Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 292: Scott Boras’ World Series Plan/A-Rod, Manny, Pettitte and the Hall

Episode Date: September 23, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss a World Series suggestion by Scott Boras and the Hall of Fame cases of three PED-implicated players. (Breaking Bad spoilers from 2:00-6:00.)

Good morning and welcome to episode 292 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg in New York, New York. And Ben, I am fired up. Why is that? I woke up at four in the morning and watched Breaking Bad, and I am now all caught up. As you know, I have never really been caught up with Breaking Bad. I've been a DVD-only guy,

and so I've always been... They release the DVDs on Netflix the day that the new season starts, so I'm always 12 minutes away from being caught up, but I am never actually caught up. But I am currently all caught up, and I'm ready to roll. It's fun to catch up with a series just in time for the finale. I've done it. We've had people ask us to talk about Breaking Bad on this show.

Have we? Did you know that? I feel like that was you. Yeah. That was me, I think. No, no, no. We have had tweets and emails saying that they would totally tune in if all we did was talk about Breaking Bad.

But it's a tricky thing to do, right? Because you don't want to spoil it for anybody. People ask us to talk about non-baseball stuff, but other people like us because we don't talk about non-baseball stuff. other people like us because we don't talk about non-baseball stuff so either way people aren't happy do you want to do you feel like having a like a 30 second breaking bad conversation okay all right first okay so first we're gonna there's anybody who doesn't want that i guess i guess you should skip ahead two minutes or so. But should we have a little buffer zone of just dead silence? I'll put a time stamp on the podcast thing so you know.

Okay. All right. Okay. Let's just – okay. All right. Okay. So here's what I want to know. This is – when we get to this point in the show, anytime I'm watching I'm every scene I'm thinking okay so is this the conclusion for this character or is there is there more to come

for this character and so it seems like going into the finale we're gonna obviously we're gonna get Jesse and Uncle Jack and the uh the the crazy bug-eyed lady and we're gonna get um we're gonna get more Skyler and and Walt and we're going to get more Marie. But are we going to get more Walt Jr.? Is Walt Jr.'s story, was this his big redemption moment? I would say. Is the loop closed on him, do you think? I would guess that he would be in it again.

I would think that we are finished with Saul at this point, but I think... Yeah, we are finished with Saul. But I don't know. Walt Jr. has really taken a more pronounced role in this last half season or so and has been good at it. So I don't know. I think there will certainly be some sort of Walt Skyler interaction, and you would think Walt Jr. would be involved, but if his storyline ends there, that's satisfactory. Do you think that we're going to get resolution on Skinny Pete and Badger's character arcs?

Because I'm worried. It's a busy show planned. I mean, it's pretty clear they're going to be packed with stuff. It's not a show that leaves a lot of loose ends. No. I'd like to see some Skinny Pete resolution. I just don't feel like his character is finished. Still working on some Star Trek pilot somewhere.

He and Badger. And we finally got Charlie Rose on the show. I know that's probably been a dream of yours to see Charlie. Your two favorite shows together. Right. Right. I know that's probably been a dream of yours to see Charlie, your two favorite shows together. Right, right. Yeah, I felt like that episode was, it was kind of a transition episode where you had to establish a bunch of things and about how Walt gets to, gets to New Hampshire and how, you know, all this, all this stuff aligns for the finale but it was it was uh still still quite a quite an affecting episode although yeah like like the wire used to put all their big stuff

in the penultimate episode of any season but uh this is not that show this was more like lost where you have a uh a moving pieces around episode to get everything ready to explode but in loss there's never any resolution. I thought that Lost resolved itself really well. I think Lost gets a bad rap. I feel like Lost is almost entirely resolved. There were a couple of things. One of them, Michael was out of their control, and I just don't think they wanted to leave

that hanging, but it's the nature of making a TV show uh yeah walt yeah yeah michael was his dad yes yeah yeah anyway uh all right well i felt like i felt like the i feel like the symbolism in this episode was was more uh telegraphed than it usually is like usually i don't i don't pick up on a lot of things in Breaking Bad and then I read someone's recap and I think, wow, I didn't even notice that shot that was a callback to some other shot or that was a metaphor for something. In this episode it sort of felt, I don't know, it felt kind of on the nose a little bit

or just like the Heisenberg had it sort of felt, I don't know, it felt kind of on the nose a little bit, or just like the Heisenberg had, and everyone kind of being in their little prisons in separate places, and the wedding ring, and, you know, all of these very blatant signs of things or mirroring of other characters. Not having Robert Forster cut the cards yeah right two kings yeah um do you want to make any predictions for for finale i don't i don't um i don't you can't predict breaking bad hashtag ycpb hashtag YCPBB. That's what I would say. Okay.

So we talked about TV. You can't predict bad, Susan. That's what I'm saying. Alright, so what do you want to talk about today? Scott Boris and his idea for the World Series. I want to talk about Pettit

and Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. Okay. What's Scott Boris' idea for the World Series? Scott Boris suggested that the first two games of the World Series be played at a neutral site. So his idea is that it would be sort of like the Super Bowl, like in a warm weather city, not a home city for either of the teams in the series, and then it would kind of be, it would almost be like a second All-Star game and that it would roll in lots of other things.

All the players would be there like they are at the All-Star game and at the Home Run Derby. You could even move the Home Run Derby to the World Series time so that players wouldn't be concerned about ruining their swings for the second half. And then it would become, you know, a TV event or a draw for people in cities other than the ones that have representatives in the series. And, you know, that it would generate interest and reverse declining ratings. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that. I kind of, I like that Scott Boris is a big idea man.

You know, like you always feel like he has an angle. Like when he talks about, you know, the draft or the CBA or something, you can't really tell whether he's genuinely concerned about players welfare or whether he's also partially concerned about you know his his cut of the bonuses or whatever it is uh in this case i don't know that that there's really an angle in it for him um yeah i my as soon as you started talking about boris the first thing that that i thought of was that he is he is kind of transitioning from into this i like that boris is transitioning into this kind of um i don't know patriarch of the game

or like like he's becoming a wise old man of the game instead of, like, instead of all his quotes being just sort of you filter them through the what does Boris get out of it thing. It feels like more and more he's just going around, you know, giving his prescriptions for the game. And they tend to make sense, it seems like. And so now I wonder if Boris is going to have, like, when Boris is, you Boris is 70, do you think he's going to be commissioner? Do you think there's any chance that Boris is ever commissioner? I was going to suggest that. That's possible. I don't know whether – I mean you'd have to have the support of the owners, and I'm sure there are a lot of owners who aren't big fans of Scott Boris.

So that could be an obstacle. But I could see some support for that. Owner? Do you think you – could you see him being an owner uh sure sure that would be that'd be fun yeah it wouldn't be the first agent to be an owner uh so as to this specific thing uh i don't like it. Well, jeez. Is Boris going to push me into a traditionalist stance? Am I going to make my first ever this is the way we've always done it argument? Well, we just talked about TV for the first time.

I feel like the home field, the home crowd in the World Series is irreplaceable. I don't think that anyone who would be in a neutral park would care that much. And some people would travel. I guess it works in football, but are people going to travel for baseball? Yeah, and there's the possibility, I guess, that a team could never play a home game in the series, right? I mean, if you play, depending on, I mean, I guess the two games would be together in that place. You wouldn't play one there and then go somewhere else and come back there.

So that's kind of a problem and uh and the whole idea of generating interest or increasing ratings i mean the the explanation that's often given for why baseball's tv ratings have declined or are are lower than other sporting events just i mean in addition to the the fact that ratings for everything are lower because of the splintering of the audience, it's that baseball supposedly is a regional game and that each fan base watches its own team. And then if that team isn't in the playoffs, that fan base hasn't been watching the teams that are all season and maybe doesn't know those players so well and can't keep up with that team and has no reason to keep watching necessarily unless they're

just big fans of baseball in general whereas in football so many games are nationally televised there's one game a week for each team you can you can follow everything and fans of of one team will watch all the other teams or keep up with all the other teams. And that seems like the big reason why the Super Bowl is such a draw is that it's not just the two teams that are playing in it. Everyone knows those teams well and knows those players and has some interest in seeing them play. Whereas in baseball, if you you keep everything else the same

and then just add these two warm weather neutral sites it doesn't seem like it would generate that much interest outside of still the two cities that are playing in it i mean it it i'm sure they'd be sellouts i'm sure people would travel from both places. And, you know, it would be kind of a cool event, I guess. But it doesn't seem like it would be that much of a brand builder on first blush to me. Yeah. It doesn't feel like it would be. I'm trying to think of what if Boris would have any interest in any self-interest in this. It's hard to imagine i

mean unless it is positioning himself as that that role that we were just talking about as as some sort of future leader or wise old man of baseball yeah as far as his profit margins go it doesn't seem like it just sort of seems seems like a pet idea he has, right? He was probably watching the World Series and thought, this is boring and not as big as it could be or something like that. The idea of having a home run derby or really anything that doesn't count in the World Series feels like it would water things down if you just turn it into a carnival.

I mean, it feels to me, and we're going off sport here, but it's always felt to me that the Super Bowl is in a lot of ways less interesting as a football game than the NFC and AFC championships are, that basically the exciting games are two weeks before the Super Bowl, and then the Super Bowl is this insane massive party that everybody watches, but the game is not that big a deal, and in a lot of ways you remember the teams in it more than you remember who wins, and that seems like, if that's true, which it might not be, but it seems like that might be hand-in-hand with the fact that you have two weeks of junk know junkets and parties and

fake news stories and real news stories and autograph sessions and parties and guacamole ads and and everything it's it's it uh the game is just wrapped up into this festival um it's not driving necessarily the the tension and the world series it feels like right now the tension. And the World Series, it feels like right now the tension comes from the game. It is tense. I mean, I feel tense before a World Series starts, before the games start. And it feels like if you had a home run derby the day before, it would water it down to me. So I guess that's why. But, I mean, you know, goodness gracious, any idea that I'm defending on tradition's grounds probably deserves at least another thought.

I like cold weather playoff baseball. I do too. I like it way, way more. I like seeing Robinson Cano like he's robbing a bank. Right. Yes. I like that too. I don't like precipitation. Like he's robbing a bank. Right. Yes. I like that too. I don't like precipitation. I don't like having the game rained out and they announce it at 10 in the morning because they know there's going to be rain in Detroit.

That sucks. But the coldness is a huge part of it. And I don't think that Joe Buck's voice goes with warm weather. I think Joe Buck's voice goes great in crisp autumn air, and it doesn't go well in summer. Apparently, Boris also suggested that some of the revenue that was generated could go to another idea he has, which is a pension fund for minor leaguers, which, again, seems like an idea that he doesn't really get anything out of. Uh, it's just a, a pet cause of his.

So, so not, not everything he does and says is motivated by money. We ought to offer him a column, Ben. Sure. Sure. He'd pick us up on that. He's probably got, he can, it could be like a three dot column. It could just be like, like, you know, be musings about his wife and his drive to work and what he thought of Downton and how he would fix minor league baseball. One sentence at a time. All right.

Andy Pettit is going to be eligible for the Hall of Fame in five years, and I just wanted to get you to rank his chances of making the Hall of Fame with two other steroid users. Steroid users. They're not steroid users. PED users, PED implicated players. And I wanted to know who you think gets the most votes of the three of them. And one is Andy Pettit. The other is Manny Ramirez, who seems unlikely to play again in the majors. And the third is Alex Rodriguez. And they are all very different players, three different tiers of players. If there was never any such thing as a PED, we would not be able to debate this.

But they also have three different tiers of implication and sort of exactly in the opposite direction as their skill level. direction is their skill level. So who gets the most Hall of Fame votes and who gets the fewest? And I guess if you have any explanation for how much the PEDs weigh in and how much the performance

weighs in, you can say that, but maybe the way you rank them will tell us that. Okay. I guess I will say that A- a rod gets the fewest wow um it's like the 12th best player in history it's crazy i know i know it's not crazy but even just looking at looking at people who haven't had any proven link and have still not gotten much support because of suspicions or rumors

or having happened to play at the time that other PED people were playing. And then you figure that there's a very good chance that he will be suspended, that all of the details about his use and other nefarious activities will come out. Obviously, not a particularly well-liked player, even before the latest allegations

surfaced. The only thing that makes me think that he might get more is that there's, there's a, a certain contingent of Hall of Fame voters, and maybe it's growing that will just vote purely based on stats. Uh, and that contingent will, will vote for him over either of the other two guys. But yeah, Clemens and Bonds got 37% basically.

Yeah. So do you think you'd have to first decide whether A-Rod has a harder road than them? I think he does. And secondly, whether Pettit will top that. Yeah, I think he has a harder road just because there were some people, I think, who voted for Bonds and Clemens because they didn't officially test positive. And maybe some of the stuff they did was before there was an official policy in baseball uh and i think some of those people think differently about players who were caught doing things after that policy was in place and and so i i think that that could

cost him more than those guys and and i don't think that that's – I mean when you and I did our hypothetical would we do steroids episode if we'd been living in 1999 or playing in 1999, it is different. It is, yeah, sure. changed, but because if the playing field is essentially one in which a large portion of people are doing this and you feel like that's the only way to compete, it's very easy to rationalize it in your mind as just that's part of what you do. You wake up early, you work out, you eat nutritiously, you do some steroids, you do what everybody does to stay competitive. But A-Rod was cheating at a time when most guys were not cheating, presumably, if all this holds up. And that does feel like ratty, ratty, ratty behavior. That's a totally different thing. Most writers, I think, are saying that these players who cheated in the

90s and the early 2000s, they were cheating us, they were cheating us they were cheating you know they they were cheating you know the country they didn't have honor or whatever but they weren't quite cheating each other you know in if you believe kind of their mindset i mean the way that they a lot of players describe it is like well you just felt like everybody was doing it you have to do what you had to do um whereas a rod was cheating his his play i mean he was cheating his colleagues. He was a snake, or I guess that's the way to spin it. Right. So yeah, I don't see him getting much sympathy. And it's kind of a shame because, as I think I said on the podcast, I think he's the best player I've ever seen in person regularly

or watched firsthand often. And if I were going to go to a museum of baseball where you read about the best players ever, I'd want to see him there. Even if you acknowledge all the bad stuff, I would want him to be represented in some way. But as for the other two guys, in some way. But as for the other two guys, I think, I think Pettit might have a better chance than Manny. And I don't think Pettit should be a Hall of Famer. And I don't think he will be a Hall of Famer. I can't think of, I don't know how many people will vote against him or not vote for

him because of the, thedh thing it seems to be so far from from people's minds in his case um you know for whatever reason whether it was because it was a while ago or because he's a nice guy and he talks to the media and everyone likes him or because he said it was a one-time thing and never had any other connection. People have largely forgotten about that, it seemed, or never gave him a particularly hard time about it. You'd like to think that if there are people just voting no on anyone who was implicated on PEDs for that reason, that they would include Pettit to be consistent. But I don't know that they all would.

And Manny, clearly a better player and statistically a much more deserving Hall of Famer. But again, he's a multiple offender, right? I can't even keep track of who's been suspended how many times, but he was suspended under the JDA, and sort of the same thing as A-Rod, but with less shadiness about it, or less rumors about how he obstructed investigations and implicated other players. But as far as failing tests and doing it multiple times and not being particularly

contrite about it, that's Manny just as much as it is A-Rod. So it's so hard to predict Hall of Fame results now. It's so hard to predict Hall of Fame results now, but I guess the most predictable thing in the last couple of years seems to be that guys with really strong PED ties are not going to get in. So here's my theory for why people won't hold it against Pettit. It's that they don't think of him as a Hall of Famer. And if they did think of him as a Hall of Famer, they would hold. It's like it's almost, it's this weird decision tree where if you, the first question is, you know, was he good enough to be in the Hall of Fame?

And if the answer is yes, then it's because he was on steroids. And if the answer is no, then you don't hold the steroids again. I'm using steroids to catch up. But you don't use the steroids against him, but he's still not a Hall of Famer. Either way, you can't get in, one way or the other. If Pettit had won 60 more games, then the PEDs would be a big deal, but since they didn't, they're not a big deal. It's the very, very weird way of compartmentalizing the morality of this. I mean, I feel like primarily what makes us respond strongly to certain players is that they're performing too good. And we don't want to, I mean, we want to appreciate what they're doing and we can't.

And so we hold it against them. And so Pettit never rose to that level, but Pettit never rose to that level. And so I think there will be talk about how he's borderline, but I certainly wouldn't mind a vote for him on performance standards. I think that he's as good a pitcher as Todd Helton was, a position player, and we were both kind of on the fence for that guy. But I don't think that he has widespread support for his performance. My guess is that if there was never a PED on his record,

he would get probably 12% of the vote and fall off, and my guess is that he will get 12% of the vote and fall off. I wonder. Well, he won't fall off at 12%. I mean, there are worse pitchers who have gotten much more support. Yeah, and better pitchers. He doesn't have the ace. He doesn't have the ace sheen.

He doesn't have the hardware. He doesn't have... Yeah, I guess so. I mean, Mussina deserves to be in way before Pettit does, and nobody's really taking Mussina seriously, I don't think. David Cohn got 4%. I will take Mussina seriously. You will, but I don't get the feeling that Mussina's got a walk-in.

I think David Cohn was a better pitcher, and he got 4%. I mean, certainly Kevin Brown was a considerably better pitcher, and he fell off the ballot, but maybe that's just because he wasn't liked, and it's the era, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if Cohen was better than Pettit. Well, at his peak, maybe, but I don't know about career length. But I could have imagined, I mean, even in New York, and I haven't really read all the articles that

came out when Pettit announced his retirement again, but you would think that he'd be a guy that some of the local columnists would make a case for. And maybe some of them have, I don't know, but I haven't seen any. But you would think, you know, just based on the wins and all the postseason experience and, you know, 20 win seasons or whatever. And I don't know if, I mean, why Jack Morris and not him? Is it the opening day starts? The fact that he doesn't have one playoff game that was amazing, but had many that were very good. I don't know. Why Jack Morris is an internal question.

I mean, it's hard to say. I feel like Pettit has sort of the same... Jack Morris, he has five top five Cy Young finishes. And so, I mean, at least... I'm not saying that he... He's not a Hall of Fame candidate. Morris is not a Hall of Fame candidate because he has those. But those two things correlate. It's the same guy's voting, right?

Although, what is, Pettit has one, two, three, four. Yeah, he does. Plus a number six. Yeah, he does. Well, Morris has a seven and a nine and all that. But yeah, you're right. Okay. So, Pettit did get some love.

Although, yeah. all right, maybe. Shoot, I don't know. He feels like, I don't know, he feels like this guy who has this sort of aura of pitching to the score. It's the daily bet, Ben. It's the daily prediction. What do we call it? Do we ever call it something? I don't know.

All right. uh do we ever call it something i don't know all right uh what give me andy pettit's uh hall of fame vote total or vote percentage in his first first year of eligibility first year all right uh 21 all right i'll say 13 okay i am shocked shocked to see Andy Pettit's postseason performance level. It's good. It's like as good as his regular season, isn't it? With tougher competition. It is. I mean, you know, huzzah to him.

I just am – I had the feeling that it was much better than that. I'm surprised that it's as low as it is. I mean, he did great. He should be able to cash that in to some degree. But like Curt Schilling's is, much, much better, right, than his regular level, wasn't it? Yes, I think so. I always thought of Pettit and Schilling and John Smoltz

as the three guys who were, like, postseason dominant and, like, really had that reputation and could take that to the bank and shillings postseason era is 223 and pettis is 38 yeah that's a big difference pettit has twice as many innings smoltz 267 pettit has has well over a season of postseason innings. How many? Smolt has 209. Pettit has 276. And I don't know what to do with that, really, with him. Because I can see why you would count it towards his case that he's pitched well over a full season in that environment. But at the same time, I don't know.

Do you count that? Do you hold it against him that he was just on the Yankees at a time when they were amazing for his entire career and got a chance to pitch those innings? Well, no. I don't know that I give him a ton of extra credit for how many innings it is, but I count that. He pitched those innings, and he pitched them well.

I count it more than I would count regular season performance. I mean, if you add that to his total. That's true. If you add that to his total. That's, you know, if he's a borderline guy without that, then you add all of that. That could be the difference. I don't know whether I would push him over

based on having all of those opportunities but he contributed that value well Ben we'll settle this in five years alright we done? I'm done send us emails at

podcast at baseballperspectives.com and we will get to them in a couple days