Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2525: Espresso Written Consent

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the research Meg saw on her trip to Saber Seminar, a vintage Max Scherzer start, Tarik Skubal’s espresso-machine maneuver, a Kevin McGonigle double and rule 9.06(f), an international signing scandal (or in truth, two), MLB’s proposals for reworking offseason signings and roster rules, legal wrangling regarding prediction markets, WPBL difficulties, a Chris Sale gem, a costly FARTBAT, outfield additions, whether Shohei Ohtani will pitch again, the first team eliminated from division-title contention, and more. Audio intro: Philip Tapley and Michael Stokes, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Saber Seminar site Link to Scherzer start Link to espresso article 1 Link to espresso article 2 Link to McGonigle hit article Link to @ScoringChanges explanation Link to Posnanski post Link to ESPN report on signing scandal Link to MLB proposal article 1 Link to MLB proposal article 2 Link to Baumann on MLB proposals Link to NHL holiday roster freeze Link to MLB prediction-market deals Link to latest legal decision Link to prediction-markets piece 1 Link to prediction-markets piece 2 Link to WPBL standings Link to WPBL article 1 Link to WPBL article 2 Link to Sale article 1 Link to Sale article 2 Link to Sale game page Link to Baldwin game precedents Link to FARTBAT article Link to FARTBAT wiki Link to MLBTR on Pham Link to Pham vs. Myers spat Link to MLBTR on Cave Link to MLBTR on Robert Jr. Link to Ohtani update Link to Reddit Rockies post Link to Curt’s Bluesky post Link to Cowser catch clip Link to Cowser catch article Link to The Sun Never Sets  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Diaz has that kind of stuff where it looks like every at bat is a totally uncomfortable at bat because you don't know up, down, left, right? Yes, that's that effectively wild, right? Yeah, a podcast as well, effectively wild, and one of our favorites. Here are the show. Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise from small sample size. Hello and welcome facts must lie It's effective

A strange book Hello and welcome to episode 2525 Of Effectively Wild A Baseball podcast from Fangraphs Presented by our Patreon supporters I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer Joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello Meg.

Well, we both had some travel this weekend Though yours was a bit more arduous than mine You had some interesting plain misadventures on your return trip, but your trip required air travel, whereas mine was car travel and train travel. And also yours was baseball themed, and mine was not. You attended Sabre Seminar in Chicago, which is always a lovely event. And I lament that I have not attended since they switched from Boston to Chicago, but I always enjoyed attending back in the day. did you get any sense of whether there are trends in research or was there any kind of clustering? Because I recall Saber seminars I attended.

Sometimes, even though they tried not to have overlapping presentations, sometimes it was kind of clear what the vanguard was or where the area of greatest research interest was. So I wonder whether anything stood out from the event. One of the things I'm always struck by going to this, Sabres Seminar has really changed in some ways over the years. I think that the quality of the presentations is as high as ever. I would say, like, if you are a young person who is trying to get on the radar of teams and you have unique research to present, I don't know that there's a better bang for your buck than go on a Saber Seminar. I really don't. It's frustrating to me. go to bang for your bucket is candidly. As a self-interested person who would like to hire some

smart young folks to write about baseball on the public side, I don't know how necessary a part of that pipeline that is for people anymore. A real mix of people, not everyone presenting there, is a student, but I think, you know, it's a really great opportunity for students to talk to a bunch of teams at once and really be with folks who have the power to hire interns, you know, sometimes to hire analysts. Yeah, I would just say that as a sort of an advertisement for the event. We've been so proud to be sponsors of Sabre Seminar for a long time. You know, all you have to do is look at the sponsor page to get a sense of like how many teams and and other sort of analytics-oriented organizations are present and excited about it.

So having done that little bit of X-Re-Ex-Try, I will say that this year was more biomechanics-heavy than previous years have been, which isn't super surprising. I think that when, you know, the latest and greatest in public-side data is what it is right now. That's maybe not super surprising, a continued curiosity about pitcher-ins. injury and fatigue. We had a number of presentations sort of oriented around using computer vision and, you know, the different motion capture files that are out there to try to basically detect fatigue before, you know, not only before a guy blows out, but before you see velocity decline or real changes in command. The front knee is where it's at. There were a couple of presentations that's sort of focused on the stability of the front knee as pitchers are delivering as a way of trying to gauge

fatigue. Noah Bear, I hope I'm saying your last name correctly, Noah from Syracuse, sort of kicked off some of that research first thing on Saturday morning. And there were other presentations that were interested in that. A lot of emphasis on bat speed and bat tracking and what that can reveal about swings and the quality of swings, how hitters can optimize, but also, you know, sort of how it can open up our understanding of the pitcher hitter interaction and sort of the cat and mouse game. There was Syracuse is just like all over this program. Not surprising given their their sports analytics program, but Owen St. Ongue, again, Owen, I'm so sorry if I'm not saying your name correctly, but your presentation was

super cool and impressive. He was using bat tracking as a way. way of understanding sort of, you know, if a hitter, first of all, being able to quantify in a specific way the notion of earlier late and have that be specific to the pitch that the hitter was seeing, but then also sort of hypothesizing about whether a hitter being earlier late affects the next pitch in the sequence that a pitcher throws, like basically are pitchers able to be reactive to seeing a guy be earlier late, and how does that sort of influence their decision to speed a guy up or slow him down

as a way of anticipating what the next pitch might be? And, you know, Owen talked about some of the limitations of his own study, like it's only looking at two pitch sequences, and obviously it's hard for us to really know, like, how cognizant of earlier late is the pitcher, can you incorporate information about the, catcher who presumably has a better vantage on that than the pitcher does. So I thought, you know, there were a lot of really wonderful presentations and I feel bad just picking out two from the

student side because they were hardly the only good ones. But those two, I thought, were very well done. And then, you know, you have a number of industry service providers and, and whatnot who presented, you know, Jack Lambert presented from Drive Line and the Sports Info Solutions guys presented on bringing DRS to the KBO and MPB and how they're thinking about trying to improve their defensive metrics for international league. So that was an interesting. One, there was a presentation from a number of player development and pitching development coaches at the college level, the most famous of whom for our listeners will be

Dan Straeli, who's the director of pitching development for Oregon, talking about sort of how colleges are navigating the NIL landscape and the role that sort of being able to talk through pitching development and player development plays in those conversations, right? Because obviously the money is an important piece of it, but part of what is inducing a player who's in the transfer portal to come to your program might be that you have a specific plan for him, right? Like you've looked at, you know, his arsenal and you have an idea for how to improve his fastball shape or whatever it is. I think that we have seen, continue to see the contraction of, say,

the pro scouting space in recent years and even as recently as last week. And there's all this competition for analyst jobs on the pro team side. And I think, you know, the big takeaway, and they were pretty explicit about this in their presentation, but I think it would have been obvious even if they hadn't said it, is that, you know, if you're a smart baseball person, there's a lot of opportunity in the college space if that's appealing to you because there's just a lot of low hanging fruit. I resisted the urge to Hector them and be like, but you're going to make them bunt less, right? You're going to talk to them about the bunting. Some of the punting is fine, to be clear. The calculus on like the ability of infielders to field in college, very different

than it is in the majors. And so, like, I do think that we can be a little reflexively antagonistic to the notion of bunting at the college level. Like, I know you talk about it all the time. Like, I can't get you to shut up about bunting in college. Some of the bunts are real bad, though, man. Some of the bunts are the worst bunt you've ever seen in your life. Not the bunt itself as like an aesthetic object, but like the strategy behind the bunt.

And so there's just a lot of room, I think, to make real meaningful interventions in that space. And it's going to be fascinating to see, like, how much adoption you get of advanced analytics concepts at the college level, I think it'll always lag behind the pros, not just because of sort of the college game is its own game. And people have an understanding of what it looks like, and it is different from the majors.

You also just, you have a different demographic of player. Not all of them can do all this stuff you want them to do, right? So there's that, but I thought that panel was interesting and sort of a nice change from some of the other ones. we got, which are, you know, like I said, there's just like a lot of focus on the bat tracking stuff. There was a whole section of challenge-related presentations that was interesting. And then unfortunately, I will admit, I had to leave not long after there was a presentation on sort of the use of relievers and high-leverage moments.

But then I had to scoot to the airport, except I didn't because I ended up being delayed hours and hours, but I didn't know that when I left Ben. So I did miss a number of what I imagine were very sharp presentations at the end of the day. But that's always the one downside of Sabers. You have to scoot. And then you get delayed because the weather, you don't know if it's the weather in Chicago or in Miami. And you think you're going to get home at 830 and said, get home in one in the morning because you get diverted to Tucson. Because in the time that you got delayed, thunderstorms happened in Phoenix.

and there's a ground stoppage. I think I remembered Sabre Seminar pretty well, given the fact that I'm working on so a few hours of sleep. But yeah, it was, it's a great event. And, like, the organizers do such a good job. Dan does such a good job. And Katie and Rob, and then they have this wonderful group of volunteers. And it's a really nice opportunity to, like, meet new people

and see folks that you might not otherwise. And, again, I'll just say, like, if you're, if you're a young person and you're trying to get in the game and you have some research to present, like, I really think it's a tremendous opportunity and the student, you know, student prices are less expensive. And then you get to go be in Chicago for a weekend. And Chicago is a beautiful city that I was desperate to leave, you know, when it came right down to it. At the end, I really was ready to go home, you know? Got a lot of rain, though, Ben. And you know what we say all the time. We needed it. Yeah. And I praised precipitation

on our most recent bonus episode. You did. You can hear my P-N2 precipitation if you subscribe. But But I'm glad you made it home and thank you for the rundown. I'll get back to Saber Seminar someday. We used to do effectively wild-life episodes at Saber Seminar. I got to say, so the final thing on the agenda for Saturday before the meetup was Eno and Derek recording a live rates and barrels. They took our spot. Well, they did, and they did a lovely job as they always do. But I was sitting here thinking Ben would never let us do this short of an episode.

It's true. We'd have to really, we'd have to really cut back. But, you know, maybe we should explore it because then producer Shane could just be there in person. It could be there in person. It's true. Shane, I keep forgetting to like make myself known that I'm going to this. And I do feel bad because you could have come to Maria's community bar back patio and had a couple of drinks afterward. But anyway.

Yeah, well, thanks for the recap. And I'm glad to that events like this. exist. And yes, it does seem as if there's just a sort of school to team pipeline now just skip straight over the intermediate stage, which used to be blog for a while, which was nice. And yeah, I'm glad that at least we get some research like this in the public sphere. And everyone wants to check out Saber Seminar. It'll probably be same time, same place next year, Sabreseminar.com. Stay tuned. Well, same time anyway. There's rumors about the.

location changing. Oh, okay. Well, maybe it'll come closer to me. That would be nice. Anyway. No, it's going to stay in Chicago. Maybe on your Odyssey at least. Hopefully you miss your Mariners being blanked by vintage throwback Max Scher for seven innings,

42-year-old Max shutting them down for seven frames, 10Ks. See, that was the sort of vintage Max Scherzer outing that I've been pining for. And I've celebrated that he's been pretty good of late, but not like that. That's a classic Scher's routing, or is it just a classic Mariners offensive outage? I don't know, maybe some combination of both takes two to tango or not tango, but it was nice to see. And probably just recharged his competitive batteries. And if anyone signs him, he'll be back for more next year, I would imagine. But he's making a case down the stretch here for still having a little left in the tank as long as his body allows him to pitch and physically return to the mound.

So that was nice, at least for me, for neutrals, maybe not so much for Mariners fans. Anyway, we have espresso machine controversy. I don't know whether you notice this, but the espresso machine has once again returned to the four in baseball. Been a while. Just preemptively did one. I feel like I can't, but I did because I anticipated. Sometimes I still don't notice, but now I just, I'm noticing more because you got me. But we were talking about espresso machines in the WBC and then with the Royals after that and Team Italy.

Now there's an espresso machine story surrounding Tarek Scoubel who took the espresso machine with him when he went from Detroit to L.A. So he was back in Detroit and it was a nice homecoming and he pitched well and he got to see his old teammates and fans and also take his new teammates out to dinner and everything. But also his espresso machine evidently went with him in the... the trade. The Dodgers acquired the espresso machine as well as Terrick Scouple. And this had been a fixture in the Tiger's Clubhouse, and they'd had a whole ritual around it. And now it's gone because he took it. He said, I'll wear it as to taking the machine, but also I did buy it, but I guess I'll wear it. So he purchased the machine, to be clear, and then also took it with him. And I think he, He also kind of blamed his wife, Jessica.

He said, that was my wife. I wanted to leave it and get a new one, but she wouldn't let me. My wife was like, that was too expensive to just run the charge back. So he's throwing his wife under the bus a little bit here, and it's someone who is married to a different Jessica. I don't know that my Jessica would have appreciated being blamed for any absconding with espresso machines. But, you know, this is kind of an entry in, remember that Britney Droly piece for The Athletic that we talked about, where it's like baseball players being cheap, right? Even though they're making lots of money, it's tough sometimes.

If you don't have a lot of money to begin with, then you don't, you're not really a born and raised rich person. You know, it's Nouveau Rish. It's you don't have the mindset of a super salaried person. And so you still look to economize, even if you're Terrick Scoobel, you can afford a multitude of espresso machines. Do we know what kind of espresso machine it is? We don't know the precise model and make, I don't think, but it is a high-end model, evidently. It's a fairly nice one. It wasn't just your budget kind.

But this was a nice one that Scouble bought because there was a whole setup where Casey Mize had procured some kind of machine because they were calling it Casey's Cafe and I think maybe Scoobel and Maiz went in together and of course now they're both X Tigers but evidently Scouble footed the bill for a bunch of new fancier stuff and Mai said he's gotten us a better grinder

we have a nice machine up in Detroit too it's coming along we're learning as we're going so they became coffee snobs as they went and then when this espresso machine disappeared. There was, I think, Spencer Torkelson said, couldn't believe it, that it was gone. Not just that Scoopal was gone, but the espresso machine, too. That was a really good espresso machine. So we don't know the exact details, but it was, I don't know if it was top of the line, but it was, you know, more than your budget one-button machine.

Look, I feel weird giving him the business about this a little bit, because, like, you know, He did buy it and he He got traded Right? Like he He didn't choose to leave He was sent away And

And Mice was sent away So Casey's cafe is closed Yeah I would have just left a machine though You know I would have just left it And been like, I love you guys so much

It's not a cast iron Right You don't have to season it You just get a new one You know And Yeah And now

I don't know why his wife is so attached to this particular one. And maybe it's just the principle of the thing. Maybe she's just like, hey, I was the one who bought this. I spent time on wire cutter,

figuring out which one was the best one. I read magazines in Italian. I'm just making up a version of her. I did all this work. I'd like my machine back, please. And that would be reasonable. Respect her work. But we, I'm just making up a story.

about why this would be true. I am a little surprised. Yeah, it's a drop in the bucket or the mug, really, when you're in that income bracket and you got that arbitration salary and you're poised on the precipice of a probably gigantic free agent deal. So, yeah, it's, maybe it would have been nice

to just leave that for your old teammates. It's tough enough that you have to, it's not jump ship, it's not as if he traded himself. He didn't necessarily have a sense. saying that, but just as a gesture of goodwill. But who knows, he was, it's all a joking tone. I don't think anyone's too bent out of shape about any of this. It's a fake espresso controversy, but it does surprise me slightly, I guess, that you

wouldn't just donate that to the Detroit clubhouse and just get a new one or maybe, because I don't know, he wasn't using it at home, presumably, so why does his, doesn't really impact his family and did the Dodgers have their own setup? I don't know. This was going to be my next question, which is like, so, hey, they like put the days in. They'll buy you an espresso maker. Now, I understand that money might feel like a sensitive subject around the Dodgers these days, but, you know, how many insurance policies does it cost? Exactly. I'm sure we there must be. Can we make jokes about it yet? Are we at the joking phase of the Mark Walter situation? I guess we're not.

since we don't have a full rundown of what has happened and what its impact on the team is going to be. But I felt like I made a good little joke there, you know? How many months of premiums is that? It can't be that many. Anyway, that's the espresso story and Terrick Scoobble. And I'm sure that the Tigers will adjust. And, you know, people who are coffee people, they're going to get their coffee one way or another. That's not really optional for them.

So someone can procure a new machine. I'm a coffee drinker. Tea, I associate with being sick. You know, tea is a go-to-for-one I'm sick, but it's not something that I necessarily gravitate toward in non-sick conditions. And part of that is because, like, I don't know if I'm a big hot beverage after the morning person. This is the thing I'm realizing about myself.

You're getting this version of Meg today. I'm doing my best. Having said all of that, I have lost my freedom. I'm not. Should have had more coffee. Oh, yeah, coffee. Coffee's good. Coffee's good.

I had a thought. I did. I had more of a thought than... Than coffee's good. Than just making coffee. Oh, here was my thought. You know how when you're sick, especially if you are sick in a way that involves like some amount of crummy, tummy,

you know how like the first thing you eat after you've had a stomach flu where you're like actually better and can eat something that isn't like bananas or applesauce is like easily one of the best things you've ever tasted in your entire life. Yeah, it's just such a relief. It's such a relief and it doesn't even strictly matter if it's actually good. You know, like if it's actively bad, then maybe you're not into it. But it can be I, the saltines I ate after my colonoscopy, easily one of the top like 20 foods I've ever eaten in my entire life because I was so hungry.

It was so hungry. When you have been diverted to Tucson and you don't get home until 1 a.m. And then you make good coffee. It's the best cup. It's like the best cup of coffee you've ever had in your life. You're just like, whoa, man, this is. And the variety we get is bitches brew. And that's just funny, you know?

You can't bleep it. It's on the bag. It's on the bag at the store. Sprout says it's fine. Sprouts says it's fine for us to not bleep bitches brew. Yes, I think that's okay. Okay. Great.

Thank you, Sprat. It's effectively wild standards and practices. Yes, that clears the bar. It's like a quote, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, sticking with the Tigers for a second, we got an email from listener Matthew.

This was sent on Sunday who said yesterday's Dodgers' Tigers game ended in the bottom of the ninth when with one out and the basis loaded. Kevin McGonagall hit a fly ball over the head of the drawn-in outfielder. The ball bounced into the stands for what I understand to be a ground rule double, or as some would say, an automatic double, that would have forced in two runs for a 3-1 victory. However, the scoring was a single with one-run scoring for a 2-1 final score. This strays into the pedantic

because a win is a win in the end. However, if he had hit a home run, then the final would have been 5 to 1. If, by rule, the ball bouncing into the stands makes it a double, why would the official scoring call it a single, color me perplexed? We have dealt with this issue before, and our recent guest,

the mysterious scoring changes account owner was all over this. And so I referred our listener to a at scoring changes tweet. But it does seem like this particular situation causes enough consternation that maybe there should be a change. To be clear, nothing was misscored or misruled here. This was by the book and by the rules. But it is confusing and there is some amount of inconsistency here. And this was the second time that this had happened. It had happened, I mean, this season, it had happened in a Giants Angels game, and there was a case with Raphael Devers.

And that was just last month. That was fairly recent. And so we're re-airing all of this consternation over this. And there is an actual rule that governs this, and it's very explicit about all of it, rule 9.06F, when a batter ends a game with a safe hit that drives in as many runs as are necessary to put. his team in the lead, the official score shall credit such batter with only as many bases on his hit as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run, and then only if the batter runs out his hit for as many bases as are advanced by the runner who scores the winning run. And then there's a comment on that rule that says the official score shall apply this rule

even when the batter is theoretically entitled to more bases because of being awarded an automatic extra base hit under various provisions of rules 5.05 and 5.06.4. So again, they said, we anticipated your objection here, and we are specifically ruling that, no, they don't do it even in that case. And then there's a separate rule 9.06 G that gives the special dispensation to home runs. When the batter ends a game with a home run hit out of the playing field, the batter and any runners on base are entitled to score. So, again, they have covered all the bases, literally here.

But why? Why is there this card? out for homers and not for automatic doubles. And this has come up on the Pazcast recently, and Michael Schur has ranted and raved about this. And Joe Posnansky has written and reported about it because in 1951, Joe DiMaggio's final season, there was a similar situation where he hit a fly ball that bounced over the fence and there was a lot of dispute about it.

And the official score gave DiMaggio a double and to RBI, even though the winning run had already scored. and the AL president at the time confirmed the ruling the next day. And then it seems like maybe they wrote this rule 9.06F in the year to after that, maybe prompted by that because no one quite knew what to do. And so they decided that, well, from here on out, that would not be ruled that way. And Posnansky actually sought out MLB and asked for a comment

on whether they would consider changing this. And they said any potential rule changes slash modifications would have to be looked at by our rules committee. And probably not a top priority, nor should it be, I suppose. This doesn't happen all that often, and it doesn't really matter all that much. We're not even talking about a difference in the decision or something. It's just what the final score is and what the margin of victory is and how many RBI does the guy who gets that hit, how many RBI is he credited with.

So it's pretty small beans in the grand scheme of things. But it does provoke consternation and listener emails and people confused about wait. Why don't they get all of those runs and all those bases and everything? And I don't know. I don't know that it does seem somewhat inconsistent to me when you have different types of balls that are out of play. And one is scored one way and the other is scored the other way. So there's no injustice done here in the sense of the letter of the law. but you could question why there is this inconsistency.

And maybe it would just be more intuitive for everyone involved, players, broadcasters, fans, if they did just treat that like, yeah, it's a double and you get a couple bases. And so another run should score there. Yeah, I think I tend to agree. I don't find myself kept up at night by it, you know? No. It's not even one of the things that I find the most annoying. but I think that there's an argument to be made that we're kind of maybe doing it a goofy way, you know?

Well, if anyone should have an objection to that rule being changed, then speak now or, well, forever hold your piece or I guess just speak later because this probably will continue to be an issue. But it's a non-issue mostly. I'm just sympathetic to the advocates for changing this to make it slightly more consistent. But agree with you. that it's not exactly at the top of the list when it comes to baseball reform. All right. Well, speaking of reform, I guess I have a couple of things to bring up along those lines. So one thing is that there was a whole raft of partnerships with Kalshi with MLB teams announced early last week.

And of course, teams and leagues are already in bed with prediction markets, whether it be polymers. market or Kalshi or something else. And there's already a league level polymarket sponsorship, I believe, and Kalshi is pursuing that too. And then there are already teams, Yankees, Mets, teams that have partnerships with some prediction market or another. But yeah, there was a whole group of five. The Braves, Red Sox, Dodgers, Padres, and Giants joined the party. And this is not unique to MLB either lots of other sports are getting in on this also. But just days after that was announced, there was a decision that might affect the classification of these prediction markets, because as we have discussed before, there's been this whole

debate about, is this gambling, why is this not classified as gambling? Is it meaningfully different? And there was a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco that rejected Calci's request for relief against Nevada's gambling laws after the state sued the company earlier this year for unlicensed operations because, of course, the sports books, the gambling operations are going after the prediction markets because they want the same regulations to apply to the prediction markets. And so it's sort of whom do we root for here?

Do we root for anyone? is it's like, yeah, maybe it seems like the prediction market should be regulated more, but it's like the good guys here are the actual sports books and legal gambling operations that just want the prediction markets to be subject to the same regulations as they are so that they don't have to compete on an unequal playing field. So there's this whole, I mean, 20 states are in litigation over whether the prediction market should be subject to the gambling laws and thus also confer some added revenue on those states in the public and everything.

So it seems like this is going to go to the Supreme Court. And that should be interesting, I guess, given the way the Supreme Court tends to rule these days. And given the stakes that the administration or people close to the administration has in prediction markets, Donald Trump Jr. has all sorts of stakes and advisory roles for prediction markets. So Trump Jr., you know, they're telling the Republican state attorneys general, at least not to go after the prediction market. So it's one of these things that shouldn't really be a partisan issue, but has ended up being one anyway. And so there's this sort of blue state, red state divide to some extent when it comes to who's going after whom. Anyway, that's where we are.

We're sort of in limbo, but getting closer and closer to this probably having to go to the Supreme Court to, actually decide this stuff. And I don't know if it actually matters when it comes to MLB, because obviously MLB has all sorts of partnerships with the sports books, too. So it's not as if these prediction markets, if the book gets thrown at them and they get reclassified as gambling operations that MLB will be like, oh, well, we couldn't possibly have any association with you, right, or the teams for that matter. It was interesting because the teams seemingly didn't really broadcast this arrangement, and it was really like the prediction markets were doing the PR, hey, we got these deals. And then maybe the teams grudgingly in some cases copped to having these deals too. But, you know, MLB and teams and especially the league, like they'll just, they'll take the money if the check clears regardless of how unsavory the sponsor is.

So I don't know if this affects anything in terms of the long-term partnerships. it might affect the viability of prediction markets and the profitability of prediction markets and thus whether they continue to be in the business of splashing cash around and partnering with teams and leagues. So that's one possible outcome is that they will no longer have such big marketing budgets and that source of income will go away. But I guess in terms of whom will MLB tolerate being in business with, that probably wouldn't actually change.

Yeah, I mean like MLB teams. did crypto sponsorships, right? The Nats crypto sponsorship is just still hanging out all over that ballpark. And so I don't think that the sort of perceived legality of the thing is necessary, or like what regulatory schema prediction markets are forced to sit in is going to do much for how the league thinks about them. Because, you know, if what ends up happening is that they have to be, they have to conduct themselves in a way that is akin to how sports books do.

Well, the league's comfortable with that. You know, they're comfortable with sports books. They like sports books for reasons that are about money and for reasons that are about oversight. And, you know, you can imagine which of those matters more. But it's an understanding of gambling that they're comfortable with. I do appreciate that the, you know, and I didn't read the entire decision by any means, but, you know, it has this vibe of like, hey, we're not dumb though, you know? Like, it's such an obvious dodge to say that these prediction markets are actually operating in a way that is more akin to commodities trading than it is to gambling.

And the fact that sports contracts, quote unquote, make up such a large percentage of their daily action kind of gives the game away, doesn't it? So it does feel nice. It does feel nice when one of the circuits is like, hey, we're not crazy or stupid. Let's roll it away. That makes sense. Yeah, because this ruling... We have a lot of counter examples lately, as my point. Yeah, this contradicted an earlier decision just a few months ago because there was the Philadelphia Third Circuit said that Kalshese sports event contracts were swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, which then granted them federal preemption from state law.

So this is very much in dispute. still and that's why it's going to have to be resolved. Right, because there will be a split in the circuit. So it'll end up going to the Supreme Court. But it's very obviously gambling. I think it was on five to four. I was listening to one of their episodes about this. And they made the note, this is not something I would have noticed because, like, you know,

I can tell you who the fourth reliever out of the Reds bullpen is, but I can't tell you all the weirdos who defend various lobbying interests. They just brought on a bunch of, like, gambling lawyers, these sports books. Like, that's who they're relying on in their defense against various lawsuits. Like, they are turning to people with industry experience in gaming. They are not relying on, like, commodities lawyers, right? Like, there are people whose entire practice is about financial stuff. That's not who the prediction markets are leading on.

They're leaning on gambling journey. So the speed with which the prediction market stuff has warmed its way into the advertising across the league is kind of shocking, even within the broader landscape of sports books and how much of that there is. I opened MLB.com while I was at Saber's webinar, and I was in one of the, you know, the game days. And at the bottom, it's given me live odds from Polymarket. I was like, I don't, I don't want that. And the way that they advertise it is so off-putting. It's even more off-putting than the Draft King stuff, which is amazing because the Draft King's ad. I was getting with some regularity was the guy yelling at me.

Exciting news from the sports world. It's not a trade or a free agent signing. I'm like, right, you know the stuff that actually affects sports? Yeah. Draftkins is now available in all 50 states. I was like, am I supposed to know who you are? Because I don't. You're just the guy who's yelling at me. I haven't seen that at in a while. You know the other thing I noticed the other, David? I haven't seen the salary cap ads in a minute. Yeah, that's true. I guess I haven't. either. Not that MLB is

abandoning its pro-cap position, but perhaps has pulled back a little bit from broadcasting that, but we'll see. Maybe it was just a little bit of a breather, a little well before they resumed the full core press. I do have more to say about MLB's CBA

proposals. Yes. But one other report that surfaced, this was late last week, I believe Alden Gonzalez at ESPN broke the story. It was an age falsification story with an international prospect, a Dominican prospect, going by the name of David Severino, and I will just read Alden's lead here.

Major League Baseball has suspended a once-priced Dominican prospect after uncovering an elaborate age fraud plot that included a fictitious death and gravesite tombstone. The MLB investigation uncovered a series of extreme efforts by the player's handler to make him appear nearly two years younger than he actually is, including faking a birth certificate to create a new identity, falsifying medical and school records, filing a fraudulent death certificate, and even creating the gravesite scene, according to sources. Yeah, so it's somewhat sensational, and this made the rounds because of the length that they went to here, evidently. And Severino's real name evidently was different, and he was actually 16 years old. And so they came up with this whole alternate identity, really old school stuff, you know.

And so they did this birth registration, and then there was the fraudulent death certificate, which said he had died of a respiratory illness two years after he was born. And then there was a fake tombstone that they created and put in this gravesite 75 miles from Santo Domingo. And so they really went all out. And he would have been eligible for the class of 2027, but now he's suspended and he'll have to wait an extra year. and this agreement that he seemingly had is probably off. But I always feel like I'm just losing my mind when I read stories like this. And I have mentioned this before because all the emphasis is on the player and the player's handlers and what they were doing and the player is suspended.

And then it says the Guardians, the Cleveland Guardians, had agreed in December to a $2.8 million pre-deal with a switch hitting infielder going by the. name of David Severino. The Guardians thought he was 13 or 14 years old, and the deal would be finalized in 2029, by which point he would be 17 and eligible to sign, but his name and age were both fake. The emphasis here is all on this not actually David Severino and the people involved in this scheme. But then it's just, it's sort of like forget about the fact that an MLB team had a deal with someone who was, they thought, 13 or 14 years old. And I know that's never the story because that's just the way that business is done in that market.

But it always feels to me like, wait, though, don't relegate that to paragraph three. And then there's just a no comment from Chris Antenetti, Guardians Pobo, and everything. And it's just like, that's almost a footnote. That's an afterthought. It's like, yeah, oh, the Guardians, they didn't get their deal done after all. And it's like, they broke the rules too. And I know everyone, it's just wink and nod and look the other way and everyone's doing it and everything. But every time one of these stories surfaces, I'm like, they broke the rules just as much as this kid broke the rules.

And there's just something very strange about teams negotiating with 13-year-olds. And are they the victim here because the 13-year-olds or so they thought was actually 16? It's like, it's just that should be the story. It feels like you're putting the emphasis on the wrong solaceal as it were. Yeah, and I know that's not newsy because it's dog bites man instead of man bites dog. It's like that's the way it's always done and everyone's doing it. And so it's only when someone does something uniquely nefarious in that market that baseball ops people get suspended or that becomes a big story. But that always feels like, wait, we should also acknowledge that.

I know the grave site stuff, that's pretty interesting and that's going to get headlines and everything. but also you're not actually allowed to do this sort of deal in the first place. So in a way, you kind of got what you deserved to, even if you were just going along with this system that everyone employs. Well, and the sort of strange wrinkle of it in a year like this is that we don't know for sure if there's even going to be a 2027 international class, right? Like there's kind of conflicting understandings about whether there will be a January 15th signing period in the midst of the CBA negotiations. They had an international class last time, but we have heard different things from different team sources on their understanding of whether or not they're going to get these deals done.

And like they want to. They're excited about these players and also like these young people have an understanding that a couple of months from now they're going to. to have a life-changing amount of money. It's such a weird and kind of yucky feeling part of it because you're like, well, I want this kid to have his money. You know, he has an understanding. But, you know, the fact that the deal exists at all is gross. And you're right.

Like, there's no mention in the story and from everything that I've been able to clean. Like, I don't think that Cleveland has any expectation that they're going to suffer sanction as a result of this, right? Like they won't be able to, it's like, it's a, it's almost as if the league's logic is like, well, you're not going to be able to sign this kid for 2.8 million and all of the deals are done. So now you have to find someone to reallocate that amount of the pool for. And I don't know off the top of my head what their expected international pool is for this coming year. But, you know, 2.8 million is probably a meaningful portion of it. And so is it just that like, oh, well, now you either have to wait to sign him. or going to have a scant class that that is punishment I guess but it doesn't even come with like official sanction it would be one thing if it were articulated that way by the league but it's not even it like they don't even do that you know and so yeah it's just it's that part of the the market

is so yishy and you're right we don't we don't get these age verification issues as often as we used to. Some of the behavior that caused quote unquote damage to teams, they're much, they're much better about having cleaned up than, you know, the fact that there are teams out there that just at this very moment have understandings with kids who are like 12 years old. Yeah. And it would be weird also to punish the guardians only because everyone's doing this. And so it's just like, well, this came to light and this became a story. But if you dig a little deeper. Every team has some sort of deal with kids that age. And this kind of story, this sort of tale, this is why we're more receptive to the idea of an international drafts, not that

we're super pro the entire institution of drafts to begin with, but it's just this whole situation is so messy that it's almost like, well, it will be a different bad, a different kind of, You know, at least this particular sort of story might not happen as much. There might be other negative byproducts. I remain in favor of a scenario that doesn't seem likely to actually manifest or maybe jokes on me. But like my preference would just be that they enforce their own stupid rules, right? Like it's not as if what any of these clubs are doing is understood to be legal.

They know what the boundaries of the rule are, right? that they're not supposed to have this kind of. And really, you know, the kids who end up getting signed, that's not the problem. I mean, it's not ideal that, like, these young people go from being children to being children who have jobs. And then, like, you know, apart from anything else, I just keep thinking about how, I think it was an interview he did with Mina, times, when she talked to him for, when Julio talked to Mina for her, podcast, she was asking him about his hobbies because he's, he's started DJing, Ben. Uh-oh. He's like a DJ now.

I don't know. But he talked about, I think he told her that, like, you know, this is the first time in his life he's ever had a hobby. Like, he's, he's had interests, like, Julio famously likes anime and, like, there's stuff he likes. But just, like, developing a, a thing you do outside of your job, he's, this is the first he's ever done that. And it makes sense. Like, he went from being a little kid to a good youth baseball player to a Seattle Mariner. That was it. Like, that's his entire life. And so, you know, that has its negative effects, right? But, like, Julio got paid and then Julio was good. And it's the kids who end up, you know, looking really different when they report to the

facility and then the deal falls through and they don't get re-signed or they get signed for a lot less. Like, it's not the kids who sign for three million dollars that are even, that is like where the tragedy lies, you know, it's the kids who think they're going to sign for three million dollars or maybe don't have a handshape deal at all, but know that these exist. And so devote their entire lives to training only for it to go nowhere. And then it's like, then where are you, you know? Yeah, this continues to be the subject of negotiation. and sometimes criticism from within the union about the lack of Latin American players

who are on the council that's deciding these things in leadership positions at the MLBPA, which is certainly a valid point as well. And we should note that, like, my understanding I don't have a current list in front of me is that, like, from a club representation perspective, like some of the club union reps are Latin American players, but you're right that the executive.

Council. It's all American-born players. Yeah, almost. Yeah. Okay. Well, elsewhere in the MLB proposals world, we got a little bit of this last week shortly after we recorded more details in MLB proposal. Mostly not surprising because MLB has expressed a desire for this sort of thing before, but shortening free agency having a two to three week window every offseason. So there would be a free agent, period until the winter meetings after the World Series in which players and teams can negotiate, kind of like in the international draft, where you can come up with a deal before you're actually allowed to have a deal, but then can't announce it until that's official.

So you can negotiate, but no deals can be signed. You could still do trades during that period. And then free agency would open the Monday of winter meetings and would close again shortly before Christmas, December 21st. And then from December 21st through the first Monday in February, no free agent signings or trades, I think, would be allowed. And then from the first Monday in February onward, things would reopen again.

So this has come up before. We've talked about it before. Sometimes it is the league advocating for it. Sometimes it's people who just think that this would lead to a busier baseball offseason. if you restricted signings to certain times. And then there was a free agent frenzy of sorts akin to what we see in other leagues. Salary cap leagues, crucially. But of course, MLB wants MLB to be a salary cap league.

But that's why we see that free agent feeding frenzy in those other leagues because there's just a finite number of dollars that can be spent. And so everyone, there's just a rush for those players and they're all kind of competing against each. other. And of course, MLB wants players to be competing against each other and wants salaries to be suppressed. And I think ultimately where we've come down on this kind of thing before is that, well, it's not a coincidence that it's the owners proposing it, not the union, right? And of course, Bruce Meyer, interim head of the MLBPA was quick to condemn this and to come out against it, of course. It makes sense that they would because, you. even if MLB can pitch this as sort of, oh, this is for the good of the sport and it will lead to lots of headlines,

it ultimately puts the onus on the players because the teams have more leverage, right? The season will go on. The team seasons will start when they're scheduled to start, except maybe for next year, but, you know, when there is a CPA in place. Whereas individual players, they don't have as much tolerance for risk. I mean, if they don't sign somewhere, they're not going to sign. They're not going to be making a salary. The season will go on for the teams. And so they sort of have the players where they want them.

And it puts this time pressure on the players. Can it be frustrating sometimes for fans, for media members, when certain signing sagas drag into March and spring training has started or sometimes even the season has started and someone is still sitting on the sidelines? and then it's disruptive for that player too. Maybe their agent misread the market or something. And then they end up just really taking it down to the wire.

And then if you're a pitcher, maybe you've got to ramp up. And so that's not ideal either. But this obviously is not a pro player proposal. That's why MLB is proposing it. That's why the players are against it. So it's pretty easy to read the incentives here. You know, nothing really revealing. that I'm saying about this.

I want to get one thing out of the way. Less anyone accused me of never saying that Major League Baseball has a good point. We should absolutely have a transaction freeze between Christmas and New Year's. Selfishly. That's good. We should have that. We should, you know what? December 21st, great day.

Because then I have multiple days to make cookies and pies, you know? December 21st until like January 3rd. No transactions. No transactions. None. mind that. I don't care if they involve players who aren't on the 40 man. No transactions. You are in a freeze. Go spend time with your families. Go spend time with your families. Do you not love your families? None of my business. Act like you do. Pretend that you do. Assume that I do. I want to spend time with my family. I don't want to have to explain to my mom whether this trade is big enough that I have to bother people and then have to be bothered myself. I don't want that. I am ready to be. done. And the NHL has something similar to that.

Obviously, the season is in season in that case, but they have a holiday signing freeze or roster freeze. So, yeah, and it's fairly short. And that makes sense. Yeah. I don't think that really restricts anyone's leverage or ability to negotiate. It's just a small portion of the offseason. It's probably good for everyone.

Good for baseball. You save some headlines for when people are paying attention. Yeah. Saves the front office. folks from themselves. And, you know. So, yeah, that's not bad. Yeah.

I'd even say there's part of me that, even though I'm not in favor of this proposal, having a slightly delayed start to the offseason, I wouldn't mind that either. Sure. I think there's a provision maybe for teams resigning players or, you know, teams that are, they could maybe approach that differently than if you're just purely a free agent. But I always remark that I find it jarring when we go. from World Series to suddenly just an inundation of transactions and free agency starts right away. And I know that the majority of the teams, their season ends more than a month before that because

they have set out the playoffs too. So they're raring to go. I get that. But I always feel like it would be nice to have a bit of a breather there where we could not immediately turn our attention to Hot Stove League, but just let the World Series and the outcome of the season breathe. I don't know that we need to go all the way to winter meetings because we're talking, what, six weeks almost in that case because the World Series, I think, would end this year prior to November, right? Even if it goes to seven games, is that right? October 31st, Halloween, much to your dismay.

Yeah. Much to my dismay. But I wouldn't mind a bit of a break there, a little longer break than we have, but it does need to go all the way to the winter meetings. I think, you know, Bowman wrote about the. set of proposals for us when they came out. And I thought that he sort of hit the nail on the head at the end of the column. You know, I think the notion that there might be interesting and potentially mutually beneficial sort of frameworks that we could put around free agency and off-season transactions more generally, that seems reasonable to me, right? The idea that this is,

that the way we're doing it now is the only way that we can do it and still preserve a fair negotiating environment for both players and teams strikes me as silly. I like the idea of teams having a stretch of sort of exclusive access where they can try to prioritize retaining their homegrown players. Like I like that. I think that's a good thing for the sport and it's not it doesn't have to be bad for players and their earning potential, right? And you could still do trades during that period, the quiet period. You could do trades and yes, you could resign but not go to a different team as a free agent. But unfortunately, we don't live in a reality where I view them, them being the league,

is sort of operating in good faith around this stuff. And I think that for all the talk of using this as an opportunity to drum up interest in the sport, what it really served to do is provide a pathway for teams to have the upper hand from a leverage perspective. Now, I don't think this is going to, if this were to be implemented, and I do, I do love, and everyone found this equally amusing, so I'm hardly possessed of a special sense of humor here. But I do love that they're like, well, this is contingent on a salary cap. And it's like, oh, well, that's going to make me accept the cap then.

Oh, you got me. Oh, no. The Rule 5 draft is what's going to do. It's just like you guys. And please, again, can we just get to the part where you're actually negotiating for realsies? I think that for all the talk of this being like about generating hype, it's about putting players on their back foot and I don't think that it would affect everyone the same way. Like if this was the, if this was the circumstance in Juan Soto's free agency year,

I don't think it matters, right? Like, Juan Soto's Wonsoto. The top of the market is going to have a certain amount, maybe not perfect, but a certain amount of immunity, I think, to this kind of stuff because they either will be so sought after early that they're just going to make their money because there's enough of a market around their deal, or they're going to be viewed to be so good that if they end up extending into camp, I don't know that it makes a meaningful difference on their long-term earnings, right? Like, Bryce Harper and Machado signing when they did didn't diminish the amount of money they got.

It made everybody stress and it made me have to reschedule contributor interviews, but it wasn't, it didn't mar their market in any appreciable way. But if you're a middle class free agent, if you're a utility, player, if you're a reliever or a fifth starter, I imagine the anxiety about not having a team as you're two weeks away from pitchers and catchers is meaningful. And you would feel pressure to accept a lesser offer

just to know that you have an offer at all. And so that piece of it, I think, is going to be a non-starter for folks. And obviously the union's aware of this dynamic because, you know, Bruce Meyer is highlighting it and his response to it. But I don't know that I am more nervous about the lockout lasting longer than I was a couple of months ago. I will say, and I know that a lot of this is just an artifact of them still saying, well, we want a salary cap. And either the league will cave on that or the union will.

But, you know, some of what I'm about to describe is just the fact that like a cap's in here and it's hard to be more. anti-player than when you're trying to get a salary cap in place. But I do find it a little disconcerting that there's so little obvious attempted concession in some of these, right? Like the Rule 5 stuff is fine. I think that the idea of having some greater flexibility with like how long guys are on the Big League roster, getting guys to the Rule 5 sooner. Like, I think that's fine. And some of the other transaction-related stuff. It's sort of silly when, I mean, the Rule 5, it's a good mechanism to just get players

and out when they're stuck in a certain system forever. And this would have some provisions where with some players, at least, instead of just sending the player back to the original team unless you carry them on the Major League roster, you could maybe send them to the minors with the new team. Because it is sort of silly sometimes. I mean, it's nice for the player who gets to be carried at the big league level for a whole season by the organization that doesn't want to lose him. But then maybe it impacts their development or they don't actually get used or they're clearly outclassed and overmatched. So that's sort of strange.

Or, yeah, sending certain players to that draft earlier. That seems fine as far as I can tell. And then, yes, the other transaction stuff that you were just about to get to, some of that sounds pretty appealing to me. actually, just as a mechanism for restricting the constant churn. The thing that they floated here changes to in-season transactions. So they'd have almost like a fantasy draft sort of set up where you lock your roster at the start of the week. You make your roster moves Sunday evening into Monday afternoon. And then you kind of sort of have a roster freeze, but not really because there are some allowances for waiver claims or paternity leave or,

injuries and that sort of thing. They're not going to do away with bereavement leave as part of the N.S.C.BA. Yeah, exactly. But then there would be some different I.L. Stints. There's the 10-day minimum for position players now. And then that would maybe be a week. And then the 15-day for pitchers could become two weeks.

But that would be like counting Mondays, not literally seven days and 14 days. And so there's some of this stuff where, you know, it's still 26th. players and I don't like that they're restoring the 14 pitchers up from 13. I actually want that number to go down and they're going in the wrong direction. But the idea of further restricting the number of times you can option a player in a given season so that we get a little less of the just constantly churning through bullpen arms to find a fresh one. I'm in favor of that, at least some aspects of that part of the proposal. Yeah, like I think some of that stuff is is totally fine.

But in general, they're in a sort of hard-nosed mode. That's where they're at. And I do find that a little disconcerting, that there hasn't been more give around the margins. And like the concessions there have been have been so minorist to be pretty inconsequential. And again, some of that is just that like the thing they are going for is literally a salary cap. So like when you're still trying to. to push that. It's hard to like concede anything. But yeah, man, it's, it might be a long one.

It might be a long offseason. It's going to feel long, no matter how long it actually is. I think that's the thing. Like, it's going to feel bad the whole time. And because all of this is subject to agreeing to a sour recap, it's all pretty moot, but there are aspects of the proposal that could work their way into whatever agreement is eventually signed. So it's still perhaps instruct. as to what each side is angling for. I will say, though, when it comes to the off-season freezes and signing stops and such,

putting aside whose pockets this would put more money in, I continue to think that the idea that this would make the off-season more exciting is somewhat overblown. I just think, what about all the other times? Now, maybe this wouldn't actually do that much because it's not a total freeze. You can still make trades. You can resign.

It's not like there's a ton of high-profile free agent activity in November anyway, as it is. And much of the major stuff gets done in December now. And I get that, look, January, you just sort of seed that time of the year to football. Everyone's paying attention to the NFL anyway. But still, I think if you restrict it, then you're not really gaining that much. Like, people who don't care about baseball aren't really going to be super. psyched about, oh, there's a signing period where a bunch of free agents will sign. Well, if you don't care about baseball and free agents, then will you be any more excited about that, really?

And if you're a baseball fan, maybe it would lead to sometimes when baseball breaks through the noise and all the other leagues are in action and maybe baseball makes some headlines because there was a flurry of activity. It's fun when a lot of deals get done at the winter meetings, right? But I just think part of it for baseball. fans, people who actually are into the hot stove league and want to speculate about baseball and follow rumors all offseason. If you're compressing the major signings into smaller periods, and then you're just seating the rest of the winter calendar and there's just no baseball news whatsoever, it's not as if baseball has quite as much off the field drama and the soap opera

aspect that some other leagues do. And so it's just going to be a total news blackout for baseball. for weeks or months at a time. I don't know that that's great. It doesn't seem great for year-round baseball podcasts, but even putting aside self-interest, I just think if you are a baseball person who cares about baseball off-season activity, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

It's just, okay, we'll have a bunch of moves now, and then nada, zip, zilch the rest of the off-season. It's going to be super slow. I also feel like, okay, so I think a couple of things drive, like big excitement about transactions in the offseason. Some of it is when you have a guy who is very talented and he gets traded.

Okay? So, like, that's about the guy and the teams. Just to, I'm going to categorize this in a couple of different ways. And then when you have, like, a meaningful free agent signing. So, like, we don't even have to go so, so Coooo Bananas is to be talking about, like, the Otani deal. But like, we can talk about the Otani deal. What was exciting about Otani signing? It was Otani.

It was the Dodgers. It was the size and structure of the contract, right? Yeah. When Soto signed, what was exciting? It was Soto. It was that it was the Mets. And it was that it was such a huge contract. You want people to believe that you care about, like, the off season is this time of excitement.

And you're removing as, as one of the. drivers of that excitement, one of the pillars, right? Now, people would still be super excited and have a lot to say about Juan Soto siding with the Mets if he had signed for, you know, $250 million or whatever the max is under their proposed salary cap league. But some of what is driving the excitement in baseball is that you have guys signing for big money, right? And like, that, that more than Juan Soto or even the Mets is what, drives interest for people who are not baseball fans, I would submit. Now, that's not a reason to have an economic system shaped any particular way, because ultimately, I don't think it matters.

I just do not think it matters very much for the long-term viability of the sport. If you concentrate news in a couple of weeks, I don't think it matters. If there's like big, big excitement about free agent signings, you want some amount of chatter so that people like don't forget baseball exists, but the notion that like a free agent signing, that Max Fried signing with the Yankees is going to

distract people from the fact that they have to set their fantasy football items. It's like, no, we just know it's not true. You know, they could be watching reruns of Andor. Like, who knows what they're going to do? So I just, I know that it matters some. I don't want to say it doesn't matter at all,

but I just don't think it matters that much. And I think that in sort of the same way that I don't really buy the true underlying motivations of them wanting to change the draft to be about like generating excitement for the draft and college baseball. I don't buy it as a primary motivator either. I think that it's a convenient non-salary-related reason to do something that ultimately is about economics anyway. All right. shifting leagues, a couple updates on the women's pro baseball league.

I want to avoid the thing that you often get with WNBA conversation where people dip in and dabble and do a dilettante thing when as so often is the case, it's just it's all about the culture war stuff and not so much about what's taking

place on the court. And we've talked a fair amount about the actual on-field product of the WPBL, but the regular season ends next week. So we're in the stretch run here as we cover it's a short season, 15 games per team. And the standings, not a ton of separation, but they range from the 8 and 4 San Francisco Firebells to the 4 and 8 Boston Hunters. So it looks a little like the American League, except that it's after only 12 games or so per team or 13. But there have been a couple

stories about the off-the-field aspects of the league. Nothing super shocking, really, given the lead-up to it that we talked to Curioa about. But there was a defector piece by Jen Ramos Eisen and Frankie DeLacreda that was published recently, headlined the new women's pro baseball league offers hope and frustrations. And nothing in there was shocking, given the somewhat seat of the pants way that the league approached the season and the broadcast deal. getting announced days before opening day

and then the broadcasts being a bit shoddy and just a lack of communication seemingly. A lot of that story was about that, about how players who were drafted but not signed were just kind of waiting around for word and hadn't really heard anything and weren't sure if they were going to play or not and just a lot of growing pains, basically.

Nothing super scandalous, but just clearly they have not figured out all aspects of this league. The slightly more nefarious story, if there's anything to it, I was reading this AP piece, headlined Women's Baseball League board member goes public with concerns about companies' finances. Now, this would be a bit more concerning if there's fire in addition to the smoke. A member of the WPBL Board of Directors is asking a Delaware court to force the fledgling organization to release records.

She says could reveal misuse of company funds an undisclosed conflict. of interest. So this could be a bit more scandalous. The legal filing says the league has refused to provide Mina Kim, a WPBL investor with books and records reasonably related to her responsibilities as one of six members of the league's board. The missing records could include details about money paid to an entity owned by CEO Keith Stein and a possible family connection between Stein and another board member. And so Kim wants this Delaware court to order the WPBL to produce these materials and the filing says that the league has not been forthcoming with this. The league says that it has provided the information and has cooperated and that her attempts

to escalate the litigation appears to be motivated by a personal grievance rather than a bona fide request for information. All the other board members are opposed to Ms. Kim's proceedings, et cetera. But she's trying to get access to bank and financial records and says that there needs to be more transparency. There was a roughly $60,000 payment to an entity the WPBL says is owned by Stein and possibly his wife. The transfer was first described as a reimbursement for startup expenses for the league, but it was later characterized as a loan owed by this entity to the league. And then there might also be a relationship, a familial relationship between Shauna Stein, who's Keith Stein's wife and one of the board members, because her maiden name is the same as this board member. surname. And if there's a familiar relationship, that wasn't disclosed. And then also there's an

admitted conflict of interest it alleges with the law firm serving as the outside counsel. And two of the attorneys at that firm fill spots on the board of directors. So I don't know. It could be something shady. It could not. But unfortunately, a lot of the headlines floating around this league, in addition to the player's performance are about just, is there financial impropriety of some sort? Is this money getting funneled in the right places or the wrong places? And then has the league been on top of things when it comes to communicating to the players and everything? So we'll probably do a wrap up after the season with Kiri and talk about how it all went.

But I do wish that the focus could be on the field more. and here I am drawing attention to some of the off-the-field stuff. But that is also relevant. I just, I hope, you know, as we express the hope with Keri, that this could be a successful enough season to get renewed for season two and that this not crash and burn or be seen as some sort of fly-by-night operation or that people aren't getting jobbed or short-changed. And maybe there's just not a ton of money there right now.

And that's just a step that leagues have to take on the path of viability. And that would be one. thing as long as there isn't someone enriching themselves at the expense of other people who should get paid. So maybe more will come out and we'll see when the dust settles and whether there is a sequel to this season, which I hope there is because there has been a lot of exciting action. And I know a lot of people have actually gotten invested in these players and teams and everything. And so I want them to continue to enjoy that. Yeah. I hope that it is at a place where it is a viable.

going concern, both for the benefit of the players, for all of us watching it. I do think that it's hard to know some amount of growing pains on this stuff seems reasonable to me, but that can't extend to financial impropriety, right? So, you know, I hope that

that we can kind of get to the bottom of it and have confidence that everything is on the up and up. And you're right, like there are, there's like this balance to be struck between and wanting to focus on the play itself and needing to kind of keep an eye on some of the broader sort of business questions. But I think those are important questions to answer because they directly relate to whether or not you're going to get a second season out of this league.

So I don't think that it's unreasonable to ask. It just means having to sort of keep competing notions in your head at the same time, which, you know, you didn't get diverted to Tucson. So you should have an easier time doing that than I've had. It's true. Yeah. Okay. We did have a couple non-frozen transactions in MLB. We've got some outfielder claims flying. The Mets placed Louise Robert Jr. on waivers after not trading him at the deadline. And then the Orioles claimed him. And also the White So, Tommy Fam. So Tommy Fam. I get that one less.

Yeah. Most recently seen in a Twitter spat with Red Sederfielder Dan Myers where they were, Going back and forth and fam was not covering himself in glory as he accused Myers of trying to hog a ball that was not his ball because he was suggesting that outfielders are trying to quote unquote steal catches to boost their savant stats. They're like outs above average because if they're ranging far to get a ball, which maybe he's basing that on someone doing that at some point. Maybe he did that. I don't know. but it was a very sophomoric exchange, more so on fam's part than Myers, where it just became this like fam claiming

that people in the Reds Clubhouse were talking about Myers being a non-team player or something, and then Myers being like, who and fam be like, I'm not going to name names and just citing his own stats. I mean, typical Tommy Tomfoolery, right? But now he's with the White Sox, I guess, as he continues his trek, his little odyssey and tour of so many major league teams,

all of whom seem to want him at some point, but then not want to keep him, although sometimes they want him back. He's had multiple tours of duty. He was with the White Sox in 2024, right? So I am confused about fam's reputation, because everywhere he goes, he's just like beyond red ass,

he's just like picking fights. He's seeing insults where they don't seem to exist. And yet it does play hard, I guess, on some level and maybe keeps people accountable and tries to keep people motivated. So like teams bring him in despite the fact that I don't know if he has anything really to offer a major league team anymore performance wise. But but here he is. So acquired from the Phillies, I guess.

Anyway, yeah, that happens for the stretch run. I guess Tommy Fam, a little veteran experience for those young White Sox. And then Luis Robert Jr. going to Baltimore after all their trades at the day. deadline. They are rearming now that they've had a nice little run and have managed to at least stay on the outskirts of contention. It makes a ton of sense for them. I think that they are in a spot where like every win is super important. I'm heartened to learn that the Orioles also believe that they do not have a viable center field on their roster. Huh? Who said that? I don't want to be mean about Colton Cowellner saying. I think he's not a center field.

doesn't mean he's a bad player, just means he's not an interview. That was all I was saying, Ben, you know? Yeah. And then we got zero emails about it, so I don't know why I'm acting so aggrieved. Like I was given the business by an irate Baltimoreian. Baltimoreian? Baltimore. Yeah.

Baltimore. Boulter Morgander. No, that's not right. I think that just from a purely defensive perspective, he's better than their options, which doesn't mean that he's the same guy he was at the peak of his powers. but I think still viable out there. It's not an inexpensive waiver claim because he is due, you know, I think, what, $3 million this year?

And then there's a non-trivial buyout of his option if they don't pick him up. But also, what is a postseason birth worth? It's not priceless, but it's pretty good. So I think it makes a ton of sense for them. Those are my takes on the Orioles and Luis River, Jr. And we had talked about how he had perhaps played his way out of being tradable at the deadline, what with injuries and underperformance. But post-deadline, he has a 133 WRC plus. So a little resurgence there suggests that maybe he could help some teams.

Six stingers, 80-plate appearances, and at that position, yeah, that can be valuable as he has been before. White Sox also acquired Jake Cave from the race. So a run on outfielders in Chicago. So that's exciting, I guess. Okay. Yeah. So that's the pre-playoffs cavalry arriving moves. I do, I wonder, I was thinking of this, and this could be outdated by the time people hear this even.

But what's the probability that Shohayotani just never pitches again in the majors? Is that beyond imagining? Because obviously I'm the last person who wants that to be the case. but he was on the verge of a comeback as a pitcher, and there were some talk that he might be pitching as soon as this past Sunday. That didn't happen because he had a bullpen session, which was really the last hurdle that he had to clear.

And if he came out of that, given the green light, then he would be pitching and he'd be ramped up again. And that didn't happen. And he still felt some discomfort in the knee, and now no timetable. And he could be back soon, again, like this, this hypothetical might have a very short shelf life. And when the Dodgers are back in LA,

like he doesn't have a timeline exactly right now, but it could turn out that he feels a little bit better and he's back. But they said if any pitcher was feeling like this, we wouldn't run him out there. That was a Dave Roberts quote. It's still just sort of his overall soreness and a bit banged up and the right biceps and left knee.

And they've gotten Snell back and they've gotten Glassnow back. And so the knee isn't quite so acute. And it sounds like Robert said, I just don't see everything getting to 100% by the end of the season. There's a lot of pictures that are not 100% and still viable. So it's not an exact science. So they're not ruling out that he could return. And it's even conceivable that he could return soon. But if they do shut him down as a pitcher for the rest of this season, which also is not inconceivable,

because at this point, like, he'd have to work his way back up. to multi-inning work anyway. So he might really be relegated to say serving as an opener if he doesn't come back soon in October, that is. So I just don't know, like if they decide, eh, too little too late, or it's not viable, or we don't want to exacerbate any of these physical complaints, and then he doesn't return.

And it's not clear they haven't said whether any of these complaints could require some sort of cleanup or surgery after the season. It wouldn't be shocking. if that happens, and he's had knee surgeries in the past. So I wouldn't be totally shocked because we were riding high, and he was riding high earlier this year. He was really having a career year, which is saying something for him,

and he was just the pitching, the hitting, everything was firing on all cylinders, and then these nagging injuries cropped up, not enough to sideline him fully. But if he doesn't return as a pitcher this year, will they then clear him and say, yeah, let's get back out. there next year or once he's, you know, pushing 33 or something, like, I'm loathe to have that conversation, but it is going to be a conversation that is inevitable at some point. And he might not want to have it yet. I don't know. Ultimately, it kind of comes down to whether he's ready

to go there, I think. I think that part of the answer is going to have more to do, honestly, with how he performs at the plate than anything else. And you might be thinking, well, he hasn't been hitting well. Yeah, that's the thing. You know, I would not be shocked if he doesn't pitch again this year, even in October, even in like a relief capacity. I wouldn't be shocked if he was just done for the year.

And part of that is that since the beginning of August, he's 115 WRC Plus. He's in 2.41. And over the last like two weeks, Ben, it's not going well. So I don't want to overreact to like a stretch where it's clear that he's just like compromise. But I think that, you know, it would be one thing if he were having to sort out the pitching issues, but was still having a really successful stretch at the plate. This is what we saw from him

last year, right? He was like parallel pathing part of his rehab stuff with this just like transcendent season as a hitter. But then, you know, if you're not able to do both and there's an argument to be made that the way that you can contribute most dramatically is to just focus on the hitting and get right. And then maybe you lose the pinching. So I don't think it, I still don't think it's the most likely outcome and especially with an off season that you're right. Like we haven't heard that he's going to require any sort of like cleanup or whatever,

but like that might have a more focused rehabilitation effort and that might give him a lot of runway, right? Like, it's not ideal for guys to be coming back from injury at a time when the team can't have any contact with you. But it does allow like a longer recovery period. So like if he does have to have anything done surgically this offseason or even just needs the rest after October, you know, these Dodgers play in the playoffs every year, Ben. They're just in the playoffs every year.

They're tacking on an extra month to their season more often than not. So having the ability to sort of actually recover, maybe that changes the equation. And whenever we're coming back to camp, he reports and he looks good and he seems healthy and we don't have to worry about it. But I don't know. I'm more concerned about it now than I was, even when, you know, the injury was first reported and we didn't have a ton of clarity around it because he's not doing either thing well right now. And so does that sort of increase the pressure for him to focus on just one thing so that he might improve it?

Yeah, it never takes much to set the tongues to wagging about this. And my tongue is wagging about it too. And the older he gets, the more defensible it becomes to say maybe he should specialize or if they have an outfield vacancy, maybe he could fill that. But it is not something I want to face yet. but we've always been aware that short shelf life when it comes to being a two-way player, it's tough to do that. And so that's why I've tried to appreciate it however long it lasts.

But this season has both reaffirmed how good he can be doing that and how excellent and effective he can be as a pitcher and why it's worth aiming for, but also why it's so difficult to sustain. And unfortunately, he does not have a great track record of staying healthy and doing the two-way thing for sustained stretches in MLB. So that's the downside of this thing. And, you know, speaking of another Dodgers game, we talked about the Chris Sale Jacob Mizorowski pitcher's duel and how it largely lived up to the billing. But it probably paled in comparison to the next Chris Sale outing against the Dodgers,

which was Sale versus Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yeah, that's spectacular. Sale turned back the clock. Complete game shutout. It was, I think, his first complete game of any kind. in more than seven years. And that was truly vintage sale, five hits, no walks, 11 strikeouts.

And Yamamoto was excellent too. And, you know, made a real game of it. He went six and a third and gave up just one run. And it was on the first pitch, right? Drake Baldwin hit a lead-off Homer for Atlanta. And that was the scoring for that entire game. So that was pretty exciting. And sale also touched triple digits.

for the first time since I think he was with the Red Sox, not even 2019. That was his last complete game or complete game shutout. He threw a 100.1 mile per hour pitch to Otani. And that was the first time since July 6, 2018, that Chris Sale had thrown a pitch 100 miles per hour. So he is really looking good lately. Yeah. Dominant. He is looking like his younger self, pretty exciting.

Yeah, it's pretty. incredible. That game, the ending of that game was so funny because there was like a not short challenge. Yes, that's right. Like Matt was going to try to stretch to corral the ball at first and he wasn't able to keep his foot on the bag and the Braves challenge that he had, which was the right decision because like, well, what if there's an out in there and then you're done? You know, the game's over. And, you know, sales pitch count was at like 106, 107. Like, it was up there. I really wonder if like he getting a bit of

a breather and then getting pissed that he wasn't out of the game is what allowed him to complete it because he you know like when is the last time he went that deep and that long like it was a it was a it was a cool thing and then apparently he had had a

like a death in the extended family or something and he was very emotional after the game I was like wow this was like a really I don't think he's going to win the side young. But I hope that we appropriately appreciate the season he's had because it has been something very special and it has been marked by these moments that have been like very dramatic and really intense. And yeah, it's been it's been a sight to see. Yeah. We got a little submission

from listener Ethan who did a little unsolicited stat blasting on the subject of those Drake Baldwin first pitch homers. Ethan wrote when Drake Baldwin's first pitch at the bottom of the first, lead off Homer ended up being the only run of the beautiful Sale Yamamoto duel on Thursday night. I got curious about how many other times a first pitch leadoff dong has constituted the only run of a game. I only went back to 1990 in Retro-Sheet play-by-play, which is almost as far as we can go for the pitch-by-pitch records. That's opposed to 88. But in that span, this has happened only twice before in the 35-year span. Pirates at Marlins, September 14th, 1993, with a Carlos Garcia.

Homer. That game got called after the sixth, so caveat there. And Diamondbacks at Marlins, May 18, 2013, Diamondbacks win was also a complete game shutout by Brandon McCarthy, although not as great a game as sales. The Marlins were at home and on the losing end both times, and thanks to RetroSheet and various tools that Ethan used, appreciate it. And also saw a post on Blue Sky by Friend of the Pod and Brewer's preview guest Kurt Hogue. who noted, well, I'll quote, looking it over, I believe we just had our first team officially eliminated from a division race. The Rockies in the NL West, which was the free space.

This was a day or two ago. And that got Kurt to wondering what's the latest in the season that we had our first division elimination. So I guess the Rockies have not yet been mathematically eliminated from the wildcard race. So there's still a chance is what I'm saying. But it seems like kind of a late elimination from the division race, for a first team to be eliminated from that. And this was posted in the Stapblast channel of our Patreon Discord group.

Frequent Stapblast correspondent, Michael Mountain, tackled it and said, I'm taking this to mean what's the latest in a season where every team in MLB could still theoretically be a division winner. Under my interpretation, the answer for a non-shorten season, 162 games in the divisional era is 1990 when the 65 and 76 Minnesota Twins

were the first team eliminated from division contention. on September 9th. So yes, we can go later than this season of parody. September 9th, 1990, the twins were the first team eliminated from division contention for a single division. It's

the 2005 NL East where the Mets were the first team eliminated on September 23rd with a 76 and 77 record. So that one came down to the wire. Did I share with you my new favorite fun fact

about fastballs. No. This was inspired by the Mets. I believe it was the Mets broadcast that I was listening to. Maybe not. When Miserowski was facing the Mets, I didn't share this fun fact with you. I don't think so.

Okay, so the Brewers lead the majors in fastballs thrown 100 miles an hour or harder, right? And that's not surprising. They employ Jacob Mzorowski. And as you might imagine, of the 1,05 fastballs, 100 miles an hour or faster that the brewers have thrown, Mizraowski is responsible for 931 of them.

You're like, wow, that's not a fun fact at all. That's just obvious, right? That's like gravity. Okay. But here's the thing. The New York Mets, his opponent that night. Yeah. As a team, they've thrown eight.

The entire year. Eight fastballs clocked at 100 miles an hour faster. No, 100 miles an hour. That's an arbitrary, that's an arbitrary, you know, threshold to clear. Yeah. But it is hilarious. It was, it's amazing. They should have called up Jeffrey on sooner.

Yeah, he could have been firing those in all season. Do you know the team that has the fewest fastballs thrown 100? Well, this is fewest pitches. I imagine these are all fastballs of some stripe. But fewest pitches thrown 100 miles an hour faster? I don't know. It's not going to be obvious. Like there's not like a, it didn't jump out of me.

It's the Detroit Tigers. They only have full. Oh, interesting. Okay. Full more. All right. We also had a choice fart bat, which you may have seen. There was a—

Fart bat. Yeah, Johnny DeLuca. This was a home run hit off Mason Miller, who went more than a year without allowing one, and then allowed home runs in back-to-back appearances. He's got a touch of the gophoritis. But not really, though, because there was an assist on this play. This was the extra innings raise win over the Padres on Sunday. And there was a fart bat.

where DeLuca hit this fly ball into the left field corner, and Samad Taylor, who was out there for San Diego, got his glove on it, had it in there, and then dropped it and deposited the ball on the other side of the fence. I think it would not have been out if he hadn't touched it. It wasn't like he babbled it and it bounced off his glove or some part of his person. He almost had it. He almost corralled it.

It was just like snow-coned there. and then he crashed into the fence and the ball fell out of his glove and landed out there for the game tying Homer and then it went to extras and the raise one. So that was rough. It was not one of the more clownish fart bats that we have ever seen, but it was one of the more costly ones. So that was unfortunate. I do pity the fielder in that sort of situation, but especially when they have the ball just clonk off their head or their glove or something. In this one, at least it was a tough play and his momentum carried him and there was an impact. And it was good even to get a glove on it.

So it wasn't like an unforced error or anything, but still tough because it looked like he had snacked it. And then, nope, it dribbled out. Nope. He did not. He did not snag it. He had not snacked it. Well, somehow Orioles centerfielder Colton Couser heard this podcast prior to its publication and issued this preempted. response.

McCarthy deep center field, Kouser racing back, Kouser near the wall, jumps, Kouser, hit it. And it would be the greatest home run robberies you'll see in your life. You've got to be kidding me. How dare you slander my defense, Kouser said, in making that grab to preserve the Orioles 2-1 win on Monday over the Rockies. Tusha, Colton, a convincing put-out and put down. All right.

If anyone sees the Joe Swanberg movie, The Sun Never Sets, which comes out in wide release later this week, if you could send me the exact quote of the baseball scene. Evidently, there's a bar trivia question that is baseball related. That would be wonderful. I don't know if I'll be able to see the movie right away. We talked last time about the baseball reference, the Lance Parish reference in the end of Oak Street. I was trying to figure out whether the timing of it made sense. They were talking about a game where Lance Parish had two hits, but the Tigers lost to the Rangers. and we know that something happens on July 11th in that movie,

and this seemed to be maybe the day before that. And I was trying to puzzle out, well, does it fit? Because that seems to describe a game or games on July 9th. So were they a day late? As I said, I need to rewatch it to be sure. But listener Andy pointed out, couldn't that radio broadcast that mentioned Parish's two-hit game have been talking about a game from yesterday, from their perspective,

the day before, making the timeline accurate, didn't sound like Ben was talking about a live broadcast. of a game. That's right. It was a radio news update. So it could have been on July 10th about a game on July 9th. There were two games on that July 9th. And also, this seemed to be maybe an afternoon scene when I don't know if you'd be giving updates about the previous days games because there would be more games to report on. But yes, that is another possible interpretation. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. I think it was close enough. And there are definitely ways in which it would make sense. I also realized that the back-to-back doubleheaders that were

scheduled that week that I referenced on the podcast. I was saying, boy, there used to be a lot of doubleheaders back then. They weren't actually scheduled that way. There were some makeups of rain games from May of that season in 1982. Nonetheless, it's true. There were way more doubleheaders. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Ian Copeland, Matt, Caleb Giordano, Kevin Schmidt, and Jake Silverman. Thanks to all of you.

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You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted Fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then.

Just a couple of baseball nerd. They'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, banter and bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling, giddily, equalling, effectively, Just a couple of baseball nerds