Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 476: How Far Should MLB Go to Protect Players?

Episode Date: June 23, 2014

Ben and Sam discuss whether Major League Baseball should ban chewing tobacco, mandate that pitchers wear protective caps, and fund research about elbow injuries.

Backwoods legit, don't take no lip. Shoot him back, shoot him back, shoot him back a spit. All heck. Good morning and welcome to episode 481 of Effectively Wild. Not a week off. Close. 486, 476. There you go.

476? Yep. 476. There you go. 476? Yeah. Of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from BaseballPerspectives.com. Presented by the Play Index at Baseball Reference. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. Great. So how are you? I spent most of the weekend on Megabus. I don't know what that is. You mentioned that. Is that like what you take to Syracuse or something?

Yeah, it's a regional bus line. It goes from New York to everywhere up and down the eastern seaboard. So I was in D.C. for the BP events. And so those were fun on the times when I wasn't on the bus. They were good. Isn't there a train that people take? Yeah, there times when I wasn't on the bus. They were good. Isn't there a train that people take? Yeah, there is. You didn't like the train? Trying to be economical. I regret it.

What's the price difference? It's pretty substantial. The bus is like $20 and the train is like $80 or something. But yeah, just trying to be a good company man. Save BP some money. I see. I paid the price. But the events were fun and it was nice meeting all of you who said

hello, all the listeners who were there. Fun. Yeah. Alright. I have a couple things real quick. Okay. Koji Uji wahara i don't know if you saw this uh today allowed two solo home runs oh uh-huh uh which um is now five homers and five runs this year um and i don't remember exactly what the records were that we discussed but i mean certainly it's a couple of bullets dodged.

It gets him a little closer to the end of the year. He's way past the record for a year, for a single season, but he has to maintain that. And I think, as I recall, he obviously didn't get any closer to Tom Seaver's streak of innings, but it was seven homers, I think, was the most somebody had had. So he's now five homers, five runs. So interesting. So that's something to root for.

And also in reliever news, Sean Doolittle batted for the A's. And so Brady Childs asked me, Brady Childs asked me, I think Childs. Childs. Childs, me when the last time a relief pitcher had homered. The answer is not very exciting. It's 2010. A lot of relief pitchers have homered. About two a year homer, in fact, usually.

But those, of course, are National Leaguers. And so I learned today, in looking further, that there has never been a reliever who homered in an AL on AL game in the post-DH era. So that's kind of interesting, sort of. So that could have happened, for instance, today with Sean Doolittle. It didn't. What did he do? What did he do? I don't know. I had one of those weekends where I had to file something for ESPN, the magazine, this

weekend. And so it was one of those weekends where I was completely consumed with baseball, but none of it was happening. I was stressed and anxious and couldn't think of anything else. And it was a horrible husband and an even worse father um but like not one baseball event happened in front of my eyes so i managed to pick up the uahara thing via twitter and the doolittle thing but otherwise i know nothing so well speaking of relievers and speaking of brady childs brady posted a video in the Facebook group of the Webb-Albers race getting a shout-out on Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that. Oh, I didn't see that.

I haven't heard it yet. I have to go back to it. But, yeah. Michael Kay cited the 83 games finished without a save and the tie between Webb and Albers while, I guess, Webb was warming up maybe on Saturday. James Smith I assume it's pronounced Smith is a friend of the show and

he is also the booth statistician for the Yes Network. He's the one who got the Ituro reverse split on the air a month or so ago and he recognized the historical importance of Ryan Webb entering a game.

Unfortunately, Webb was entering, I think, in the sixth. So there was no chance of either a game finished or a save. So, you know, there wasn't quite as much tension around it as there might have been if he had lucked into a, you know, a rare ninth inning appearance, or not so rare ninthning appearance from Webb. But all the same, it is exciting. And I sort of feel like I have an emotionless tone in my voice right now,

but that's just because I'm fried from the entire weekend. I actually am genuinely thrilled about that. That might be the highlight of the podcast. Having the Webb Albers record on a real broadcast is pretty amazing. So, yeah. So, it was a good weekend. All right. So, I want to talk about three things that are all the same thing today. I want to talk about paternalism or whatever you want to call it.

I mentioned on the Tony Gwynn episode a week ago that there's something about baseball that brings out the urge to tell players what to do and to take care of them. tell players what to do and to take care of them. We all become mothers and fathers to these guys in a way, and we get very insistent that anything that might hurt them is legislated away. Or the other way, a lot of people are the exact opposite. They are the younger brother to these players, and they want to see them get hurt, and they think that if you do anything to restrict their ability to hurt each other or get hurt, that you are babying them. So I want to talk about three instances of Major League Baseball looking out for their

players or potentially looking out for their players and find out what your take is on each of those three and whether you think that baseball has a role. You ready for that, you game? Sure. All right. So the first one is chewing tobacco. We didn't talk much about it. We talked very briefly about it in regards to Tony Nguyen, but there's been, you know, people have written columns since then about how it's, you know, time for baseball to outlaw it, and Tony Wynn's death makes that clearer than ever. And in general, it does feel like a sort of strange relic of a previous time, even though

it has never gone anywhere. Unlike, for instance, facial hair, it didn't disappear for 30 years and then come back as vintage. It has always been there. And yet it still feels like something that you would think would have been left in the 80s. But it hasn't. And as we talked about, a trainer had estimated to me that half of the players roughly are using chewing tobacco and that there's been, it seems to him, an increase as a replacement for maybe amphetamines or something like that. And so, what do you feel? How do you feel about that? Is it weird enough to see people chewing tobacco that you would want something done about it? You know where I'm going. I don't need to freeze the question. Right. I feel like I wouldn't even necessarily notice what people were chewing.

I don't know that I would notice the difference between a guy who's chewing tobacco and a guy who's chewing gum and a guy who's chewing sunflower seeds when I'm watching on TV, I don't really pay that much attention to that or notice who's chewing what, you know, unless it's like one of those shots where some guy's doing something weird and just like, what was that gif you made once, right, where Lincecum was like spraying sunflower seeds or something? That was not me. Someone made that? That's a classic John Boycece uh gift of the gift of the year right challenger so greatest gift of all time

yeah it's pretty good so so i don't know i because the argument that always comes up is the the children argument think of the children and major league baseball players are role models and children model their behavior on major league baseball players and role models and children model their behavior on major league baseball players. And you don't want to, don't want to encourage kids to be doing something that causes cancer. And, uh, you know, I, I guess I, I'm, I'm, I don't know. I have mixed feelings about banning things that are not threats to other people you know or it's just like i live in new york and the the whole banning sugary drinks movement you know i wouldn't i wouldn't miss sugary drinks gigantic sized sugary drinks myself uh i don't know i can i kind of see it both ways

and and i'm not sure where I come down on that. As for chewing tobacco, I guess, I don't know. It would be good for everyone, I suppose, if it were gone. So, you know, people would just chew other stuff, and they'd probably be just as happy chewing that stuff and not getting cancer ultimately and not persuading anyone else to do it. And so I don't know, I'm reluctant to say that they should be banned from doing it because as you said, they are adults and it doesn't hurt anyone else and it's not an immediate

threat to them. But if they were to make the decision to stop doing it on their own, that would be wise. I would not be sorry to see it go. Yeah, but I mean, nobody, for instance, like let's say that the average ballplayer chews tobacco for three hours a day during the game. If you outlawed it in games and then they went home and chewed it for three hours a game, you know, a day at home, you know, from like nine to midnight, it's unlikely that there would be calls to ban that. You know, it's unlikely that anybody would say that Major League Baseball had a compelling reason to keep ballplayers from chewing tobacco away from the field.

So, yeah, so presumably the only reason to do it, the only justifiable reason to do it would not be the player's health, the player's well-being, but the message that it sends about people on the field and the product on the field. I think that I generally, like I can see why that would be a worthwhile thing for Major League Baseball to decide to do. And if they did it, especially if they did it for financial reasons, that seems like it would basically be within their rights. And I wouldn't be that upset about it. But generally, if you outlaw a vice, you don't make people's hearts any better.

To me, there's something about pretending that these guys are any better than they are that kind of insults all of us as adults. You're just not really changing anything. There's no change in the moral balance of the universe by getting rid of it. And so, you know, you're worried that kids might do it. I guess that's... Yeah,

I mean, I'd want to see some sort of data on that, I guess. Like if kids say that they're influenced by it. I guess all the baseball players who chew tobacco today probably picked it up from a previous generation of baseball players. It's not something that non-baseball players do. They're not constantly reinventing what it means to be a ball player. This is a story that's been being told among ball players for 150 years, and they're just

sort of carrying it on. Yeah. So, I mean, so it clearly is being passed on. That's true. I don't know whether it's being passed on to a lot of non-major league baseball players, but, I mean, I don't know. But, yes, I mean, I guess just the fact that people are still doing it is evidence that it influences

other people that do it yeah you're right though that when I'm watching I don't know what's in the guys chewing gum I see enough guys chewing gum and sunflower seeds that I until I was told the 50% number I was sort of under the impression that it was at an all-time low.

Yeah, me too. Because baseball has made it, you know, against the rules to display or to show it, to take the, you know, to have the visible tin, for instance. And so I thought that nobody was really doing it anymore. I mean, I knew some people were, but I thought it was a lot less common. Some people were, but I thought it was a lot less common. But I guess even though that's probably, you know, even though probably most of us don't see it a lot, most of the games we watch, we don't notice it. You do, there is enough knowledge that tobacco is in the game that you're aware that ballplayers do it.

You're aware it's part of the culture. When you do see a stuffed cheek, you might not know whether it's gum or sunflower seeds or chew, but you do know it could be chew. Whereas if it were outlawed, you would quickly forget even about the possibility. It's like every time you see a stuffed cheek, it's like one-third of an advertisement for chew. If it were outlawed, it would be a zero, zero thirds. So is that a good enough reason, compelling reason? I guess, I mean, maybe it is. Yeah, I think I probably would be. If I were, look, I probably don't care all that much where I am right now.

I don't, it doesn't personally affect me. It doesn't affect my child, and it probably never will. And so for sort of being kind of self-obsessed, I don't have a real strong opinion. I think if I worked in the commissioner's office, if I worked in the office that manages things like this, I think I probably would be pushing to get rid of it. It seems like a pretty easy thing to be in favor of getting rid of. So I'm going to say pro-outlaw tobacco. Okay.

All right. So there we go. So there's one. All right. Number two, funny Alex Torres hat. Yes. Alex Torres was the first pitcher to wear this protective hat. It looked silly.

It looked silly, but it looked silly in the same way that I think. Do you remember when you would have friends who skateboarded and they'd have a hat that was like a half hat, half helmet? I had no friends who skateboarded, as far as I know. It looked silly, except those were your cool friends. And so because they were your cool friends, you didn't think of it as silly. You thought of it as cool because the skaters were wearing it. And Alex Torres is undeniably cool.

So while it looked silly, I thought it kind of looked good too. But definitely silly. And so there's no legislation forcing anybody to wear this. He did it voluntarily. He's the first person to do it voluntarily. I think that's really great of him. And huzzah to him. I will like him more now forever and ever.

But let's say it works great. And he says at the end of the year, I love it. No distraction at all. Pitched as well as ever, and it kept me safe. And baseball decides, well, we want to keep everybody safe from line drives and made it mandatory. Pro or con? Probably pro, I think.

I mean, I would guess that the way it will go is the way it went with the giant batting helmets, which is that they will shrink, and they will soon look like normal batting helmets so when i was gonna ask you about that yes so is that what happened with those are they all wearing yes they're all wearing the david wright helmet right now the protective equivalent of the the david wright great kazoo helmet that he was sort of peer pressured into not using anymore because it looked kind of kind of ridiculous but it was safe and he he was probably smart to wear it and and then yeah so then it it went away for a few years and then it came back in a normal batting

helmet shaped helmet and uh with the same protective qualities. So whatever they did in the design manufacturing process to make it retain the protective powers and yet shrink down to the size of the batting helmets we're used to, they did, and it was made mandatory and embraced by everyone. And I would imagine that something similar will happen here that a few years from now. I mean, clearly these protective caps have not caught on. He is the first person to use it now in late June.

Brandon McCarthy, who was closely involved with the process of getting them certified and designing them, rejected them himself for being too uncomfortable and distracting. So yes, I would imagine that the same thing will happen. So I guess the question is, should they mandate it now while it does still look big? While conceivably it could be a distraction. I mean, Torres said it doesn't feel bad. The difference between the regular hat and this hat is not that big. But, I don't know, maybe another pitcher could feel differently and choose to take that risk. So I guess if it is still conceivably such a

distraction that it could really impact your performance in a way, I mean, if you have millions of dollars riding on how well you pitch and you say that that this thing impairs your pitching sort of sympathetic to that at the same time i'm sure there were people who said the same thing about batting helmets and every other protective measure that's ever been introduced and and it's a good thing that those things were introduced if someone came along today and said i think batting helmets are uncomfortable and i play better without one, then you wouldn't want him to be able to do that. I'd be okay with not letting him do that.

So it's the same sort of principle, really. So to be consistent about it, if the thing is really protective and it's possible to play with it, then yeah, I suppose so. Yeah, I agree. To me, looking funny is not a compelling reason to not wear something. It's hard to know. I would feel like a real dope telling a major leaguer

who said it was uncomfortable and was hurting his performance that it was not uncomfortable and hurting his performance. I would think that would be a thing he would know better than me but on the other hand you're right every every protective piece of protective gear in sports history uh has almost certainly uh drawn the exact same complaints um and i don't know if those complaints are nonsense and that they're just all psychosomatic or whether they are legitimate but you get used to it or they're legitimate and by complaining they spur development of ever better equipment. But I mean this seems like clearly something where it is on the field of play and it is related to the field of play. It is not like chewing tobacco where it's on the field of play but not related to it in any way. It seems clearly within Major League Baseball's purview to monitor, particularly as it's head injuries that we're talking about, head injuries that

result directly from play itself. So I would have, you know, I think that would be one that would be a pretty easy case to make that MLB should step in. Now, that's presuming that they have, you know, reason to believe that this would not be a distraction for the performance and their reason to believe that it would not make pitchers change the way that they pitch. But if they didn't, yeah, I'd be all in favor of everybody wearing a funny hat. Imagine how funny helmets looked at first. funny helmets looked at first. Because to go from non-helmet to helmet is a much bigger

leap than to go from hat to slightly askew, slightly bulky hat. I bet we would have made fun of a lot of people in 1956 or whatever it was. Yeah. And now helmets are super cool. Especially Jason Hayward's. I wear a helmet to the club. It's how cool they are. Cool. It's like a full head helmet?

Sometimes I wear a helmet that's a little too big for me, and then I have to wear my hat underneath it, my cap underneath it, so it doesn't rattle around too much. I do that. Sometimes I'll just wear the Jaeger mask. Not the full catcher's mask, just the Jaeger. It's a good look. Safety first. All right, last one then. Major League Baseball has a committee that is going to be meeting in July to research causes and solutions to the elbow injury epidemic. And it's going to be, I believe, under the medical offices aegis. I believe under the medical offices, Aegis. And they'll be able to really take research in some really interesting ways that haven't been done yet.

I think it's probable that there's going to be some really interesting findings from this, and we'll learn a lot over the next few years. And so that sounds great. But I'm just wondering whether you think that pitcher health is actually something that is good or bad for the league as a whole to study collectively, as opposed to taking it out of the kind of competitive sphere where all 30 teams are able to differentiate themselves from the others on pitcher health. I mean, is there, I guess what I'm saying is, is there actually a common good or a common bad to Tommy John surgeries? Or are injuries a part of the game no different than triples and doubles and stolen bases and pitch outs? I think it's gotten to the point where it really significantly, you know, it's a detriment to the game, I think.

The fact that so many pitchers get hurt, that we can never really count on any pitcher continuing to stay healthy. It seems to me like something that it makes sense for Major League Baseball to kind of lead the charge in. And I can see why if you were one team that, I mean, we talked to Stan Conte about this and we asked him how he balances that need to share information and contribute to the wealth of common information with the need to give the Dodgers an edge as a Dodgers employee.

And he seemed to say, at least this is what he told us, that he sort of puts the players' health first and that everyone kind of puts the players' health first. And I don't know. I mean, if one team cracks the code and figures out how to prevent elbow injuries, then I could see why if you were that one team, you might say, well, we were clever and we put more money into this or we hired better or more people to study it. And so we deserve to reap the rewards for a while and be the only team that has healthy pitchers.

But if you're Major League Baseball, then you want all the pitchers to stay healthy, right? You want the highest level of play on the field. You want stars. You want people like Jose Fernandez not to get hurt when they're becoming one of the faces of the game. You want people not to be worried about a guy just experiencing pain and breaking down every time he throws a pitch.

They want you to enjoy the game and not worry about the injuries. So it seems to me, I mean, it's not a, it's not a life-threatening issue, which is, I guess, distinguishes it from the protective headgear, from the possibility of getting hit in the head and seriously hurt or getting cancer from the chewing tobacco. It's more of a, it's, you know, it affects your ability to pitch, but not necessarily your quality of life otherwise. But it seems to me that it's a big enough threat to the game, big enough issue in the game. Even just the coverage is negative.

There's been so much written about it. It's been one of the biggest storylines of this season, which has been an exciting season in many, many respects. And yet elbow injuries are one of the dominant stories that we've heard this year. So it seems to me that it's in the league's best interest and maybe in every team's best interest to just remove that from the conversation. I would say those are a lot of speculative statements that you just made, though. I mean, do you think that anybody has not bought a ticket this year because there's been negative coverage

or, I guess, because there's been a lot of coverage of Tommy John injuries? I mean, I can see you could maybe say that the Marlins, for instance, don't get the Jose Fernandez bump on days that Jose Fernandez would have pitched. But I would imagine that just as, you know how when they say that there's, oh, we're going to have the Olympics here, it's going to create $100 billion. And really that's just displacement. You're just taking money from other entertainment industries, movie theaters and bars and bowling alleys and things like that. Because people basically spend the same amount of money on recreation and entertainment. And so you're just moving it around. It doesn't actually create anything in the economy. And so in the same way, so you take Jose Fernandez

out of the league this year, and sure, Jose Fernandez is not there to sell tickets, but you know, like, I'm trying to think of a player who's a draw, but so like Andrew McCutcheon doesn't have to face Jose Fernandez. So Andrew McCutcheon's numbers are slightly better this year because he doesn't have to face Jose Fernandez. And so, you know, he looks a little better and, and,

you know, uh, some other pitcher gets a chance. I don't know. I don't know. It just feels to me that losing, if you, if you lopped off a third of the league's pitchers,

which is what we've done, right. It's not a third, but you know pitchers, which is what we've done, right? It's not a third, but, you know, half are going to be on the DL this year. And, you know, maybe it is a third. Maybe at any given point a third of the pitchers are injured. It wouldn't shock me. But if you lopped off, say, an eighth or whatever of the league's pitchers, and you just didn't tell us that you had done it,

like we all closed our eyes and spun around and then they were all gone. We wouldn't notice, right? The quality of play would not be like the quality of play that we're used to is what we think of as the highest. I mean, it's not like people in the 40s were like, boy, the quality of play sure sucks. Right. They thought it was the best in the world. And it was the best in the world. And as it gets better and better, that's the best in the world. And it was the best in the world. And as it gets better and better, that's the best in the world. And what we're seeing right now is

pretty sucky by 2085 standards probably. And we don't really care. So to me, the idea that the quality of play has gone down, it doesn't convince me because it's totally unnoticeable. The fact that certain players are missing, I would imagine is an extremely small driver of economic activity related to MLB. And the press about it doesn't seem to be very compelling. I don't know why anybody who's thinking of going to a game this weekend would stop going because 400 miles away in some other city, Patrick Corbin got hurt. And the one thing that I think might be compelling is that if the strategy of the game has to change significantly because of this. For instance, if Steven Strasburg is not allowed to pitch,

if pitchers are pulled from games in a way that is kind of aesthetically objectionable to fans who want to see pitchers go deep in the game and are used to pitchers going deeper in the game, that sort of stuff, I could see maybe that would make the game less enjoyable and that could hurt the game. But I would think even that's a pretty small thing. So I'm not convinced that there's really any financial case for Major League Baseball to care about Tommy Jones, other than the fact that they're paying these guys.

But the league as a whole, I mean, they have money. Money is essentially a strategy weapon in this sport. And they have the money to pay these players. If they didn't have the money, they wouldn't. They would probably start spending a lot less money on pitchers, but they can afford to pay injured players. So I don't know that I'm... It's weird because clearly from a health of the sport perspective for all of us, we would prefer, I think, basically we would prefer pitchers to be healthy. We're not happy when pitchers get hurt. But I don't know what the case is philosophically

that these 30 clubs should be collaborating on this. I don't know what the White Sox get out of this. And I didn't pick the White Sox because they stand out on medical stuff. I could have picked any team, but I don't get what any of these teams feel like they're getting out of this. Other than, I guess, maybe they feel like the other teams are subsidizing the research so they don't have to, but they're paying a 30th of it. So yeah, I don't really know what these teams feel like they're getting out of it. It feels like an odd thing for them to collaborate on it.

And like you said, if it were head injuries, if it were anything that affected quality of life, I would say absolutely. I mean, you have to protect your employees. But this is the ligament, the UCL is like a piece of baseball equipment. It matters for the competitiveness of the game and virtually nothing else. So I don't know. Maybe it is just about the employees. You don't want to have employees feeling like their livelihood is insecure and that the league doesn't care about the fact that so many of their careers end early because of this. Maybe what this is is actually just looking into Daniel Hudson's eyes and feeling his

infinite sadness and saying, we can't let this happen to another Daniel Hudson. And I can see that. Maybe I'm pro-study on the Daniel Hudson humanitarianism argument. So yeah, okay. There's kind of, yeah, there's an ethical case, kind of. Yeah, I think there is an ethical case from the employee's perspective. Yeah, all right. Fair enough. I'm pro. Okay, so we're pretty much pro-everything.

Yeah, we are. We're just paternalistic, just like everyone else. Big government baseball fans. Okay, so please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. Please send us emails for this week's listener email show

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