Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2272: Leagues of Their Own

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley react to the news that Roki Sasaki is signing with the Dodgers (shocker!), breaking down how the posting process played out, the Dodgers’ ridiculous rotation, whether L.A.’s talent-acquisition advantage is good or bad for baseball, the runners-up for Roki, and more. Then they explore how softball and baseball are joining […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2272 of Effectively Wild, a fan grass baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulia, as and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer Well, you delivered that intro in such practiced fashion. The way that you said 2272, it almost sounded as if you had done this specific intro before, but that can't have happened. This is the first time we have talked today.

Fancy meeting you here. This is take two of the intro to Effectively Wild episode 2272. The highlights of the original intro, which maybe I'll send out as an outtake to our Patreon supporters, included us predicting that Roki Sasaki would sign immediately after we recorded the intro to the episode lamenting that that would happen, but residing ourselves to that fact because we had waited as long as we thought we reasonably could. We also discussed the Blue Jays. We discussed the fact that we hoped that they weren't getting their hopes up too high, their poor fans who've been through so much.

You wavered very briefly on whether Roki Sasaki actually would sign. Why would you? Blowing up your spot here. I was going to get away with that. It's true. No one would have known, except maybe our Patreon people. The upshot is that we knew well what we were doing, that Roki Sasaki would spoil our best laid plans, but at least he signed early enough that we could actually re-record

before it was too late to do that on Friday. So thanks Sasaki for that at least. Roki Sasaki announced he broke the news himself. He got the scoop on Instagram that he has signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Who could have foreseen it? Who could have predicted this? I'd like to point out that I spent time when we were announcing, announcing makes it sound like we broke it, but when we were discussing Otani's contract and then I wavered and then I bemoaned my wavering and then the Blue Jays traded for $2 million in pool space and I was like, I don't know, maybe he will end up a Blue Jay. No, it was as-

At least you got Miles Straw Blue Jays fans. Oh man, I feel so bad for them. I really feel so bad for them. They've been a, as I said once before today, they've been a handy trading partner for the guardians who have used them to dump lots of salary in multiple trades so far. And we knew that when the Blue Jays made that trade to acquire bonus pool space, it didn't necessarily portend anything, but they must have thought they were still in it at that point, unless they just really liked Miles Straw. Seems unlikely. Sorry, Miles. So presumably the decision actually did come down to the wire or at least the communication

of the decision. But after all of that, he ended up with the team that everyone thought he was going to end up with in the first place. Yeah. And by everyone, you mostly mean me, right? You just mostly mean me, Meg. Yeah. You were the lone voice in the wilderness saying, you know what?

I could see Roki Sasaki signing with the Dodgers and everyone said, what are you on Meg? How could you come to that conclusion? And you persisted. You held strong. Yeah, I did. I'd like to point out that at this precise juncture, wow, the Dodgers rotation has Blake Snow, Yamamoto, Glasnow, Tony Gonsolin, Roki Sasaki, Dustin May, and I don't know if you've heard of this guy Shohei Otani? Yeah. He sometimes pitches. I do wonder, leave it to me to, look, we've handed disappointing news to Blue Jays fans. I mean, I guess technically Rokey Sasaki did that, but they've had to take their lumps,

so leave it to me to find a way to try to bring the Dodger crowd down. I do wonder if this means that Clayton Kershaw is done being a Dodger. Just because it's like, how many guys can you really fit? I know. I kind of doubt it. I think they'll make room for him. I think that they will too. They're probably just waiting until they can put him directly on the IAL because they're

just running out of spots on the 40 man roster because they have all of the good players. So if they wait a little longer that they could sign him and IL him immediately, I believe, and then they would not have to DFA anyone because they're already DFAing former top prospects left and right.

Just, you want Gavin Lux? We just don't have room for Gavin Lux anymore. I know he was one of our better hitters late last season and lots of teams would probably be happy to have him starting, but you know, we just need to clear some roster room. So you can take Lux, you can take Kartaya here. You know, we just can't contain the multitudes of talent

that we have on this roster anymore. So Shouhi Otani does not currently fit contain the multitudes of talent that we have on this roster anymore. So Shoei Otani does not currently fit onto the projected Dodger starting rotation at Roster Resource because I guess it only goes six deep or I don't know, maybe Jason could make it as deep as he wants, but. I think it's because he is not anticipated to be ready to pitch by opening for the first for the first series Yeah, and this is the projected opening day roster You'll know that Otani is on there as the designated hitter But I think because of what we have heard about his availability to pitch in the early going. That's why he's not on there But wow, Zer's, you know, it makes. Yeah. I, I remember when I was a kid, there was a headline, I don't know if it was the

New York post or what, but one of the tabloids in New York when the Yankees had made a bunch of pitching moves and I forget whether it was like four aces, the headline blared and it was, I don't know if it was David Cohn and David Wells and Andy Pettit or Hideki Arabu maybe was in there, it didn't know if it was David Cohn and David Wells and Andy Pettit or Hedekia Rabu maybe was in there, it didn't quite work out that way. Or maybe it was, El Duque might've been part of that. And I remember pinning that to my wall or taping that to my wall because I just thought, wow, look at all these aces that my Yankees have.

And that rotation pales in comparison to what the Dodgers have right now. I know they were planning to have a six starter rotation regardless, but they almost have to now, not even because of injury concerns or to arrest anyone, but just because you can't contain the number of top of the rotation starters that they have in a five-man rotation because it's just now Yamamoto, Glasnow, Sasaki, Otani at some point, Gonsolin, May, presumably Kershaw. Let's add him in there theoretically at some point. And then, of course, they still have most of a rotation on the IL, the recovering Tommy John guys.

And then they have various AAA types who were pretty much more or less major league ready and could probably be in someone else's rotation. So they basically have two rotations, not counting the rotation that's on the injured list right now. So they may be the exception to the rule of you can never have enough pitching, except for the fact that they are usually the team that proves the rule because lots of people are already making jokes, cracking jokes about how the Dodgers will have to be trading for innings come the trade deadline. And that is quite possible, but this is just

preposterous, this collection of arms. They had the highest projected starting pitcher war, according to fan crafts, before they signed Roki Sasaki. So now it's just gilding the lily. It's just an absolute embarrassment of riches, literal and figurative. LS. And to aid in the signing of those riches, a friend of the pod, Kiley McDaniel, reporting that they have traded Dylan Campbell to the Phillies for international bonus pool space, presumably to help secure Sasaki. I have a couple of thoughts here, the first of which is, and workshop this with me, I recall a time not too long ago when a man stood in front of a large scrum in Dallas

and said that this young phenom, this bright young man was open to the concept of smaller market teams. And so do we say that he is the Joel who cried wolf? Is that? Yeah. I think that's pretty good actually. I think I'm proud of that one. I'm like, that little pun is, that's a cupcake and I'm licking it to lay claim to it for later. So it's a slant rhyme maybe, I guess. You know, it's not quite, but I'll allow it. I like it very much.

I will say that as preposterous as it would be to posit the Dodgers as a small market team and as large of a, and I'm gonna do a big swear here, Shane, clusterfuck as Camelback Ranch is gonna be in a couple of weeks. They are in a lot of ways a perfect destination because while I think people are a little rude to be getting their jokes off about the potential for injury in that rotation. And while I don't think that

all of these guys are going to be available at the same time, you know, separate and distinct from whatever roster limitations the Dodgers may have, although I remain convinced that they have special dispensation from the commissioner's office. We used to say that about the Padres and now we say it about the Dodgers may have, although I remain convinced that they have special dispensation from the commissioner's office. We used to say that about the Padres and now we say it about the Dodgers. Man, AJ must be furious. Anyway, he is still a very young guy, famously. He is a guy who, while very talented and I think going to be a tremendous boon to that rotation, like is likely to have some period of adjustment as he comes to the US and gets used to, you know, a different cadence in

his schedule as he and the Dodgers probably do some work to try to really maximize that fastball. And so being able to slot into a group that was, you know, sort of a six man rotation curious anyway, it's probably a really good fit, even though by no stretch, small market, and certainly not one that is likely to remove him from the spotlight. Now, how sincere a desire that was, I don't know. Again, the Joel who cried wolf. Yeah. It was a caveat. He said, oh, you know, I don't know exactly what he,

he was just trying to convince people that it wasn't a done deal. And so we could take him at his word and say, well, it was a legitimate process and other teams had their shot and he visited and they made their presentations. I'm sure there are plenty of teams out there that are thinking this was just a dog and pony show.

Why did you make me go through the motions and jump through these hoops? If you wanted to sign with the Dodgers, you could have just done that. And that's the thing. He didn't really have a strong incentive to pretend that he didn't want to sign with the Dodgers because it was his prerogative to sign with the Dodgers. If he wanted to, he was an international free agent. He could have just said, yeah, I want to go to the Dodgers. He didn't even have to entertain all of these other offers.

So what is the motivation for him? Now Wolf was keen to assert and establish that there was no handshake deal or anything. There was no secret deal done with the Dodgers. And again, there didn't need to be a secret deal because he's on the open market. He can just sign with the Dodgers if he wanted to, right? So I want to just give him credit for sincerely entering into this exercise and not just wasting everyone's time and breaking Blue Jays fans hearts once more. And just, hey, the Dodgers made the best pitch for the obvious reasons that they could. Because otherwise, what would be the point?

Is it just that he didn't want to look like he had his mind made up before it started? I feel like people would be less mad at him maybe if he had just said from the start, yeah, I want to go just to join the rest of my Samurai Japan teammates here the entire top of the rotation of that team and play with the best team that just won the World Series and has lots of money and not only in Yamamoto and everything, people wouldn't have been thrilled, but I think they would have understood. Whereas now people are assuming, rightly or wrongly, that this was all just pantomime and he never really had sincere interest in anyone else. And I certainly see why you could come to that conclusion, but I do question

what his motivation for putting on that show would be. So I want to be clear. I suspect that at least in, in some regard, as it pertains to some other teams that were not the Dodgers, that this process was conducted in the interest of really finding the correct fit for Roki Sasaki. So I might be having a little fun at Joel Wolfe's expense. This must have been a very strange negotiation for an agent because on the one hand, you have potentially many more suitors than you would typically have when you are representing a player of this caliber because of the bonus pool restrictions.

There just were, you know, there wasn't a team in Major League Baseball that couldn't afford Sasaki. That doesn't mean that everyone had the available pool space. It doesn't mean that there weren't, you know, deals that would have had to be done and get done in order for him to sign with teams that had committed a larger share of their international bonus pool or had more international amateurs that they liked and were keen to retain. But this was in a, whatever the final dollar amount ends up being, this was an achievable

amount of money for literally anyone, any team in baseball. So in that respect, you have maximal leverage, but you also have like not really meaningful leverage because you are capped at what that total can be. So you, an agent cannot extract maximum present value for your client because the maximum is like going to be less than $10 million, but you can, um, and I'm sure he did take into consideration a number of other things that make you confident that this young man is going to earn a great deal, more money over the life of his deal and over the life of future deals than he would other places.

And so I don't think that that took every market out of the running, but I think the, the notion that even caveated as many teams as his comments suggested were actually meaningfully in the running, probably overstated. But like, you know, I have no reason to believe that he wasn't considering some other teams besides the Dodgers.

I'm sure he did look at Toronto. If he had, you know, presumably, unless there were shenanigans that we're not aware of, which I guess we have to leave open the possibility have taken place, but it doesn't seem like that would be true. And they'd still let him sign with LA. If the question was one of, do I see anything about the Dodgers organization that makes me say, no, that's actually not a good fit. Um, he would have just signed in the last international period. I'm sure that major league baseball, given their druthers would have rather he done that because while it seems as if most of the true international amateurs who were pool committed to the Dodgers and have since moved on to

other organizations in anticipation of this being a potential outcome of this whole circus have gotten more money than they were originally committed. That was not a far gone conclusion and it could have been really nasty, right? And I guess, you know, in theory it could be, although their top three guys have already moved on to other orgs. So that seems unlikely at this point. Yeah. If you wanted to put on your tin foil hat, I guess you could say, okay, maybe the Dodgers knew that he wanted to be a Dodger and they wanted him to be a Dodger. And they said, make it look good. Make it look like other teams were in

the running. Put this smoke screen up because people are going to be pissed at us as it is because we just keep getting too many good players. And so let's at least make it look like other teams had a chance. I don't think they would care about that. I really don't think that they would care about that. No, probably not. Like, I don't know. If I turn the Dodgers, I'm like, come at me. Like, what are you going to do? You spend more money? Apparently not. Is it getting to the point where the anti-Dodgers drumbeat is so loud that

you do end up with some sort of more serious salary cap conversation or like the owners are in favor of that to begin with, but do the players even, players who are not on the Dodgers, do, does it weaken their resolve because they don't love the fact that all of these players are signing with the Dodgers and do the Dodgers just not want to paint a target on their backs even more than they already have by just winning so much and getting so many good players. And so let's keep a slightly lower profile. Let's make it look like other teams had a chance. I don't really buy this, but I guess that is one incentive, one motivation that you

could come up with if you don't think that Roki Sasaki just set out to torture the Toronto Bujis, which I do not because they've been through enough. And at least he actually did take a plane there. So I don't know whether that makes it better or worse, but there wasn't a phantom trip. He gave them a shot. And the thing that's probably frustrating for a Dodger's hater is that you can't cry salary cap in this case.

Well, you can and many people will and are, but the specific move here is not an example of the Dodgers just splashing their money around. It is indirectly in the sense that the fact that they have lots of money means they can afford good players, means they can always make the playoffs, they have a very favorable broadcast deal. All of these institutional advantages have contributed to their standing. But in this particular case, it's not that Roki Sasaki was swayed by money. And it might be more satisfying if it were money, because if you could just say, oh, those Dodgers, they're buying a championship, then you could console yourself with that.

And you can't even do that here. It's like, I don't know, if the richest kid in the class, like you resent just how huge a mansion he lives in and how many swimming pools he has. And if no one liked him and he was just a pill, then that might make you feel a little bit better, you know? Like he's got all the money in the world, but no one wants to be around him. He's probably unhappy on the inside. It's like if you have the richest kid in class who has all these advantages. And also he's just like cool and everyone wants to be around him.

Sure. Not even because he has lots of money, but just because he's like a fun guy or something. And that maybe makes it even more frustrating. And it is the money of course, but it's more than the money. It's the player development and it's the willingness to spend money, which they have more of than most teams, but they're also more willing to part with it than other teams that could part with more. You look at the Padres and they missed out here and that's rough, but they also haven't really done anything this off season that could convince Roki Sasaki, hey, we're being aggressive.

Now they've been plenty aggressive in the past, don't get me wrong, but they haven't made many moves and of course they've got ownership drama going on behind the scenes and everything. I guess you could say, hey, LA has been through a lot the past couple of weeks. Los Angeles needs a win. Can we begrudge the Angelino's Roki Sasaki? Absolutely not. Yes, I think pretty much everyone could actually.

But you know, sympathy points after all the fires and all the unrest and the destruction. Maybe you could find it in your heart to feel for them on that level at least. But the sports hatred is strong and it was strong already and this is only going to intensify that. And if only for that reason, I do kind of wish that he had signed with the Blue Jays just because another round of Dodgers discourse and are the Dodgers ruining the sport, which it's gotten to the point where that's a valid conversation to have. I'm not endorsing that position, but I'm not saying it is completely ridiculous to talk about that.

It is frustrating. I understand that. And it's frustrating because how can you beat the team that players just want to play for? What's the counter to that? LS WELCH Right. I think a couple of different things about this. I think, first of all, like, I think we'd all be well served in moments like this to have like a longer memory than we do because it wasn't all that long ago when the Dodgers and the way that their ownership group conducted itself around money was like the laughing stock of the sport. That's true. Right? Like that was, that was less than two decades ago.

What they are demonstrating in this moment is that you experience additional benefits as a result of a willingness to spend over and above the ability of money to secure the services of a particular player. And that doesn't mean that that matters the most every time. And it doesn't mean that other teams can't spend big money. Juan Soto is not a Dodger, right? He's a Met. So it's not as if they're the only sort of team on the block that can splash cash around.

They've done it- Yeah, Dodgers East got one, Soto. Right. Like they've done it more consistently of late and they've been able to get creative with the way that those deals are structured. And I think that the willingness of players and agents to sort of meet them part of the way when it comes to deferrals is an indication of the desirability of that destination. And so look, when you are willing to spend money, when you are willing to push your chips in, when you say it's not enough, we, we know what it,

we know how it feels to get to October, have no healthy pitching. We just want to try to ensure ourselves against that eventuality as as thoroughly as we can understanding that pitchers get hurt and that we happen to employ some guys who have been hurt before. I don't care. Let's go, let's go get those guys. Let's build a world class player dev organization. Let's be a place where players want to play. I think that it, again, it goes to show that, you know, money can help to secure talent, but it doesn't just end with the individual player that it helps you sign. It creates an understanding of your want as an organization. What do they want?

They want to go win a world series. Again, they are not satisfied with one. That doesn't mean that they're the only team in baseball that wants to win a world series. That doesn't mean that other teams don't spend money. It doesn't mean that it's the only way to build a successful organization. Clearly it's not.

We've seen other teams do it for less, but it is like a really good one. And I think that people can be mad about that. And I think that having like a really talented, really rich team that is going all in all the time and getting the guys and pissing you off, that's I think good for the sport. I think that baseball does well when we have a team like that, and it used to be the Yankees, and then they, you know, got afraid, and now it's the Dodgers, and soon to be the Mets. I think that it's good when we have a couple of these. And I understand

the broader concern about concentrating too much talent in one squad, but I have two counters to that. The first of which is these guys just get hurt all the goddamn time. And so like for every super team on opening day, you have a team that is out, you know, around earlier than you'd expect them to be in the playoffs because guys get hurt, guys get hurt, come back, but then underperform because they're not all the way better. Like, you know, there's that. The Dodgers are the best illustration of that. Not last year when they went all the way, but lots of other years when they didn't. When they didn't. They have essentially guaranteed themselves a division title. They've guaranteed themselves repeated chances at surviving the variability and randomness

of the playoffs. And they've just been there so many times that they have won about as many championships as you would expect given the odds entering each postseason, even though it didn't seem like at the time, some of those years. But that's the thing. They just keep giving themselves bites of the apple by being good enough, having enough depth that they can keep getting back there. There are no guarantees when they do get back there, but there aren't that many teams that even could claim that much that, well, we know we're going to be there. Right. And who knows what will happen after that. They have at least removed that uncertainty

from the equation and that is pretty important. Right. So the first counter is guys get hurt, teams do not look the same come the first day of the postseason as they do on opening day. This Dodgers team won't look the same on the first day of the postseason as it does on opening day. And there are ways in which that will be hopefully to their benefit, assuming that Otani comes back and looks like himself and is able to pitch the way he wants to. But who knows? Like one of these guys could blow out, a couple of these guys could blow out and then where are they going to be? And then the second piece is sort of returning to a point I made earlier, which is like,

I just think that we would be well served to have a longer memory in these moments because the team that is at the very pinnacle of its cycle that is, you know, the team to beat on opening day, that changes over time. And while this Dodgers team and this Dodgers ownership group seems committed to spending big, big money in pursuit of World Series, while they seem to be very happy with the way that they're arranging their payroll, with the marketing opportunities that having this particular collection of guys affords them, like guess what? I have devastating news for you, Ben, which is that like, Otani's not

going to be good forever, right? Betts isn't going to be good forever. Freddie Freeman's not going to be good forever. This team is super talented. And I think that the way that they have constructed their roster gives them a lot of opportunity to cycle guys in. They have a lot of minor league depth. They continue to have a good farm system, but like, you know, they're not the youngest team in baseball. No, they're not. But that's why it's even more of a dagger that they get Sasaki. Sure, but like, yeah. Because he does bring down the age.

You look at their lineup and everyone there is 30 or over 30 or about to be will be 30 at some point this season. But then they get Kim who's 26. And I don't know how great Kim will be, but that's youth. And then they get Yamamoto who's 26 and they can beat you any which way for a great free agent. They can outspend everyone and splurge on Yamamoto, or they can just persuade Sasaki to sign with them for not more money.

And so they get guys like that. And other than that, they've kind of traded everyone away because they just haven't had room to keep them to have Andy Pahas around. But you add a 23 year old like Sasaki, and it is entirely possible that Sasaki won't fulfill his potential and that he'll get hurt and that he'll never completely put it together. But that does kind of give you another lease on life. If you're trying to forecast when will the Dodgers stop winning? They just can't be a perpetual playoff machine, even with all their advantages, one of these years enough has to go wrong and maybe it will.

And nothing lasts forever. But if you can add what is essentially the best prospect in baseball, I wouldn't even really classify him as a prospect. He's an accomplished international major leaguer, but. He is a prospect. He doesn't qualify as a foreign pro. No, this is like an important distinction because this guy's going to be on our top 100 and Yamamoto wasn't last year. Right. Yeah. And so to just be able to add that guy, not by outspending everyone, but by just providing a more appealing destination, that's pretty demoralizing because you might say, okay, maybe

Freddie will look his age this year, but then you add Sasaki and suddenly you've got six, seven more years of team control of a guy who should in theory be in his prime and also just solidifying your popularity in Japan, which is already off the charts with this trio of starters you've got. It just sort of cements the self-sustaining championship kind of caliber core that you have here. Sure. And again, I don't want to say that that stuff doesn't matter, but here's a, here's another example of what I'm talking about. This Dodgers team famously has lost some very disappointing World Series. One of those World Series that they lost was to the Houston Astros. Houston Astros have been at least in the ALCS for what, like six of the last seven seasons or

something like that. Like they've just been this perpetual motion machine themselves. Now the wheels are starting to fall off a little bit. Now are they going to be favored to win the ALS? Probably, but that's because that division's weak and the rest of the people in it don't want to spend any fricking money. So my point is that we ascribe permanence to this level of competition. We say that these, that these teams are unbeatable, but they're not, they're not unbeatable forever.

Now the Dodgers are doing their damnedest to give themselves, as you said, as many bites at the apple as they possibly can get. And I find that very admirable. And so I don't want to like say that what they're doing isn't going to work. But I just, I do think we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that like baseball tends to have a couple of these every couple of decades and then they fade because guys get older, guys get hurt, or even for a team like the Dodgers, they ultimately get too expensive to keep all together. And then another team rises and like the next one will probably be the Mets, you know? So I want to hold two thoughts in my head simultaneously.

The first is that I find the argument that like what they're doing is somehow bad for the sport, fundamentally silly. I can entertain the argument. I understand the bullet points in the presentation, but ultimately I find that argument very silly. Having said that, I would encourage every fan base of every other team in baseball to concentrate their efforts on hating the Dodgers because that's fun it's fun for the sport it's good for the sport to have a villain it's good for the sport to have a heel and candidly after the last time when the reason we had the heel was because we had to talk about the banging scheme for the next 10 years I I would rather this. And that sounds like

the Dodgers might not get up to shenanigans. I don't know, man. Like you could tell me, maybe they're... I'm saying that not because I think they're shenanigans, but because invariably there will prove to be shenanigans and then people are going to be like, no. CB No, the dominance is on the level as far as we know. And it's just historic. I look back at the piece I wrote for Grantland 10 years ago this March, where I came up with the factors that could stop the seemingly unstoppable Los Angeles Dodgers.

And I tried to think of how will the wheels come off. That was 10 years ago. Right, yeah. And they are no less seemingly unstoppable than they were then. Forget about Windo. And I talked to Stan K unstoppable than they were then. Forget about window. And I talked to Stan Kastin at the time, their president and CEO, and I brought up the word window.

And he said, and I quote, know we're the Dodgers. We should be contending every year period. We're the Dodgers. He made good on that. Now I think it might be good for baseball if the Blue Jays could sign a free agent. One of these days also. You know, like- Yeah, but that's not the Dodgers' problem is my point. It's not the Dodgers' fault that they are so appealing a destination. No. And I don't know

what rule you change to say we want to share the wealth in terms of talent here. We don't want all the superstars concentrated on this one team, even if it's in a big market and it's high profile and it's a storied team. And maybe that redounds to the benefit of the sport in terms of eyeballs and attention and headlines and everything. But at a certain point, you do want a team like the BOOJays, a Canada's team to actually get one of the guys that they're going after. And it's tough because I don't know how you legislate against that, because again,

this is not a case of outspending everyone. Now you could change the international free agent rules maybe so that Roki Sasaki would be someone who would have to be assigned for many hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe you could reclassify him somehow, but then the Dodgers would just do that in a way. Like it's currently set up to try to combat the Dodgers would just do that. In a way, it's currently set up to try to combat the Dodgers. Yes, you've already- Yes. The system in which outspending everyone is the way to get a Roki Sasaki, that is the system

where the Dodgers are set up to dominate everyone. And so in theory, this should be more fair, which probably makes it all the more frustrating to the Dodger's opponents because no, now they just convince people through the sheer power of their personalities, not exactly that, but more or less. And that's the kind of thing that I don't know how you can combat exactly unless you tie the Dodger's hands in so many other ways that they're no longer as appealing a destination. But it would just be tough to do that. And generally we're against tying teams hands that want to spend. We want teams that are willing and able to spend to do so. And as you said,

you hope that that will encourage other teams to raise the stakes too. And maybe other teams are just thinking, well, what do we even do now? How can we compete? They just have a more compelling pitch because this is just one of the most successful teams ever. I know they have quote unquote only two world championships. And so some people might not put them up there with the greatest dynasties of all time, but given the caliber of competition, given how hard it is to be as good as they've been for this long.

Rob Maynes has documented this at baseball perspectives, that to find a many season stretch of regular season dominance, the likes of which the Dodgers are still on, you have to go back to many, like a century ago, like thirties, forties, like way unbalanced pre free agency. I mean, just, you know, pre integration in many cases, like when the Yankees could just buy everyone, like those are the kind of competition for this Dodgers dominance. And because it's this era regular season dominance, we have to judge teams by that because you can't really buy a championship. There's so many playoff rounds. There's so much randomness. So you do have to judge them to an extent by their regular season success.

And the Dodgers era adjusted is just about unsurpassed. So it's incredibly impressive and you can absolutely resent them and hate them and root against them. You do kind of have to hand it to them or at least acknowledge just how impressive it is that they have done this. And, and now it's just a self-sustaining machine. It's just until you get someone, and I would respect this frankly, if some big free agent said, I am not signing with the Dodgers because I don't want to be a front runner basically,

right? Like if some free agent said, I want to take a team to the top. I don't want to join a team that is perennially at the top. And I don't mean the way that Mike Trout just seems to have doomed himself to staying in Anaheim forever because he wants to win on hard mode or something. And maybe that's not the entire thing, but he doesn't seem to want to just jump ship to a team that's already good. It seems like it would be really meaningful for him if he could take that team to the top and I don't think he can. But I get that impulse. And so the next region who comes along and says, I don't want to be number nine on the superstar list here. I

actually either want to stand out or be the guy or have some of the spotlight or at least challenge myself because if you're on the Dodgers, you are kind of coasting through most of the season or at least you have the capacity to because you know you're going to get there and all that really is up in the air is what happens in October. LS Yeah. And look, I want to be clear about a couple of things because this is our second go. It's Friday. I thought I was done working. I think like a couple of things simultaneously and I want to make sure my position on various issues is clear. For one, I think Joel will have exaggerated the small market nature of

the appeal. But I think the process was a real process. I think that Sasaki wanted to understand what his various options were. Multiple sources have reported that his ultimate signing bonus with LA was $6.5 million, an amount that any team in baseball could have matched, again, barring, you know, other commitments, having to trade for pool space, et cetera, et cetera. So I am sure that given the realities of the finances here, he wanted to really genuinely understand what it would be like to play for different teams, what they had to offer from a player dev perspective, how they could help him to access other forms of income.

And at the end of all of that, it was the Los Angeles Dodgers who I'm sure were high on the list to begin with, but I, I imagine the process was a sincere one. This is an amount of money that any team could have spent, which makes making this about the money, at least the present money sort of silly. But I think the larger point that money begets money and that, um, the Dodgers deciding that they wanted to commit to Otani, to Yamamoto, to all of their other big either free agents or extensions probably played some part in his decision.

It is an incredibly good and compelling team. I don't think that there's a good way other than a salary cap, which I am fundamentally opposed to, to really say you can't do any of this stuff. But I don't know, like I feel bad for the Blue Jays. Um, but again, I just would invite everyone to like remember stuff because the other team, the other free agent rather, that they were like in on and then disappointed by it, like they were in the Juan Soto sweepstakes and they lost

out, they lost out to another big money, big market team. But like, does the Toronto tourism board need assistance or something? It's a very nice city. I don't know. Someone told them about the bagged milk and that scared them off at the last second. Who knows? But look, the Dodgers, they have a unique or at least uncommon advantage in their TV situation, I think. So I don't want to pretend that anyone could do what the Dodgers are doing. They absolutely have some unusual or singular advantages.

I think there are teams that could come closer to rivaling what the Dodgers are doing, but no team frankly can make a more persuasive, compelling pitch to a free agent that, hey, this is where you are most likely to win. Now, if there's a free agent who says, yeah, but it won't mean quite as much to me because this team is so stacked already that maybe it just won't feel as earned or who knows, but all the advantages, whether it's player development, unless you're scared off by the pitching injuries, whatever you want, the Dodgers can give you as much of, if not more than other teams can. And again, that's just tough to counter. So if you want to know more about Roki Sasaki specifically as a pitcher, we did a podcast

about him on November 12th, episode 2243, Roki of the Year. We talked to Eric Langenhagen, we talked to Jim Allen. It was an entirely Roki of the Year. We talked to Eric Langenhagen. We talked to Jim Allen. It was an entirely Roki-centric episode. So much in the way that you have pre-writes for free agents who sign, we did a pre-podcast essentially. So that is a good place to go if you want to know more about Roki, the pitcher. And if you want to get your pitchforks out and tarn feather the Dodgers, I guess I do understand that impulse.

Look, at a certain point, this team is going to be a ton of fun to watch. For me, as someone who is not rooting for the Dodgers, I will be watching a lot of Dodgers baseball. I'll be watching a lot of Shohei Otani, but not only Shohei Otani. I'll be watching Aroki Sasaki starts. I will be tuning in to see tons of Dodgers baseball. That said, there is maybe a point of diminishing returns or just embarrassment of riches where it becomes boring.

It becomes predictable. Oh, of course he signed with the Dodgers and you want to see someone else have a crack at things and you want to see another fan base get a chance to appreciate one of the most exciting talents in baseball. It just does. Well, good news. The inn is full.

So you're about to like, again, this is part of why I just am not particularly fussed about it one, because I again, think it's fun to have a team to root against like this, not because you should be like saying that if they win another World Series, it will have been easy. Baseball is so hard. Baseball is just so hard and they break all the time. So it's just like, I, again, I find that argument to be so silly, but they're pretty full now, you know?

And so the next good free agent, it is not going to be a Dodger in all likelihood. He's going to go do something else. He's going to go play for a different team. And so we just, we do have a natural limit to this stuff. It's that you would only have 26 guys active at any given time. You only get 40 beyond, you know? So it's fine everyone. I mean, it's like, it's not fine. I feel bad for Padres fans. I'm sure Giants fans are furious. I'm sure D-Backs fans are furious. Rockies fans are happy to be invited to a party, but like it's, you can only do 26, you know? 27 if there's a double header. You can be mad about that. CB Yeah. Probably the Dodgers won't be in the market for Munitaka Murakami, I would

think. Yeah. No room at first base or DH, at least as of now. So maybe someone else will have a shot at some consolation. If the Dodgers don't try to sign someone, someone else might have a chance. Right. And so I just, I think that we can, we can recall those facts and we can like chill out a little bit. Like you know, there are good players who are going to be free agents this coming off season. There are good players who are going to be free agents this coming off season. There are good players who are going to be free agents the off season after that.

There are going to be good players who come up through the minor leagues. There are other orgs that are good at player dev. I don't want to overstate the case. This is a terrifying baseball team. They are going to win so many games. They are going to win so many games. They are so good. The degree to which I wonder how many of our positional power ranking positions, the Dodgers, will be number one in. I bet it'll be a lot of them, Ben. I bet it'll be a lot of them.

But I'm just saying that like there are other good teams in baseball, there are other smart orgs, there are other free agents who will be able to help teams. The inn is full. I'm ready for opening day. I mean, I'm not. I have so much work to do between now and then. Opening day being tomorrow would be horrible, but it's going to be exciting and it won't only be exciting for Dodger fans.

Although Dodger fans, good gravy. It's going to be so much fun. You guys are in for a while, right? So anyway. CB 0 They're only about four war ahead of the number two team in terms of projected team war. Does that console anyone? LS Yeah, it should. I mean, and this is, I think speaks to the broader point about just how hard it is. How hard it is. It's so hard, you know? And, and if you are a fan of another team and your team is trying hard and they missed out on some guys, you, you get to feel disappointed, right?

If you are a fan of the Blue Jays in particular, but like other teams tried this off season to sign some of these big free agents and they missed out. And if you missed out on a guy, you get to be disappointed by that. It doesn't make you anti-labor. It doesn't mean that you're being a doof. You get to be disappointed. If you're a fan of a team that isn't trying, I am simply inviting you to consider that the target of your frustration should not be the Los Angeles Dodgers. It should be your team. If you're a Mariners fan, Dodgers ownership isn't the ownership you should be pissed at, I guess is the broader point I'm trying to make. Although be, hate the Dodgers though. Like, you know, like-

Yeah, not your number one target at least, but- Yeah, like you can be annoying with that team. You can paint them as villains. You can say, ah, ah, you know, they can be your new Yankees, but they're not the ones that are preventing you from experiencing exciting baseball, or at least they're not the main that are preventing you from experiencing exciting baseball, or at least they're not the main ones doing that. So that's all I got. Well, you implored people to chill. I don't think they'll take you up on that intriguing, but-

They absolutely will not. Social media is gonna be a disaster. We are gonna get some truly wild takes, just some of the doofiest, craziest takes, the schemes, Ben, that we are gonna see people propose to prevent the next good player from going to LA, even though, again, I will say the in is full.

We're gonna see some words uttered in public. That's coming for us, but I would just say, have a beer, you know, or whatever else you like to drink. It doesn't have to be a beer. Some people don't like beer, don't drink it. There you go. Well, we have more words to utter as well. We had a whole plan for this podcast before we knew

that we would be spending much of it talking about Roki Sasaki signing. So we will proceed with that plan. We're giving over the rest of this episode to women's sports, specifically women's softball and women's baseball, even more specifically, mostly women's professional softball and baseball and the futures of them in the United States because there's some exciting developments on the horizon with professional softball and baseball leagues starting and expanding

this year and next year. And there is so much enthusiasm for women's sports more broadly. And so we wanted to devote an episode to talking about how that is manifesting closer to home in our bat and ball sports. So we will be talking to Emma Batchelary of Sports Illustrated about women's softball and about the AUSL's efforts to expand what Kim Aeng, who is involved in those efforts, has called a major league baseball for softball. We will also be talking to Kiri Oller of Fangrass, who just wrote about the WPBL, which is the new women's professional baseball league that is slated to launch next year. And we'll also bug Curie a bit, and by we, I mean me, about her work with Sony PlayStation as a data scientist for MLB the show, which is kind of cool. But mostly we'll be talking about the professional futures of women's softball and baseball,

and also to some extent the pasts and the potential and pitfalls that can be avoided, and the commonalities and the disparities. And I think it's all pretty fascinating. We've talked a lot on hang up and listen lately, of course, about women's sports. And I've had the opportunity to pick Lindsay Gibbs's brain on that subject

and who better qualified to talk about that. But we haven't really had a chance to talk so much about softball and baseball. And so I've been itching to do that. And today we will. First up, we are joined by the great Emma Batchelary, staff writer for Sports Illustrated. And I guess we can say author of a book or at least author of a book manuscript, which seems like an important part. Hello, welcome, congrats. Hello, thank you. It's just a coffee table book, but those have a lot more words than I realized at least now that I've written the manuscript. Not just a coffee table book, those are the biggest books there are.

Yeah, that is true. That is true. CB What is the book about? You can do your first possibly premature book plug here. I don't know if it's too early to pre-order, but you could at least give a tease. KS Oh, wow. Well, it is definitely too early to pre-order. We literally just turned in the manuscript two days ago. Sadly, not super relevant to the effectively wild audience, but it's about the history of women's basketball. Just a big photographic history starting in 1882, all the way up until right now and it was a lot of fun to work on.

Lots of very cool history, including some that I really knew very little about before I started this, and some that I wanted to get to spend more time researching and talking to people about for years. And yeah, it was just a really fun project and I'm excited to see it come to life. Well, so are we. Congrats. That is excellent. And I guess it's not solely a photographic history because there must be a bunch of

words there. That's where you came in. Uh, yes. The 50,000 words. Yes. That's a lot of words. Wow. That's a book.

Yeah. That's a book. words. That's a book. Yeah. That does include like captions and stuff, but yes, a lot of words. I had no idea. Can't be just captions. Those would be really long captions or a lot of photographs alternatively. And I guess that is somewhat relevant to what we're talking about today. And I'm sure it will be of interest to some of our audience. And you've kind of made a pivot of sorts to not writing exclusively about baseball, but about covering women's sports of all kinds.

And I was gonna ask you briefly about that because I saw that you had, quote, tweeted a blue sky post, I guess I'm mixing my social media platforms here, but you had quote posted the episodes that I did with Hannah Kaiser and Lindsay Adler late last year. And you said that their efforts to figure out how to do sports writing these days and how to be a writer and what they want to do next and kind of find their way forward professionally,

that some of that resonated with you. And I wonder how that relates to your broadening your beats at SI. Yeah, that's definitely been part of it. You know, I still love baseball. There have been things that I've missed about covering baseball full time and I haven't left it behind entirely. I feel pretty lucky to be at a place where I have the flexibility to keep a foot in both worlds and not have to just be boxed into one beat where that's all that I'm doing all the time. But a combination of things of one, just I've always loved women's basketball, I grew up playing softball,

the ability to cover these sports as they've gotten more mainstream prominence has been really exciting and personally fulfilling. And also it's frankly an opportunity that I don't think would have existed at SI when I came aboard seven years ago. Wow. Yeah. Just not one that you saw many places hiring people to cover full-time. Obviously, there have always been a few people who have been lucky enough to have serious full-time women's sports coverage jobs for a while, but not that many. It's really only the last couple of years that I think you've seen the powers that be

recognized that if you pour into coverage here, you can get a return on your investment because there are fans who really want to read these stories and that it's actually an area where you can establish yourself on these beats pretty quickly by doing meaningful work just because there's so much less competition, which is beginning to change, which is great to see more people covering them. But yeah, just a combination of wanting a new challenge of feeling personally fulfilled to get to cover some things that I've always loved just as much as I've loved baseball and then it's just you know it's an interesting space to be in one that's kind of establishing itself right now rather

than I mean baseball is so traditional in so many ways and very very well established in terms of the media environment so yeah it's just something different and I really enjoyed it and feel lucky to have been able to keep doing it. Yeah I can identify with that and of course I'm just happy that Sports Illustrated still exists at all because we had a close call there. So that's good news. Yeah, you're telling me. Yeah. I don't know if you know, but Sports Illustrated was in a little trouble a while back. I'm sure that you were aware of that. But yeah, it's been fun to follow your coverage. And I guess this relates really to what we're talking about because this is a growth

industry that you are seizing on here. Not that baseball is dying, which you know well, because you've chronicled the history of baseball, allegedly dying and not actually being dead, but it is perhaps not growing in leaps and bounds the way that women's sports are. And that's why today we're talking about women's professional softball and baseball. So maybe you could start by laying out the landscape of women's professional softball worldwide maybe if that's not too ambitious, but at least in the US because there are now a number of professional women's softball leagues in the US and it is growing and evolving. It's an interesting time for it for sure. You've seen college softball grow pretty meaningfully over the last couple of years,

that that's been a pretty robust product for a while now. If you look at the women's college world series, that consistently draws very strong ratings, that they've expanded the ballpark there in Oklahoma City where they have it as an analog to Omaha for the baseball college world series. So you really have this situation where college has been thriving for a while. ESPN bears tons of college softball every year. And then for the longest time, it was like those players would graduate and there was just kind of nothing for them, right? Like it's been in and out of the Olympics. It wasn't in

Paris. It'll be in LA. There have been leagues, but they've been pretty shaky for a long time. NPF, National Pro Fast Pitch was the major league, but that was one that, you know, it existed for about 20 years. It went under because of COVID in 2021. The professional experience really varied by team, not high salaries. Teams were constantly relocating or folding and just really kind of shaky across the board. And so out of that environment, you had this new group come up in 2020 called Athletes Unlimited, which had this vision of kind of revolutionizing pro sports, starting with women's sports. You have this model that's a little bit hard to explain,

but it basically breaks down everything that you think of when you think of traditional pro sports. So even though you were talking about team sports, you didn't have consistent teams, you didn't have front offices, you didn't have coaches, you had team captains who would draft a new team each week and you would play what looked like standard softball. But the scoring system was based on individual points where they assigned points values to basically everything you can do individually on a field. And so at the end of the season, rather than having a winning team, you had one person who won the season. It was actually kind of interesting that I followed that first season fairly closely and, you know, they have their final game set up like a championship and the player who actually won was one of the ace

pitchers who had pitched the day before. So you have this championship game where a team wins the game, but the person who is then crowned as the champion of the season didn't do anything that day. So strange dynamic. I think it did some things that were really cool, but also I think there are limitations with that model and they've realized that. So they now, starting this summer, will be launching a full traditional league

that just has four teams with managers, general managers and playing softball like you would think of softball and kind of just having that sort of more traditional model now backed by a group that you know has invested in this space in the last couple of years seems pretty committed to making sure the player experience is good. They get paychecks on time, things are clean and safe, all those kind of basic things that historically have not always been met when you're talking about trying to play professional softball here and some of those leagues that have cropped up and tried over the last couple of decades. So yeah, something new growing out of something

that has been around the last couple of years and that's kind something new growing out of something that has been around the last couple of years and that's kind of where they are right now. And in terms of the player population that is finding its way to that league that maybe participated in the prior league, are they drawing primarily from the domestic college rings, domestic meaning here in the US, are they looking internationally? Because I feel like part of the tension that has always existed in the women's bat to ball landscape, let's call it, has been this focus in the United States on softball,

but then an international embrace of women's baseball in countries like Australia. So where are those players coming from? And are they going to be names that folks who've tuned into the softball college world series might recognize? So they haven't announced the full rosters yet but of the ones that they have it is pretty American based a lot of names that will be familiar from college and there certainly are international softball leagues it's big in Japan just as women's baseball is also

big in Japan but I think you see less of a dynamic where top talent, if there is an option to play here, there's interest in playing here, if that can be cultivated in a league that is truly professional, if that makes sense. For the most part of this talent so far, it looks like they're focused on American players who want to be able to play at home. I got to ask you more about this tournament format because this is the most effectively wild thing ever and I don't know how we haven't talked about it to this point. This is a if softball were different, how different would it be question if I've ever heard one. And we

actually got this question from a listener about a month ago and I'll just read this was from Carlos who says, I recently learned about athletes, unlimited softball. It is a women's pro softball league, but instead of operating the championship on a team basis, as MLB does, they go by the individual. This is what you were just saying. Players are assigned points based on individual accomplishments like hits, stolen bases, pitcher strikeouts, et cetera, like in fantasy sports. Also points for team accomplishments, winning a game, quote unquote winning an inning are given to all the players on that team. Also, players and fans vote on game MVPs for extra points.

After each series, the four top scoring players draft completely new teams for the next series, and the season's champion is not a team, but the individual who gets the most points. That's the gist. And then Carlos links to the full scoring system, which we will also link to on the show page And then Carlos says I have lots of questions including but not limited to people like to call baseball softball individual sports masquerading as team sports So what do you think of this format where it embraces this side of the game? How do you think this would work in MLB? Situationally, it's a pretty ingenious way to make a compelling team sports league with far fewer resources

Situationally, it's a pretty ingenious way to make a compelling team sports league with far fewer resources. Athletes Unlimited has only 60 players and they play all their games in a small Chicago suburb. But how does it translate to the size and popularity of MLB? Would we just see the regular MVPs winning every season? Would the top players hire their own mini front offices so they could draft well to get team points? How would the specifics of the point system affect play? Finally, is there a different or better individual player championship based format you can imagine? You don't have to answer all of those questions or any of those questions, but I would love to know how you think that works in practice. Is it confusing? Is it fun? Is there money ball involved? Do fans understand what is happening? Is it a satisfying way to crown a champion?

First of all, I just love to think if we're going to compare this to what it could be an MLB, can you imagine how unstoppable Otani would be beyond what he already is? That would kind of really just make a one-dimensional competition for everyone else. Yeah, baseball is holding him back. Yeah. Truly. Yeah, it's interesting. It's certainly very creative and I admire that they looked at this landscape that really

for professional softball had been stagnant for so long and were just like, we need to do something really different and bold and they did. I enjoyed watching it, but I also would find myself watching it just as a game if that makes sense. It's pretty easy to block out. They would show on the score bug, you would have the actual game score but then they would also cycle through the player leaderboard and who'd earned individual points that day. I just would find myself not really thinking about that. If I were to sit down and watch it as a game, I would just watch it as a game, if that makes sense. I'm sure it's one of those things like fandom and viewing experiences can be very

individual. I'm sure there were some people who loved that and I'm sure there were some who really didn't. It was something where when I first heard about it, I wrote a story about it after that first season, kind of a big overarching look at what it took to get this off the ground and what they were hoping to do with it. I had been extremely skeptical when I first heard about it and just was like, is this just going to be too much of a gimmick? Like, I like watching softball, not watching a fantasy leaderboard. It was neat to see when you actually turn it on, like it is easy to just watch it and

forget that all of that is happening. But then of course, if their goal is to use that to draw people in, it brings up the question of well, why don't you just play regular softball then? And I guess that's what they're doing now. Yeah, exactly. Change of format perhaps suggests an answer to this question more broadly. You mentioned that the money piece of this sounds like it is a relatively stable situation, you know, as stable as any new league can be. And there is a, you know, a sorted and mixed

history of the funding that is available to women's leagues. Obviously there's been this huge explosion in the interest in women's sports that we have seen like really concentrated in the W, but it's clear that, you know, whether it's college volleyball or the W or other women's sports, that there is, you know, a profound interest and that if you put these leagues on TV, people will watch them and they will engage with these athletes and they will be excited about them and they will be excited about these leagues on TV, people will watch them and they will engage with these athletes and they will be excited about them and they will be excited about these leagues. I am curious, you know, with the money secured, where do the broadcast rates for something

like this sit? Because if you have a limited number of teams and they're playing in a concentrated geographic area, your ability to build that is going to be dependent on people being able to get their eyes on it, whether it's, you know, streaming or over traditional cable. So where do the broadcast rights for all of this sit? Yeah, so they've rotated through partners over the last couple of years that they've changed from one season to the next. They've worked with ESPN and with CBS and also with some smaller streaming platforms for this upcoming season of traditional softball.

They are with ESPN, which is exciting that they've said I think at least 20 of the games are going to be on either ESPN or ESPN2 and then the rest should be on streaming on ESPN+, I would assume. I think, of course, then you get into when are those games on, what does promotion look like? There's a whole slew of things that go on alongside that. But yeah, the fact that they've worked with ESPN in the past and that ESPN still wanted more, I think is good. Yeah, I'm really interested to see how this plays out over the summer just in terms of are they better able to market a traditional league like this one? What kind of viewership can they draw? And I think, you know, expectations are probably pretty modest, just

getting started with something like this. But I think it's promising that they were able to get at least some broadcast guarantee and interested to see how it goes from there. So the evolution for this summer is four teams playing a 30 game season, 60 total games. And that goes along with the existing AU Pro Softball Championship season, which will continue to be played. And then the next evolution is slated for next year, 2026, when the AUSL will morph into a city based league. And I wonder how this all fits in with the fact that there are other women's professional softball leagues out there now. You mentioned that there are defunct ones. There was the National Pro Fast Pitch, which was formerly the Women's Pro Softball League, but there are

currently women's professional fast pitch. There's the association of fast pitch professionals. So is there competition? Is there collaboration? Is there learning from previous ventures that ultimately didn't last? I think there's definitely some level of competition so far from what we've seen. It seems like most top players, most former national team players seem to be with Athletes Unlimited. But everything is so in flux that I think, you know, women's professional fast pitch that only started 2023. So it was very new. You really kind of just had this space where people can tell that there is interest because of what we've seen with the college game and that you then had this kind of rush of people trying to figure out what it would look like to make something professional and sustainable.

I think in the next couple of years, we'll probably see that shake out and kind of talent sort itself naturally or some leagues maybe either emerge or collapse. But from the way that it's unfolded so far, it seems like a lot of the kind of top talent that people might remember from the women's college World Series over the last couple of years from national team. Most of those seem to be going with athletes unlimited, but it is an interesting landscape with a lot of change over the last couple of years. LESLIE KENDRICK This might be looking a bit too far into the future just given that this league in and of itself needs to thrive and succeed for competition from women's baseball to maybe be all that

big of a concern. But I am curious what your sense is of how pro softball players, whether they're with Athletes Unlimited or elsewhere, sort of view themselves within the landscape of women's bat to ball sports, because softball reigns supreme here, but there is strong interest in women's baseball. And I think that younger generations seem to be playing baseball later and eschewing the pressure to play softball, which I don't say to denigrate softball at all. Softball is an amazing sport, but we do see this tension right of where you get off the little league train and start to specialize in softball. So how are they thinking about themselves within that landscape and how

do they view women's baseball as a separate venture? Yeah, it's a good question because, as you said, there is kind of a natural tension there and I think the one big structural thing that softball really has to its advantage now, in addition to having now a league that will regularly be on national TV and all of that, is that so much of the system is oriented around college scholarships and now college NIL payments. And that, you know, I think that is really the piece of the puzzle that would have to change more so than having. But hopefully, I really sincerely hope can be a thriving women's professional baseball landscape.

I think if you don't have that step of if you want to be able to get a college scholarship and potentially earn money in college, you have to be playing softball. That really is a step that I think can't be glossed over, basically. It's a hard one because this is something that even as I've covered softball more over the last couple of years, I did cover the Women's Baseball World Cup when it was in the US for the first time a couple of years ago. There were several players on that baseball team, on the national team who don't particularly care for softball and didn't want to like establish themselves in softball, but they knew they could get a scholarship that they were, you know, especially if you're not a pitcher, a lot of them, you can make that transition if you do it early

enough in high school. It's not a, you know, a huge deal, even if it's not your favorite thing that like they ended up playing softball in college and then tried to get onto a baseball track right after. And so I think that's just the hard reality that can't really be worked around. But I think, you know, I hope it's not too idealistic to say like I would like to see a world where you can have professional features in both, which you know, certainly looking at the landscape right now, that's not going to be incredibly lucrative professional features, but that if you can just have leagues that show visible professional options in both, that over time, that allows for growth, that allows for kids to make different choices

coming up, if they can see different possibilities and that, you know, they are different sports, like I enjoy them both, but they're different. And so I think there's no reason that you can't have two of those. They don't have to cannibalize each other, I think. Is it an impediment or an opportunity that in softball, there's no equivalent counterpart, high level men's professional league? Of course, there have been some men's professional softball leagues, but it's not the way that it is with the WNBA or the NWSL or the PWHL where there is some high profile men's league, which in the WNBA's case at least is very tightly linked financially, et cetera, with

the NBA. And so you could say, well, maybe that could be a gateway then if someone already watches that sport and watches another league that plays that sport, then another league comes along, same sports. Maybe it's easy to say, okay, you would want to watch this too. Then again, there's that competition where you might say, I don't need to watch another professional baseball league. I already have one that I am deeply invested in. So do you see that as more of a plus or a minus for the potential appeal of AUSL,

that it's the only game in town? Yeah, I think it's a little of both, but I do think there's a real opportunity for it to be a plus plus that this doesn't have to be something you're comparing to something else. They deliberately didn't put women's in the title, athletes unlimited, that they wanted it to just stand as a league. And it happens to be a women's league, of course, but they didn't want it to be defined by that as just like, here is something you can watch that is completely its own thing. And that's not like the women's equivalent of something else. I think that can be a real opportunity.

I think there probably are people who might not know how much they might like watching fast-pitched softball and might be surprised. But yeah, it is its own thing. And I think that can be a good thing and can be an asset and can be a way to try to tap into a different audience that isn't comparing it to something else. STACEY Has Major League Baseball kind of taken a view on this? Because I know that if you watch any MLB game, you'll see promos of kids playing Little League and often there is interspersed

with that, young women playing softball. Have there been any interludes from Major League Baseball itself trying to support this particular league or are they sort of focusing on the amateur side of things as it pertains to women's softball? Katie I don't think there's been any formal connection with Athletes Unlimited specifically, but they have done some things where they've used former college softball players as kind of ambassadors and done skill camps and like connected to players who some of which may now be in athletes unlimited. And then the biggest former MLB connection here is that Kim Ang is the lead

advisor for AUSL and she played college softball herself at the University of Chicago and she has been, it sounds like pretty instrumental in setting some of the vision here and helping to get this off the ground and just charting a course. So no formal league-wide connection, at least not that I have seen yet, but I'm curious to see if that changes. Because you have your finger on the pulse of the women's sports landscape writ large and you're covering multiple sports, one thing I've wondered is because we've seen this explosive growth across the board, obviously there was just a lot of latent interest in women's sports

that was not being catered to and it wasn't being covered and there was an appetite out there and to some extent the appetite has there. And to some extent, the appetite has been developed and to some extent, this is just finally quenching the thirst that had been out there forever. And so to this point, it seems like everyone can sort of succeed, that a lot of these leagues can profit simultaneously, that they can all just have record attendance, they can all have record ratings, they can all have record revenues at the same time. And I wonder whether you think that can continue indefinitely or whether at some point it becomes not just complimentary but more competitive that to this point, maybe it's not like you have a pie that's a certain size and you're

divvying up slices of that pie and the slices are getting smaller for certain leagues because the pie is just getting bigger and bigger. So everyone's slices are larger. But I wonder whether that will cease to be the case at some point and whether we will get leagues, and I hope not, and I hope that it's not these softball or baseball leagues that we're talking about today, but will there come a point where we either reach some level of saturation or it turns out that the demand has basically been tapped at least in certain sports or there will be clear winners and clear losers as opposed to everyone wins. Yeah, I mean, there can't be infinite growth forever.

And I think also we've kind of hit this cultural moment where it seems like there's lots of interest from sponsors and from corporate entities to want to support these groups. But I think over the next few years, you'll probably see kind of shaking out. Like, some of these groups are better run than others, and some have completely different corporate backing than others.

Some are more fit to survive for the long-term than others and I think you'll see that kind of start to separate itself out. But I think there is such striking growth right now across the board that obviously you see a lot of headlines about the WNBA and the NWSL, but there's also what's happening in women's professional hockey right now. There are new volleyball leagues getting off the ground.

There really is, it seems like such a moment where it's hot across the board that if you can get in now, maybe in a couple of years, that advantage is going to start to die off. But I think right now there's almost very know very little to lose by trying to to get in the door and see what you can build at this moment when people are making it clear that they want to invest that they want to try to see what can happen here. The graph doesn't just go straight up for infinity obviously but I think right now the moment is hot enough that it makes sense to me that we're seeing so many different leagues pop up and not everyone is going to survive in

its current form. But I think certainly in a couple of years, I imagine this landscape will have grown and there will be net improvements across the board compared to where we were a few years ago. I think I said something on hang up and listen not long ago to the effect of it's a boom, but it's not a bubble just because there really is just so much interest and so much growth.

And we're talking about more than half of the country's population. And this population was just underserved for so long that you could imagine when belatedly that infrastructure and those pipelines and all of that starts to get built up, that that growth could continue for quite a while. As you said, maybe not infinitely and indefinitely, but it doesn't seem like we've tapped out the interest here. Yeah, 100%.

I'm curious because this is Effectively Wild and we are a fan-crafts podcast. What the state of stats in professional softball is? Who are the keepers? Are we thinking about concepts like war? What is the sort of analytics landscape look like in women's professional softball? Because someone somewhere is going to get hooked because they can look at a little leaderboard, right? That's going to happen. That is a great question.

And that's something that the original version of Athletes Unlimited tried to push since they had all they had this proprietary model of everything that went into that individual leaderboard, which was interesting, but is not what we are used to when we're thinking of sorting a leaderboard. And so yeah, there's really not a space out there for anyone who wants to get first mover advantage on this. Maybe it's VanGrafts, maybe it's someone else in terms of like a comprehensive stats site that goes beyond just the basic accounting stats that you can usually find on any of the league sites or college stats.

The NCAA has its leaderboard, but that's about it other than softball America has its thing. And yeah, there's space for innovation here. If someone wants to be the keeper of softball war, the moment's right, get on in. Yeah, I don't know how you would have to tailor that to the tournament format where you're both on a team and also out for yourself. Are there any ways in which when you're playing on that team that you might have selfish interests that there might be a moral hazard sort of situation where

that there might be a moral hazard sort of situation where, where something that you could do on the field might benefit you while harming your team or because you get points for team success while you are assigned to that particular team. Everyone is pretty much pulling together. This was one of the first questions I asked when I did that original story a couple of years ago, because yeah, it's like the first thing that comes to mind. when I did that original story a couple years ago, because yes, it's like the first thing that comes to mind. They say not really because you do get points for a team win and that is going to be

the bulk of point assignments from any individual game. But that said, it's not impossible for there to be a situation where you and a teammate, I guess the hard thing is, you know, it would really only come into play if it's a situation where you might be considering going for a sacrifice, but your teammate who's on deck behind you is also breathing down your neck on the leaderboard and you're not going to do what might be most beneficial for the team, but would potentially benefit you. It really only would

be very few specific scenarios that realistically are not coming up that much and certainly are not coming up that much in like the handful of games at the end of the season where it's clear how the leaderboard has shaken up. But yeah, like theoretically, it's not impossible. So lastly, is there anything that we have not touched on that we should have or that we've not asked that we should have that has stood out to you in your coverage either about the way that high-level softball is played or particular players whose stories you have found fascinating that people should watch out for or

any other questions or storylines that you will be monitoring with AUSL or the future of professional softball in general? You know, I AUSL or the future of professional softball in general? I realize obviously we talked a lot about professional softball today because that's the subject of what you were covering, but really if you're someone who is looking to get into it and is unsure about it, there's no better place to start than college. ESPN airs so much college softball every year. Season's right about to start and it's so fun that it's something, even though I played softball growing up, I really didn't watch a ton of college softball.

And when I started covering it, I was just really delighted to realize how much of a blast it is to watch. It translates really well to TV too because it's so fast. And yeah, the Women's College World Series is one of my favorite things that I cover every year. And yeah, if Women's College World Series is one of my favorite things that I cover every year. And yeah, if you're interested, you should start by watching college and see what you think. And the hope, the aspiration here for many of the women who are playing in college and are now looking out for the AOSL as a potential path to keep playing, is that mostly what

it's about that the ambition is, I just want to keep playing softball and hopefully have a way to support myself while doing that? Yeah, which I mean, that also is something we didn't really get into here. No one is doing this to get rich that, you know, the salaries for the beginning years of athletes unlimited where it would top out at about 30 to $35,000, which was, I mean, NPF was, I think maybe $6,000 was the average salary. So it was a meaningful multiple of what it used to be. Like the fact that you could play and not lose money was a big step forward. But yes, you're not talking about huge sums here. Like no one is asking for

crazy amounts of money. But yes, just that ability to play, to not lose money playing, to hopefully be able to play in an environment where you feel like you're treated like a professional. The fact that softball will be in the Olympics in 2020 is a big one that, you know, you have this generation right now of women where the chances have been to play internationally on that major stage have been pretty fractured because you did have it in Tokyo, but you didn't have it in Paris and So the fact that that's coming up and that those games will actually be played not in LA They'll be played in Oklahoma City the softball capital of the country Which is kind of unusual to me because they have softball fields in Los Angeles.

It's not like doing surfing in Tahiti at the Paris games. You definitely had options there, which also just, I can't imagine coming from another country and thinking you're going to Los Angeles and then you're in Oklahoma. But the stadium there is really cool. I love that stadium. It's a great ballpark. And so having that on the horizon, I think does change things for players that you have something specific coming up that, you know, if you can make it professionally until then, like, who knows what comes after that, basically. So yeah, no one's looking for anything crazy here. But just, you know, in the past, it really

hasn't been any guarantee that you could actually play in a consistent professional environment and make any money at all. And so the ability to do that is a game changer. All right. Well, selfishly, I hope that there is still some Emma Batchelor-y baseball coverage in all of our futures and we will look forward to that, but also to whatever you're working on. So thank you very much for coming on, Emma. Thank you, Bill.

All right, after a quick break, we'll be back with Kiri Oller from Fan Graphs on women's professional baseball and a new league of their own. Sometimes I still feel like that little girl hearing grandma's handheld readies Collecting baseball cards before I could read They say I waste my time, tracking all these stat lines

But it's here I've found my kind We're all effectively wild Okay, we are back and we are back to baseball after our softball segment And we are joined now by fan-graphs writer Kiri Oller. Hello Kiri. Hello. You just recently wrote an excellent deep dive into the future of women's professional baseball in the US, specifically the future of the women's pro baseball league, the WPBL, which is slated to launch next year. So I guess I'll start the same way that we started with Emma, which is just to ask you to sum up the landscape currently and up to this point when it comes to women's professional baseball globally,

if you care to give us the overarching view, but specifically in the US or in North America. Yeah. So there really hasn't been professional women's baseball since the All-American Girls League that people are familiar with from a league of their own. There have been a few barnstorming teams and short-lived little bursts of women's baseball activity, but from a professional league standpoint, there has really been a dearth of activity on this front. There are national teams that compete, so that's where a lot of the interest from for players for this upcoming league has come from. There are national teams around the world

that compete at national worldwide tournaments. And so that's sort of been carrying the women's baseball landscape. From the adult player perspective, there are women and girls who play baseball at the amateur level, all up and down there. So there's a little bit of activity there, but it's pretty sparse in terms of a historical footprint. And we talked about this a little bit with Emma, but there's, you know, I use this phrase

with her in the like women's bat to ball landscape, you have competing factions in the US, right? I think there's less pressure on amateur players to divert to softball away from Little League than there used to be, but at the collegiate level, there isn't a strong women's baseball presence. And so young women who show aptitude there often get put on a track to play competitive softball where there are scholarship opportunities and an infrastructure. And so I'm curious for this league where the pockets of talent really sit and what demographics they're anticipating will fill out the league because as you noted, have women who play baseball in the United States, but you also have all

of this pressure for them to play softball, which we are not denigrating as a sport, softball rocks, but it is separate from baseball. So where are they anticipating that they will pull their player pool from and what might that look like for them going forward? Yeah, I was really curious about this too, because yeah, when other new women's sports leagues have popped up in recent years, they've been really buoyed by having a college presence and that sort of development pipeline that they can draw from and build off of and women's baseball really doesn't have that. So when I talked to Keith Stein, who is one of the founders of the league,

I asked him about that. And he assured me that since they had announced the league, and at this point it had only been a couple of weeks since that announcement came out that they had already had 700 players reach out with interest in participating in the league. And it sounds like they come from, you know, they're international players.

So from some of those national teams in other countries, people are interested in coming and playing over here in this new league. And then, you know, from those amateur ranks where there are still women playing baseball, there are players who have an interest at that level. It sounds like there is definitely a lot of interest. Then he's also hoping that once this league exists,

that phenomenon that you mentioned where girls are encouraged to take up softball if they start out playing little league. Even if they aren't under pressure to go play softball, frequently a lot of their friends are playing softball. So you're going to kind of do what your friends do at that age. But once there is a league that these girls can look at and see and be like, oh, there is a future for me in this sport. So if I don't want to go play softball, this is a viable option for me that that pipeline will become even more robust. CB Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the WPBL who's involved. I know Justine Siegel is.

She's the founder of Baseball for All, the nonprofit for girls in baseball. She was a guest of ours on episode 1890 when we talked to her about being the baseball coordinator for a league of their own TV reboot. But who else is involved here and what's the structure? KS Yeah, so it's Justine Siegel and Kirsten Stein, who I mentioned, are the two co-founders. And I think Justine's experience will also be really helpful in helping to recruit players because through her Baseball for All organization, she was obviously very tapped into the network of women who are playing baseball. That's a huge start in terms of already having that network built out.

Then beyond that, they do have advisors. They have, I believe it's a seven member advisory board and it is entirely women. They all have decades of experience in baseball and they come from all different kinds of backgrounds. So there are former players like Ayami Soto who I believe is a Japanese women's player who has just a really incredible resume and she has a page on on baseball reference. So I encourage people to go check her out. She seems really cool. And she also just signed on to play in a Canadian semi-professional baseball league recently. But yeah, so the rest of the women on this board, they have business experience in baseball. They have coaching experience in baseball. It's a really comprehensive group of women.

And, you know, Keystein made it very clear to me that they want to make sure they have women in leadership roles, and they're making that an emphasis. So they definitely put together this board with a lot of intent and thought. And so I think that's really encouraging. And then for Key Stein himself, like his background, he has been involved

in different semi-professional leagues. I believe he is in the ownership group for one of the teams in the Canadian league where Iami Soto is playing. So there might be a connection there. So yeah, he has some experience in informing me these smaller leagues and what it takes to be successful. And it's hard to make a new league go. So having someone with a really clear-eyed view of what that's going to take and what is going to be required from owners in a league like this, I think will be really

helpful insight as well. I was struck by, I think it was Stein who said in your piece that a lot of people want to be sports owners, but they aren't actually equipped to do that, right? They wouldn't be good owners. So what are they looking for from an ownership perspective? Because there's a lot of upfront costs to building a league like this,

and they clearly want it to succeed. So what are their expectations for those who might come into ownership roles for them? This was something that I was really nervous about as well because women's sports are experiencing a surge in popularity right now. And that is for the most part really wonderful, but it does tend to attract people who may just be looking to cash in on a trend as opposed to making a long-term investment in the sport

and in women playing the sport. I asked him about this to sort of allay some of my fears in that regard. And so he did really emphasize that they are looking for owners who are in this for the long haul that are not just looking to profit off of the labor of women, which has been an issue with women's leagues that haven't made it in the past. I talked a lot in the piece about the women's professional basketball league that was around

for a few years in the late 70s. A lot of those owners did not really have the necessary financial backing that they needed to really own a sports team. And to see that through in the long term, they were hoping this would just be like a quick buck that they could make by not paying the players very well and not really providing them the support staff and everything that they need. He's aware that those type of owners are out there, and I was encouraged by that line that you mentioned as well. They're being very diligent in their screening process.

He said, similar to with players, they've had a lot of people reach out wanting to be part of ownership groups, but they vary in their levels of seriousness in terms of that interest. And so they are definitely aware of that and keeping that front of mind as they go through these potential ownership groups. And in your piece, you ran through some of the other potential pitfalls that could apply to this league or really any upstart league, and you used the example of the Women's Professional Basketball League,

which was the first professional women's basketball league in the US in the late 70s and early 80s, didn't last that long, unfortunately. So what were some of the mistakes that that league made or that others like it may have made that you think are key other than what you just mentioned about finding the right owners? Ownership groups were the big one at the top. I think another one was in the way that they marketed the league. It's tempting when maybe you don't fully believe in your own product enough to try and dress it up with different gimmicks or you feel like you need to provide a multifaceted appeal to this league.

So you want to add in pretty women if that's attractive to people or sideline entertainment and things like that. There was just a lot of focus not on the actual basketball. So if you don't trust that the actual sport on the field or on the court is good and compelling and entertaining, then it sort of left them flailing to, to bring in other things to try and attract eyeballs, but they weren't going to attract eyeballs in a meaningful way and I think they actually wound up distracting from what was really good basketball being

played. And so they were doing things like drafting players on name recognition or because there was some, you know, special feature about them. Like they, there was a woman that was drafted, you know, seemingly just because she was seven feet tall. She wasn't necessarily a great basketball player, but that's sort of a spectacle that might draw people out. And so there was just a lot of trying to draw eyes in different ways that weren't necessarily genuine to the women involved. It put them in a lot of awkward positions where they were trying to market themselves in ways where they weren't comfortable. And I think that's always going to be a tough sell to actually pull off in any meaningful

way, you know. And they were also trying to meet like conflicting standards of what would be marketable because on the one hand they are elite athletes. So people kind of expect them to put out like a tomboy persona and look similar to male athletes and they just happen to be women. Or they wanted them to be pretty unattractive. It created this interesting conflict where they couldn't really do what they needed to do regardless.

I think the other big downfall was just not getting the games in front of enough people. Obviously in the 70s, TV is a little bit different market than we're dealing with today. Their options for a media deal were a lot more limited and so getting in front of people was a little bit more difficult. When people would come to the games, they really liked the basketball, but it was hard to actually

access the games to reach a large fan base. So making sure that these games are accessible and easy to watch, I think, is a big emphasis for the league and should be. Frequently, women's sports, they are often like relegated to these strange streaming services that can be hard to access or they're behind a paywall. And so even people who are excited to watch women's sports have all these hoops to jump through to get there and when it's something new that you're not totally sold on yet even if you really want to check it out, you're not necessarily going to be primed to to pay an extra fee to get some obscure streaming service that you've never heard

of and maybe isn't broadcasting in super high quality or what have you. So getting a good media deal and putting a good TV product out there in addition to a good in-person product, I think is really crucial. And one of the ways that some women's leagues have sort of tried to thread the needle on this is partnering with, as Ben mentioned, sort of the male professional equivalent. So this was part of how the WNBA came to have sort of supremacy within the US market. I'm sitting here looking up at my Seattle rain flag, like R-I-T-A-B-L, right? But the WNBA was able to kind of continue to operate in part because of support from the NBA. And then as people tuned into the league and saw the quality of play and the quality of play continued to improve, and fan bases became established, it, you know, has been able to really hit a new

level of popularity, uh, and self-sufficiency. I'm curious if Major League Baseball has made interludes to, you know, try to support or play a role in the women's pro game and what the league's perspective would be on that. Would those be welcome overtures or at this point are they trying to sort of stand on their own? Yeah, I'm not sure what if any attempts to connect MLB has made at this point. I did ask Stein about that and he said at this point

they would really like to maintain their independence from a relationship similar to what the NBA and the WNBA have. He said they anticipate having a really good relationship with MLB, but I don't think they are looking to be financial partners at this time. The partnership with the NBA certainly helped the WNBA, especially in the early days, like you're saying they had competition from the American Basketball League. And so they kind of needed the support of an established brand like the NBA to really define themselves as the big actor in that market. Whereas, you know, the WPBL isn't going to have much direct competition, because, you

know, as you've said, like there is pro softball becoming more of a thing, but that is a very different sport. So that's, those can hopefully both be just independent and thriving. It sounds like their goal right now is to not, you know, have dependencies on a men's league in part because, you know, like we talked about earlier, they want to really have female leadership and they want to have, you know, the strong women's voices leading the league. And once you start taking money from a men's league, you know, they get to have more say in what you're doing and more control over what you're doing. And so I think they want to maintain

their independence. And I also think that, you know, those, those deals can be really good in the early going, but they can have some downsides later on. Like now we're seeing with the WNBA, now that they do have a strong foothold in a way, their relationship with the NBA could be perceived as holding them back a little bit. Some of the NBA owners are now like, well, the WNBA is profitable now. We want to, you know, extract our value from it. We want now. We want to extract our value from it. We want to get our payout and our return from it. And so they're a little bit hamstrung in that way

now that they are established. So unless it's necessary, I think it's probably wiser to go ahead and stay independent. But hopefully, like Stine was saying, have a good relationship with MLB, be supporters of one another, but keep all of your decision-making in-house. And this is also a variation of something we touched on with Emma, but do you think that it is, and it is to the advantage of the WPBL that there are a lot of people who watch baseball in this country and have some attachment to other

baseball leagues like MLB, or is that an impediment potentially because people might say, I'm good with baseball leagues, I don't need another baseball league. Do you see that as something that could help the league because it's just not a large leap from one baseball league to another, or do you see it as, well, you have to overcome the fact that people have a lifelong attachment to MLB or other professional leagues that have existed for some time? Yeah, I definitely think it can go both ways. On the one hand, like the barrier to entry with a new league is much lower if you already

understand the sport. And so baseball being well established here and something that most folks are going to have at least a surface level understanding of how it works is really helpful. But yeah, people only have finite time to devote to their recreational sport watching. So there's a bit of a push and pull there, but I think ultimately, like people who really love baseball are going to want to watch baseball. And so for the diehards, it's just more baseball for them to watch. And I think they'll be really stoked on that. Like you see that in basketball, like people who came up fans of the NBA are now discovering that there's another really great

source of basketball for them to watch. So if people are, you know, maybe a little less enthusiastic about baseball and would rather spend that time on other things and they only have so much time they're willing to devote to baseball, they might stick with MLB. But I think ultimately, like people who like baseball are going to be excited to have more baseball. Katie Grant I put this question to Emma and I'm curious, you know, they're obviously still in the process of figuring out their ownership structure and what have you, but what do you think the future of stats and advanced stats will be in the women's

game? Emma Bolling That was something that I mentioned in the piece as well in terms of like the media side of things, part of how we storytell in baseball is via having accessible stats available. So that's not something that I have talked to them about specifically. So I'm not totally sure how much thought they have given to that.

I would imagine that, you know, similarly in terms of like fans coming over, like some of the traditions of the sport, like a lot of statistical analysis will cross over as well. So I feel confident there will be an appetite for stats and people wanting to do analysis on it. And as long as that appetite is there, I think it would really behoove the league to make data as much data as possible available. I think the only limiting factor might be in the early going, you know, there are costs associated with collecting that data and making it available. So it might not be something we have right away, but I think if there's a demonstrated, you know, desire for it, I think they'd be able to get that out there. Do we know what brand of baseball might be played in the WPBL kiss? One way you could differentiate yourself is to say, okay, yeah, you watch this type of baseball, but get a load of this.

People are playing baseball differently at this level in this league. The way that Japanese players in some respects play baseball differently, stylistically than players who grew up in North America for the most part. And I don't mean just purely in terms of how hard they throw, how hard they swing, how fast they run, et cetera, but just do we know what the baseball would look like in terms of pitch types or tactics or positioning or team composition, or is all of that still sort of TBD? I think it's mostly TBD, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do maybe tinker with the

rules a little bit or, you know, maybe try to encourage some, some small differences. One of the things that can be a little limiting with Major League Baseball because it has existed for so long, breaking out from tradition and how things have always been done, can be, there's some friction there. Whereas when you're starting a new league, you have the opportunity to start fresh and really reevaluate

if all of these existing traditions and conventions are still serving the game overall, are they still going to make sense in this new context? And you're seeing this with other leagues and other sports. As we record this tonight, there's a new women's basketball

league tipping off called unrivaled and it's three on three, but it's not even the most conventional three on three. They're playing on a different size court but it is full court as opposed to half court three on three and they spent a lot of time really like tinkering with the rules to make it so that you know when if WNBA players are playing there in the off season which is the goal it's a different style of basketball that's still going to be fun and exciting, but it's also something that's going to serve their skill development for their WNBA teams as well. So they really took advantage of the fact that they were starting fresh as a new league to create a fun and exciting product that would also be a good TV product they're playing in kind of a TV studio that only seats like 500 people.

So they really like did things differently from what is traditional in a way that they thought would really serve their league well and complement what is already happening in the WNBA. So it wouldn't surprise me if you see something similar to that with the WPBL. They could take some time to really think about what changes they might want to make in order to serve the different types of players that they're going to have and what's going to make for the most compelling product based on the players that they have there and what they want that to look like for their league. CB You mentioned in your piece that Maybel Blair, the great 98-year-old former pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and person I'd love to have on the podcast someday,

will serve as the honorary chair of the board and they're hoping that she'll be able to throw out the first pitch at the season opener next year. Do you think that this league will or should really lean into that AA GPBL history and people's awareness about a league of their own or will they want to really differentiate it? Because that was of course very much of its era in ways that the WPBL will not be. BT – Right, yeah. I think they probably do want to diversify their players a little bit more than the All-American Girls League did, but I think it makes sense. This is the real touchstone that people have with women's baseball, and I think honoring that history also makes a lot of sense. The WNBA doesn't

always do a great job of acknowledging leagues like the basketball version of the WPBL. To continue building a strong tradition of women's baseball, it makes sense to acknowledge your history and where things came from and how we got to where we are today and continue to build on that rather than ignoring it. And I think it makes sense to also acknowledge the shortcomings there as well. So I think bringing in a beloved character and a beloved figure within women's baseball history

makes a ton of sense. And so I think you can kind of play it both ways and acknowledge the past, but also continue to move forward. We've talked about some of them here, and you talked about more of them in your piece. You've obviously covered the W. I'm curious if there are other things from your experience covering it and just your time observing it as a league

that you think would be useful parallels and pointers that they can that the WPBL can draw from that league and its success that might help them, you know, avoid early early speed bumps as they're trying to get off the ground and build a fan base. It's interesting, like the WNBA has been around so long that it's hard to go back to the beginning and remember exactly some of the speed bumps that they encountered early on. It's a very different environment for them as well. One of the things that has impressed upon me since the piece came out is even a couple of years ago when you would talk to

folks about women's sports, sort of the best case scenario was they might be have a little bit of like apathy towards it, but then hopefully you could convince them to watch a game or two and they'd realize that this is a really high level elite version of the sport that is really entertaining and fun to watch. But you would have to kind of sell them on it a little bit. And since the piece came out, it has highlighted to me how it's not just that people are kind of indifferent, but can be convinced. Now the mood has kind of shifted to where there's there people are actually like clamoring and excited to watch.

And so it's a little different, you know, just sort of general mood around women's sports that they are entering. So I actually think one of the better leagues that they can kind of learn from that's just, you know, a few steps ahead of them in this regard is the professional women's hockey league that is in their second season now. And that is a league that is backed by Billie Jean King and Mark Walter of Dodger's ownership. They have made what I think are some really smart choices, which is they broadcast a lot of their games on YouTube for people that are watching in the U.S. For the folks in Canada, they're on their like basic, you know, regional cable networks. And so it is very easy to watch those games

as I was talking about before. And so lowering the barrier to entry to get to watch is really helpful. And you know, like I've tuned in and watched a few of those games and the broadcast quality is really high. You know, even a few years ago tuning in and watching the WNBA, sometimes you would pull up some of the local broadcasts and like the picture is washed out

and so it's really hard to see what's happening and there are like bad camera angles and the commentary isn't always the best. And so it's just not always like the most pleasant experience to watch the game, even if you do appreciate the basketball. Having a really high-quality broadcast with good commentary, and it's lit properly and all of that,

it's just a little details. It's giving it the same level of attention and production that you would give a men's league. Not cutting the corners because it's a new league or a women's league. You have to have that level of attention to detail and investment right from the beginning. Because if you don't make a good first impression, people might watch and be like, oh, this is not that exciting or I don't want to deal with

this poor quality production so I'm just not going to watch this. Something that has happened with a lot of leagues in the past is they'll be at the point of starting their season or coming into their draft or what have you to put the teams together. The teams don't have names, they don't have venues secured. There's just a lot of the details that are put together really last minute and cobbled together and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth,

even for fans who are excited. Even with the PWHL, their teams didn't have names the first year, and all of the merch was very generic across all of the teams. And so I think giving people reason to want to keep coming back for more. And so I think it's actually smart that they're starting

with just six teams so that they can really devote all of their energy and resources to those six teams and making sure that everything is good to go and that they have venues and support staff and medical staff and all that stuff so that they can have the best product out there. They also mentioned to me that there's going to be a documentary, a docu-series about their first season. I think that'll really help them like have to have things ready to go

and look good for the documentary right from the jump. So that's heartening. Yeah. I think when you, when you take yourself seriously, you invite other people to take you seriously. And so treating it like a, like an actual professional venture rather than something that has sort of an amateurish vibe, it, I don't know, it changes the dynamic between you and the viewer in a way that I think is to the benefit of, I mean, probably any new venture, but particularly here where there isn't a long tradition of pro women's baseball. I don't know, it just changes what the viewer expects of you

and what you might expect from yourself, I'd imagine. Before we wrap up, is there anything that came up in your reporting that we have not asked you about or that you wanted to share or any other questions that you have in your mind as we see how things shake out here or how we'll even be able to tell whether this league is surviving and thriving the way that its organizers hope? Yeah, one thing that I've been thinking about a little bit sort of in addition to some of these new leagues playing around with the rules of the sport and, you know, different

dimensions and stuff like that. They've also been bringing out some new like team ownership or lack thereof models. I believe this is how AU softball works as well, but Unrivaled definitely works this way where there are not team owners, they're all just under the league's umbrella. And when they were putting together the rosters for Unrivaled, they had all of the coaches work together to put together rosters of really strong teams. And this was before they had assigned coaches to each team.

So the coaches didn't know which group they were going to be in charge of. So they all just tried to make every team as good and equal as they possibly could. And that was really fascinating to me and it also avoids some of the pitfalls we can see with the existing ownership model if certain owners decide that they don't want to make a strong investment or that they would rather be content being good enough without necessarily being particularly competitive. It sort of ensures a certain amount of parity across the league. So it doesn't sound like they're going to go that way. Like I

said, they have mentioned, you know, vetting different ownership groups, but along those lines, it would be interesting if, you know, starting from the jump as they are putting together sort of their league rules, whatever those, whatever they end up calling that, if they do put some restrictions on ownership or put some standards and requirements for owners and teams to maintain a certain level of competitiveness, you know, one of the refrains

when people talk about like bringing relegation to baseball is like the owners would never go for it. They'd never allow that to happen. And it's the way that the power structures are set up and it's such an ingrained league that that makes sense. But this is a new league where anybody who wants in is going to have to agree to the rules and standards that the league decides to set. And so they could get creative and put some requirements on what teams are expected to do in order to remain competitive and remain

an active part of the league. Yeah, that is one of the most interesting aspects of this. And it does sort of sound like AUSL, it's very almost a worker owned collective kind of model. It's sort of like the 1890 players league, which maybe is not the comp that they would want because the 1890 players league did not have an 1891 season, so it was ahead of its time. But that is kind of part of the potential here, not to be too utopian about it, but you've seen how sports leagues are organized and baseball and softball, and you could come up with a new model and make it more decentralized. But then again, you also still have to make money and make it a viable league that can

survive. And there's a pretty proven model that has made that work in the US. So there's a tension there. But if they are able to tinker with that traditional ownership structure somewhat, that would be quite compelling. That's another topic Emma Batchelor has written about the 1890 players league. But yeah, that's pretty interesting to me too. But probably the top priority is just to make sure that the league has legs and can pay people to play and ensure consistent conditions. So before we let you go, I have to ask you about something else entirely, which we could probably devote an entire podcast to, but we won't right now. Meg and I were making fun of LinkedIn on our most recent episode, but I'm glad I looked

at your LinkedIn because you got a good one. You got lots of interesting jobs. You work for the Phillies in the front office. You work for the twins. You were a double major English and math two-way player academically, but your current position when you're not writing for Fangrass and coming on Effectively Wild, your day job is as a data scientist at PlayStation, which of course intrigued me as a video game guy and intrigued me even more when I asked you about this before we started recording, and you said that you work on MLB the show.

So please tell us and our listeners what it is exactly that a PlayStation data scientist does and what kind of data you're working with with MLB the show. Yeah, so our overarching mission statement is we just want to help the game designers make the game as good as possible. We're an annual release, so we get to put out a new version every year, which means we get to make improvements every year. Within the game, there is certain user data that we collect about how users are interacting the game, which modes they're playing the most, which features they're using,

sort of the way that they work their way through the game and different patterns of user behavior that we can use to keep improving the game and give folks what they want and make it a better game year over year. A lot of what we're asked for is, which modes do they like the most? How much time are they spending in those modes,

whether it's Road to the Show or Diamond Dynasty or what have you. But one of the more interesting ones that I like to work with is, for the folks who are designing the user interfaces on the menus, they might ask us which buttons are getting clicked on and they're the most, which settings people are tinkering with the most to try and figure out if it's just because they're not interested in those settings or if the menus are hard to navigate. So that can be a fun one to collaborate on.

One of the big projects that I work on is trying to minimize fraud within the game. It did not occur to me before I started working here that people were doing fraud in MLB the show, but they are. What does MLB the show fraud entail? I'm going to sound like such a noob. My God, what kind of fraud are they? What? So, a lot of it is within the marketplace where users can use the in-game currency to buy and sell cards. So people will kind of launder stubs through the marketplace because there are these like

third party folks who will sell stubs at a discounted rate. So that's part of how they transfer them. Or they will just sell loaded up accounts that already have a bunch of XP and stubs in their impacts already. So they'll sell those. So there are also a lot of bots within the game that are trying to XP farm and make those accounts that they can sell.

Which that's not the worst problem except that recently they've made their way into like the online modes where they're actually playing against other users. So that hurts the integrity of the game a little bit. So trying to like detect those folks and get them out of there is, is part of what I work on. Do you work solely on user behavior or also on the baseball simulation aspect? And are those things related? Because my questions about the show, which are probably annoying when I pose them to people who work on the show, are often about the realism of the baseball and how you model

the baseball in this digital recreation of it. I remember writing something seven years ago now about how the show was dealing with the juiced ball in Major League Baseball and how they were juicing the digital ball essentially. And so I was pestering people with questions about how they were modeling that. Chris Gill, who is the longtime gameplay director of the show and a former professional player himself and scout for the Reds. And I was talking to other programmers there about how are you modeling this given that at the time people were still trying to figure out why exactly the

home run rate was up so much anyway, that's a digression. Do you work on anything along those lines? Yeah, a little bit. I don't have a ton of insight on the actual mechanics of how they try to model those things, but one of the things that we do occasionally get asked to do is check how those are actually playing out in game. So we'll occasionally get a request.

There'll be something weird happening with the park factors in a certain stadium. And so they'll want to see the actual data around like the run environment in that stadium. Or I've been trying to like nudge my way into doing more, more research on the actual data and stats being generated within the game. So I do have a project that I'm working on

on that front right now that's sort of calibrating the actual output by players against the player ratings on their carts and stuff like that to make sure that that's all humming along the way we'd like it to. CBJ There's so much data, of course, just the zillions of games that people are playing, whether it's against other players or against the computer. I'd imagine you could do some pretty interesting sabermetric research if you were so inclined and you had access to the backend because that's like lab league, that's there, right? And people talk about that with baseball mogul and out of the park

and everything. And I know this is a different type of baseball simulation, but still there's an emphasis on realism there. And yes, as you know well Meg. Yeah. And I would think- Come on, tell me something I don't know. You can take that data set. I would imagine, you know, LMB is like partner league with all these indie leagues and the Atlantic league and maybe maybe we should move them out and back in MLB the Show and we should figure out what the effects of that are, right? Maybe this is a useful testing ground that we wouldn't have to use humans in person as guinea pigs.

We could use humans with controllers as guinea pigs. BT. Yeah, that's definitely an interesting idea. One of the things- CB. Thank you for humoring me. Yeah, sure. Yeah, totally. No, I mean, I don't know. Like I said, I don't touch the actual modeling on the back end,

so it's hard for me to know exactly what they would have the capability to do. But one of the things that I like about having access to the data set as it is currently modeled is, when I worked for teams, occasionally, you'd want to look at certain splits, but you would just be slicing and dicing the data into two small sample sizes even with 30 teams in Major League Baseball and several seasons worth of data.

But we get just obscene volume of data through MLB the show. I have never run into sample size issues at all, and it's often at the other end of the spectrum where I don't always have the compute power to evaluate the whole data set that I want. So it definitely provides a lot of opportunities to evaluate stuff that is hard to do in the smaller sample set that you have available of Major League Baseball data.

I remember once I wanted to do a study on whether bat color had any impact, whether if you have a darker colored bat or a lighter colored bat, I was thinking, well, maybe fielders would get a less good jump on the ball. If there was less of a contrast in color between the bat and the ball, like maybe you wouldn't be able to gauge quite as quickly where it was going and maybe you wouldn't get quite as good a jump. And I remember imploring people with MLB the show to share some data with me on because MLB the show is, you know, trying to customize everything with the actual equipment that the players used. And so there's this data set of like, who is wearing a elbow protector and who

wears this or that and who has this kind of bat and I don't think it went anywhere for whatever reason, so neither did this anecdote, but that's just another example of how you could potentially harness that information if it were shared in some interesting ways. So yeah, that does remind me. I did recently spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to figure out if the orientation of the sun at Safeco Field was impacting hitter performance and didn't really get anywhere with that.

But that's another thing we could maybe simulate up in MLB the show. Yeah. Tell the Mariners about that. Yeah. Mike Petriello just did a deep dive on hitting in T-Mobile that I think is coming out early next week. So I don't know whether he looked into MLB the show data, but perhaps that's an area

for further research. Well, I could go on, but I will not now, at least. Maybe I will later somehow. We're just a couple months away from a new edition MLB the show 25. So you must be hard at work preparing for that. I assume you cannot reveal the cover model live on Effectively Wild right now. I cannot, but do you know the second they give me permission, I'll tell you. Okay. So you know, but you, you cannot spill the secret. I do know. I cannot, but the second they give me permission, I'll tell you. Okay. So you know, but you cannot spill the secret here. I do know. I actually, I don't think I'm supposed to know. We had like some internal leaks happen,

so I'm actually not supposed to know, but I do know. Okay. Well, mom's the words. I don't know where you go from Shohei Otani, frankly. It seems like anywhere, but Otani is down. But I don't want to denigrate whoever the cover model is, or maybe it will just be permanently Shohei Otani. That was another thing I was interested in, and how do you model two-way Otani? Because that was another thing that the show had to figure out. And I guess there was some some clutches going on there. Maybe it wasn't totally implemented the way that Otani works in real life, but there was some effort because I don't think there was support for two-way players in the show. And then you have Shohei Otani as

your cover model. You kind of have to figure something out there. So, okay. So much to talk about. Thank you for humoring me, Kiri. This was a pleasure. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. All right. I'm going to leave you with a last word about breakouts. It will actually be the last word I can't say for sure, but just one more clarification

about why I think a certain type of player can't be a breakout candidate. Listener Rob says, my question is about why you wouldn't consider rookies as breakout contenders. As I was listening, I was scoffing along with Julio and Kyle Tucker et al being named as breakouts, but both of you had the same reaction when it came to Jackson Holliday and Dillon Cruz. My question is why? Jackson Holliday actually underperformed last year considering he was the number one prospect, came up and wasn't very good. So if he does have a great year in his sophomore year, wouldn't that actually be the actual definition of a breakout, since he has done nothing in the majors up to this point?

This isn't a criticism, but more a curiosity as to why a highly ranked prospect in the minors, with no or severely limited success in the majors, shouldn't be considered as breakout players. Here's how I responded via email. If we knew nothing about players before they appeared in the majors, and they were all blank slates and ciphers until they produced at that level, then I suppose so. But minor league performance plus scouting insight is pretty predictive of big's nothing surprising about a number one overall prospect playing well the year he's ranked number one or the year after he loses his prospect eligibility.

We acknowledged in one of our breakout conversations that Holliday might have had the best case for inclusion of anyone on that list, low bar, just because he was so bad last year, but still, he's what, six months removed from being the best prospect in baseball? Despite his smallish sample struggles, he's still projected to be a comfortably above-average player and he just turned 21. That he'll make a major improvement and be a valuable big leaguer should probably be the baseline outlook for him. Now if he's bad for a few more years and someone labels him a breakout player at that

point, once he's widely regarded as a disappointment or a bust, then sure. As I've noted, I think it's fair to say that former No. 1 prospect Jereksson Profar broke out last year, but he was 31, 11 years into his big league career and 11 years removed from his No. 1 overall ranking. He signed for a million dollars after Camps opened, and at the start of last season, no one was expecting him to be an All-Star or win a Silver Slugger award. The potential for that outcome appeared to have passed, and then belatedly, he had the sort of season that had once been forecasted for him.

Holiday is a ways away from sinking to the point that Profar had a year ago. Then Rob responded and said, "'I would agree to a certain extent, "'but what about taking into account most fans "'who don't know who the major prospects are?' "'Like I would say casual fans "'don't know who Dylan Cruz is.

"'So if he puts together an incredible 2025 season, "'I assume most of the public would call that a breakout, since they've never heard of him. I know we shouldn't make labels for what the majority of people think, but should there maybe be exceptions for those types of players if the majority of people don't know who they are? And this doesn't count Lawrence Butler playing in Oakland where no one is paying attention since that is in the major leagues, but specifically for people who don't pay attention to prospects or minor league stats. Again, just conversation for conversation purposes. And my final response was, if you set the bar for baseball knowledge low enough, I guess any player could be a breakout candidate. Like, yeah, you could have put Victor Wembenyama on a list of basketball breakout

candidates before this season. It's probably true that some people who don't purposely pay attention to basketball heard of him for the first time when he had his 50-point game. But those people probably wouldn't have been clicking on the preseason list of breakout candidates. So whom would it have helped to include him? Similarly, if you don't know enough about baseball to be aware of the best prospect and you're not curious enough to look up who it is, are you even likely to be reading a list of baseball breakout candidates?

There's a list of top prospects at MLB.com too, if that's what you want. And that's the end of the breakout dialogues. That's where I stand on the possibility of top prospect breakouts. And here's where I stand on the possibility of you becoming a Patreon supporter for Effectively Wild. I'm strongly in favor of it. If you want to help keep this podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get yourself access to some perks, you can go to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount, as have the following five listeners.

Robert Sieczkiewicz, Sam, Brian Dobbins, Jonathan Meyer, and Eli Sentman, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, autographed books, potential podcast appearances, first takes of intros screwed up by the timing of Roki Sasaki's signing, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrass memberships, and so much more you never know what you're gonna get. 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, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcastthefangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit

at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page at Fangraphs 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. That will do it for today and for this week. Thank you for listening. We hope you have a wonderful long weekend, perhaps, and we will be back to talk to you

next week. Effectively wild, where we can talk about it all day long Effectively wild, we've been in makeup all night like you know it's gonna be a good time I wanna learn about mixity and sticks I wanna hear about none of them RBI's, yeah Tell me about some prospect I should know about My turn. Oh, God, you started. Okay. What? It's Friday. Shut up. I need to close the window. The tab. I was worried I was going to make noise. Okay, sorry, Shane. Here we go. Oh no. Oh no. You got the giggles.

Okay, wait. Oh no. All right. Okay, serious face. All down to business now. It's like a SSI. Okay, serious face. All down to business now. It's like a SNL actor trying not to break during a skit at this point. Oh, now I'm thinking of the Beavis and Butthead sketch.

That was so funny. Okay.