to do in the short term. You almost kind of cut off some of the future distant projects and maybe gain a little buy-in on the near-term higher priority stuff that he puts forward. At the same time, right, the owners could look at it and go, you're getting out of here anyway. I don't care about you. It doesn't matter. I'm not sure what the answer is there. I also wouldn't be surprised if he does not leave on January 25th, 2029. I don't think he's going to stick around for 10 years like Bud Seelig. I think it's totally possible he's around for another couple of years or something like that. And some of it will depend on what happens in 2026 with the CBA. You know, are we coming off some massive lockout and the sport is rebuilding?

Who knows there? What was the other part of that question? Whether he's sort of a skilled, you know, massager of egos or consensus builder or threatener or whatever it takes to get everyone in line. Yeah, Bud Selig had an easier time with this. I'm not sure that any lawyer who ascends to the position Rob is in, what was Selig's power? It was that he was one of them.

He had been a lead owner, or at the time, was still a lead owner when he became commissioner. So, look, I think there are clear examples of him being able to get some things done over time. I do also think that there are frustrations inside the commissioner's office with how difficult it is to work with this group of owners. So this issue in particular, if you kind of set aside the general context of it is difficult for Rob Manfred, and I do think for anybody, to deal with this group of people. You're talking about

something of a very material value to these teams. Most things in the baseball world, the baseball constitution, could be changed by a three-quarters vote. So theoretically here, Rob Manfred could get the owners together, and he could get his 75% vote, his 23 votes, and say, you know what, we're doing this. We're going to local rights. And then the real fun would begin. And I don't mean to sound too giddy at this possibility, but you could end up in a place where the big market teams are suing the commissioner's office, and then there would be a fight over whether that lawsuit is viable in court or it should be handled through mediation, arbitration, whatever the Constitution calls for or not. And from there, okay, the judge says,

let's say they say it goes into court, it would be this kind of beautiful legal Armageddon for baseball. It's to the point that it can't happen that way. And the only way it really could happen, that it can't happen that way. And the only way it really could happen, and I think Rob Manfred is of this mindset, is if basically they're all on board. I think the interesting scenario would be if he got 29 or 28 and there were one or two holdouts,

what would happen? Would somebody actually, would Randy Levine and the Yankees, would Stan Kasten and the Dodgers say would stand cast in the Dodgers, you know, say, screw you. You are not touching this. You are taking away something worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars over X period of time. This is illegal and we're going to sue. And so it's a really touchy controversial issue, which brings us to something that everybody should keep in mind here.

There's a lot of hurdles here. This would take a long time. It's not an instantaneous thing. It might never happen. You mentioned sort of back of house needing to get sorted out. I mean, I think that we're all familiar with MLB TV and it's a pretty robust platform. And obviously, I don't want to downplay the amount of work that it took for them to onboard, say, the Padres and the Diamondbacks last year and get them ready to broadcast after their Bally deals fell through. But I think it's seen as sort of robust and able to handle stuff. Is it in a position just technologically to be able to, if Manfred were to get everything he wanted, they have all of these rights, they're able to give a specific offering. Can they take on basically all of these markets

worth of subscribers at once? Are they in a position to really do that? Maybe this isn't exactly what you're asking, but even my place at one point, there was a tweet or something that I thought kind of didn't quite capture what it is it you know the local it wouldn't be mlb assuming the production of all of this it would be you know like it would just be mlb deciding who to partner with so yeah i i don't think there's any doubt that mlbs and the mlb.tv infrastructure like let's say that it was all folded into one the out--of-market package, the in-market package, it's all MLB.TV. I mean, it basically exists now, right? If you're sitting in New York, you get a little message that says, sorry, you're screwed.

So no, I think they could... The interesting thing would be if MLB had to take over production of teams all at once, which if Diamond were to fall through and all of a sudden all these teams at one time needed production, could MLB do it? They've always maintained they could. But yeah, I think the infrastructure would be there for MLB.tv or whoever they would presumably partner with, Amazon or Apple or Peacock. Who knows? One of the interesting things is that, A, there's a ton of inventory, which is an asset that's a plus if you're marketing this to someone or you're trying to get a streamer interested. Look at all this stock we have, all of these thousands of baseball games in a season.

The other thing is, though, how many people are going to want to watch those games who are not local fans. And as you mentioned, this would be trying to really make it a national pastime, a national game, and it's more of a local game and fans are organized that way. So you kind of compare and contrast it with football in the piece. And the NFL is looked at as, oh, this visionary, and they really got on board the TV train early. And Pete Rozelle was this visionary commissioner, and you credit Burt Bell, a predecessor of his also. But maybe it's not just that they were quicker to realize the potential of TV, but that football was just better structured to take advantage of that because there are only so many games in a season.

And you might conceivably want to watch some games that don't involve the team that you root for because it affects your team. And there's a scarcity of supply and it's once a week-ish, right? So all those factors make it so that people typically don't tune in to watch a game that does not involve their baseball team. So would that change? And if that didn't or couldn't change, then how much value is there actually in being able to offer such an enormous number of games? This is the, I guess, literally billion-dollar question that exists here. Is baseball a national game? Could it excel that way? And I'm just repeating back to you the question you exists here. Is baseball a national game? Could it excel that way? And I'm just repeating back to you the question you asked me. I don't know that I have the answer, but that

really is a debate. I mean, there are people, executives in the sport, you know, Faye Vinson was quoted in my story. It's, you know, an old adage that baseball is a local game, and it's ironic in comparison to the national pastime moniker. But does the fan in New York have any interest in watching a game outside of New York that doesn't involve their Yankees or their Mets in the same way that an NFL fan might have even a casual interest in watching a game in a different market. And somebody made a good point to me that, and I don't even remember who at this point, but it was a good point, whoever you were, that if you look at what the NFL has done, they're regionalized as well, right? You get games in your general area on Sundays, regular season Sundays. It's not that literally every single game is available at every second, I guess through a package,

but if you're just kind of over the air or basic television subscriber, you know, it's CBS and Fox, and they're giving you what they think will be best for you regionally. And look, baseball never, because of the inventory, it would have been basically literally impossible for them to, prior to streaming, go to this model.

Who was going to carry the games? You couldn't do it. The other half of that, though, we talk about these two variables is A, who controls the rights? B, how does the money split? Yes, they could have decided to split the money much earlier, but the big market, small market dynamic has long been entrenched in baseball. And the NFL was younger and just starting at that time. And so there wasn't this greater difference between the teams. And so it was easier for them to say, yeah, okay, let's all get together.

And even then, it wasn't right away. There were progressive steps there that were taken, including an antitrust exemption that was required. You mentioned that under this model, it's not as if Major League Baseball would necessarily be assuming responsibility for the production of the broadcast themselves, but they obviously have a couple of teams for whom they are running sort of the show this year. And I wonder what your sense is of their level of satisfaction with that, how the numbers have looked for those broadcasts, and if there are sort of lessons that they have learned that might have applicability if we venture into a world where there is more streaming for more teams without blackouts. I think they like the reach.

I believe that they would always tout the numbers positively. I don't have them in front of me. It's rare that we get them acknowledging negative numbers. But the issue with streaming, and this is a whole other kind of interesting part of the discussion, is that nobody's really figured out how to make money on it yet. You know, in a perfect world for baseball, probably like right now we're talking about, you would have the RSNs continue on with the promise of the money, but there would be less exclusivity with them.

And you could also simultaneously do a national package. You could get to a place where, in theory, there is an all-30-team national package, and MLB doesn't control the rights. You just have had all-30 teams say, yes, MLB, you can simulcast this, and I've agreed to a contract with my RSN that allows you to simulcast it. The problem is a lot of these contracts between teams and RSNs don't allow simulcasting like that because the RSNs want exclusivity. And what comes along with exclusivity is money. The reason that these teams get the amount of money they do is because they want to limit the RSNs. The distributors want to limit your options to be able to get the team.

So you have to go to their product. You got to go sign up and get the RSN from Time Warner Cable or whoever it is. So there's another way to get at it. But they would want – it's not a world that you envision, at least at this point, where it's all streaming. It's RSN and streaming or streaming and RSN. that you envision at least at this point where it's all streaming, it's stream, it's RSN and streaming or streaming and RSN. And I, and I do think in general that there's probably,

well, I guess I'd call it overhype. I think, I think the, the projection of like cable is dying. If you actually look at what's going on, like, you know,

diamond is still happy to operate a lot of these RSNs and is trying to emerge from it. And so, the hybrid model, I think, is the thing to keep the eye on. Yeah, it's still or was recently like 50-50 in terms of viewership split between cable and streaming. So, you're cutting out a large portion of the audience either way if you ignore them. So if you had sort of a MLS season pass style deal for MLB, and I mean, if it were just only on Apple, like, it'd be nice for me. I got to subscribe to watch all the obscure sci-fi shows on there that no one else watches. So many shows, Ben. Just such a list of shows.

Lots of other people who are still watching over the air or on cable or whatever. Are they going to want to sign up for that? Are they going to have the right technology to do that? Maybe not. Maybe they would be prodded to do that. But you would still just have a hurdle there. It'd be easier if it were all in one place instead of in several places as it has been recently.

But would a streaming company pay you? Would Amazon or Peacock or whoever say, we're going to give you basically the equivalent or similar to what you were getting from the RSNs. And what they might be more likely to do is, you know, do kind of a risk reward model where less money guaranteed upfront, but if baseball performs well, then, you know, then they make more risk reward model where where less money guaranteed up front but if baseball performs well then you know then they make more money yada yada so it all comes

back to that question of how do you make the money if baseball went all streaming tomorrow like peacock lost two billion dollars last year it's no one has figured out how to monetize streaming maybe aside from netflix it's it's still aside from Netflix. It's more of a reach tool at this point than a lifeblood revenue tool. And what implications do you think this could have for competition, for spending and payrolls? Obviously, all of this is going to be a big talking point when it comes to the next CBA negotiations and already has been to some extent. I think there was some optimism maybe that, well, if each team really had to get people in their local market to pay, then they would have to put a compelling product on the field and they'd have to invest in that product and they'd have to spend on players. And okay, now we won't have the situation we've had where you're already making money hand over fist before you even spend anything on players. And so some teams have been content just not to and to just sort of sit on their

hands and pocket a large part of their money. On the other hand, if everyone is kind of by default getting the same payout anyway, and that revenue is just sort of split equally with a national deal, then might you see some of the traditional big spenders be like, well, we're not going to be anymore? Or, you know, will there be less incentive to spend there? Like, how do you see that affecting just sort of payroll disparities across the league and competitive integrity. You know, it seems like the Yankees might say our payroll's too big and the Red Sox might stop acting like the Red Sox. That would be stunning.

Yeah, what a different world. Yeah. Yeah, you know, which does make you wonder where this all is headed. I think you're hitting the nail on the head there. And that's why this, you know, does come back to if indeed you had more money coming from streaming, streaming is, is easier for people to move in and out of, you know, you, you, you've signed up for a month and then you say, bye, um, I've done it with a couple of services. I mean, you know, some people might

be more aggressive than me, whereas, you know, yeah, the churn is, is real. And so to keep people you, you have to spend. And so the pressure to put a good product on the field would probably inherently go up and it will become a small market, big market issue. And again, this is where that talk of the cap is going to rear its head. And the owners would certainly be more comfortable with that. The players have never wanted it it would you know it'd be it'd be quite a drag out fight if if they tried to go there i i look i think they will try to go there yeah the better question is but they've always kind of tried to go there the real question is is anybody you know gearing up for for a real long fight for it but you're asking the right question about the spending and how this would be affected

by it. And as kind of the labor guy doing that side of the coverage, it's really what I'm starting to realize is that the TV is going to underscore everything and is the underpinning of everything as far as this next upcoming negotiation. Well, as the labor guy, I guess my question, my last question then is, do you have a sense of any kind of particular preference emerging from the Players Association, or do they just want the thing that brings in the most money with the greatest consistency also? Sometimes their positions amount to, yeah, yes, I think that's right.

No salary cap and whatever brings in the most money are kind of the two universal truths that seem to be put forth there. I do not have a sense that they have any preference beyond that. And I also think that for all this talk, for all this kind of formative period time that we're in here, where the world is just a bubbling sphere of hot gas and it's all coming together, it's baseball, it's television, big bang, I think there's a real chance that at the end of the day, it's going to be a lot of talk and a lot of hand-wringing, and it's just going to look kind of similar. And eventually, teams will stop striking exclusive deals with RSNs,

and you'll get to a point where sometime there's a national package. It won't have every team all at once at first. Maybe over time, it'll get there, rather than this big universal change. Because I think the amount of money and time it would take to get – it's a bridge too far, is what I think. But we'll see. Yeah, that was going to be my last question. Just what you think the timeline will be for when we will have some clarity on this. So you mentioned the bankruptcy hearing end of July, but you also have existing deals like

the Dodgers lucrative contract running through 2038. So are you settling in for another decade of covering how this is shaping up? Or do you think we will actually have a handle within, I don't know, some reasonable timeframe on what this will ultimately look like, even if it takes some time for it to come together? Oh, yeah. Whether I want to cover another decade of CBAs, it's usually a topic I say for therapy. But yeah, look, short term, a lot does hinge on Diamond. If Diamond does not emerge, MLB gets those rights back. Three teams are going to get the rights back anyway, because they're on one-year deals. But that means there's nine additional teams that going into 2025, MLB would now have the rights to.

And that would bring them up around, I think it's about 18 if I'm counting right there, that MLB could pretty easily for 2025 roll out into a national package. Now, that national package presumably wouldn't have the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Cubs. It would have, in that scenario where Diamond goes under, it would have the Cardinals. It would have the Braves. Those are probably the two biggest draws in there. The Rangers. You'd have some teams. The question would be, would anybody buy it, right? Do you really want that package? How well is it going to do? So that's kind of the short-term element of it. And then if Diamond doesn't go away right now, does it make it through 2025? A lot is tied up in the expiration of current RSN deals. And one of the more interesting

things will be the teams that are coming out of a diamond deal for next year. If diamond's still around, do the twins Rangers and guardians do the same thing? Do they sign another short-term deal that doesn't grant streaming rights again? Or, or, or does baseball start to move in a different direction? Because this year is kind of a bridge year. Uh, you know, diamond is a domino that, that will lead to one way or another. It's the fork in the goosebumps, choose your own adventure. We'll see where it goes. While we have you, could I ask you one question about a different diamond? We've been talking about Diamond Sports Group. There's also

Diamond Baseball Holdings. You co-authored a piece about this last month. It's about this private equity group that is snapping up minor league teams left and right. And I don't think we really talked about it on the podcast because I wasn't sure what to make of it, but we did get some questions about it. And I don't know if you know what to make of it, even having written this piece, because it seems like a lot of people in baseball are like, this seems like it could be bad, but it doesn't seem to be so bad so far. So, can you tell people what exactly is happening here and what it might mean? Yeah. So, and just to give due credit, Chad Jennings was really the guy, the power behind that in the writing side. I was co-bylined, and there's no way for people to know this from afar, but I just want to shout him out because he did the vast majority of work on

that. I was a part of it. Yeah, Diamond Baseball Holdings is this group, is this company that has private equity money behind it, Silver Lake and Endeavor, and it's bought up a whole bunch of minor league teams with the intent of buying even more. And so basically what used to be largely a lot of mom and pop ownership in the minor leagues is now becoming much more corporate. And there are people who are scared of that, wonder what that's going to do for local game production. I don't mean in television, I mean, just, you know, who's running the team? Is it a corporate office, you know, many states away? Or is it the guy down the street, the local business owner who knows the market and knows the community, et cetera,

et cetera, et cetera? You know, there's some element overall of, well, who's kind of controlling minor league baseball? You know, and this group, Diamond Baseball Holdings, is working very closely with major league baseball. There's a lot of, oh God, synergy there. And this group, Diamond Baseball Holdings, is working very closely with Major League Baseball. There's a lot of, oh God, synergy there. Oh boy. Oh boy. But, you know, it's true. And, you know, it is a bit of wait and see. Because, you know, if MLB were to move for further minor league contraction, do any of those teams go?

Is it only independent owners? You know, further contraction might be made more difficult because now the minor league players. Do any of those teams go? Is it only independent owners? Further contraction might be made more difficult because now the minor league players have a union, so the number of jobs that are available would be collectively bargained. That doesn't mean they couldn't agree to cut more if the league pushed for that. So it's really a wait and see. And kind of stunningly, we're already like three or four years into the first batch of these 10-year licenses in this new minor league system where MLB said, we're going to treat every minor league team like an individual licensee. And so put a hold on it and let's come back to it. But yeah, there's more corporate ownership in the minor leagues, good or bad. Let's talk about it. I'm dividing myself for another one.

Well, we're always happy to have you. And we always recommend that people read Evan. He is all up in baseball's business over at The Athletic. And you should also read his excellent book about the Astros, Winning Fixes Everything. I don't know whether winning fixes baseball's broadcast model. That might be too much even for winning to accomplish, but we will see. Thanks as always, Evan. Thank you, guys. All right. A few follow-ups for you. One more thing Manfred mentioned that I don't think Evan noted is that we're unlikely to get robo-umps in 2025. Manford said we still

have some technical issues. We haven't made as much progress in the minor leagues this year as we sort of hoped at this point. I think it's becoming more and more likely that this will not be a go for 2025. He also said there's a growing consensus in large part based on what we're hearing from players that the challenge form should be the form of ABS if and when we bring it to the big leagues, at least as a starting point. I think that's a good decision. And why? Well, the AP coverage of this says MLB's meetings with players revealed a preference for a challenge system in order to continue to incentivize catcher framing skills. if you can get it right every single time, that's a great idea, Manfred said. One thing we've learned in these meetings is the players feel there could be other effects on the game that would be negative if you use it full-blown. Players feel that a catcher that frames is part of the, if you'll let me use the word, art of the game. And that if in fact framing is no longer important, the kind of

players that would occupy that position might be different than they are today. You could hypothesize a world where instead of a framing catcher who's focused on defense, the catching position becomes a more offensive player. That alters people's careers. Those are real legitimate concerns that we need to think all the way through before we jump off that bridge. My man, Fred. Preach, Rob.

I was kidding about using recordings of Manfred to pump myself up, but if I could get that piece of tape, Manfred talking about the importance of preserving framing, or at least about players' emphasis on the importance of preserving framing, that might get me going. And although John Fisher continues to be an embarrassment to the sport, congrats are in order for the Oakland Ballers, the Pioneer League expansion team that we did an interview about on episode 2122. They did indeed open their season on Tuesday, and they had a dramatic 7-6 victory over the Glacier Range Riders. They won their second game of the season, too. Well done, Ballers. Also of note, we talked about the Phillies winning so much. One implication is that Jose Ruiz, whom we noted was called up,

is getting to finish some games. And his pursuit of the all-time Ryan Webb record of games finished without a save is getting serious now. He made his season debut for the Phillies on May 4th. He has already finished three games. So he has added to his all-time tally. He's now up to 84 career games finished without a save. Ryan Webb, of course, at 105. The gap is shrinking. Probably too big to close this season, but we will continue to track this. Another thing that we continue to track is any hint of a team trying to remove a pitcher mid-plate appearance for tactical reasons. This has been one of my beats for a while, the Joe Girardi strategy that's more common in college baseball. Pull a pitcher in the middle of a plate appearance, bring in a different pitcher, confuse the hitter who's suddenly seeing pitches from a different angle, particularly when the pitcher is ahead in the

count. So, you know, it's more about pressing the advantage than getting the guy out of there before he does any more damage. I was tipped off by Chris Calo that there was an attempted mid-plate appearance pitching change in the Padres-Reds game on Thursday, bottom of the sixth, after our favorite knuckleballer Matt Waldron was removed. His third straight pretty strong start. favorite knuckleballer Matt Waldron was removed, his third straight pretty strong start. Daniel De Los Santos came in for the Padres, and he blew the two-run lead that Waldron had left San Diego with. He walked Spencer Steer, he gave up a home run to Nick Martini, but then he got ahead of Jonathan India, 0-2. India fouled off the first 0-2 pitch, and then Padres manager Mike Schilt emerged from the dugout. Here's a clip from the Reds TV broadcast.

As we get a visit here in the middle of the at-bat. And Marvin Hudson is denying this trip. They still have a mound visit. What are you thinking here? I think he was going to go out there. I'm not sure if there's someone warming up. There is a guy warming up down there. I mean, he was pointing.

When he came out of the dugout, he was pointing to the bullpen. The bullpen, like he was going to take him out, yeah. Middle of the at-bat. Well, this is still the third batter faced for De Los Santos, so you can't remove him until he finishes facing India. That could have been the conversation, because he was pointing. It's been a weird game. So it's not totally clear what happened here.

Schilt did try to make a pitching change prematurely. Maybe he was going for the mid-plate appearance element of surprise. Maybe it was just a mistake. The Padres radio broadcast speculated that he thought that India had been out, though I don't know how he could have thought that because, again, India had just fouled off an 0-2 pitch. Padres radio broadcast said that they thought he was signaling with his left hand, which would be weird because India's a right-handed hitter. And so was Luke Maley, who was up next. Maybe Schilt just forgot how many hitters De Los

Santos had faced. Whatever the thought process was, he was prevented from making the change. But even a close call excites me. And it worked out for Schilt. De Los Santos ended up striking out India and Maley before being replaced by Yuki Matsui. The Padres went on to win in 10 innings. Oh, and hey, is that Jerry DePoto's music I hear? I'll tell you what Jerry DePoto did. He traded for Mike Bauman. Not Michael Bauman, the fan graphs writer and composer and performer of What Did Jerry DePoto Do? But Big Mike Bauman, the Orioles pitcher, and now Mariners pitcher, as the Mariners traded for Bauman and catcher Michael Perez for a younger catcher, Blake Hunt, after Baltimore had designated

Bauman for assignment. And really, what could be more appropriate than Jerry DiPoto doing this, the most meta move he could make? Finally, on episode 2162, we talked about pitcher Chase Anderson as a fightin' necklace-wearing endling, potentially the last pitcher to wear a fightin' necklace. Well, listener Ben Alain pointed us to a tweet by the Division I UNCW Seahawks baseball team, which says, in case you haven't heard the news, fightin' necklaces are back. It includes four pictures of multiple members of the Seahawks team wearing fightin' necklaces. That's P-H-I-T-E-N. So maybe it's a retro thing, a throwback.

Chase Anderson has kept it alive. Now a younger generation has rediscovered the snake oil necklaces. I found it more charming when it was just one guy carrying the torch for fighting. But hey, if you're wearing it for fashion reasons, you like the style,

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more episode before the end of the week, and the end of the week draws near, which means we will talk to you soon. Hosted by Ben Lindberg and Meg Riley I want to hear about Shohei Ohtani Or Mike Trout with three arms