Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2343: Say it Ain’t Low, Luis

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about how many members of the All-Star Celebrity Softball Game roster they have heard of, honorary all-stars, and velocity spikes preceding arm injuries, then discuss an investigation concerning possible pitch-fixing by Luis L. Ortiz, a federal civil rights complaint about the Dodgers’ DEI policies, and Rob Manfred’s pitch to […]

I'm just a fan who wants nothing less than Effectively Wild. Oh, why oh why oh why. Nothing less than Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. You know how they say that the Coachella Festival poster tells you something about your age,

the number of acts you recognize. I think it's something like your real age is 70 minus the number of musicians you recognize playing at Coachella that are on the poster, something like that. There's a formula. I think maybe the same thing applies to the MLB All-Star Games Celebrity Softball Game roster.

I assume you also received this press release. I did. Informing us of the participants in this game. I'm going to send you a link because it has the full roster. And I just want you to count the number of people here you recognize. And it doesn't even have to be that you're intimately familiar with their biographies, but just, you've heard of them.

Yes. The name rings a bell at least, okay? So there are 27 names here. If you could just skim this and just, just count on your fingers, your toes, however many digits you need, just how many you've heard of and we can compare. Them having photos is really helping me here. Well that's the thing.

See, I sent you a page on the MLP site that has names and photos and a one line bio. And so, yeah, if you just saw the names, it might be even harder. So I should have told you, don't read, don't spoil yourself, but. Oh, I'm sorry. 12 total. Okay, I had 15 actually.

So I was just over half, you were just under half, I guess. Which seems like it's not great given that we do cover baseball and this is marketed to baseball people, but then again, maybe they want to attract the attention of non-sickos like us and broaden the audience. And so that's good. I guess if there are some people,

if they're catering to audiences that we are not in, then that could be a good thing from a marketing perspective. For sure. And I think that like some of the folks on here are maybe who I don't know. Like obviously the All-Star game is taking place in Atlanta. Well, not in Atlanta, famously, but, you know, Atlanta adjacent.

And so there is, you know, like there's an Atlanta-based singer songwriter on this list, who I've never heard of. And I don't watch the Real Housewives, but they got one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. There are two actual former MLB players on this list. There's Javi Lopez and Cici Sabathia. So for us, that's like, yeah, that's, those are the free spaces on the big go-karts basically for us and then a lot of musicians, a lot of influencer social media types, I did not do well in that category, but.

social media types. I did not do well in that category. And if I had only had, is it, is it pronounced Drusky? Like I say, I believe so. Okay. So like if I had only seen the name Drusky, no idea, but I recognize this person, mostly from commercials. Okay. I love they don't even let the capital one bank guy have a name That guy that he's like the you know, he is the final evolution of like the

Insurance, you know Yeah Like that is what the yeah the the The, the Pokemon like evolves into. It's like, he doesn't even have a name, right? Right. It's like method acting. He just is the capital. He just is the capital one. Who is that guy? I always wonder with these folks, like, did you set out to do actual acting and then you just became so famous for being Flo or Jake Kim State Farm or whatever. Yeah, in many cases, I think so. It can be quite lucrative if you get a national campaign like that.

Yeah, that's a big break. Deal with the devil if you have other artistic aspirations and then it becomes hard to be cast in anything else because people are like, You're the capital one bank guy people aren't gonna be able to suspend their disbelief when they isn't part of the Whole capital one pitch campaign an ad with him and Derek Jeter were like they're like this guy's more famous than day Why are you leaning into that MLB like that seems like a? counter I just look I We can talk about the, the relative fame.

So many of the people that recognize this are either former athletes or other people who work in sports media. Right. It's like, you know, Maria Taylor, El Duncan, Jenny Finch, Natasha Wotley, Michael Kelly, the actor from house of cards and special ops Linus. So the guy who always plays the government fixer who does the things that are off the books, you know, the black ops, that's him.

I feel a little less out of touch. Clearly I'm out of touch with almost half of these people, but I feel a little less out of touch culturally. Terella Owens is on this. So yeah, there are a number of former athletes. So that helps a little bit. But with Coachella, it makes me feel old. In this case, I'm not sure that I feel old

because some of the people here I don't know are not themselves young. I think it's just that the caliber of celebrity here is not super high. We're we've got some A list. Do we even have an A list around here? You know, it's it's B, it's C, it's D list, other than the athletes, certainly, when it comes to the celebrities who agree to play in these games.

I feel like it used to be bigger celebrities playing in the MLB All-Stars Celebrity Softball game. I haven't. Yeah. I haven't done a rigorous analysis of that. And it could be that that's culturally skewed because I used to know them and now I don't. Right. I do think it used to be bigger stars. It was like big actors and now it's more influencers who obviously have large followings, but it's a little more segmented.

Maybe this is just a death of the monoculture kind of conversation, but some of these people, I don't necessarily feel that bad about not knowing. Oh, sure. Yeah. Like the influencers, I'm sorry. Like I, this is a much longer conversation and one that's probably not super well suited for the podcast, but like, I'm sorry, that's not a real job. And I don't mean that in like a trying to,

I mean it like, be honest about what your job is. You're a salesperson, you work in PR, you're an influencer. Get out of here, get out. So like, I don't feel bad about not knowing the influencers, which isn't to say- You are not influenced. No, not by, and to be clear, not claiming that I am not influenceable

because I too have bought stuff on Instagram that I later end up returning or not being able to return is the case maybe. I'm not above it, I'm just saying that, no, I, sorry, I miscounted, my number is 13. Oh, my number is 13. Almost half. Almost half, yeah. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Well, I will, no? 14, it's 14. Oh, 14, the count keeps climbing. Yeah, yeah, sorry, it's 14. Some of these people, I have no idea who they are though,

but I think you're right that like. Our counts are very close then. Yeah, this strikes me as less an issue of us not being out of touch. What a self-indulgent thing for us to say. And more- It is the children who are wrong. Yeah. There is perhaps, at least among

the non-athlete participants, maybe a slight significant decline. Because it's not like there's no one, like, you know, big boys gonna be there like that. He's big. Yeah, like, come on. And you gotta have a number of outcasts. I don't know. We're in an all-star game. Come on. Come on. But Bad Bunny was in the celebrity all-star game when it was in LA. You know, is the current and it's not that like is the

someone with that current level of fame now I am probably Indicating my ignorance of some of the actual like musical artists who are on this list, and I'm just not Familiar with them, so I might just be playing myself as the kids would say but I would not have known storm reads name But I would not have known Storm Reid's name because I didn't watch Euphoria, but I did watch the first season of The Last of Us famously in real time. And she was quite good in that episode,

it was heartbreaking. Could be any episode that I'm talking about, but the one with her in particular was like one of the stronger ones I thought. Okay, well, I'll link to the roster on the show page and you can all come up with your MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball game numbers and compare notes. I'm gonna be on my soapbox ever so briefly if you'll allow.

I understand that like the All-Star break has so many days and only so many. And sometimes you're gonna have to double up a little bit on a day from a scheduling perspective. But the fact that this game is part of why, not the only reason, but a major reason that the Futures game is only seven innings is insane. And I remain mad about it. Seven innings? No, no, no, no. Yeah, those are your celebrities, the futures game participants. Yeah. Okay.

Well, we hope that people are influenced to become fans of baseball. Sure. If it's through the MLB All-Star Celebrity Softball game. And it's fine. It's fine if they are. Right. And I think it's good to cast a wide net. And I'm sitting here, like kind of given influencers a hard time. And I think that I'm right. But also like they are a

big part of the media landscape. So the notion that like they might have appeal for someone seems quite, quite feasible to me. I mean, like, like 400 million people follow Mr. Beast on YouTube. That's a sign of societal decline, but like also indicates a segment that, you know, presumably some meaningful portion of that group was in the US. He's not playing in celebrity softball game to be clear, but, um, yeah, I'm fine with people. He's much too famous to be in this game. He's much too much influence. Yeah. And you hope that some of the influencers can use their influence for good.

And of course, with Mr. Beast, there's always this conversation about, is he using his clout for good or is he doing good for clout? And does it matter? But yes, hopefully some people can use their platform for something worthwhile in addition to their own profit. And maybe it'll be turning them onto baseball. We can hope. I do think that, you know how there's the commissioner can add one or more players in an honorary capacity to the actual All-Star Game roster? That hasn't happened, I guess, in a couple of years. It was Pujols was the first and then Miggie the year after that.

Right. And I haven't heard that that's going to happen this year, but I was thinking that this would be a good year to get those three aces in the twilights of their careers. Maybe it's tougher for a pitcher because it depends on when they're available and if they're available. But if we could get Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander in those honorary spots, But if we could get Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander in those honorary spots, actually, I guess you can have more than one on one roster.

But if you had Kershaw and Verlander on the NL team and then you had Scherzer on the AL team and you needed to round that out, make it even, you could call up Rich Hill. That could be his major league debut for 2025. He could be an honorary All-Star. So it would be Kershaw, Verwander, Scherzer and Hill for luminaries defining pictures of their times. I think that would be a nice way for him to break in potentially. I don't want to like yuck people's yum about the All-Star game. And I like that we have this like, you know, commemorative spot. But I think that you want, you want the guy to like see real big league action first, not because it's going to change the way he pitches. But it's

like if the, if the first time he's in a thing is in an exhibition game, it feels gimmicky, you know, Rich Hill doesn't deserve a gimmick. Rich Hill deserves his chance. It's true. Well, he should have just been in a rotation the entire time. Yeah, it seems crazy. Yeah, he has never been an All-Star.

It's time. What? No, he's never been an All-Star. Really? In our hearts he has, but he's never actually been one, I don't believe. So- I'm surprised by that. It's just that he's floated around so many different teams and some of those teams have been quite bad that I thought he would have lucked into one of

the, we got to send someone from this club's spots if nothing else. And then, you know, he had seasons where he was very good. So yeah, and seasons where he was hurt, maybe that played a part in it. But yes, I think that might be the time. Okay, we could sub in Charlie Morton if we need another old AL pitcher. Maybe we can make that work. I guess it's kind of an insult potentially to dub the player the honorary All-Star maybe, or some players could take it that way, I guess, if they were like,

I used to just make this team legitimately, and now I just have to get a gift invitation. But I think it would be nice. It's just that it could potentially seem like a slight, if you're not at the end of your career, if it's not known that this is your last season, then maybe it would be, and I assume it's always like a negotiation with the player. Do they want this? Would they come? You could back channel it. But if you said, Hey Max Rozer,

you can be the honorary All-Star, Justin Berlander, you can be, and they're like, I'm gonna pitch five more years. Like this isn't the end for me. Don't try to put me out to pasture yet with my honorary All-Star appearance. So maybe if you're super competitive, you would wanna earn it.

You wouldn't wanna be given it, especially if you've earned it many times in the past. I do like the existence of the like Viking pyres. Yeah, I think that having the opportunity to fet these guys, even if the, you know, exact season they're having doesn't necessarily merit it, which in Poole's case was not true. Right. Like he was he his final year was like quite strong.

He was deployed properly and then he hit well, you know, he like was vintagey. Not although it was, it was especially late in that season, right? He really, he really turned it on, I think. So I'll have to look up. Maybe it was after the, did he treat that year? Pre all-star break in 2022, 676 OPS and then post All-Star break. 1103. That was when he just went off and hit 18 of his 24 homers that year.

Maybe it inspired. Yeah, it inspired his resurgence. Mm hmm. Could be. I like it. Like the purpose of these games is not serious. The purpose of these games is to celebrate the sport. And so having an opportunity to fit people who have been very important to the sport, even if like the year that they're having would not at an earlier point in their career merit all star selection, I think is good. It seems like a good use of the exercise to be like, this guy's retiring. We know that we're going to miss him. Here's a chance for him to stand and get a, you know, a standing ovation

from all the people in the ballpark. That's cool. I like that. I think that's good, but I do think you need to take someone else's spot. Right. Maybe hasn't made one yet. Like Rich Hill, for instance, but someone who it's always been kind of a honorary, yeah, let's send Cal Ripken to the game

and maybe we'll groove one for him and we'll have the heartfelt moment where he is replaced at his position, even though he's not that great a player anymore. But yeah, this way you can do it without actually taking someone's spot. And it was always clear that that was kind of an honorary position,

even if it wasn't technically. So it is good. All right. So one little bit of news just about, well, we talked about old former Atlanta pitcher. Here's a bit of news about a current and younger one, Schwellenbach, Spencer Schwellenbach. He has suffered an injury like almost every other pitcher

in that rotation this season. And it's not a sproing. I guess we need a new word for it. It's an elbow injury, but it's a fracture. It's a small fracture. Now there have been pitchers who have horrifically just broken their arms while throwing, but this is one that bolsters my hobby horse about don't throw so hard everyone, This is one that bolsters my hobby horse about don't throw so hard everyone, which clearly everyone is heeding my words and my warnings there. But Schwellenbach had recently experienced a speed uptick. So he's just coming off of a career high 12 strikeout performance against the Phillies

on Saturday. And he felt some soreness, some discomfort. I guess it wasn't a super acute pain, but he got imaging and it showed a small fracture and now he's out potentially for the rest of the season, though potentially not. Schwelnbach said, doctors just use the term freak accident. Honestly, from the bump in Velo I've had in the last last month maybe my elbow just wasn't ready for it who knows it could have been anything and then the mlb.com story says schwellenbach's assessment comes just a month after teammate aj smith schaver experienced an increase in velocity just before tearing his right ulnar collateral ligament so he did have a sproing now i i guess there could be cases where the uptick in velocity is a symptom,

not a cause. I don't know if that's possible. Like if something's breaking down and somehow that briefly enables you to throw harder. I don't know whether that's a thing or whether it's just that, yeah, if you do have a velocity boost, then maybe there's more max effort, there's more torque, there's more tension because Schwannbach against the Red Sox on May 31st, he threw 13 pitches, 99 miles per hour or higher, and he had never touched 99 in any of his previous 33 starts.

And his average four seamer was sitting quite a bit higher over that span too. So for whatever reason he unlocked some extra speed and then his elbow was like, no, I cannot, I cannot do this. I am not capable of sustaining this sort of speed. So it's just a really, I don't know if this is a unique phenomenon in sports where something that is so correlated with improved performance is also so correlated with increased risk of injury to the point where I'm always torn much like the UCL itself sometimes about how to react to these things because we see a Velocity uptick and we think,

oh, good news, this is great, right? He projects even better now. But then also that voice in the back of my head is thinking, uh-oh, danger, Will Robinson, this is bad. And I don't like that because I wanna get excited about extreme performances. And we typically can when it comes to hitters, if someone hits the ball really hard, we generally

think, oh, that's good, that's a good sign, he can hit the ball really far. And you don't think of that as being so closely associated with injury risk that it's also kind of foreshadowing of doom. But with pitchers, you do. And so I don't know whether that is unique to pitchers or whether that is a common thing in sports. I guess like, you know, if a sprinter is faster, do you think, uh-oh, sprinter's going to break? I don't know.

Is this if a football player is bigger or stronger? Do you think, uh-oh, that's bad? That's certainly, I guess it's bad for impacts and concussions and everything, at least for the people they're running right into. And that's even more of a long-term concern, whereas it can be a short-term concern as it has been, I guess, with Schwellenbach and Smith-Scharver. So football is the one I could sort of speak to in terms of where my anxiety registers. And it doesn't tend to be with the guys who are really big. There is precedent for that, right? Where, you know, a guy is just so massive that, you know, you'll

see non-contact injuries and it really does look like the force of their own body sort of working against itself was enough to pull a, you know, a ligament or tear something or what have you. That certainly exists. But you mostly worry about the little guys. You worry about the little guys having to go up against the big guy and what that's going to do to not only their ability to play well, but also to leave the field safely, which isn't a funny thing. It's just like, wow, this sport is a thing I really like and should feel maybe more conflicted about than I do. But it little guys in baseball

don't make me nervous because it's a non contact sport. I might worry about like their ability to actualize power. If it's a tiny hitter, I might worry about, you know, their ability to hold up to the rigors of catching a whole year if it's like a shorter statured catcher or there's this debate, always this debate about the shorter pitchers and how effective they're going to be over the long term. So there's performance related stuff, but it mostly sits in that realm as opposed to I'm worried they're going to pull themselves apart. But I, unlike you, swing of swing the other way at a certain point, even though big guys get hurt. It's not like, you know, big guys don't need Tommy John or whatever.

But, you know, when I look at someone like Paul Skeens, you know, I do take a certain amount of comfort that like, you know, this isn't unsafe at any speed. Like he's such a big guy. Surely he can absorb that kind of velocity, which, you know, that's probably foolish, but that is my sense. I, like I, I'm less worried about it. I worry about like the whippy guys the most. Yeah. I guess maybe if you're an outlier, like Wemby or something where it's, you know, an outlier like Wemby or something where it's, you know, guys that height, there's just a lot that can go wrong. And his height is part of why he was such a highly touted prospect in addition to his just all around athleticism, which you don't often expect from someone his size, but his size was both an advantage and a concern. So maybe that's a case, although

that's, that's about physical stature, which is not exactly what we're talking about with pitchers. And of course, in basketball, there's concerns about Achilles tears. Now, is it because these guys are big? Is it because of the shoes? Is it because too many games or what? But that's not necessarily the same either where it's like, Oh, this guy's's this guy's so good, he might get hurt. That's something where I don't know, I'd associate that almost with racing, like car racing, like test pilots or something like the more extreme and scintillating the performance, the more dangerous it is, perhaps.

That's maybe, yeah, if you're like amazing at defense in baseball and you're constantly leaping and diving, that could be a case where you're thinking, oh, he's gonna run right into the wall and he's gonna hurt himself. But pitchers, I think, are sort of singular in this respect where I'm just always conflicted because we just, we know like, okay, this guy just added a tick of fastball velocity, that's good, that bodes well.

But also maybe it bodes poorly too. So it's just always just a conflict and I don't care for that conflict. I think that that's fair. I do think it's dangerous to be a test pilot. I think so too. Yes. Historically speaking, that is probably the case. It doesn't always go well. No. Okay. So we've got just a few news stories to discuss and that'll be the rest of this episode. And I guess we can lead with the newsiest and timeliest right now, which is the latest sign of our sports betting apocalypse, the latest gambling scandal

involving the guardians, Luis Ortiz. So we are recording on Thursday afternoon. Ortiz was scheduled to start for Cleveland on Thursday night. He will not be doing that because as was reported on Thursday, he is on leave and he is under investigation by MLB in partnership with the union. He's not suspended. He's still being paid. It's technically called a non-disciplinary paid leave, though I guess the fact that he is not making this start is sort of disciplinary, but not really because he hasn't been found at fault. He's not guilty of anything yet, but they're just taking the precaution of taking him out of the

game. And we know based on an ESPN report, something about why this is. So he has been placed on leave because one of the betting integrity firms that monitors the action at sportsbooks detected that there was an unusual pattern of gambling activity specific to two particular pitches that Ortiz threw in June. So this was June 15th against the Mariners, June 27th against the Cardinals, the bottom of the second inning against the Mariners, the top of the third inning against the Cardinals. He threw first pitch sliders for balls.

And evidently there was a lot of gambling activity on these specific pitches in Ohio, New York, New Jersey. And the wagers were that these pitches would be balls or hit by pitches. And so as far as we know now, we don't know whether there is anything directly linking Ortiz. We don't know whether there's a paper trail or a digital trail that suggests that he was aware of this, that he was doing this on purpose,

but there is suspicious betting activity, which might suggest that someone had a tip that these pitches would be balls. And so this is different, I guess, from some of the gambling scandals that we've seen in baseball recently, where players were suspended temporarily or banned permanently in the case of Tukupita Marcano, because those were betting on baseball games, but not allegations of game fixing. Right. allegations of game fixing, right? And even Pat Hover, the umpire, he was seemingly sharing a dual owner

of a sports betting account where baseball betting was going on. But in these previous scandals, there were no real allegations that the players had done something to influence outcomes in games in sort of a Black Sox scandal type way. Whereas this is, this has taken on game fixing or, you know, pitch fixing implications, which

is worse in some ways, if it's not just, I had a gambling problem and I bet on some games. Obviously, the reason why betting on baseball is banned for people in baseball is because of the concern that they might know something, they might influence something. But this is specific allegations for particular pitches. So, okay, I want to try to be reasonable because I am often on my high horse about the gambling stuff. It seems to mean that if you are the league and you are trying to walk this line whereby you have, you know, you have affiliated sportsbooks, but you are still obviously concerned with the integrity of your sport, that these kinds of micro bets are disastrous and shouldn't be allowed. And that you could have, you could have an entire class of bets that aren't about like particularly ball strike calls. And I asked Chris Crawford if this is a typical

way for these to be presented, right? Because the bets, both times the bets that the available bet on the pitch was a ball or hit batsman, which I found interesting that it wasn't ball or strike. I really think you cannot allow ball to be an available bet because, you know, even the very best pitchers in the world sometimes miss their spots and are trying to throw a strike but can't for whatever reason. But you can pretty reliably throw a ball if you mean to. Um, and so to your point, like people who are involved with the game, who are employed by the league or its teams are prohibited from betting on not just baseball, but any bat to ball sport.

And the reason is because of competitive integrity issues. You don't want a game, a particular at bat, an inning influenced by anything other than the competitive drive of the people in the field and their skill. And so I don't know why you would allow this category of bet and maybe saying like micro bets, maybe banning that is too broad. You know, I haven't thought through all of that yet, but it's certainly it seems wild to have pitching related micro bets that allow for you to bet on a thing that the pitcher can very directly control. You know, it seems, that seems like what it,

what else do you think is gonna happen? This is the most obvious point of vulnerability. This and umpires to my mind are the most obvious points of vulnerability and it doesn't mean that there aren't broader sort of like Conspiracies that could emerge that might put other Outcomes or what-have-you in play? Obviously one could as we discussed Drug someone and then they throw an amazing game and then your bet that you will lose will be undone and you have to kill Them with a fastball in a batting cage, You know, like these things happen. But I think that there is maybe work that could be done to

address what seems like a very obvious vulnerability within the system. And like we don't, to your point, we don't know other than he's the guy who threw them. We don't know what the theory of the case is here to the extent that there even is one. But as soon as you think there's a possibility that a guy might have thrown even a pitch, you got to take him off the field. Like you can't let him play anymore, even if he is ultimately exonerated of any wrongdoing here. Yeah, which is possible, right? Totally. In the NBA, they've had a bunch of scandals lately. Terry Rozier was under investigation.

It was just reported this week, I believe, that he was cleared of wrongdoing. But of course, John T. Porter was found to be guilty and banned from the NBA for life and even in legal trouble. And then Malik Beasley is now also under investigation. Those are prop bet sort of situations like, you know, guy will or won't score a certain number of points, that kind of thing. And yeah, the micro betting, the ESPN story says betting on the result of first pitches is offered by some sports books.

I thought you could or would soon be able to bet on any pitch. I didn't even know that it was just limited to first pitches. I don't know that it is just limited to first pitches. I think that my understanding is that and you know, it varies book to book. Yeah. And what micro bets they entertain both in terms of like the, the pitch itself, like as in the number that it is in the game or the outcome that they allow you to bet on. I think that that can kind of vary, but yeah,

like I've seen people, I've seen people betting pitch by pitch at games. Oh, sure. Yeah. It's the whole business model for Invenu, the company we talked to that does the odds for Apple TV Plus games. Their whole goal was to get involved. Remember that interview? Yes, I do. That was the craziest hour of my whole life. Their whole goal was to get into microbedding. And really, you can see why it would be lucrative,

but you can also see why it would be dangerous and Pandora's box even more so than the legalization of sports betting generally. And yeah, I'm I'm generally in the camp of I don't think gambling on sports should be illegal. I just wish that like me, no one else wanted to do it. It's like I feel like the world would be a better place if it had never been invented somehow, or if everyone else was equally uninterested in it. And yet I do support people's right to do that, and even though it's going to lead to harm for a lot of them. And that's the thing though, if you were going to regulate, and I do think that there should be more regulation,

certainly of marketing and availability of these things, but also maybe some specific betting types and micro bets, you can see why they wouldn't want that to be banned or regulated because even more bets, so many opportunities to bet, but that seems even more dangerous for people who are susceptible to problem gambling.

Yes. Could get addicted if there's just an unlimited number of things. I mean, there's already so many things you can bet on every sport and every part of the world at all hours, but to open it up to the hundreds of thousands of pitches that are thrown in the course of an MLB season. That plus, as you said, the potential for players to fix things, which just seems pretty limitless. And really, I think this is one case where if this is going to be offered, then it is better for the action to be legal and monitored,

because how would you ever know if you were doing this just off the books? I mean, the only reason why we know this happened is because there's this company that's set up to flag bets like this. And even the gambling purveyors are somewhat motivated to catch people doing this because they don't want the implication

that things aren't on the level. Yeah. So I'm always nervous if it's like, oh, it's self-regulating. They'll just stop this themselves. But there's something to that. Like the fact that this was caught, that we know about it, that it was reported on by sports media companies, even though they have ties to sports betting companies, that's all good, I guess,

cause this has to have happened. Now I don't know whether the legalization of betting has just made it more feasible to bet on these things. Like maybe when you had to go see your bookie to put some money down, I don't know whether your bookie was offering action on individual pitches. So it's possible that the legalization of sports betting

has just made this kind of thing more commonplace. But if this were something that you could bet on and you could do it illegally with no monitoring or anything, then you'd have to think that it would happen quite often, because it's just... You could even tell yourself as a pitcher, it's no big deal, it's not like, I'm really throwing the game here,

I'm just throwing a ball, there's a good chance that I'd be throwing a ball on this pitch regardless. It's interesting, I watched the two pitches, you can't tell anything, obviously. One of them just looks like a regular ball to slider, they're often outside the two pitches. You can't tell anything. Obviously one of them just looks like a regular ball to slider. They're often outside the strike zone. Yep. The other is farther outside and really yanked.

And so now I'm watching and thinking, Oh, well, he really wanted to make sure that that was a ball, but if I had seen that without this being flagged for me, I wouldn't think anything of it. There are just weirder, wilder pitches thrown all the time. It is interesting to bet on a pitch being a ball because it's not entirely in your control, I suppose, if you're the pitcher, you could always just get the batter to chase.

And so you'd really wanna be sure of it, I guess. Like one of the pitches that was flagged, it wasn't really a competitive pitch, but I'm sure that there have been wilder pitches that have been swung at at some point. And so it's kind of, you know, partly the batter is in play there as well. I'm imagining like some super framing catcher who spoils the whole plot because he somehow got a pitch called a strike. And neither of these, no one could have gotten Patrick Bailey and Austin Hedges could not

have gotten these pitches called strikes. But you know, if it were closer to borderline, but I guess he would make sure not to make it borderline. But it is, it is interesting that it's something that is not entirely under your control, I guess, though it's, it's mostly under your control. Right. I think maybe entirely would be too strong, but I think you definitely could with greater confidence say, yeah, I can literally throw that pitch. If the line facilitates something out of the zone rather than in it, because then it's mostly about your ability to execute that. Because you're right.

Like these pitches were so far outside, like there's no framing that could do it. And there's no way that this is getting called a strike accidentally. So I, yeah, it just seems like it's a very obvious soft spot in the system that would, if you're the league, if you're one of these sports books, like maybe, maybe you feel like your monitoring is sufficient. And so this is catching things as it should, but I do wonder if there's like a strategy here to be like, hey, we're worried about this. We recognize that this is a kind of bet that could be open to manipulation. And so we're going to stop offering it for a while,

or we're gonna stop offering it in perpetuity. And instead we'll give you 14 parlay bets to bankrupt you better. Like, you know, we'll just make up our money somewhere else. Yeah. Matt Trueblood noted on Blue Sky that the second of these pitches

was the sixth hardest slider he's thrown all year and his release point was about four inches higher than on the five faster than it. But he says the smoking gun is the first one it had by a good margin the highest arm angle on any slider he's thrown this year. I don't know, you know, is that corroboration? It's certainly not conclusive, but if you wanted to find something else that seemed suspicious, then I guess that could be it. So, you know, that's something that I imagine the league is probably looking at the characteristics of pitches, perhaps. But yeah, it's, I assume that the micro betting, I mean, aside from the legalization, you just

need phones and apps to make that feasible. Like smartphones were a mistake, maybe I say as, you know, someone who has one in his hand at all times, but that was the true Pandora's box, probably in any number of ways. And so I guess to bet on a first pitch, you could do that before a game. So maybe that's the point that some sports books offer that a first pitch of an inning is not really subject to anything else. But in game micro betting, that's obviously going to fluctuate based on what has happened. I want to be careful as I, uh,

continue my crusade to convince every man under the age of 40 and American not to participate in sports betting, just to pick the demo. That's most likely to do it, that a couple of things are true simultaneously. I think that the presence of phones and the ability to do this on an app away from a casino has supercharged both the market for these kinds of bets and the addictive properties of sports betting. I say that acknowledging that I have not conducted, nor do I know of like objective research on that, but that's my instinct that this is, has the ability

to make things stickier if only because that's true of our phones with literally everything else. Yeah. You know, and I'm not an anti-phone person, but I think we can all acknowledge that like, you know, we're on them maybe more than we should be. So there's that part of it. But like the instinct to sports bet has been present for as long as the game's been around. And I think that we should properly identify the danger here, which is the ability to do

it very easily as an individual better, and the proliferation of it and proliferation of bets that are largely facilitated by the technology existing, just introduce more points of potential vulnerability into the system, either for your own pocketbook or for, you know, an athlete who has incentive they might not have before to throw a little pitch into your point. You might be able to do it and be like, what's the big deal? Like, I think all the time, you know, I've worried about this in the minor leagues too, because yeah, you talk about umpires maybe because they can influence so many things and because they're not as well paid as the players in the majors and Ortiz, he's early in his career. He's making not much more than league minimum.

League minimum is still a hefty amount of money for most of us. But, oh yeah. Wouldn't object. Yeah, right. But there's large amounts of money available there. If you're a minor leaguer, then the payout might be smaller, but the bar is a lot lower for what might convince you to do that. And there are just as many events and pitches and everything. And I don't know how commonplace

micro betting on minor league baseball is, for instance. But in any of these cases, I guess the good news is that any significant amount of wagering is going to raise red flags because why would that many people put money down on a pitch in some unremarkable game in June in the third inning or whatever. So that's always going to raise eyebrows and fortunately get flagged, I guess. So that's the positive takeaway. Anyway, we will return to the story when we know more.

But that is one bit of bad news, one other little bit of bad news and annoying news that I wanted to mention. So we talked a little bit about the Dodgers and their slow response to the situation in LA with ICE raids and protests, et cetera. And their, you know, very Hispanic-leaning fan base was frustrated at their lack of response

to that. Ultimately, perhaps in response to that pressure, they did make a million dollar donation in support of immigrants. And they also did prevent some federal immigration agents from setting up in their parking lot. Yeah. Subsequently, they have now been sued or there's a federal complaint filed against them over their DEI practices. And this is America first legal, which is these Stephen Miller.

Guys, man, I'm sorry, I'm going to lose. Sorry for the big swear, but I'm not because I'm just, I'm, sorry. This is, this is the fairly loathsome Stephen Miller, who is the White House deputy chief of staff and one of Trump's top advisors and ideological people. He started this group and this has been going on for years. And in fact, this same group, America First Legal, filed a similar complaint against Major League Baseball back in 2023, which preceded MLB downplaying its own DEI initiatives. That was filed before Trump and Miller were back in power, and maybe it's just, you know, any time anyone sticks their head up an inch, then these guys are going to come in and just do something in defense of the white men who are clearly in need of being a protected class in Major League Baseball, just in front offices,

just not enough white dudes. You know, finally someone's sticking up for my people in Major League Baseball. But really, they're going after the Dodgers and Guggenheim partners, Mark Walters company. And it's all about just their kind of DEI mission statements and practices, et cetera. And it's just rampant.

This is happening to corporations all over the place. And it is clearly, I think, a reprisal. It's like, OK, you're going to donate some money. You're going to stop our agents from coming in here. Well, we'll see you in court, because now we're going after you for quote unquote, anti-white racism. And it's just very frustrating because this is the kind of thing that then cows companies into not doing anything or

saying anything. And that's what they're banking on here. That's the calculation. So the Dodgers do finally do something. And this is the response. Yeah. Baseball and financial services, famously a font of diversity. Yeah. That was my experience when I worked in finance. I didn't get a little settlement as part of a gender discrimination lawsuit class section at all. Like, what the f**k are we even talking about? I, I think that these kinds of lawsuits always lay bare the real ideological project that they're engaged in, which is to, this was what they were trying to do when they were out of power.

The recriminations and consequences are much worse now that they're back in power. But to create a permission structure whereby anyone in a position of authority who is not a cis white dude is open to suspicion and questioning about why are they there? Surely you took someone else's job, right? Their issue isn't with diversity, equity, and inclusion as a means of guiding a corporation's hiring. Their problem is with diversity, full stop. That's the project, right? And for them to look at an organization like the Dodgers, which is very international in terms of its

player population, got a lot of different kinds of folks represented there, got a lot of different kinds of folks represented in their front office, famously just won the World Series, right? They're doing fine. It sort of puts the light of the whole thing, right? Because this is a successful organization. It has brought together a lot of different kinds of people. The work output of that diverse workforce is literally being a champion. So what are we doing here? Like, I think we can

just call this stuff what it is. This isn't them being annoyed that you have to sit through an annual like sexual harassment training, right? They're racist. They're segregationists. They're white supremacists. That's the project. We're recording this on the day that the House just passed this monstrosity of a bill which is blowing out ICE's budget in a way that is going to make it the most heavily funded federal law enforcement agency that we have more than the Bureau of Prisons. And we famously love putting people in prison. And so they're not like, it's all just being laid bare.

That's what they're trying to do. They are trying to intimidate the Dodgers. They're trying to intimidate Guggenheim Partners. Guggenheim Partners has a lot of money. It has offices all over the world is my understanding. I'm sure that they will fight back against this, but they are hoping for concession. And I just hope that both the Dodgers and Guggenheim Partners looks to all of the different corporations, nonprofits, universities that

have gone down that road, they don't stop. Giving ground here does not make them stop coming after you. It makes them come after you again, but they're doing it while you're in a weakened position compared to where you were before. Just like the paramount settlement, same thing going on in media, where it's just the hope is that you won't object to anything because if you do, you'll end up being sued. So, yeah, the bill that just passed does have some sort of provision in it

that gamblers are very upset about when it comes to deducting your losses that people are upset about being a professional poker player or gambler. So maybe that'll save us from the micro betting apocalypse. Who knows? But yeah, that's just this latest sign of things happening that we do not care for whatsoever. And hopefully, well, we'll see maybe America first legal will will file a complaint against effectively wild because in the post Sam and Jeff era, we're not a hundred percent white guys.

We're white, but, but yeah, we would have been safe in the, the Jeff or Sam era with our host lineup here, but this could be a problem. So I'm kind of surprised that this, uh, hasn't been leveled against me on social media, but maybe this is the benefit of me having quit Twitter. All right. Lastly, we said that we would return to this last time. Rob Manfred's comments that were reported earlier this week about his approach to the upcoming labor negotiations with the players.

He is attempting to do an end around the union leadership and speak directly to the players themselves. And his message is apparently that he is the benevolent man who wants the players to make more money. And if they would just listen to him and play ball, so to speak, that's really his main motivation here, is that he doesn't think the players are getting enough money.

I mean, that is something, he works for the owners and that is something that the owners have historically been concerned about. Like, players are getting a raw deal. How can we set up players with a cushier situation? So that is what Rob is saying here. These comments were reported by Avandrelik, wrote about them at The Athletic, and evidently he said this during an investor event that the Braves were holding. And he pretty explicitly said, he said,

the strategy is to get directly to the players. There seems to be kind of a mismatch between what we see at the union leadership level and what the players are thinking. I don't think the leadership of this union is anxious to lead the way to change. Certainly not the change that Rob Hanford wants. So we need to energize the workforce

in order to get them familiar with or supportive of the idea that maybe change in the system could be good for everybody. Everyone. Yeah, change such as a salary cap, for instance. Right. Change such as a signing deadline in the offseason. A bunch of changes that seemingly would benefit the owners, but, Rob Manfred is insisting,

would be good for everyone too. And so he contends, he says that in the player meetings that he holds with teams, he starts with a rhetorical question. What does the current system do for players? Over the last 20 years, the slowest growing salaries among the four major professional sports, baseball. And when I make that point,

what I usually say to the players, to me, that's a failure on our part. 10% of our players earn 72% of the money. I usually try to avoid the high-earning guy at this point and find a younger player and say, look, if you're one of the 10%, it's a great deal, but if you're the other 90, it ain't so good. So pretty explicitly, he's trying to divide and conquer. He's trying to divide the players from the union leadership and then also the lower earning players

from the higher earning players. And he has some figures in here that it's hard to verify. I don't know whether he is cooking the books a little here. I'm sure it's the most positive spin. Maybe he's not making these things up out of whole cloth. Like, I don't know, have MLB players' salaries on a percentage basis increase less? Perhaps they have. Maybe that's because they were making good money before

because of the union's efforts, because of Martin Miller, etc. Or maybe because the owners have decided to spend less in a lot of cases. Right. This is kind of a we're all trying to find the guy because the owners have decided to spend less in a lot of cases, right? This is kind of a, we're all trying to find the guy who did this sort of situation where if the players are making less, maybe it's because the owners, you know, in coordination with the front offices who've realized aging curves and how that works and everything else,

but because you have some owners who are just sitting on the revenue, sharing money and not spending. Well, that could be one reason maybe why player salaries have stagnated relatively speaking. Manfred said, my first deal, where I was the chief negotiator in 2002, we were spending 63% of our revenue on players today. We spend about 47% on players. Again, is that because the players have done poorly for themselves or is it because the owners have tightened the purse strings? I said, so what does that mean? I said the math means you are getting, you the players are getting smaller and smaller percentage of each dollar.

And in fact, if we had made the deal 10 years ago to share revenue 50 50, you would have made two and a half billion dollars more than you made. Obviously, the union Tony Clark came out and said, this is full of misleading or downright false statements coupled with their already announced intention to shut down the sport unless they get their way. So what do you think? Would this pitch work on you if you're earning the major league minimum and Rob comes over and says, I've got a deal for you.

I can make you more money. Would you say, okay, Mr. commissioner, let's do it. I think my rhetorical question to Rob Manfred and I might actually just call it a question that I demand an answer to in these meetings is, I don't know, Rob, do you support the repeal of the national labor relations act of 1935? Like we didn't set out to have this be like such a political episode, but here we are, because you know, the news is what it is

We have to react to the moment that we're living in the notion that management is going to be a fair arbiter of Labor's interest when you have an established contentious relationship is Ludicrous I think that the the circumstance under which he offered these comments is instructive. Like we get on Manfred a lot for being a poor communicator, often in a press setting, right? Like he gets easily flustered. He says things that he comes to regret, then he kind of can't rebound. He was very much with his people at this event,

right? These are people whose stated objective is making money on baseball as investors. Although he did still manage to stick his foot in his mouth here because when he was talking about MLB free agency and how it should be more like other sports that have deadlines and all the activity happens quickly, he said, our free agency is like the Baton Death March. It starts the day after the World Series and in February, really, really good players

are still wondering around. Yeah, that's. Yes, I forgot that part of it. Yeah, you're right. He did. He did do that, man. Just going completely out of proportion. So, yeah. So, yeah, so he did do that part. But like he is very much he was very much with his people during this

event and what he was doing, you know, he was clearly aware that his comments were going to filter out to the media as they obviously did both to Evan and I think the Sports Business Journal reported on those remarks initially. But like the target audience for them was hearing about stuff they care about, right? How do you increase ROI? How do you increase franchise values? How do you think about central revenue versus individual team revenue? But the idea that they are trying to get as much money to the players as they can, it's

just obviously contradicted by all of their actions, by his actions individually, right? Because Manfred has been, before he was commissioner, was a central figure in some of the prior CBA negotiations, including the- Yeah, that's how he became commissioner. He was the labor hawk. Right. This guy has been trying to tip the balance of revenue and power in the league in favor of the owners the entire time he's worked for Major League Baseball. So the idea that he's suddenly like, well, I just want to make sure you get your fair share. It's

like, tell me what's a bigger hurdle to young guys getting paid, Rob. The fact that free agents are making big money once they actually hit free agency or the fact that they have to make the leak minimum for three years and then submit to arbitration for at least three. Which of those do you think is suppressing salaries for younger players more? I have a feeling it's their inability to negotiate on the open market for their services. Right? If I just had to like put my finger to the wind and pull something out of my brain space, that's what it's going to be. I'm so angry today and I woke up feeling mostly tired, but not this mad. Now I'm really mad. I didn't know about the Stephen Miller thing, man. That

boned me out hard. I just think that these are like, this is obviously being put forward with the goal of weakening the union rather than strengthening the individual players who are in any of the rooms that he meets in. Honestly, I think that if I were the union, I would take everything that he said on this investor call and repackage it into messaging to the members of my association, right? Because these are not the remarks of a person who has respect for the people sitting on the other side of the negotiating table, right? In order for this to work, you have to think that the union and more importantly, its members aren't that bright,

aren't paying attention to what's going on, aren't going to be able to recognize the obvious strategy in front of them. And that isn't to say that every member of the players association is happy with union leadership. That isn't to say that the union has always done a good job. I think that they've done a much better job of late in terms of both the resolve that they have shown in the modern era, to be clear. There have obviously been periods of profound solidarity among the players in the past,

but the way that they did hold together in the last CBA negotiation, even though the executive committee was not happy with the deal that they ultimately got, they did better. I think they got back as much as they possibly could. And in contradiction to Manfred's point, some of those initiatives were directly targeted at getting more money to players sooner in their career. Right? So if I'm the union, I'm going to every one of my members and I'm like, this is what this guy thinks of you. Right? This is what this guy thinks of us. He's talking about us to investors openly about the strategy he's trying to deploy

so that when push comes to shove and we're at the table a year and a half from now, we fracture, but we don't have to do that. And that doesn't mean that the negotiations going to be easy. And it doesn't mean that we're not going to lose money and games because I think we're going to lose money and games, but I think we're going to lose money and games. Like we just are. It's the oldest management strategy in the book. What Stanford is doing here. Classic union busting. Yeah. And you know, if you can't prevent the union from forming in the first place, then what you do is try to bypass that leadership. Yes.

And as you noted, the executive committee voted against ratifying the last CPA that was agreed to and the players themselves, the members supported it. And so that may have been a signal that, oh, maybe we can actually go around, or maybe Tony Clark and his reputation has been damaged slightly.

He and the union are are under federal investigation currently, right? I don't know whether there's any fire to the smoke that is happening here. And it's it's not just Clark, but it's you know, this concern that maybe union leaders were enriching themselves, which has happened, could have happened. I know nothing about this specific case, but between those things, and there was also like an attempted coup of union leadership last year, right? Which went nowhere, but again,

maybe there are some signs of vulnerability here, potentially that Manfred is trying to exploit. And historically speaking, he's known what he's doing in labor negotiations. So maybe there's something to that. And yeah, there could be cases where the leadership actually isn't great. And, you know, there could be a point to it, but it's just on its face, really the contention that he's coming in and saying,

I want to help you make more money. That is obviously the opposite of what he is employed to do and what he has been doing for three decades or so. So it's just, it's very much a wolf trying to look like the grandma talking to little red riding hood sort of situation. And I would guess that it won't really fool anyone. You know, could there conceivably be a way

that there really is like like this would benefit us all, because if we could do something that would benefit the owners, but it would also benefit the sport in general and would lead to increased revenue and we would all come out ahead? Maybe, like, you could come up with a scenario where that's true, but I, I don't think it's a salary cap or an off season signing deadline, which I get it's excited when all of the NBA free agents signed at the same time. That just happened. But the reason why this happens in other sports is because they do have salary caps.

Right. They have a limited pool of money. Exactly. And so you're, you're squabbling over the same dollars with your union mates, and you are kind of competing against each other and owners, they can wait because you're just one player and you have to find somewhere to play, whereas the owners, they have leverage because they're going to field a team one way or another. And you need to sign a contract if you're going to play and make any money as an individual athlete. And so I think everyone mostly agrees that while having a deadline might be exciting

in some respects, it would be exciting for a little while, but I always remind people like the off season is still the same length. And so if you compressed all of the activity into a very small window, then you would have months where absolutely nothing was happening and not even rumors or hot stove stuff.

So I don't actually know that this would be better. Like, yeah, it might generate headlines and attention for a week or something, but then it would just be dead for months on end. So I don't know that that's actually superior because baseball doesn't really have the same off-field intrigue and drama that goes on in the NBA. And so there aren't as many other storylines that would sort of pick up the slack there. So yeah, I don't think that Rob is recommending this

just out of the kindness of his heart. And the Braves chairman, Terry McGurk, said that MLB teams typically are valued at four to nine times their expected revenues, whereas NBA teams might be 10 to 15. And he said, Rob can fix that. And that might just be about the stability, the predictability of,

you're gonna spend this amount of money because that's all you can spend. And people like that, but players I don't think would like that. So yeah, it's sort of silly. The idea that he's just extending a helping hand here. Like let me help you guys out. That is the opposite of what he intends to do.

I find myself the most frustrated with the commissioner when he, he treats us like we're stupid. Part of it is that it's stimulating of other experiences of our moment. I'll admit that part. I've been to therapy. These are grown ass men. These are serious people. The union's not full of rubes. And so I wish that he wouldn't do that. And I know that he thinks he's being strategic and I know that he thinks that he wouldn't do that. And I know that he thinks he's being strategic. And I know that he thinks that he can like kind of pull a fast one a little bit. I don't think that every single thing that has happened under his tenure has been bad. You know, I do think that there are things

that he is open to on the rule change side that have been positive. And I think that he's actually been pretty clear-eyed about the reality of broadcast rights and revenues in the modern era. But the notion that this guy who came up through the labor relations department at the league is like here to champion the salaries and rates of players is ludicrous. It's just ludicrous on its face. And it's pretty insulting to have it advanced as if it's anything other than that. So I'm sure that he, he was met warmly in the room, right? But we don't have to extend that same courtesy. So I hope the union strike fund is getting bigger and bigger every day because they might need it. I don't think that we're getting out of this next one without lost time.

And I know that, you know, opinions have varied on that. You know, we talked about Hannah Kaiser's argument, which I thought was sound at the time. Maybe I'm just in a more pessimistic mood today, but I think that it might be a protracted absence. So. On that lovely thought, we can end this episode. All right.

It is tough sometimes these days not to crash out, not to be on tilt. You can try to stick to sports, but these stories will find you even inside sports. We will have one more episode this week despite the holiday, And I think it'll be a little lighter hearted. I was heartened to hear from producer Shane, who is still in his twenties, that he didn't do any better on the All-Star Game Celebrity Softball recognition test than we did.

He also pointed me to a YouGov page with data on what percentage of all American adults have heard of various celebrities. They have an influencer data set as well. Druski, whom we had heard of, he's at 36% name recognition. He's only 151st on the influencer list. The other influencer in the celebrity softball game

doesn't even show up in this data. Some of the musicians don't either. So again, not exactly the cream of the crop fame-wise. To follow up on our conversation about that Diamondbacks fan who has repeatedly interfered with balls at the fence and we noted he had been ejected from that game but we questioned why he hadn't been banned. Well, now he has, only for the rest of this season

but he has been banned from Chase Field for multiple offenses during games. The fan actually did an interview. He went on an Arizona sports radio station and said that he's been ejected three times and that he's been part of nine or 10 replay reviews. Guy named Dave McCaskill. We thought it was four or five reviews

he'd been involved in. This reminds me of when the police catch a killer and he cops to more crimes than he was known to have committed. Maybe he even brags about past crimes that went undetected. Nine or 10 offenses for McCaskill. The Diamondbacks said, this fan will have the opportunity to return to Chase Field in 2026, so long as he meets certain terms and abides by our fan code of conduct. Presumably one of the terms is, hey, knock it off. Also thanks to listener Brad,

who wrote in to say congrats to Ben on Anthony Siegler making the show, one of my minor league free agent draftees. Nine of my 10 draftees have been in the big leagues already this season. I just need one more to complete the set. Luis Curvelo pitching in triple A for the Rangers. Please Rangers, make my day. Help me have a perfect minor league free agent draft.

Siegler has played a couple of games for the Brewers. And finally, I mentioned that knuckle baller, Matt Waldron of the Padres said that he would throw more knuckle balls this year than he did last year. Well, he has made good on that so far. His knuckle ball usage rate in his first major league started this season, 74%. Last year, I think his highest was 55,

and he was generally in the 30s or 40s, 38.2% on the whole last season. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners who have already signed up and pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access to some perks.

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memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. 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 podcast.fancrafts.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 sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild, and you can check the show group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the effectively wild sub edit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show notes at fan graphs

or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Despite it all, we hope you have a happy fourth and you will be back on the fourth or perhaps soon after with one more episode this week. Talk to you then. ["Effectively Wild"]