Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 660: The Weekend-Long A’s-Royals Rumble

Episode Date: April 20, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Alex Rodriguez and discuss the three-day dispute about unwritten rules between the A’s and the Royals.

Can you remember the thrill and the rush? You're not at a touch. Could you not just see? No one here's changing, no one ever. No one here's changing, no one ever. No one here's changing, no one ever. No one here's changing, no one ever. No one here to the Play Index at baseballreference.com. 660, first significant baseball number we've had in a while.

That's the thing about getting past 500. That's true. There are like nine more numbers that are significant, and they're spread out over like a 4,000-number range. Although the Yankees would have you believe this is not a milestone. It's an A-Rod reference. It is an A-Rod reference. How about A-Rod?

Exciting. I'm really enjoying it. I am too. I love that people are happy for him again. It's so much more fun when we like A-Rod. It's fun to root for him. It's fun to like him. It's fun to like him and to

get to hate people who hate him. It's just fun to watch really good players play really well. He's still the best player I've ever seen on a regular basis in person. It was seven, eight years ago, but

I was hoping that we would get some glimpse of that A-Rod again. And so far we have. It's fun. I don't know if it'll last, but two weeks of Elite A-Rod is more weeks of Elite A-Rod than I expected to see. So I have, for me, I have very bonds is that, but do you think that I have Mike Trout? Is Mike Trout going to be better? Is there any chance that Mike Trout is better than A-Rod at the end of this what do you think I do about this dishwasher open it uh it's open turn it off I don't think I can turn it off all right so yeah so Trout A-Rod Trout A-Rod's pretty close like to this stage in their career yeah it's pretty close like I've compared them at some

point or just I mean they're A-Rod's MVP years with the Yankees, which is when I was watching him, were slightly sub-Trout, I think. Offensively, they were as good as Trout, but he, by that point, was a third baseman and wasn't bringing quite the same defensive and base running value that he was early in his career. So he was more of a nine win guy at that point, as opposed to Trout, who was a 10 win guy, at least for a while. So maybe

slightly sub Trout. And he was, I mean, Trout's best season is better than A-Rod's best season, right? I mean, we're almost splitting hairs. It's like, you know, less than a weight above replacement probably. Yeah, it's 10.8 to 10.4. Yeah, okay. So it's essentially nothing. Also using different defensive metrics, because the defensive metrics didn't exist for A-Rod's 10.4. Yeah, right. So basically the same. Basically the same. A-Rod, so let's see, Trout is through age 20, basically through his first three years, A-Rod was 23 and a half wins. Those are the same three years age-wise. Through Trout's first three years, 27 and a half. So that's sizable. That's pretty sizable. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about the Royals

and the A's and the weekend that they have. And I find there to be very few skirmishes worth talking about in this sport. When you're coming up as a child, it's all new to you. The whole world is new to you.

And seeing baseball players leave their dugout to mill about is like ferocious intensity. It's like the most exciting thing that could happen. And also, at least in my youth, I think that there were more kind of iconic skirmishes. Certainly there was a massive one between the Giants and Cardinals that was pretty big in my life. And you had the Nolan Ryan, Robin Ventura one. And there's other ones that I can think of if I want to. Yeah, Tino Martinez, Armando Benitez was pretty serious.

Mm-hmm. And not as many good ones these days. And there were no good fights in this one, but it did have the benefit of lasting three days. And there were no good fights in this one, but it did have the benefit of lasting three days. It's been a long time since I can remember really having a full series in which the tension, the

bitterness lasted the entire time. And I enjoyed it, to be honest. I didn't watch any of the games because I blacked out of A's games. But I did enjoy it. But anyway, today, Monday, Grant Brisby will, I assume, do his assessment of the unwritten rules violations at SB Nation, which is probably my favorite thing that Grant Brisby writes. It's my favorite

micro beat of his. It'll be great and it will teach me a lot about those unwritten rules. But I thought that you and I could maybe, we can, I don't know, we can, let's get the jump on Grant. Let's talk about what Grant might say. It'd be nice to do that for once. Yeah. So as far as I can tell, and I'll just quickly in case anybody missed it, the sequence of events is Brett Laurie. It's so complicated. anybody missed it. The sequence of events is Brett Laurie. It's so

complicated. I didn't see a lot of this live and so I was watching videos and reading recaps and quotes and if you weren't watching it at the time, it's kind of hard to keep the sequence of events in order. Especially because once you

get into the cell phone towers, it became an episode of Serial. Who sent it and who gave them the number and whether there was really a payphone at the Best Buy. It was all very complicated. So this is the sequence of events. Brett Laurie slides into second base.

It was deemed dirty. This is Friday. This is Friday. He gets up seemingly apologetic, but instead the Royals jaw, jaw, jaw at him. It seems pretty, I think the bench is clear at that point. It seems clear that he's going to get hit by a pitch the next day. Sure enough, he does. Giordano Ventura hits him after falling behind in the game.

Right in the side, I think it catches his elbow at 99 miles an hour. Laurie takes it and walks to first base. Ventura sort of walks toward him, is ejected. And then after the game, before the game, actually before this, there's the cell phone thing where Laurie tells reporters that he texted Escobar, an apology, and Escobar texted back something that was not very polite. And then Escobar denied that there was any text and said that he would have, it was in Spanish, by the way,

Escobar denies that there was anything and that he would have texted back in English if he had. There were screen grabs and people transcribed it. Right. And there was some question, there was some question about whether he had the right number, right? Because players are always changing their numbers.

But I didn't see a definitive answer on what number he texted and what the right number is. Was there an answer on that? He got the number from Hosmer. So Hosmer, you know, ought to know it. But it's possible that he gave him the wrong number, but we haven't heard. I mean, you'd think that it'd be easy, because Billy Butler's got to know it, but it's possible that he gave them the wrong number, but we haven't heard.

I mean, you'd think that it'd be easy, because Billy Butler's got to know the number, right? Yeah, unless Escobar changed it over the winter. But you would figure that it'd be pretty easy to determine. Like Hosmer by now would have told Laurie, oh, gosh, sorry, I gave you the wrong number, or I didn't, or the test text going at some point. And so if it were indeed the wrong number,

you would think there would have been confirmation of that by now. But maybe not. Maybe nobody's talking anymore. Who knows? So then Ventura hits him, ejected. Game ends. And everybody seems to be, I guess, content that things have been taken care of. And then the next day, today, Sunday, Scott Casimir hits a batter in the first inning in the foot, in the toe. A bunch of people get ejected from the Royals for yelling at Casimir

and maybe yelling at the umpires, I'm not sure. Danny Duffy apologizes for getting upset, but Danny Duffy being upset leads his manager and pitching coach to both get ejected. And later in the game, in the eighth, Kelvin Herrera throws a pitch behind Brett Laurie at 100 miles an hour, sort of around the back of his neck, I would say, and then also starts squawking and pointing at his head. And Laurie gets mad and takes out a water cooler. Now everybody hates everybody and is talking about how unprofessional they are. And it is no longer as though this has been resolved.

Is that the story? Yeah, I think you hit all the major plot points. The great thing about this is that like 35 royals got ejected this weekend and not one egg ever. Right, yeah. And there will probably be suspensions for royals also and yeah so in that sense the a's kind of get the last laugh okay so let's go through each of these uh i have nine i think i have something like nine actions or something or nine people so i want to know who violated unwritten rules uh and what the unwritten rule was. All right, so let's start with Laurie.

Did Laurie violate, was Laurie's slide out of line? Was it, I mean, literally out of line, but was it figuratively out of line? And was retribution deserved? It's so hard to say because I kind of wonder whether like Laurie is a victim of his own reputation here. Like he has this reputation and deserved reputation for being super intense and, you know, running through walls and everything. Maybe the Royals are quicker to assume that there is intention to this as opposed to just Laurie being hustly and intense. I don't know. Like he seems to go for the bag mostly. And yet he manages to push Escobar off the bag almost entirely too. So it's hard to say. He says he didn't go in spikes up.

It's pretty hard to tell from the video. I can't really tell. So if he had done that, that would be bad, I guess. If he was just... I mean, it's always the team that the player is on who slides thinks that it's hustle and it's just guts and it's a hard play and it's a legitimate baseball play. And the other team thinks that it's not. So I don't know. He got a little bit of contact, but I believe that it wasn't dirty.

Yeah, I think you're right about Laurie's reputation. To me, this is like the sort of thing where like you're out on, you know, you get out of prison, you're paroled, and they say you're not allowed to associate with any known felons. And Laurie, in any of these situations, these are the known felons in his life. He is a guy who you assume the worst about in a lot of these sort of situations. And he just put himself in a position where we're going to assume something shady is going on. But to me, I think it was accidental. I think it was probably completely clean. It was such a weird play because the ball was deflected and the throw didn't even come close to beating him, which was also weird.

And there was no double play possibility because the play was so slow to develop. And so it's not like he – I mean, I think that's why the Royals were mad is that it was like he was breaking up a double play that was never going to happen. But what I think it was is that he wasn't planning to slide. Like, I don't know if he thought that he was going to be out by a lot because he didn't realize that the ball had been deflected or if he didn't think there was going to be a throw because he did know it had been deflected or if he just hadn't picked up the ball. But I don't think he was intending to go in and slide at all. And then at the last second, he's like, oh, well, I got a slide. And then it was a late slide because of that, and it got out of control.

But to me, unless he hates Alcides Escobar, there was no reason to go in hard. He wasn't going to dislodge the ball. He wasn't going to break up a double play. It had been like roughly seven seconds since the ball had been hit. I mean, there wasn't really any reason to knock a guy out. So I think that, you know, if it's who's a guy? Who's another guy?

If it's Marco Scudero, I don't know who's a guy. Who's a guy people like? Ben Zobrist. If it's Ben Zobrist, I don't know who's the guy. Who's the guy people like? Ben Zobrist. If it's Ben Zobrist, I don't think anybody notices the slide. I think then we're looking at how awkward he was but not worried about it. But anyway, and he gets up and he immediately seems to have said something conciliatory. So I kind of feel... Did it surprise you that the play was not overturned it was challenged and he was clearly

he beat the ball there but he also maybe came off the bag a little bit in the slide and was tagged in the process sort of hard to see but melvin said after the game i think that he still hadn't seen any evidence that lori was actually out the play. The angle that I'm watching, it's possible that he came off the bag and was tagged. And so I guess there was just enough doubt that the call on the field could stand. But anyway. Yeah, you got a better look at it than me. I mean, he clearly beat the throw. Yeah. But I don't know. Are you asking if I think that the umpires called him out in order to make the situation room getting worse?

Yeah. Right. Because imagine sending Laurie back out there. Right. And Escobar might have, you know, like pulled out a weapon, shot him right there. I don't know. So then, let's see. So what are we saying with him?

Does he have any sin? Is there any sin in Laurie's weekend that you can tell? I'm going to say innocent. Seems innocent to me. Seems very apologetic throughout. Okay, so I agree. Very mature. I'm actually proud of him.

He's come a long way, and I think he's handled himself well. I do think that the unwritten rule that he might have violated is showing the text to me it's a little it's a little you're you're i don't know you're you're making a little bit too big a deal out of it if you want to apply it's like when macklemore texted kendrick lamar right and then like told everyone he texted Kendrick Lamar about the Grammy win. It's like, you know, I don't mind the text. It's a little weird, but I don't mind the text. With Laurie, it's not weird.

But I don't know. Don't make a big deal out of you sending the text, and then pull out the proof. You're going to show them the proof. You're going to call them a liar. Well, he's calling you a liar if you actually did send it. It doesn't matter. Part of being apologetic, look, when you apologize to someone, you don't then wait and see if they accept your apology and then take it back. If they don't, you apologize. You say you're sorry,

and then you say, hey, take it or leave it. I'm sorry. And that's how you show that you're a grown-up. All right. So I'm going to say 1 to 10. I'm going to say 0 to 10. I'm going to say 0 on the slide, 0 on anything that we saw as far as him interacting with the Royals, but like a 3-ish on his pre-Saturday clubhouse behavior. Uh-huh. Okay. I don't blame him for the proof of text, but okay. All right. Jordano Ventura hits him with a pitch right in the side. What's your take?

Well, so it comes down to the whole nature of unwritten to, you know, defend the players by backing them up and punishing the guy who did this possibly imaginary thing, or, you know, looking like he doesn't have guts or he's not willing to step up for his team or whatever. So, I mean, that's the whole nature of unwritten rules. It seems silly. It seems unmerited. And yet this is how these rules are perpetuated this is how it happens and you can kind of understand it from ventura's perspective if if the royals clubhouse was united in their opinion that ori did something then he almost has to go along with it yeah i um i mean right there's there is the I'm against all of this aspect of it, but I'm not going to get into that because until the commissioner decides he wants to enforce some ban on this and take it seriously like I would like him to, it's part of the game.

I'm fine with it. It's like, yeah, they're just doing what they do. I think that the issue with Ventura is not that he hit Laurie. I think that was probably fine within the bounds. I think that everybody on the A's would have accepted that. The timing is perhaps controversial. Yeah, you know, it's... He waited until he was already in a pouty mood.

Right. He waited until the game was sort of getting out of hand. I mean, it seems to me that if you have the courage of your convictions, you hit him with the first pitch. Yeah. He comes up in the first, you hit him. It's done. Having it linger...

Now, maybe there's strategic benefit to that. Maybe you've got the guy... You're in the guy's head now. Maybe you strike him out in the first inning because he's waiting for one between the shoulder blades. I doubt it, but maybe you get some benefit from that. And sure, I mean, you don't want to hurt your team's chances of winning. And I would also, like, if he, you know, if he had done it with the bases loaded or something in the first inning, I'd call him an idiot and say that he's, what, an idiot. But there was just something

about, like, I feel like you need to do it when you're neutral. It's like spanking your kid, right? You can't do it when you're mad. I know that this is another thing where it's like, oh yeah, maybe also you shouldn't ever spank your kid but as long as it's common practice, you don't put people in jail for it. What you can't do is you can't do it out of anger. You can't do it because you're an abusive dad who gets mad and hits his kid.

That's the crime. That's the crime. But if you discipline them by explaining what they did wrong in a very calm way and in a way that is not emotional and that is not aiming to hurt them, you meet out a little bit of discipline like we generally understand. And I feel like he waited until he got mad and that's what made it kind of worse yeah i i thought the same thing i mean he what they were down by five at that point and so yeah if you're if you're going to do it right right yeah yeah out five i think yeah the whole thing is is silly and stupid and is not going to help your team win at least, you know, statistically speaking it wouldn't. But yeah, I mean

the whole thing is about making the gesture and sending the message and it does seem like the message is weakened a little bit if you are more concerned about the game and that single game than you are sending the message, which is the case here.

He was waiting until the game was out of hand where it wouldn't cost the Royals anything to hit him, which in a sense is smarter. Yeah. But is also just kind of, if you're going to do it, you might as well just get it over with from the start when it will be clear to everyone that this was coming and that this was connected to the previous day and and there's no putting anything else in front of it so i agree the timing and then i guess the the jawing afterwards is also sort of unnecessary like you could you could do this and still keep it businesslike and not inflame

passions further yeah i agree the the jawing i mean there was people have brought up that he pulled this on mike trout a couple days ago too and there's something about a little guy who talks too much that is particularly egregious because i don't know in my experience the little guy's always got a big brother and when things get things get real, he's behind the big brother. And it's hard to respect. Sometimes the little guy doesn't have a brother. And he's a fighter and he'll take a swing. And you've got to respect that.

But I don't know. So far I've seen Ventura squawk at bigger guys twice. And then Salvador Perez comes over. And Salvador Perez is always there. And then Salvador Perez comes over. And Salvador Perez is always there. Right. So not feeling, right now, currently not feeling a lot of respect for Ventura the fighter. But we'll see.

We'll see. If he starts hitting people for no good reason, then I'll respect him again. No, I won't. All right. Let's see. If you're a guy with a triple digit fastball, is there, I mean, he hit him in the accepted place where you're supposed to hit people, a non-vital area, but he also threw a 99 miles per hour, per hour fastball. Is there, I mean, not that he throws anything very slowly, but he could have thrown something, you know, one of the slower pitches from his repertoire still would have been 90 or something but i i wouldn't have done i wouldn't have said that i would have said maybe that it goes down to thigh slash butt area as the target because it does really seem like he could have broken his elbow he could have broken a hand he could have maybe broken a rib uh i mean there

were things that that pitch could break and so who knows what he was aiming for it's not like these guys have such perfect control that they could not hit an elbow when they're aiming for a butt so but that's all the more reason maybe to not throw your 99 prayer fastball come on what are you he's not gonna throw a change up his change up is still what like uh 88 or something but yeah but he's not going to do it. No. All right. Scott Casimir, clearly an accident, right?

I mean, you could see it in his response. You could just say you don't hit him in the toe. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of a pitch he throws that you kind of just hit him in the toe. So that one, I feel like that seems like a clear pass, right? Sure seems like it. I guess that would be the perfect cover, right? But no, because you don't want to get away with it.

You want everyone to know that you were doing it, sort of. If it was intentional and he was trying to hit somebody with the perfect cover, then that would be like an 8. a half for unruly violations. Is there any part of you that thinks that he should have been ejected anyway? That once you get to this point in a series and in a conflict that accidents are as bad as intention and that you just have to have a zero tolerance for anything that gets out of hand. I mean, if not for that pitch, Herrera doesn't throw his pitch later on, right? And so Kazmir is still to blame even if it's an accident. If the umpires had tossed him, then does that settle everything down?

Should they have? Yeah, maybe it does it seems unfair but also maybe safer because things can get dangerous when these things spiral out of control so i don't know if if you were an ace fan then you would have considered that just more injustice and more being wronged so oh i don't have a big problem with that all right uh let's see calvin herrera yeah so uh i mean that was uncomfortably close to a dangerous region um and that was also what a 99 mile per hour pitch or something, a hundred mile per hour pitch behind Laurie, behind his neck.

So, I mean, that's like if any pitch up there, that's like automatic, pretty high number, I think on the unwritten rules violation, even if he didn't mean to throw it there. I don't know if you can't be certain that you won't throw it there.

Don't even try to throw it there. So that know if you can't be certain that you won't throw it there don't even try to throw it there so that's that's like real life or death danger so that's that's a big number i think and responding to i mean if you're going to punish somebody for violating an unwritten rule there has to be an unwritten rule violated and And we have deemed the previous matter in the case of Oakland versus Kansas City to have been resolved by Ventura the day before. And we have deemed Scott Casimir to have been in violation of nothing. And so the response, I mean, usually when Grant does these, it seems to me that usually the biggest sin is in either the response or the response to the response.

Like someone just doesn't know when to let this go. And clearly Herrera is the guy in this situation who didn't know when to let something go. And I think I also hit, I don't know, maybe this is just good business. But then after the game saying it was unintentional, it slipped, it was raining, I was pointing at my head because I was telling him, quote, think about it. To me, having a, I don't know, once you start making up excuses, it stops being civil disobedience. I remember hearing, I remember learning about civil disobedience.

You know, was that Emerson or Thoreau? I can't remember. Thoreau. And a crucial part of civil disobedience is that you do not cover up your crime. You have to have, you have to stand behind your crime. If the government wants to punish you for it, that is fine. That is part of it though. You cannot then blame, you can't frame somebody

for your crime and you can't like try to cover it up and you can't flee the country. That doesn't count anymore. Now you're just a criminal. And so I feel like using lame excuses, just don't say anything. Just if the reporters come and ask you, just go, I don't want to talk about it. Don't say anything. You't necessarily say anything uh incriminating but the the rain and the slipping that's the i was hacked excuse of baseball and i don't like it yeah i didn't like the excuse yeah so what number are we putting on herrera he i mean this is he's racking up the points i think like i think like nine and a quarter like this was pretty bad like this is about as bad as it gets. I mean, if he'd hit him in the face intentionally, it would have been worse.

Yeah. If he'd hit him in the on deck circle, that clearly would have been worse. But this is pretty bad. Clearly the villain of this whole situation. Okay. So now he is the villain of the whole situation however i think that escobar is also a pretty like we don't know the full story but reading between the lines of this stuff like when herrera said it was an accident uh escobar is like no it wasn't an accident it

was awesome like these guys have my back i'm so glad for Herrera. I'm so glad for Ventura. I'm going to read the quote. He says, Laurie, he knows he did a bad thing in that situation. That's why Ventura and Herrera reacted. My whole team supported me in that situation. That's why I like to play here. You sort of get the feeling that all this would have been a lot cooler if Escobar was a lot cooler,

but that he wouldn't let this go, that he kept talking, that he came't let this go. He kept talking. He came in the next day and kept on talking about it. And this team's like, eh, just give it a rest. But he didn't give it a rest. And then they had something. And probably all during that game, he was sitting on the bench talking about how horrible Oakland was.

And I don't know. I guess technically he and Herrera weren't in the same location because Herrera was in the bullpen. But I don't know. I guess technically he and Herrera weren't in the same location because Herrera was in the bullpen. But I don't know. You sort of get the feeling that Escobar just could not let this go. This is two days later, and he still feels like he's been wronged.

I mean, I know he's not playing, so he has been wronged, whether by accident or not. I don't know. He could have diffused it. He was the one who was wronged. by accident or not i don't know yeah he could have he could have diffused it he was the one who was wronged he was the the supposed victim so if he had if he had declared that he was not holding a grudge that it was an accident he had the power to probably head off the the retaliation he's also got some of the cell phone thing going on too. Right, right. He could have just said anything that he, any apologies between me and him. He doesn't have to go, he didn't apologize to me.

And he doesn't have to go through the forensics of why he didn't get the text. Just go, it's between me and him. I don't know. Dealing with this stuff through the press is bad business, if you ask me. They both failed in that sense. But that's probably even a little worse, maybe. I don't know. is bad business, if you ask me. They both failed in that sense. But Escobar probably even a little worse, maybe. I don't know.

It's hard to tell who failed worse because Escobar was clearly... When Laurie did it, he was trying to kind of quiet the situation a little bit, although saying that he got this text back maybe doesn't help. But Escobar is trying to escalate it. He is persistent in keeping this a thing so however as far as I know he did not pull out his phone and show it to anybody and uh so maybe he was a little less aggressive in making this point

and there were other quotes I don't know Danny Duffy said, I'm tired of seeing my brothers with bruises. And I don't know. Lorenzo Cain said something similar about how the team is. They all got each other's backs and all that. And the Royals, they've been hit a bunch this year. Although they've been hit 13 times. The Rangers have actually been hit 15 times and then no other team is above eight so maybe there's just some some building frustration about

the fact that they've been hit a bunch of times intentionally or not maybe that's the kind of thing that just gets on your nerves because getting hit hurts and you want to get payback, even if it's not against the people who hit you necessarily. So maybe it's tied to that a little bit. And the Royals pitching staff has only hit like three guys all year. So it's not as if they've been, you know, Diamondback style eye for an eye retribution here. So maybe that's part of it. Don Wakamatsu getting ejected twice was pretty good.

That's a zero on the unwritten rule. That was just cool. And then what do you think about Billy Butler? So Billy Butler, in an awkward position, leaving this team he had spent so much time with, was, I guess, maybe a leader of. And then having to go to his new team and talk about how unprofessional the other team was. Does he, is this okay?

Does he have any remaining loyalty to his old team that he is expected to show? Is there a time period, like a non-compete clause clause where you're not allowed to badmouth your previous employer uh or is he did he do just right no i think he's fine it'd be nice if he could be like an emissary like just going back and forth between clubhouses with an olive branch or something but i think obviously the the loyalty has to be to the team that is paying him for the next few years. And it really isn't as though he capitalized on his position as a former guy. He wasn't like the Republican who turns into a Democrat and is immediately the harshest critic of the party or anything like that. The quote is, Billy Butler sounded confused by the play of his former team and said, I

don't think it was handled right. You can completely envision, like, you can envision the question. You can envision the look on his face as he realizes he's been asked the question. You can envision exactly what sounded confused looks like in this case. And you can see how quickly he wanted to get that sentence over with yeah so i think butler did okay it does kind of remind you just how arbitrary the sides are in these things that you know if if he had been in the other clubhouse he probably would have been on the royal side he would have taken the other side it's just you know whatever uniform you're wearing as long as like

someone on your team is upset you are obligated to at least seem like you are upset too so i would guess that in any unwritten rules flare up like this if you could somehow get the players true thoughts and opinions like what like half the guys on the team would be thinking that you know the guy on their team should just shut up and should stop making such a big deal out of this but they can't actually say that they have to act as if their player is in the right almost all the time yeah i uh the one of my friends on my softball team early on in our softball careers had a had an unfortunate habit of getting into near fights with the other team.

The other teams that we would play were always really big. These were block teams, teams of people who lived on the same block. So there'd be guys who were 375 pounds. Sometimes there'd be sometimes there'd be like six of those guys and i just remember it like sometimes he'd be jawing with a guy and i would just be so scared like i would be thinking what am i gonna do here because i am not fighting with these people but i also didn't know what to do and at one point they were like face to face and one of the other team's guys uh like went behind my guy and like shoved him into the the other guy so it was like it was almost like framing him for a for a shove and oh it was the worst moment anyway so

yeah i know and so ever since then i have to like i would like yell at him went like knock it off. I'm not fighting for you. I am not behind you. Are there any other people to critique? No, not really. I don't think so. I think it's okay. So let's hope that this doesn't continue the next time these teams meet in June or whenever it is. But it sort of seems like if you're the Royals, you probably don't feel satisfied. Maybe in a couple months you have time to reflect.

So we are coming down pretty wholeheartedly on Oakland's side here. Let me ask you a question. Let's say that tomorrow like Jeremy Guthrie got traded to the Tigers and then the A's and the Tigers play. Does Guthrie got traded to the Tigers. And then the A's and the Tigers play. Does Guthrie now have any hostility toward the A's?

Does Guthrie hit Laurie with a pitch? Or now that he's being on not the Royals, just like Billy Butler being on not the Royals, is it completely immediately done? If you're not the guy who has a personal one-on-one beef with the player, like Escobar and Laurie, they're going to hate each other for a while. Herrera and Laurie. But is Guthrie absolved of all this if

he gets traded? And secondly, they should hire assassins. They should actually ask people on other teams to hit Laurie so that it's concealed. But he won't know that that came from the royals.

But if you're really I mean I said that you should have the courage of your convictions but on the other hand if you really have the courage, really then you're not in it to send a message. You're in it to hurt him. And if you want to hurt him you want to do it without hurting yourself. Depends what kind of war you're in.

Don't do this, children. Please, kids at home. Ben and I are both completely baseball pacifists. We are only speaking about this in the context of the world that we live in right now. When we are made commissioner, serious penalties for anything. Yeah. I think anyone traded is released from his obligation. Does this make the Royals less likable? Oh, completely.

Yeah, right? Because they were so likable last year and now all of a sudden they have squandered a lot of their likability. Yeah. Their one quote from their GM saying that this is part of their strategy away from being like like hateable that's right yeah because they were they were very uh you know intense and team spirit and everything last october but it was a very celebratory happy

sort of team spirit where they were just you know all having fun out there and now their fun is resulting in people getting hurt or almost hurt and now it's not fun anymore yeah it was pretty no it's pretty fun it's well okay it's still fun you know bloodthirsty sort of way yeah okay all right so that's it for today. We will do emails at some point this week, not Wednesday. I think we've got something else lined up for Wednesday, but you can send us emails at podcast at baseball perspectives.com.

You can find our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can read whatever Grant Brisbyby wrote about this by the time you've listened to this podcast and maybe he'll come to different conclusions we will be back tomorrow