Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2245: Diamond Sports Group in the Rough

Episode Date: November 16, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the resolution of the Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy hearing, how declining broadcast revenue could lead to labor strife, and the Pirates’ reward offer for a baseball card that comes with a patch from Paul Skenes’s debut jersey, then (28:42) bring on Patreon supporter Craig Wingbermuehle to discuss his […]

It's the Zombie Runner Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Effectively Wild! Joey Meneses! No! Walk off three run digger! Stop it! Walk off three run shot! Oh my god! Meg, he's the best player in baseball.

Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2245 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We're gonna do some emails today

for the first time in quite a while, and we will be joined by listener and Patreon supporter to do that shortly. Just a couple quick things before we bring him on here. One, we got some sort of resolution in the Diamond Sports Group saga. Evandrelik is free, perhaps. No more hearings to attend.

No more tweets about which teams will be dropped and under what terms, so he has certainly covered the heck out of that story, which has been nice because it has freed me from paying closer attention to it. It's the sort of thing that makes my eyes glaze over when I start to read about the specifics of the terms of the broadcast deals, and yet I must not avert my eyes and my attention because this is pretty darn important. And the way that this all worked out with Diamond Sports Group, which is the owner of the former Bally's broadcasting channels, which are now the FanDuel broadcast channels, now they had a hearing on Thursday.

It was expected to run into Friday, but it didn't. They wrapped up all of this upset now that's been going on for almost two years. There's some resolution to this bankruptcy saga. And the resolution is that Diamond will leave bankruptcy with a smaller portfolio of teams, but not a non-existent one. They've still got 13 NBA teams, eight NHL teams, and six MLB teams. And for those MLB teams, there will be various direct to consumer options.

So you can watch in market via standalone streaming option that Diamond will sell. And then there will be a way to purchase access through Amazon Prime Video. So it might be kind of convoluted, but you will have a way to watch those teams. And all of this happened because of the cord cutting, everything got restructured,

Diamond was deep, deep, deep in debt. Much of that debt, almost all of it was wiped away. Nice to be a corporation, I guess that can happen. And the upshot is that six teams will still be broadcast by this group at least for a while. And the Cincinnati Reds will be the next team that is taken over by MLB. So MLB will be broadcasting, what is it, up to seven now. And there had been various objections from the Braves and from MLB and it looked like things were going to get held up and then everything got restructured at the last minute to everyone's satisfaction,

or maybe satisfaction is strong, but resignation, acceptance. So that is done for now and Diamond will continue to shuffle along in some form, continuing to bleed viewers via the traditional cable. And MLB will gradually pick up other teams that it will then handle the broadcasting for. So the six teams that are staying with Diamond for now, the Braves, the Tigers, the Angels, the Marowans, the Cardinals, and the Rays, and they all renegotiated the terms of their contracts in some unspecified way. So they are almost certainly getting less than they were originally meant to get, but still getting

some significant percentage of that, perhaps more than they would have gotten from MLB. So it's just sort of circling the drain slowly, bit by bit, but not all at once. So it's just, you know, the broadcast deals, they're all kind of going down with the ship. And they're still a sizable audience here, obviously, but we are shifting fitfully, painfully to whatever the future will be, which is more direct to consumer, more dependent on the support of your local fan base, maybe a few years down the road, if not further MLB nationalizing this somehow. Although that will be a big issue as we have discussed with Evan on the show, just because

you've got this big differential really between teams, among teams, just how happy they are with their broadcast deals, what sort of revenue they're getting, whether they own their RSN or they're at the mercy of the market. And it's hard to imagine that everyone's going to get on board there without some sort of battle among the owners, which may then also get passed to the players in the next CBA. It's probably going to be a mess in some way, shape or form, but diamonds, ballet, fan duel continues to exist in diminished form. So that's the outcome of those hearings.

LS. Continuing to exist in diminished form, also relatable. CB. Yeah, I suppose so. So the upshot of this really is, and Joshian wrote about this in his newsletter the other day, is that it's just hard to envision a way that teams are going to get as much from broadcast deals as they got in the heyday of the cable RSN system where you were just raking in money from people who had no interest in your products, but they were still paying for it and they were still subsidizing it because that's the way that cable worked and that has gone away or is going away and it just seems like it's going to be really tough to make up that revenue and perfectly replace it.

Which also, as Joe said, seems likely to exacerbate the imbalances between the haves, the have nots, the higher revenue teams, the lower revenue teams, because the teams that own their own RSNs are just in better shape and those tend to be the bigger market teams. And so there's just going to be a drastic increase in revenue sharing. There's going to be tension around that. You're going to have maybe Manfred trying to broker some sort of agreement among these big market teams and small market teams and teams with tenuous broadcast deals and teams with solid broadcast deals. And it just seems like sort of a powder keg.

And I am worried about it. Not immediately, maybe immediately in terms of how it affects spending this off season, but certainly a year or two down the road when we start to get into the thick of the CPA talks, this is going to be a big sticking point and we might end up in an even worse place than we were in the previous round when we had a work stoppage. It could potentially get ugly. It could look like 94.

Obviously, I hope that the worst is averted, but it just seems like there's going to be some big existential stuff to straighten out here. And it just seems unlikely that the owners are all going to be on the same page and just agree to get less revenue. There will probably be internal squabbling among the owners and then they will probably want the players to bail them out by surrendering some of their revenue. And that's not going to go over well. So yeah, the storm is brewing here. It is what a light, lovely subject to bring up on Friday. And when I have a cold, you know, it seems

very likely to me that the next CBA negotiation will be marked by this issue and whether the main pain points are between intra owner ranks or between the owners and the players. I'm not quite sure. I don't know how that's going to resolve because some of the teams that are doing the best by their broadcast deals are also the ones that contribute the most to revenue sharing, for instance. And so they do have some amount of leverage there. We've seen the league and by that, I mean the prevailing sentiment among the owners shift toward minimizing advantages around revenue and doing that at times to the detriment of the sports.

So seems bad. More normal years mixed in between the crisis years, that'd be welcome. I know it's a selfish perspective, and I'm not suggesting that the players cave on stuff just to make my life easier, but I wouldn't hate a couple more owners to get on board with the Dodgers and Yankees perspective, just to name two big spending teams that tend to want to raise limits a little bit more than some of their contemporaries. So well, we will unfortunately have many more opportunities to talk about this topic in the coming years.

This is not going to go away even if the immediate crisis of this bankruptcy hearing has been resolved in a somewhat surprisingly non disastrous way. I mean, there are still there's still networks named after fan duels, so like, over-sell it, you know? Yes, there's that. Yeah, so it's kind of kicking the can down the road, most likely, although again, it is nice to have $9 billion in debt

or whatever it was wiped out. Must be nice, not that I have $9 billion in debts, but you know, proportionately speaking, it would, yes. So it would be nice to have a similar arrangement. I got to get in on these hearings, but I guess I haven't declared bankruptcy. So that's on me. Anyway, last thing I wanted to say before we bring in our Patreon supporter here, are you going to be ripping up Tops Boxes over the weekend to try to retrieve the Paul Skeen's one of one autographed debut patch? Have you heard about the Wonka-esque golden ticket type search that is happening here?

I have heard that that is a thing. I will not be ripping up anything. How much of that is that I have a cold and I'm hoping to spend much of the weekend on the couch sipping tea? Who could say? What do we think it'll be worth, Ben? What do you think that the card will be worth? It's an interesting story that sort of surprised me because the pirates are offering what seems to be a pretty appealing package here as a reward. This is what has kind of brought this to everyone's attention is that the Pittsburgh Pirates who are not known to be big spenders, speaking of that subject, they are not nutting when

it comes to getting this card. They want the card. It's not clear to me whether they want it for themselves, whether Paul Skeens wants it, and so they're doing this on his behalf, or whether this is all some sort of scheme, not skeins, but scheme to drum up interest in this set and these packs and to get everyone searching for it. Like Like is everyone in on this to just sort of try to make people purchase these things? I don't know, but the Pirates are offering two Pirate Season tickets behind home plate for the next 30 years. 30 years. I mean, I think that's

like longer, a lot longer than they have a lease on PNC park. But such confidence in the continued survival of the Republic. Yes. And the pirate specifically and MLB. And I guess, uh, you know, you could say, well, maybe there's some sort of a technicality here, they didn't say where behind home plate, maybe it's so way up high behind home plate, although those are actually my favorite seats in the park. I'd be quite pleased with that. But I think they said it was like an $8,000 value.

I forget if that's a per ticket or for the two, but 30 years, this is a lot of money by Pirate Standards. And then there's a softball game for 30 at PNC Park, plus coaching from Pirates alumni. And then there's a spring training experience that includes a private tour of Pirate City and a meet and greet with Paul Skeens and two Skeens autographed jerseys.

And you take batting practice and warm up with the team, et cetera, et cetera. So there's sort of an experiential aspect to this. So it seems like a lot to offer. And Livy Dunn, girlfriend of Paul Skeens, also chipped in the opportunity to sit with her in her suite during a game. So if that's something that particularly appeals to you, I guess that goes along in the bargain here. So some sort of just massive package here by pirate standards.

I mean, people are joking about, you know, does this rival the biggest contracts the pirates have handed out to free agents? And no, but hyperbolically speaking, sure, we can say that. And I'm kind of mystified by the whole thing. I understand why this patch is valuable. It was just this debut patch. It says MLB debut, and it was this little patch that was on the Jersey that Skeens was wearing when he made his MLB debut and he signed it.

And then they took this patch off the Jersey and they put it in a pack of cards. So that's a cool memento. And it's a one of one thing. There was only one patch. I absolutely understand why that would be immensely valuable as these things go to a fan or on the collectible market. I'm a little more mystified about why this is of such a high priority to the pirates and or Paul Skeen's cause like the pirates employ Paul Skeens. They could get

access to almost unlimited quantities of Paul Skeens memorabilia. Granted, I guess there's still only for the pirates. There's one MLB debut patch. I was trying to figure out what happened to the rest of the jersey because I'd rather have the jersey than the little patch. Is that still true with the little patch cut out of it? I think so, because I think it was, it was like made to tear off neatly. So it's not like there's some, some deeping hole in the Jersey.

I mean, like, what are you going to do? Wear the Jersey? No, that's- No, probably not. That would probably depreciate it. But I think it kind of came off like a sticker, nice and neat. So it's, it's a cool collectible, but like if you're the pirates, you'd think you'd have your

pick-up Paul Skeen's stuff, right? You could certainly get plenty of Paul Skeen's autographs. And if you are Paul Skeen's yourself, that's what maybe mystifies me more because like you yourself are a memento of your major league debut. Like your body was memorabilia from your big league debut. You were there yourself. Yeah. But at this point, none of your skin was.

I guess that's true. Maybe you've shed those skin cells and we're all ships of Theseus and we replace ourselves. But you know, in in spirit you were there. And so maybe this just speaks to kind of a larger philosophical stance, which is that neither of us is a big memorabilia person. So maybe that's what I'm sort of channeling here. You know, if I were Paul Skeen, it's like, I had the experience. We're actually going to kind of get into this a little later when we talk about documenting

the experiences at cool events that you went to and whether it's more important to have just kind of lived in the moment and remembered it and just rolled with it or to have stared at it through a phone camera, let's say, to preserve some aspect of it at the expense perhaps of your real time experience. So I get why players, even though they were there, they're the ones who conferred value upon these inanimate objects. In a way I would think like, well, I don't need that for someone else, it would be cool.

But Paul Skeens is like literally Paul Skeens. He was there. He is the one who by virtue of his performance makes the patch valuable. But I don't know, maybe Paul Skeens likes Topps cars and he likes collectibles and obviously players like having mementos. I would hope he has something from that game.

I'm sure he does. Sure he has a ball. Yeah, you'd think he'd have a game ball. As I was saying, I was trying to figure out what happened to the rest of the Jersey because I'd rather have that than the little patch that was torn off it. And I couldn't really see what happened to it, but I did find a tweet that suggested that maybe fanatics kept it,

that it was just sent to the fanatics office. So if that's the case and Paul DeSkines was deprived of the Jersey itself, then I guess I see why he might be interested in this. And I guess I see why the Pirates might be interested in building some sort of shrine to Paul Skeens. Though again, I would just think that there must be other items that would be roughly as cool for a fan to see or for you to display as this teeny tiny patch that fits in a pack of baseball cards. Yeah, I don't know how it would wash over me. I've never done what Paul Skeens has done,

you know, so I don't know what would be important to me in that moment. I'm sure you're right that he has other things from that. But yeah, I wonder I wonder what I would care about. I would not volunteer to hang out with anyone if I would be done. That I do know. I feel very confident that I'd be like, no, that's okay. I don't need to do that. I was going to say maybe Skeens will be there, but I guess if it's during a game, he probably wouldn't be able to be there.

So someone will be there. Hopefully there will be some sort of chaperone for this experience. I'm sure there will be. Yeah. I would imagine. Yeah. And maybe someone will, you know and maybe I should have more confidence in people. Maybe people would be normal, but I wouldn't bank on that. It's not like some sort of 30 seconds in the sweet situation. You are just watching a game as far as we know. What do you think they'll talk about? Yeah, that's, I'm now distracted by thinking about, do you think that that part of the bargain

was offered and then she was like, oh, that was a bad idea, why did I? CB. That makes me think that this must be something coming from Skeen's, unless again, this is some sort of sponsored opportunity because if it were just the pirates wanting to have this, then would she be in on it? I don't know. And can't the pirates just, it's odd because teams won't give their pre-arb players more than they need to usually, right? They usually don't sweeten their league minimum deals.

And Skeen's got a big bonus, he's doing fine. I'm just saying it, it's almost unusual for a team to offer something of significant monetary value, particularly this team to say like out of the goodness of our hearts and because we want to share it with all Pirates fans. They also said that, that they want to bring it home to PNC Park to share with all Buccos fans. So they didn't say because we want to hand it back to Paul Skeen so that he can keep it in his trophy case and be indebted to us and want to stay here long-term or something. Like this is going to be on display, which is kind of cool, I guess. But then maybe that

undercuts the theory that this is all for Paul Skeen and that he is somehow pawling the strings from behind the skeins. Ben. That took a minute for my cold-addled brain to process and then it didn't. I went, oh Ben. I just kind of think that if I were the one who was making these things valuable by being me, that it would have a little less value to me. Yeah. I know that players, they like displaying stuff. They do. And, you know, probably like if all goes well, Paul Skeens will hopefully have many more awards coming to him, perhaps in the short term, but certainly in the long term,

he will have lots of stuff to display. And I guess this is kind of a cool thing that was there with you at the very start. So again, I get why it's cool for a fan if you open up the pack and, but this just leads to, I mean, it's going to cause all sorts of Veroca salt sort of activity one would think and you've got card breakers and you've got people probably incentivized to just open up these boxes rather than sell them. And I don't know what kind of effects this might have on the card market, but there has certainly been extra interest

drummed up by the pirates putting the spotlight on this, which is almost what makes me think, is there more to the story or do the pirates just really, really want this patch? I don't know. I do feel like I'm missing something, you know? It does make me think that I am missing something, but I don't know. Like maybe I'm not, maybe they're just really into it. I think I'd want the rubber. I think I'd want the pitching rubber if it were me. Yeah, that'd be good. I'd much rather have, again, like we'll talk about this a little later with balls as mementos, but I would rather have if I were a pitcher and I had a game ball, that would be meaningful to me. I actually held that thing,

I threw it, I had some kind of connection to it. LS. Connection to it. I mean, he wore it, you know? CB. He did, yes, it's true. LS. He wore it on his body. What is a bean feast? You mentioned Veruca Salt. She sings about, she wants a, she wants a, in the song, she says that she wants a feast. She wants a bean feast. What is it? Right. This is some British thing, right? This is some weird British thing about a bean. I mean, I like beans, but what is a bean feast? Is it a particular? I'm not going to Google it. A bean feast, also known as beano in Britain, which means something different here,

is an informal term for a celebratory meal or party. LS Oh, so it's just any kind of party? CB Yeah. Historically, it referred especially to an annual summer dimmer given to an employer by their employees or given by an employer to their employees. LS Okay. I was like, we're not doing boss parties. Like, no, thank you. Bean feast, I want a bean feast. So it's not just like you prepare a lot of different kinds of beans, a lot of different kinds of ways.

I guess not, no. But there could be beans. They're not precluded from having beans at the bean feast. That's the way you wanna celebrate it. It does say an alternate derivation refers the name to the eating of a dish of beans and bacon. So I guess it could refer explicitly to that, if you believe that etymology. But yeah, if I had to rank things that would commemorate my major league debut, I think I'd have Jersey way above

like little patch from the Jersey though. Yeah. I mean, I guess if this is the best I can do then. Maybe they're like, look, he gets the Jersey. And so we have to, this is a way to like incorporate the Jersey without taking the Jersey away from Skeen. He should get the Jersey. I don't know why he wouldn't get the Jersey, but it seems like maybe fanatics got that claim, but I would put the ball probably over this little patch. I think I'd probably put- Well, but which one? Like the first one you threw? The first one you struck a guy out with? Which ball? Yeah, probably the first one if I still had that. I mean, there's first pitch, there's first strikeout, there's last pitch. There's so many options. Maybe I kept an assortment, but I think, I think first pitch would be the most

meaningful to me, even above say first strikeout pitch. I would want first strikeout pitch. I would want the ball from my first strikeout to be the ball I keep, but I would be like, dig out the rubber, dig out the whole thing. I want that. Where would you put it? No, I mean, you have nowhere to put it. It would just go in the garage, but you'd be like, dig out the rubber, dig out the whole thing. I want that. Where would you put it? No. I mean, you have nowhere to put it. It would just go in the garage, but you'd be like, look at this.

So you would want first strikeout, even if you got a non-strikeout out prior to the strikeout. Really? So you're probably, this is like fit based. You're prioritizing how much you want the ball. Like what, what if you just get a weak grounder to second for your first major league? I'd be like, hey, I have an ERA now. I'd want that one too, but the first strikeout would be, I think, more meaningful to me.

You did it. You did that. You got the guy. You got him. That's the first time that you- This really is a fit-based defense independent pitching. Look, well, first of all, I'm a company gal, but truly, if it were my first big league start, there would be something particularly

satisfying to me about saying, I struck out a major leaguer. I got him. That would feel different to me, I think, than just I got him to ground out weekly to shortstop. Because even some chump, even we could get a big league batter out on a ball and play given enough opportunities. Eventually they would hit one right at someone. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm not confident that I could do that because I'm pretty bad at baseball, but

in theory one could. The gap between, you know, a quad A guy and skeins, well, it's a lot of things, famously, but one of them is sort of the ability to like go at a guy and even quad A guys get guys out and strike them out. You know, that happens too, but I think that there would be something special about like, I got him. That was me. I did that. Yeah. I'd take any of those balls before the patch. I would take, well, your glove, presumably you still have, that's yours. Your cap, I would assume that's something that you retain, right? And the rubber, as you said, that's something you are making contact with.

Yeah, that would be pretty cool. You're towing that thing throughout the game, right? So I would want that. So these are all things that I would probably want above the patch. The patch was also, it was always a mercenary thing. It was just stowing- Well, and there's no tradition around the patch as the other thing. Yeah, and it was hitching a ride.

It was never meant to be a permanent part of the patches. The thing and it was hitching a ride. It was never meant to be a permanent part of the experience. It was always there to become a collectible. Exactly. That was not mine. Like everyone knew this is gonna be a one of one giveaway and we're just gonna stick this thing on here to enhance its value and then we'll take it off and we'll sell it.

Like it was always temporary. So I would want it I guess, but I don't think I would go way out of my way to get it. The debut patches are new this year. There's no tradition associated with it. Anything that like depends on fanatics to do feels like it should not be an important part of your origin story as a big leaker. you know, that seems like a mistake. So yeah, it would probably go for me. I would want both the first out and my first strikeout, but when I was showing people my

stuff, I'd be like, this is the first, you know, the ball from the first strikeout I ever notched. I'd show them that before the first out, I think personally. I'd want the cap, the jersey, the rubber, and a bean feast. Okay. Well, we've covered that, which is not to discount how cool it would be for a fan to pull that thing. So if you're out there, we wish you well. And now we will bring in our guest. I've been in makeup all night like you know it's gonna be a good time I wanna learn about my statistics I wanna hear about how to name RBI's head Tell me about some prospect I should know about Alright, we are joined now for the first time in a while by a Mike Chow tier Patreon supporter, Craig Wingbermuley, who joins us and we're happy to have him.

Welcome Craig. Thank you guys. Thanks for having me. Well, thanks for coming on and thanks for supporting us. And you know that I must ask the traditional question, which is why did you support us, especially at this level? Well, I have been a long time listener and I did it for free for a very long time. Quite frankly, I don't know why

I have never been a Patreon supporter, probably because I don't really use Patreon or Discord or any of that stuff. Because we give you the show for free. Yes, exactly. I was just freeloading the whole time. But no, I am in a traveling sales job in the cigar industry. So you guys and Meg's predecessors before her

have kept me company on the road. It's kind of weird talking to you guys for the first time because I feel like I know you oh so well. You've been a part of my life big time. And I just kind of was like, you know what? They deserve it and this will be fun. So yeah, that's why. Well, thank you.

I guess cigar sales are going well then I take it. How, how does one become a traveling cigar salesman? That's funny. Uh, I've been in the industry for a long time. Uh, I've worked for cigar companies, I've done retail. I recently got a promotion too, so you know having that bonus kind of helped just like, here's extra money, I'll give it to Ben and Meg, you know. So yeah, that was part of it. So I'm more in airplanes now than I am on the road, but you guys are still keeping me company. So again,

thank you. I kind of fell into the industry quite frankly. I did radio out of college and then that didn't pay me any money. So when I got out of that, I did insurance. That paid me a lot of money, but I hated it. Then I was, you know, kind of at the rise of social media time. I had a blog just not necessarily reviewing cigars, but kind of keeping a catalog or an

encyclopedia of cigars, and that got really popular. And cigar companies reached out to me to do some kind of freelance social media marketing for them, and that turned into a sales job, and then that turned into joining a big retail operation, and then that turned back into a sales job, and now I cover a whole region with people reporting to me. So it's pretty cool. So you're a genuine cigar aficionado, just like the magazine.

Wow. And before you flew around, were you Willy Lomening it in a car with like a suitcase full of cigars that you would whip out when you met a cigar client? Well, it's a little more structured than that. I did have lots of cigars that you would whip out when you met a cigar client? Well, it's a little more structured than that. I did have lots of cigars with me, but they were for sample products. Most of the ordering and shipping is done. In the old days, that's literally how it used to be, like a trunk full of cigars and, hey, how many do you want to

buy kind of thing. That's not legal anymore. But yeah, I covered basically, I live in Chicago originally from St. Louis, not all at one time have I covered all of these states, but like I've, you know, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, I have sold there. As I've been, that's been part of my territory as a sales rep. My last was Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa. And then now as the regional, all of the reps from basically Illinois all the way over to New England, kind of along the Great Lakes there, all report to me now. So I'm

traveling all around the Northeast. And how do you travel with the cigars now? Do you have a humidor? Yeah, well, I don't travel with cigars as much now. I kind of rely on the guys who I'm riding with. But yeah, before it was basically coolers work really well. You know, giant Yeti or Igloo coolers work very well. Anything with a seal really keeps them fresh. So yeah, a big old

cooler full of cigars and that was it. I'm curious, like, has the rise of vaping impacted the cigar industry at all? Cause I would imagine that like a lot of people are using that as a substitute for smoking cigarettes, but how is that buffeted cigars about if at all? I should backtrack a little bit and say, really what made me want to do this is when a few episodes ago Meg said smoking looked pretty cool. So I was like, all right, well, I'm welcome here. Oh no.

Just kidding. Just kidding. No, it's very different customers to answer your question Meg. Like the, there, we do see not to get super nerdy but hey we're on effectively wild so let's get super nerdy the demographics do show a little bit that uh there is some carryover but not in the way you would think the new carryover has been where they're being bought right so there's been a lot of rise in sales through what we would call tobacco shop markets or non-traditional markets where they are, you know, there's a lot of other things being sold there.

Glass, vapes, all the other things you mentioned, right? The rise in cigar sales has been higher there, especially since COVID. COVID was a really big jump for our industry. Um, just, you know, a lot of people are outside with nothing to do, right? Or in their own backyard outside with nothing to do. Golf was the big one too, you know, with the rise of people playing golf, outside with nothing to do, right? Or in their own backyard outside with nothing to do. Golf was the big one too, you know? With the rise of people playing golf,

cigars come with golf. So yeah, there's not a huge layover. You don't really smoke cigars for nicotine. Some people do. Right, right, yeah. I always equate it to the liquor industry, right? Like nobody is slamming bottles of high-end scotch to get drunk.

Like they would be like, you know a case of beer in college You know cigars are definitely more of sipping a fine scotch and just kind of enjoying life a little bit Well, I feel the need to say kids don't smoke I don't want to hurt your business because we're benefiting from it now, but I'm sure you don't want kids to smoke either You know, our industry is definitely for adults. It is not for children. We are very careful to not market to children. I'm your guy's age.

I'm, you know, upper thirties right now. Like I am one of the younger people in this industry. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's an older person thing for sure. Yeah. I guess I don't have a lot of contemporaries who I think of as big cigar smokers, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes it's a way to get a bonus that enables you to become a Mike Trautier Patreon supporter.

So it all works out. Happy to have you. So how did you become a baseball fan now that we've covered your cigar sales origin story? Yeah, I couldn't quite tell if you guys were as interested in this as the guy who worked for the post office, but it was pretty close, I'm pretty proud. Baseball, yeah, I'm from St. Louis, so I don't know if you guys are familiar

with how popular baseball is in St. Louis or not. You know, I always joke if we didn't have a day off school for opening day for some made up staff development day or something like They'd wheel TVs in and Mike Shannon was over the loudspeakers playing the game in the afternoon You know, it's it's a big deal down there. I became more than just a Cardinals fan You know, I always loved baseball played it and I don't know It's just been a part of as early as I can remember. It's always been a big part of my life. No, no, no special story here at all.

Right. It's just always been there and I've always loved it. How is this era of Cardinals baseball washing over you then? Like, I'm curious, cause you haven't had to really deal with rebuilds all that often, I would imagine, and yet here you are potentially staring one in the face. Right. Yeah. They've been good pretty much my whole life outside of like when I was really

young and don't remember all that well. I don't know. Like I am a baseball fan as a whole. I am definitely a Cardinals fan more than others, but like if they're not in the playoffs, it doesn't ruin the playoffs for me. It does make me wish they were there. And obviously I got very used to them being there, but you know, I love the fan base and I don't live in St. Louis anymore, so my only interaction with a lot of the fan base is online and it just makes me not want to look at that stuff all of the time, because it's like, we're pretty spoiled. I can't be bad, you know?

Like, I think I'm owed a couple down years, you know? I'm a big hockey guy too, and I was very used to that with the Blues, right? Like, they were in the playoffs a lot, but they never won until they did. And now they're just kind of met again. But it's like, I got my championship with them. I know what it's like to only have one and waiting your whole life for one on that side. I can be patient here too. So I'm not an extremely upset Cardinals fan right now.

My biggest thing personally, if we're going to deep dive into this was I didn't really trust the current regime to do a rebuild because I think a lot of the problems that they have are development of talent. And if you're going to go into a rebuild, development of talent is really important. So I'm happy there is somebody else in charge now. Hopefully better days ahead, better days behind, certainly. And you found effectively wild, I imagine, in the usual way, which is you Googled baseball podcasts or something.

Yeah, I can't exactly remember how long I've been listening, but it's been a long time. I love music. Music's one of my favorite things, but I'm not really always listening to it in the car person. I very much like conversation. I found you guys right at the end of Sam's time, and it's just been a staple ever since. So again, I owe you guys that I get to do.

We appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for the makeup Patreon payments, we appreciate it. Well we should answer some emails. We haven't gotten to do that in quite a while. It feels like at least at any length that's what happens in the postseason. And I guess we could start with a question that is postseason related from a fellow Patreon supporter Evan who says, I was wondering if or why there isn't as much talk about playoff revenue in baseball as I would expect. When the Warriors were on their run in the NBA, there was a ton of talk about how they

were making millions on millions in playoff revenue and how that would translate to being able to go way over the luxury tax. I feel like that's just not as much the case in MLB. Is that just because gate revenue for playoffs is a smaller portion of overall gate revenue? A max of 14 home games for a wildcard team divided by 81 equals 17% versus 16 home games max over 41 equals 39% for the NBA. How much of a revenue bump is making the playoffs. So I always have to remind myself and look up the actual distribution of this stuff,

which I guess is a sign that maybe we don't talk about it all that much. Beyond just a generic, oh, they're going to get extra playoff revenue. If a team wins a World Series, you might say, oh, they'll have some more money to spend. They could afford to spend some more on free agents, but it's usually sort of nebulous from the players perspective. It's not that big a deal. Generally, it might be a big deal if you're making the league minimum, in which case you might double your salary or something, but for more

established players, it's certainly a nice perk and it can be life-changing for a staffer, let's say, but for a lot of players, it's not truly transformative in the way that maybe it was decades ago when players didn't make as much money, but it's like the players pool, it's 50% of the gate receipts from the wild card games and then 60% of the gate receipts from the first three game of the DS and then 60% of the gate receipts from the first four games of the CS and 60% of the gate receipts from the first four games of the world series. This is why I can never really remember these things.

And then the players on each team, the deeper you go, the more you get. And then the players on each team vote about how many shares to award, full shares, partial shares. These days it's kind of convention that if you played for the team at all, even if you got into a game, you get a ring at least, and probably at least a partial share. And then it comes down to clubhouse attendance and other team personnel and how generous you want to be. And there's that story about Ricky Henderson, who to his credit was always in

favor of giving as many shares out to people as he could, because for them, it would make more of a difference than it would for him. So I think the distribution of the revenue this season, one reason why it's, it's maybe harder to fixate on is that you don't know exactly what the amount is until after the postseason. Yeah. But last season it was like 108 million ish, which was, I think a record. And so there was a expectation

that maybe it would be more than that. But I think if you sell a lot of seats and tickets and luxury boxes and that sort of thing, then it can be quite a bit of money for the team. There was a Sportico piece from late October headlined World series run means Yankees may make $70 million in extra ticket sales. And it was, yeah, that's kind of a lot, right? A ticket and luxury suite revenue.

That's like an entire bullpen. Yeah, that's like what they paid Aaron Judge in one Sotooto as the story said this season. So that's a lot. And some of those numbers have been disclosed for previous postseason. So depending on how deep you go, it can be a pretty big deal for the teams, I think, and how much you charge for those tickets and how your stadium is set up. So that leaves you with less of an excuse if you're the Yankees and you won a pennant and Juan Soto is a free agent. You can't cry poor if you've just got that extra revenue boost. So sometimes it matters. And sometimes you hear teams say, yeah, we sold more season tickets and thus we can invest in the roster and it helps. There's a boost to that. And that's why the Nationals were sort

of unfortunate in that they never got that, which was one of the things that went wrong for the Nationals because they won in 2019 and then there was a pandemic and then they didn't really get to enjoy and reap the rewards of an attendance boost because no one was in the seats. So that was unfortunate timing. Yeah, I know that like the most heartwarming stories are like last year. Remember, you know, the Diamondbacks didn't win the World Series, obviously, but they got a meaningful check and I think they made a point of giving a lot of that money back to the clubbies and other equipment folks. And there were like local stories here in Arizona of like so and so paid off their mortgage and there's like going to be able to send their kid to college. And it's a big boost for people who are making something that more closely

approximates like what a middle-class working person would make an annual salary. And then, yeah, they were a good example. I mean, I think that they would probably like the Jordan Montgomery signing back in a lot of ways, but you know, when they invested in payroll last off season, they specifically cited the boost that they had gotten from World Series attendance as like part of what allowed quote unquote allowed Ken Kendrick to do that. So, you know, some of that is a little bit of eye wash, but it's productive eye wash, I suppose.

Does that make it not eye wash? The World Series winner gets 36%. The world series loser gets 24%. The LCS losers get 12% each. The LDS losers split 13%. The wild card losers 3%. So last season, for example, when the Rangers won, they got 38.8 million. This is the player's share and they handed out 64 full shares.

So each of those was worth a little more than half a million. This is the player's share. And they handed out 64 full shares. So each of those was worth a little more than half a million. And then there were 12 and a half partial shares and some cash rewards. So yeah, it might not amount to that much for a particular player, but from a team perspective, that is more meaningful. And maybe we should talk about it more. I don't know. This is the sort of bonus that probably trumps your cigar selling bonus. And so I think all of these players, if they get this, so World Series share should immediately sign up for the Patreon. Well, I wonder if we hear about it more in other sports because the players

don't get as much in other sports, right? Like I remember when the blues got sold back in the mid 2000s, you know, or maybe it might've even been the new ownership group. I don't remember completely, but they talked about how simply making the playoffs can put them, you know, in the black as opposed to the red, even just one round now you're guaranteed what two home games and hockey, if you make the playoffs in baseball, you could not have a home game, even if you make the playoffs, so you get nothing unless. Like you said, the away team gets some money.

But obviously the MLB union, players union is very strong. I wonder if just the majority of dollars in other sports goes to the ownership groups and not the players. Could be that, could be what Evan said about just the differing lengths of the season, et cetera. But yeah, it's a nice boost. It's definitely something that takes an excuse away from the team if the team says we can't spend, which to be fair, you don't hear as often coming off of a World Series win. But wouldn't put it past anyone,

especially with the situation, the way it stands these days with the cable bubble bursting, et cetera. Alan says, love the podcast. Wonder if you can help me understand this quirk with prospect promotion incentives. I was thinking about this after learning that Bobby Witt Jr's top three MVP placement will net the Royals an extra draft pick. We're really getting in the weeds with some of the nitty gritty of rules here in revenue. My understanding is that rookies who sign contract extensions before their major league debut, like Colt Keith and Jax

Centurio, are not eligible for the prospect promotion incentives. Why is this? In spirit, the PPI system is in place to stop teams from nickel and diming young players. A contract extension is more player friendly than a young star playing for pre-arb money what gives, in which case the Royals extended him after his debut so they can keep reaping the sweet PPIs post-extension, but the Tigers and Brewers are excluded from PPI possibilities because they jumped the gun by a few months. Is this just a glitch or am I missing something here? So my response via email is that in principle, this prospect promotion incentive system

is intended to discourage service time manipulation and to encourage teams to put prospects on opening day rosters. And when prospects sign long-term extensions before their big league debuts, service time manipulation generally isn't really a concern. Teams don't worry so much about starting the clock, so they often bring them right up to the big league roster, and there's not as much need for extra incentives. So I think that's the primary reason. Now, Alan might be right that this wrinkle kind of, uh, unintended

consequence, I guess might make teams a little less likely to hand out extensions or to wait until after opening day to do it, because you want to promote the player, get the PPI perks, and then maybe hand out the extension. So I guess that could be seen as bad. We have talked before about situations where maybe some of these rules that are intended to discourage service time manipulation actually encourage it in certain specific cases, even though it seems to work fairly well overall. Then again, I guess a lot of pre-debut extensions turn out to be pretty team friendly on the whole. So I don't know that it is actually that bad for players if you delay those at least for a while. Yeah, I think that on balance, even if they are not receiving the potential for netting

a draft pick, that when teams are doing the math on, you know, just from a potential dollars per war perspective, they're still likely coming out ahead on those pre-debut extensions, even assuming the player plays really well such that they are in the conversation for rookie of the year, MVP or what have you, and would potentially net them a draft pick, the delta in value between even an extension AAV and that production is such that they're still coming out ahead more often than not. So I think like the Brewers aren't looking at this situation and being like, well, I wish the Jackson Truro, like we hadn't done that extension. It's like, no, Jackson Truro is like a really good player and you're probably still getting him for

below market relative to what he would get even if he went through the normal arbitration process. Like I don't think they're looking back going like, eh, dang it, we should have gotten a draft pick. I think they're doing fine. Allen followed up to say that I guess it did work out well for the Royals, regardless of whether they intended things this way. They get Witt's rookie season, they avoid arbitration on what looks to be a pretty team friendly extension. It was a big extension, but he's just turned out to be so fantastic.

And they get the bonus PPI pick for the season. So he suggested that maybe you could close the quote unquote loophole that once a player signs an extension, you no longer get the PPI. But I don't know. I don't know that we need to do that. But as Alan also says, maybe the timing in retrospect, if you look at the Tigers and the Brewers, could there be gamesmanship or subterfuge if you announce those extensions before opening day, if the Tigers had just waited a

couple more months in Colt Keith's case or Choreo or whoever. Like you don't know that these guys are going to finish top three in MVP voting or anything, but why take the chance? I guess just roll the dice. Like even if you have a deal, maybe you don't announce it. I guess it has to be official, but yeah, it just seems like maybe it would affect your timing slightly, but it's probably not that big a problem. I think this whole system is an improvement on what we had before. I can't think of a situation where a general manager

or a POBO would walk into the owner's office and be like, we have this extension ready, but we might lose a draft pick if he signs it. I think every GM's gonna be like, no, how much are we saving there? Yeah, let's save that money. Yeah. Well, you're not even losing a draft pick, right? You're just losing the opportunity to net an extra one.

Right. Potentially losing a draft pick you don't already have. Right. Right. Teams do like their draft picks though. They'll hoard those things in certain situations, but if you get the franchise blue chip player assigned to a long-term team friendly extension, then that's something to be pleased about. Yeah. Andy says, what is the mission of a team?

So he elaborates, I was reading the recent post on FanGraphs for a Rockies job opening and was struck by their mission statement. The mission of the Colorado Rockies baseball club is to embody the principles and practices of a championship organization in both the sport and business of baseball. I looked at some other team job postings and didn't see any other mission statements. I was struck that, one, they just want to embody certain attributes of a championship team rather than actually win a championship, and two, they give the quote unquote business of baseball equal weight to the sports aspect, which seems odd to put in a mission statement even if

it's true. Do you think this reveals anything about the Rockies organization in particular, or do you think this is probably representative of what most clubs are aiming for? So again, to embody the principles and practices of a championship organization in both the sport and business of baseball. To all the HR professionals out there, just like put on your earmuffs. I think there's a lot of, I'm going to do a swear too, I think there's a lot of bullsh** in HR around hiring stuff, right? Like the way that job postings are generally formulated makes it sound like every organization

is both endlessly innovative and doing the work of the United Nations often, where it's like, you're trying to hire people, you want to make the company sound good. You're doing job postings on both the baseball and business side in all likelihood, and so neglecting one or the other would probably be a little odd. This allows you to be sort of fit to purpose on both ends of the organization. But mostly, I think it's just a little bit highfalutin and probably shouldn't be taken too seriously one way or the other. It's better than them saying that all they care about is making money, I suppose. Um, there's a, a nice bit of like knowing realism to it, I guess, if you're the Rockies. It's like, we, we aim to embody that.

That's the best we could do on some days. Um, but I also think that like, that doesn't preclude the wanting to win. It's like, you're, you know, you're trying to be a winning, a winning organization, a place that people want to work and thrive and be while they sit in an open concept office and do emails all day. Unlike Andy, I have not surveyed the other job postings, so I can't confirm that none of them had mission statements. I guess it would be sort of Rockies-esque if the Rockies were the only one with a mission

statement and everyone else just sort of assumed what your mission statement is as a baseball team to win lots of baseball games, to win a championship, presumably. And I don't know, maybe we're splitting hairs when it comes to comparing, embodying the principles and practices of a championship organization, as opposed to being a championship organization. Maybe that amounts to the same thing, right? Because it's the Rockies, it sort of sounds like we'll do our best imitation of a championship organization, essentially. That's kind of what it comes off as. But if the Dodgers job posting said that, you probably wouldn't bat an eye, right? So I don't know that it means that much, but it is probably just a little bit of word salad and I guess what you would want and expect

a team's mission to be, maybe it's slightly surprising that they give the sport and the business of baseball in equal weight and a job posting for, I assume it was a baseball operations position. So unless this is a po-both situation equal weight in a job posting for, I assume it was a baseball operations position. So unless this is a po both situation where we have Derek Falvey, who's overseeing both departments and maybe he has to give equal weight to each, then maybe you would be a little surprised to see that.

But if anything, it's truth in advertising. It's, it's honest to concede that it is a business, that baseball is a business and that you care about that. What do you make of the mission statement here? I think to May's point, it's just a bunch of fluff. I mean, what's the alternative? You just say, come work for failure.

I mean, you're not going to say that, right? So I mean, if you're the Rockies, you can either fluff it up or just be like, we have a really nice ballpark. Come out to it, you know, and work here. It's put on a happy face. I don't know. It's the Rockies. I'm not trying to be mean here, but yeah, that just sounds very corporate to me.

And that's what they should be doing because I think a lot of baseball jobs to appeal to a lot of non baseball people, you know, there's a chance for them to get a really cool thing on their resume. And that's what they do. And a lot of the lower levels employees for baseball teams don't work there very long and probably don't care if the Rockies won a World Series or not. In a lot of the cases, they just want a paycheck and want something good for their resume, right? So put it on there and get the right talent and they're probably better off.

Yeah. The Rockies could have just said, our goal is to embody the best vibes in baseball and to sell affordable beer and have people come hang out. And the baseball game is almost incidental. We've got a pretty park and good beverages and a nice view and you'll have a fun time. They could have said that, but they didn't. They at least paid lip service to the idea of the championship organization. So that's a start. All right. Here is a question from Peter who says, with the sale of the Otani 50-50 ball at $4.3 million plus continued lawsuits over the proper ownership of the ball, it strikes me that perhaps we should consider stopping the abandonment principle

entirely and just say that the team or MLB still owns the ball even if it ends up in the stands. The violent scrambles for home run balls are often dangerous and create bad incentives for fans and messy litigation. Plus it doesn't really make sense from an economic standpoint. The value of the ball was generated by the player and the team, not the jabroni who caught it. Why should they get the windfall of Otani's 50-50 season? If I mistakenly left a $4.3 million or something on the train and someone picked it up, it wouldn't become theirs magically. Why say that this applies to big home run balls too? I understand that giving more money to MLB

is hardly equitable, plus MLB players probably don't want all the random fly balls and even homers. The possibility of catching a homer is part of the fun of attending. So let's say we have a new rule. MLB balls caught by fans are like a library loan. MLB owns the ball and transfers between people afterwards are just transfers of the license to hold it, not permanent ownership. This means MLB can also reclaim any ball as its own. This ends the gamesmanship of negotiating with the team,

etc. for notable balls too. And MLB probably just lets all the foul balls and even non-notable homers go, or they gobble them up and create more revenue out of their product. What do you think? Good idea or worse than the current situation? I guess it is strange to have it be a free for all. I guess on the plus side, some fan gets some amount of millions of dollars, so I guess that's a good thing, but also not great if you're ripping it out of someone's hands and people are piling on top of each other. But, you know, it's a Darwinian world out there in the outfield when a big memento is at stake. LS I don't know what I think about this. I think that the question like agrees in large part with

something I would say, which is that most of the time this sort of works itself out, right? Like there's not really an issue because who cares if you get a random, you know, foul ball, like throw those into the, to the stand sometimes, right? I do kind of like that there is this lottery potential anytime you go to the ballpark where it's like, Hey, I don't know. I might, I might get a really cool souvenir. I don't know that if we were designing the system from scratch, that's the way that we would do it. I think we'd probably say that's pretty silly, but were designing the system from scratch, that's the way that we would do it.

I think we'd probably say that's pretty silly, but that is the system we have. So I don't know if I'm keen to change it. I don't want a hample to get more balls. Can we have a hample specific rule? Is that ungenerous? I have a cold and might be a little cranky. Well, he has received a disproportionate number to this point. He has so many.

It's just a lot of them, you know, as a percentage for so many to be with one guy seems a little much. Yeah. What do you think, Craig? You know, I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. Just because they do. Have you seen how much they sell those balls for? Like, you know, just like- It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot of money for a ball that has no significant-

It's like you look at the description and it's like, thrown by pitcher X, swung at and missed by batter Y, $75. And it's like, wow, yeah, like home runs would go for a lot more money, I would think. But I don't know, part of me, like if there's a projectile that can kill you, I think you get ownership of it, right? Like that's just me, I don't know. Yeah, maybe that's part of it.

There's that warning, right? Which has been disputed and has been the subject of various lawsuits about how you basically accept the liability, right? So that there's a warning on the back of the ticket tells you, Hey, heads up. Right. And so teams say that's just kind of a blanket.

It's not our fault if you get hit. Of course, now we fortunately have protective netting over much of the park and that has reduced the danger. It is a nice thing. Obviously in the early days of baseball, when it was a much lower budget business and there weren't so many baseballs to go around, you had to retrieve the balls from the stands. You had to stop play, you had to go get them. That would add time and hassle. And now ballparks being as big and as crowded as they are, it would probably be pretty prohibitive to do that, right?

That's, I guess, another thing is that can you enforce it really? Like, how can the team assert? Like the team could, I guess, refuse to authenticate, which sometimes it does even now use as a cudgel or leverage or a threat, right? But if you retrieve a ball, I guess how would the team get it back reliably? You could always just have like a decoy ball and swap it out or something. And I guess you could never really prove if it was yours, if it's not authenticated. So that would be messy, but it's also pretty messy now. It is, it's a cool thing about baseball that they're just more souvenirs.

And most of those souvenirs aren't really valuable except to you on a sentimental level. And that's a really cool thing. You could maybe make lifelong fans that way. And there's a neat fan participation aspect to that. And so if you wanted that to be the case, well, you can't really cut it off, can you? Could you make it selective? Like, okay, yeah, you can keep your run of the mill garden variety foul ball, but today there

might be a historic home run hit. So these are ours. We got dibs on these today. Could you do that? I don't know. I don't know what the legality of that might be, but maybe, maybe you could make it sort of selective the way that you have different pricing, depending on how appealing that game is. Maybe you could have different rules governing ball retrieval. Who knows. But like, what are you going to do? Search everyone as they leave the ballpark to your plane? Like it's just like a practical limitation to being, especially because they sell baseballs at the ballpark. And you'd be like, this is a, what a, prove to me that I didn't bring it in here to get signed. Prove that I didn't

buy it at the shop and then throw the receipt away. Who keeps paper? You know? Probably don't even give, probably don't even give them paper. You know, a lot of ballparks, there's just no paper. Yeah. It might be tough to enforce. I still stand by what we said about the ball not being that memorable a memento. Cause I saw a picture of the Otani 50-50 ball on display flanked by four security guards in suits. And it just, it didn't really look like something

I would go out of my way to see because again, Shohei Otani, he never actually touched that ball. His bat did for a split second, but that was the extent of his connection to that ball. He had really the same connection to hundreds of balls over the course of even a single season. It just so happened that that was the one that was meaningful and a momentous milestone and I guess you could say that makes it special but to me I think it makes it less special because his connection to that was equally transitory, equally fleeting, equally impersonal. So I don't know what I would do like I just wouldn't go out of my way to see that

baseball because ultimately it just looks like a baseball. I agree with know what I would do. Like I just wouldn't go out of my way to see that baseball. Cause ultimately it just looks like a baseball. There's no. I agree with you. I just, I stand there all the time and look at like the certified memorabilia at all the ballparks I go to. And I'm like, that's cool. And then I walk away. Like I think to myself in my head, like,

what would I do with that? Nothing. And then move on. I just think maybe as a society, like, what would I do with that? Nothing, and then move on. I just think maybe as a society, like, you know, a lot of people like to take pictures and hold up their phones and record video. It's like, to me, the biggest memory is the memory itself. Like, wow, that was awesome.

There's no baseball or cleat or base or bat or jersey that's going to make me feel any better about that moment I saw. But there are collectors out there, and I don't want to, you know, diminish collecting, or Jersey that's going to make me feel any better about that moment I saw. But there are collectors out there and I don't want to, you know, diminish collecting, but it's not for me, that's for sure. Yeah, I understand wanting to, you know, stuff you can put up on the wall I get more, right? Like they sell lineup cards, you could, I don't know, maybe you

want to have something on your office wall or what have you. You have a den, you know, you have a den and you want it to be like sporty. You're like, oh, this is the place that the stuff that really feels like it should be more for children, but I'm an adult and I still like it. That's where that goes. It goes in the den. Right. That's where I am at right now. I'm in my den, my office, and it's surrounded by Right. Like that's where I am at right now. I'm in my den, my office, and it's surrounded by sports stuff. Like there's your 2019 St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup championship banner, like a mini one.

And like that's neat, but like, I don't need the one that's in the rafters at the arena. Right. Right. And so like I get, I get that. And we all like to have our little artifacts and mementos that remind us of things, but I'm with you. I'm able to get to an event and find the moment where I want to take a picture so that I can have a picture from the thing.

And then I don't need to sit there and try to record the home run. Are you going to watch it back? This is the part that I never- Right. I'm like, have you ever rewatched video you've taken at a concert? And again, you know, people relate to this stuff differently. So I, I'm sounding more judgmental of it than I really mean to. Cause as long as you're not impeding other people's ability to watch the

thing and have the actual like embodied in-person memory, then like if that's what you want on your phone, that's your business. But it doesn't resonate with me as like an impulse because I'm like, I took my picture, I was here and now I am done doing that, you know? I would like to be present. And if it's a concert, you usually are impeding someone's view. That's just the nature of concerts, unless it's the worst. Stadium seating or something. This is almost like a Patreon bonus pod, low stakes

rant territory. But I'd rather have someone filming incessantly than speaking incessantly, which is just kind of a constant bugaboo of mine at concerts. You're at the concert to listen to the artists. Why would you want to scream over the music? Just talk later, enjoy the music while you're there. I've never totally understood that. Are you anti like singing along or like talking about what they had for lunch while the concert's going on? Yeah, if you-

I'm a little anti singing along. I'm sorry. Maybe not the top of your lungs. If you're, you know're quietly under your breath, like sometimes it's hard not to if you're into it. And sometimes if everyone's singing along, that can enhance the experience. And obviously sometimes, I think so,

musicians will play into that, right? They'll just let you take a verse. They'll point their mic at the crowd. That can be fun. It's like, oh, you all know this song. It's almost a flex. It's like, I'll just step you take a verse. They'll point their mic at the crowd. That can be fun. It's like, oh, you all know this song. It's almost a flex. It's like, I'll just step away from my microphone because you all have my beautiful lyrics memorized.

That can be kind of cool. But yeah, I don't want to hear you belting necessarily. I didn't pay tickets to hear you perform. So if your voice is overshadowing that of the artists I have come to see, then that is excessive. If your voice is overshadowing that of the artists I have come to see, then that is excessive. But I guess I'd rather have that than just, I've heard the most mundane conversations at the highest volume levels in the midst of a concert.

And I'm just always so flummoxed. It does take me out of the experience. And the pictures and the filming, yeah, I might snap a photo or something that I probably will never look at again. But the constant filming throughout an entire song or something, I just don't get that. Like if you want to maybe, you know, if you're like video chatting with a friend or family member who's not, yeah, I mean, maybe briefly just to like give them a taste

of the experience or something. But if you're actually filming it for like to preserve it for posterity, it's just, it's not good. Like it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna sound good. It's not gonna sound good. No, and your memory won't be perfect either. Right.

That's my problem with it is exactly that. I'm like, I honestly, I'm kind of in my own world at concerts or sporting events. So unless it's like right in front of my face and blocking my view, it doesn't really bother me per se. But the one that does is the fireworks. Like, why are you filming fire? You're never going back and watching those fireworks

on your phone, right? Yeah, fireworks on video. Just like, I don't know what percent of the enjoyment that you get in person from fireworks is preserved via video. Like the smallest possible percent, right? If we're talking about a phone video, right? If it's some sort of like, you know, big screen, high def, ultra well produced, set to a soundtrack kind of video, fine. And that's always the thing in my mind. If someone else, dozens of other people are probably going to be filming this thing that you're filming.

Is your view of it better than everyone else's? You can go on YouTube later and eight other people will have uploaded their crappy video of this thing. And hopefully maybe in many cases, the band is recording it, or if it's a baseball game, like there is an actual broadcast recording. Granted, those things are like disappearing ink and you know, they self-destruct after a few years on an LBTV and we can never access them again. So in that sense, okay, preserve it for the records. But there's usually a more professional looking, better angle of the thing that you are filming.

And unless it really enhances your recall of the event to look at this grainy, tinny video and say, yes, I was there. I just, I don't get it. Yeah. Be in the moment. I do think some of this like is, is a generational thing. Although, you know, there are all kinds of people at all kinds of ages, so I don't want to overgeneralize, but it does seem like there is a generational aspect to it. Maybe the youth who listen to the pod are like, what are you guys talking about? Of course you film a concert. That's how you show that you were there, right?

We're just totally aging ourselves here is what you're saying. Well, and I'm sure there are exceptions to that. There are older folks who record stuff and there are younger folks who issue doing it. Everybody is living their lives, but I do wonder if some of it is a generational thing. This is why we need ticket stubs still to prove you were there. I think a lot of it is, I was there, see? Look at it.

I was there and we don't have ticket stubs anymore. Great insight. And that's not entirely true because a lot of people, I saw bands are like selling ticket stubs for like an extra a hundred dollars. Yes, right. They're like collectible commemorative ticket stubs that you didn't actually use to get in, but they're just kind of mementos of the event, right?

Which, you know, I guess they're worse ways to remember these things. But yes, I guess if you're attending the event for Clout, and that's a big part of why you're there, so that you can brag about being there, then you have to document and broadcast. But anyway, I guess this is enough shaking our fists at Cloud.

Yeah, but I have to do it a little bit longer because there is one instance that I found to be just truly, I was like, but why, but why though? This year got to see King Giz play The Gorge, which was very cool. And King Giz has been doing their entire tour streaming. Like you can just go and stream their show every night if you want. And there were people filming and I was like, but why though? They're doing it.

They're doing it. They're doing it for you better. They're doing it for you better with like the guy on stage getting in there. What are you, but why? Take your picture, like take your picture at the Gorge, because the Gorge is amazing and so beautiful and you're just like, how is this a concert venue? It makes no sense. But then B, but why?

It's, they're doing it. What is happening right now? Why? Also, why was the beer so expensive? It was so many dollars. Anyway, that's my, okay, I'll be done being old now. Back to baseball. Here's a question from Jake,

who describes himself as a friend from up North. And Jake says, I've had a quick look, but can't find it and I'm mildly confident you'll wanna talk about Roki Sasaki. Oh yes, we've already devoted an episode to him. Question is, when can an international free agent sign an extension? So the bonus pool is limited, but what's to stop a team from telling Sasaki that if he chooses their team, they'll sign a 10 year, $200 million contract?

I'm pretty sure we fielded this kind of question back when Otani came over because people were wondering about this then as well, some sort of end around, some way to skirt the system. And people always speculate about this sort of thing. As far as I know, there's not a hard and fast rule about this exactly. But as I think we've said in the past, if a team handed out a massive extension soon after signing an international free agent to some kind of constrained contract, then I think the attempt to circumvent the system's constraints would be painfully obvious and the contract would almost certainly be voided immediately.

Right? Like I think it would be pretty clear to everyone what you were doing. And if you had to come up with some sort of rule of thumb, I guess you could say any extension dispensed before the end of the International Free Agents first full season in MLB, I would say, would be pretty heavily scrutinized. If they don't even have one full season in the books, then you're going to say that it just hasn't been long enough, I would think. And probably the league would come down pretty harshly on that. So I don't know if that would be the bright line or because if they've gotten a year in, presumably at that point, you know enough

more than you did when they signed. I don't know exactly when the extension embargo would be lifted, but if they've played a full season, maybe if a year has passed and you've learned a lot more about that player and they've learned a lot more about you and the league, maybe that would be kind of kosher at that point, but anything just in close proximity to the extension itself would just be a pretty obvious attempt to get around those spending constraints. Yeah.

I mean, like it's a funny thing because the, I mean, I guess with, with Zachy, there's like a little more question just because he's younger and you know, there's the injury stuff. But like when Otani was coming over, no one was confused about teams needing more information, right? People, the outlook on Otani wasn't cloudy. There was an artificial constraint on how much money he could be paid. And I think everyone, including the league, was pretty clear-eyed about it. So on some level, like it's very silly to say, oh, well, a year in, we know so much more. It's like, you do, you have an entire year's worth of data, sure, but ultimately this decision and the amount

he was being paid wasn't being constrained by a lack of information. Oh, Tani had his doubters, of course. He had his doubters, sure. His two-way doubters, his can he hit doubters. I mean, there were people out there. People remember the Articles and the Scouts, right? Sure. But there was a lot more clarity into the kind of player he was than say the other population

of players who was constrained by bonus pool restrictions, which is international amateurs, right? Yeah, that's true. And so in that respect, it's like sort of silly, but also like, yeah, if your player comes over and they've signed a deal and they win MVP and you give them, you know, a 10 year, $200 million extension, I think everyone's going to be like, yeah, that's fine. Like that's fair. The union's not going to be mad, yeah, that's fine. Like that's, that's fair. The union's not going to be mad, but also I don't know that teams actually are that

incentivized to do it until later into the process. Cause it's like, why you have that guy for six years, right? Unless they could somehow do something underhanded and get away with it and say, persuade a player to sign by slipping him some sort of secret contract under the table, which is what the system is designed to prevent. Yeah. That would be the only thing, right? You're worried about that happening under the table agreements, but I just think this is so rare, right? I don't think there has had any reason to have this put in play just because it's, we're talking about two instances that you can even think of this, right?

Unless that starts becoming more of a trend, I don't see where anything's going to change here. You know, who would have the most incentive to try to dissuade this, um, isn't even the league, it's the team posting the guy, right? The group that's going to be the most peeved if you say to Sasaki, hey, trust us, a year from now we're going to sign you to a $300 million extension. The group most peeved is going to be the Marines being like, excuse me, I was supposed to get a percentage of, you know what I mean?

So I think that that piece of it is a factor here too, where there is on the league's part, not only incentive to make teams adhere to their rules, although funny, like adhere to their rules in this space as it pertains to Sasaki, but not to the 16 year old who's had a verbal deal done for three years with the team, right? But they want to maintain the posting system. And if this is what teams are doing, it seems like it would cause issues for their relationship with NPB and the KBO and other foreign leagues if all of a sudden teams are doing, it seems like it would cause issues for their relationship with NPB and the KBO and other foreign leagues if all of a sudden teams are like,

no, we're gonna give all that money to you and Maureen, sorry, you're out of luck because that guy came over early. Here's a question from late September from Monty who says, and we have a little more information than Monty did at that time, pitcher Nick Martinez of the Reds closed his year with eight innings of one run baseball,

prompting an article on MLB.com speculating about whether he will opt out following the season. This caught my attention because as a Padres fan who wishes him well, I know after returning to MLB following four years in Japan as a largely unheralded swingman, he has now signed three multi-year contracts and it appears he will opt out of all three

following the first year. So 2022, he signed for four years with $25 million guaranteed. 2023, he signed for three years with $26 million guaranteed. And 2024, two years with $26 million guaranteed. So he's had either $25 or $26 million guaranteed, but for fewer and fewer years each year. So he's gone from four years to three years to two years.

And Monte said, aside from enjoying an older seemingly good dude revive his career and continually bet on himself and win, is there a precedent for a player opting out of a contract in three consecutive years? Less important question given his seeming fondness for about 25 million dollars guaranteed over a decreasing number of years Is a team obligated to just give him a one-year 25 million dollar deal so he can complete his cycle so subsequently Nick Martinez did decline his player option for the 2025 season, which was a $12 million deal. And I asked Jeff Euston of COTS contracts about this back in September before that happened. And Jeff said, I don't have a way to do a comprehensive search of opt-out decisions,

but I don't know of anyone who has done it three years in a row. He's now 34 and a Boris client, so it's not a bad strategy, especially for a guy who signed for 60,000 bucks as a college third baseman. I can't imagine a swing man will get $25 million or even a $21 million qualifying offer, but the Reds have surprised me before. And guess what?

They surprised him again. And maybe they surprise a bunch of people. You were somewhat surprised, right? That Nick Martinez received a qualifying offer from the Reds. So he did. He got that $21.05 million offer and we still don't know what the outcome of that will be, but I'm now rooting for him somehow to not accept the qualifying offer, to reject the qualifying offer, but to get a one-year deal for 25 or 26 million dollars guaranteed, which I guess is seemingly within the realm of possibility, right? Like if the Reds were willing to offer him a qualifying offer at 21, then he might have the option of getting another multi-year

deal and he might decide, actually, I want to complete the cycle. It's like, you know, player who stops at second to complete the cycle when he could go to third. That's what Nick Martinez could do here. Maybe he could forego another multi-year offer and take a one-year, 25 or $26 million deal, just so he could have the pleasing symmetry of having four consecutive opt-outs and four consecutive 25 or $26 million deals and opting out of all of them. I am rooting for this outcome. I mean, yeah, like maximize goofiness. It's in short supply right now. So we could use some like maximize goofiness. It's in short supply right now. So we could use some like harmless goofy.

Well, if anyone can think of any precedent for that many consecutive years of opting out, especially at that age for him to just keep getting sweeter and sweeter offers as he gets older, that's a pretty cool progression. So congrats to Nick Martinez. I don't mean this as any disrespect to Nick Martinez, but if I'm Nick Martinez, I think I'm just taking back.

Ben, I can't remember where Nick Martinez was receiving the qualifying offer ranked on the list of be surprised. I don't remember how much I primed you for that reaction. I think it was, yeah, your intonation changed significantly for that one, I think. Nick Martinez? But yeah, Nick Martinez, take your $21 million, sir. It's close enough if he ends up at one year and 20 plus million. It's close enough that it's almost satisfying the progression. I'll take it and maybe he will too. Okay, here's a question from Kyle. This was

also from late September. Again, it's been a while since we have had a full-fledged email show. KS. Can I interrupt you? The impulse I had to sing that terrible song in response to that, I can't tell if it's the cold or if I'm just at the end of my rope, but I wanted to go, been a while. It's a bad song. Sorry. CB. Thanks for refraining. KS. You're welcome. I mean, I didn't really. This is the, but I don't want to go. But I want to, it's bad song, sorry. Thanks for refraining. You're welcome. I mean, I didn't really, it was the thing. I didn't, ultimately I did it, you know. Kyle was watching Mariners Astros

and the Mariners broadcast just said they'd be home on Friday night to kick off the home stand against the A's. They only have one series at home though, before the regular season ends. This leads to my question, what's necessary for something to constitute a homestand? Can you have a one game homestand? Does it necessitate multiple opponents?

I did check the wiki, thank you Kyle, and the closest thing I saw was a question that looked at how teams performed in extended homestands, which were defined to be five games or longer. So perhaps I can already deduce your answers, but that was way back on episode 1723. So what constitutes a homestand? Is there a minimum number of series and or games to satisfy that condition? I think if you're home, it's a homestand. I've heard the term one game home stand. Have I not? Maybe not.

I've heard that in other sports. Let me phrase that. That's not a baseball thing. That's another sport thing. Like you're on the road, you come back for one game. It's a one game home stand. I guess baseball, I don't know. Can you have a three game home stand

or a two game home stand? I think so. I don't have a problem with that. For me to say a home stand, I would need it to be two games at least. I think I would need it to be at least two games. So you can have a one night stand, but you can't have a one night home stand. I mean, you can have whatever kind of stand you want. I'm just saying for me, it would be two games. I had more issue with the, what did it say? The

Wiki is a five game is an extended home stand to me. That's, that's not even really two series on average, right? That's a series and a half or a series and two thirds. That's not an extended home stand to me, extended home stands when you're home for like 10 days, in my opinion. Yeah, come on past us, get it together. Well, I just checked the Dixon baseball dictionary and it does agree with Meg's requirement.

The definition is a series of two or more consecutive games played at a team's home field against one or more visiting teams. So again, excluding the possibility of a one game home stand. So if you're just making up a game and it's just a single contest, then according to Meg and according to the Dixon baseball dictionary, not a homestand, but two or more. I probably still wouldn't call it a homestand. I almost feel like I wouldn't use the term homestand unless we're discussing multiple series. I think I would probably just say series unless it were multiple series. And maybe I would say, okay, technically, yeah, it's a homestand that counts, but I

don't know that I would actually refer to it that way. I would just say it's a home series. Yeah. A quick Google search brings me to the Collins dictionary, what says, a series of successive games played between the same two teams at one team's home ground. Home ground. Yeah, I guess I'm fine with this as kind of the technical dictionary definition, but also usage-wise. Or if I did say that was a homestand, I would almost certainly specify that it was a short homestand. It was like a minimum homestand, sort of.

Minimum inning, bring back that discussion. No more minimum. Yeah. It just doesn't feel like a satisfying homestand to me. That just feels like it should be a better part of a week at least. You should be at home for a while. You should get to- You should have to do laundry. Yeah. You should have to do laundry. You should have to unpack, like reacquaint yourself with

your surroundings, probably play multiple opponents, have multiple series. That to me is a home stand. Justified in buying milk. Yeah, right. If you drink milk, you know, if you're, I mean, some people don't, so maybe that's not, but feel justified in buying a perishable item, right? Cause you'd, if you're only home for two days, you're not getting new milk, you know, or maybe you get like one of the little half and halves, you know, the little ones. Yeah. You know how little half and halfs exist?

I felt so much less loopy when we started recording than I feel now. Just imagine how I'll feel next week after I've gotten my booster. Must be Craig's influence, I guess. I mean, he didn't get me sick. That's true. It's not his fault. We've never met, so if I did, I have no idea how that would have happened. I will say I am looking forward to Ben's deep dive

into the origin of the term homestand in the future though, because that's where my brain went. Like, well, how did that start? And now I want to know. Well, Dickson says that its origin is 1902. So it's been with us for a while, one way or another. All right. A couple other technical questions, maybe Paul, Patreon supporter says, question about career years after Mark Vientos homered against the Red Sox on September 3rd, this was the Mets radio call. Mark Vientos with his 22nd home run of the year.

That is another big swing by Mark Vientos having a career year. Those are the type of September swings the Mets need. I heard it and I laughed because come on. As of the third, this is September 3rd, Vientos had only appeared in around 170 total games. Career year to me has always implied a kind of hindsight perspective.

When you look back at this guy's career, this was the year. You can't identify a career year without having a good idea of the big picture. But I Googled Vientos in career year and was somewhat dismayed to get a lot of hits. Look, this is the definition from the Dixon baseball dictionary.

This is Paul citing that now, not me. The best season of a player's career, a season as statistically good as a particular player can expect to have during his playing years. Tom Verducci in 1996 noted that a career year occurs when a player far exceeds his well-established statistical norms. For example, Norm Cash in 1961. Statistical norm, Norm Cash. This was not remarked upon in this entry that this is a so-to-speak situation. No pun intended. Joe Charbonneau in 1980 and George Brett

in 1980. But lately there seems to be some definition creep, people using career year to just mean the best year of someone's career so far. There's even an MLB article from earlier this year that says Vientos worked his way up the minor league ladder before breaking out with a career year in the upper minors in 2021. Seriously? The term is meant to describe 2024 jerks in ProFar, not 2024 Jackson Merrill. So here's my question, when is the right time to even broach the idea of a career year of a player? How many years in the league? What age? This is Soto's seventh year, but the dude, as I heard once or maybe nine times on your podcast is 25, 26 now. Is this Soto's career

year? Seems premature. Also, if you go from 7 to 8 war, I don't know if that far exceeds the statistical baseline per Verducci's definition. Is it even worthwhile talking about career years with players of that stature? It feels a little bit like calling a great band a one-hit wonder. So, career years, what do we think? AMT – I think it does have to have a retrospective component to it. I think that to use it contemporaneously, a guy needs to have been in the league in a mostly full-time capacity for, puts finger to the wind, three seasons. If a guy is in his fourth season and he has a like an outstanding, potentially aberrant statistical year, you can say he's having a career year. Cause like you could have a guy who's having like, uh, puts up seven war in his rookie

season and then his career ends and you'd look back and you'd be like, and what proved to be a career year. And that's the way you, you know, you'd think about it that way. But I think that like, if you've been in the league a while, you can start talking about a career year contemporaneously. But you gotta, you need to accumulate a sense of baseline for a guy before you can do that. And I think I'm putting it at three.

I don't know if that's right, but that's my instinct is three. Maybe that's too stringent though. I might even go higher than that. Oh, higher. Oh, not stringent enough. What a loosey goosey gal I am. Yeah. If you want it to be super pedantic, you could say, well, we can't pronounce a year career until the career is over. And only at that point can we judge whether it was in fact a career year. Any other proclamation that this is a career year is premature because we have not yet seen the whole career. But I do not want to be super penantic about this particular point. Others,

yes, not this one though, but you can certainly say career year about a career in progress, but you have to be a veteran. And I guess that opens up another can of worms. What's a veteran? We may have done that one. Maybe you have to have enough service time to qualify for free agency. Maybe that's too- That feels too stringent. Yeah, maybe that's too much. It's almost like- It's like porn. I don't know exactly where it is, but I know that it's past where Mark Vientos is.

I feel confident in saying that this is an improper application of the phrase career year. Yeah. It can't be a breakout year. We have a term for that. It can't be when you're just on the verge of the minors having your best minor league season. It can't even be this is really Vientos's first full season. It wasn't even quite a full season. And so it's the best year of his career, clearly so far, but it's only his third big league season, the previous two were partial, and he's only

24 this year. He just hasn't had enough of a career for career year to be meaningful. You could just call it a breakout. But career year, that just seems like a misapplication. Now if you wanted to say this year was once Soto's career year, I guess you could argue about whether that's even true. It also seems like maybe there does need to be more of an improvement upon your previous best season to really declare it a career year. Does there have to be some threshold of improvement? Because if you're just a couple points of WRC plus better if you're half a war more valuable than you were

before. Is that a career year? Technically, maybe, but again, probably not a situation where I would invoke that term. What say you, Craig? I think context has a lot to do with this. I think it's silly to call it a career year for Vientos, but I think the context behind that is maybe how he was seen before coming into this year, right? Like he wasn't even a top prospect in the Mets system, right? He was hovering around, I don't know, four, five, six, something around there.

So for him, and he had a really good season. So it's shocking, right? And I think that's why it's like, oh, he's having a career year. See, we weren't wrong about our rankings. This guy's playing over his skis. Right. So I think in that context, it has to do with where that's coming from. But I think looking backwards, if Mark Vientos has two really bad seasons, we will look back

and say, well, yeah, that was his career year. Right. So I think it really matters whether you're projecting forward or looking backwards. has two really bad seasons, we will look back and say, well, yeah, that was his career year, right? So I think it really matters whether you're projecting forward or looking backwards. I don't think one season or two seasons is enough to use the term career year at all. I think that's just more expectation and or going above expectation. But yeah, in context, Juan Soto is tough, right? He's good almost every year.

It's hard to point at a year and be like, well, that was his career year. He's just had a great career, right? Whereas if you have someone come up early, have a good year and falls off or comes up and is just kind of okay, has a really good year, and then is just kind of okay, then you can really point to career year,

but that takes time. So I think depending on the case, you really need four or five years before you could point to a career year. And then when you're talking about great players, I mean, it's really hard. To me, it has to be a standout when you use that term. There has to be some kind of outlier year where that was it. Yeah. Or you had to have struggled to establish yourself in a way that Juan Soto never did. He was great from the beginning. It was clear that he was just going to have a heck of a career in year one. Vientos, now he struggled a little bit in small samples in his first couple tastes of the big leagues. So yes, there was more doubt maybe that he would have a year as productive as this one, but yeah, it's still, it's just too soon.

So it's definitely closer to breakout year than career year in my opinion. Yeah. Breakout would be a good way to describe it, particularly because of the prospect context that you described, right? Right. And it could be both, right? This could be his breakout year. He has two, three bad seasons after this. Well, it was his career. The breakout year became the career year, but I think right now breakout applies more to him than career. Yes, I think it's more descriptive, definitely. Okay. Last one. This comes from Tom, who includes a clip, which which I will play but this was from September. It was a

Phillies Brewers game and Carlos Estevez was facing Willie Adamus and the broadcaster said And so the question from Tom is, can you be just O for anything? And Tom says, I feel like being just X for X has to have a non-zero number to start. I agree. Yeah, I completely agree. Also agree. Okay. It's unanimous.

No dissenting opinions there. It may have been just a misspeak. I don't know. Yeah. I've done play by play before. I guarantee you, I know what that was. It was, man, in his head, he's thinking, well, he hasn't been very productive. He's just, and then looks down, we'll pretend. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yes. For sure. Yeah. You have to be on the board to be just, otherwise it's just like undefined or something. Like you can't be, cause so that's nothing. You've got nothing. It's not even just suggest that you did something, right? Like you made some small contribution at least.

Oh, for 10 at the plate, you've done nothing. I mean, who knows? Maybe some of those O's were productive outs, but hit wise, you've done nothing. I mean, who knows? Maybe some of those O's were productive outs, but hit wise, you've done nothing. You're not on the board. Now I will say you could have said just 0 for 10 with a walk or something like that, that would have made more sense, but just 0 for 10, no. Yeah.

I guess that might be permissible, but I don't like it. It wouldn't be the way that I would. It feels like it's putting the wrong emphasis on it, you know? Yeah. Okay. No dissenting opinions on that one. We have spoken. Well, Craig, you have spoken. We have spoken to you. It has been a pleasure for us, hopefully for you as well. And I do not smoke cigars or anything for that matter, so I cannot partake of your wares, but I am happy to partake of your bonus indirectly and also of the pleasure of your company on this Patreon pod. So hope you feel like you got your money's worth and glad you found

us and have followed us for all these years and that you could come on today. Well, I appreciate it. Can I give some shout outs? Of course. Of course. Of course, yeah. Before I do that, I was thinking about making a joke. It's just like at this point, and my appearance was brought to you by random gambling sites,

but just to circumvent the rules, but no, gambling's bad, gambling's stupid. The reason why it's such a big business is because they win, so people don't do it. I feel like I'm speaking to a agreeable crowd here. So I want to shout out a really really cool organization they're called there's an event every year in st. Paul, Minnesota called cigars and baseball and It's an awesome event. It's benefits a charity called the miracle league which provides equipment and field time for

kids who normally wouldn't be able to and field time for kids who normally wouldn't be able to experience or play the game of baseball. The folks at CHS Field in St. Paul, the home of the St. Paul Saints, generously, and I mean generously, Minnesota is not a smoking-friendly state. They generously open their doors to allow smoking at the event. One day a year, some townie clubs come and play on the field, and it's a One day a year, some townie clubs come and play on the field and it's a, you know, a multi-vendor event. There's a bunch of different cigar companies and, you know, alcohol companies and local restaurants and you buy your ticket, you get a bunch of coupon books, you walk around, you get a bunch of cool stuff and it goes to a really awesome charity and they sell

it every year so they don't need me on here talking about it, but it's literally one of the coolest events I've ever been a part of and it's a great charity, goes to a good cause, so shout out to the St. Paul Saints and everything they do for cigars and baseball that benefits the Miracle League because it is just a wonderful event and any baseball fan would, whether you smoke cigars or not, it's just a great experience to be in a ballpark at that level. It's just, you know, super cool. Um, it's very lax. Like last year, I don't think I was supposed to, but I went down and played

catch with a couple of the guys on the townie team and it was, it was, it's just great experience and it's a lot of fun. We're all baseball nerds here. So if you play dynasty league baseball online, anybody give me a shout out on, uh, discord or I am on blue Sky. Craig not Greg is my name there. So find me and I'd love to connect with other Effectively the Wild players. So yeah, it was a blast guys. I really appreciate this. Like I said, it feels like I know you very well and this is the first time you've ever spoken to me. So I appreciate the, a little over an hour

to come in and hang out for a little bit. Yeah, our pleasure. It does seem like, demographically speaking, baseball and cigars probably go together, maybe in terms of people who partake of both. So yeah, it's a really cool event. And honestly, there's a lot of cigar fans there. There's a lot of baseball fans there. Not all of them are the same. It's a really unique and fun experience. And quite honestly, I wish it was bigger than it is in the sense that it can hold a lot more people. I mean, obviously,

they can only get so many donations and stuff. So that's why they have to cap the tickets, but bigger in the sense that I wish it happened in other areas because it is just a wonderful event. Tom Whaley, who is the, I believe, EVP of the St. Paul Saints. You know, he's a big cigar guy and, uh, it takes me back in time, right? Like I could never have a cigar in a baseball stadium in my life, but like that night I can and it's for charity and it's awesome. Well, have a cigar. You're going to go far. We will miss you.

Thank you, Craig. Appreciate it guys. Thank you very much. All right. That will do it for today. Somehow I refrained from saying close, but no cigar to Craig at any point in that conversation. Incredible restraint on my part. Also we talked last time about Derek Lee and how he had an incredible season in 2005 but

somehow had only 107 RBI. It turned out largely to be because the Cubs had batted pretty horrible hitters ahead of him in a very old school pre-sabermetric enlightenment way. Well, I tend to think I have great recall of Russell Carlton research. pretty horrible hitters ahead of him in a very old school pre-sabermetric enlightenment way. Well I tend to think I have great recall of Russell Carlton research. I pride myself on my Russell recall. But my colleague and Pal at the Ringer, Zach Cramm, outdid me after he heard that conversation we had about Lee last time.

He remembered a series Russell did at Baseball Prospectus in 2017 where he spent a whole season as a manager of the 2005 Cubs, a simulated season as the Sabre manager of the 05 Cubs in Out of the Park Baseball. And at the end of that simulated season, Russell's 2005 Cubs won 94 games and made the playoffs, whereas the actual 2005 Cubs won 79 games and did not make the playoffs. That's a 15-win improvement. And Russell concluded that he probably didn't deserve credit for those 15 wins, that his 2005 Cubs were probably just luckier than the real ones.

But he said he thought there were a few areas where he made a difference. And the first one was, and I quote, I hit Derek Lee second in my lineup, as opposed to third or lower, and didn't fall prey to the tyranny of putting Corey Patterson in the leadoff spot because he's fast. So I'm just going to choose to believe that that made the entire 15-win difference. It definitely didn't. But he said he made a commitment before the year began that he would use Derrick Lee in the second spot in the lineup because that's where the best hitter on the team should hit. And he kept to that promise the entire season. Russell had Nomar batting

leadoff. Of course, the real Nomar, Shocker, played 62 games that season. I don't think Russell had the full season stats of the players on his OOTP team. I'm guessing simulated Lee had a worse season overall than the real one, but he probably had a better rate of runs batted in. You can support the podcast like Craig by going to Patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners who have signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get themselves access to some perks.

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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. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments and intro and outro themes 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 groups slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page at Fan Graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today.

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back to talk to you next week. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take, hot and hotter, entwining and abutting. Watch them climb, dig a mountain.

Nothing's about nothing. Every stitch, wet with sweat, breaking balls back, tore me on effectively Wow, that can ya not be horny? When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny? Eee!