Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 701: The All-Banter Backlog Show

Episode Date: July 6, 2015

Ben and Sam return from a semi-extended absence to banter about Bryce Harper, Stephen Strasburg, a David Ortiz fun fact, All-Star voting, Cardinals hacking, and more.

Standing on the moon Where talk is cheap and vision true Standing on the moon But I would rather be with you Somewhere in San Francisco On a back porch in July Good morning and welcome to episode 701 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hello, Ben. Hello.

How are you? I'm all right. Okie doke. I wanted to ask you about a thing. This is a fun fact that has been going around the internet today. You maybe have seen it. I've seen it multiple places. I think I was going to ask you about this same fun fact, possibly. Okay, so I'm going to go to Chris Swick's write-up of it.

The Red Sox started David Ortiz at first base Sunday. All right, so it's a two-way fun fact. Part one is that it was the first time in the Red Sox history that the team did not have a first baseman record, a put-out. And what makes that a fun fact as opposed to interesting is that david ortiz was starting at first base at fenway for the first time in 10 years so uh lol because you would think like david ortiz he can't play first base and then the day they put him there a historic lack of of activity surrounds him yeah although the the the doubt about David Ortiz was not that he could stand there and catch someone

else's throw necessarily. Thank you. I find that you've, all right, so you've given away your position on this. My position on this is that this is definitely worth tweeting because it seems interesting, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. This is not actually a good fun fact. Yeah, well, right. There's the fact that there are just fewer balls in play now.

But it's still weird. It's still unusual. You could watch a whole season without seeing a game like this. You could probably do a play index and find out how many times it happens, period. But if it has never happened in Red Sox history, then it doesn't happen much. So that's sort of interesting. I had to think about it a bit when I read it. But yeah, the fact that it's David Ortiz is fun, but we didn't doubt David Ortiz's ability to stand on first base and catch a throw from someone else, maybe a scoop. I don't know if he can scoop well, but it's more about him moving and assisting or taking a ball himself.

Yeah. So there are three reasons that this, I think, fails. One is that Ortiz was involved in an out. He did field a ground ball. Yes, which is harder. And then he flipped the ball to the pitcher covering, which is especially harder. And so it is not as though David Ortiz could have taken the day off in retrospect. Right? He did have to do things. Right. Indeed, he almost certainly also had to field pickoff throws.

Probably. Probably. John Lester's not on the Red Sox anymore. Right. And so, you know, the fact that put outs are a standalone statistic where the first baseman gets credit for the put out, even though somebody else fields it and throws it, is kind of a quirk of scorekeeping more than anything. David Ortiz did play defense. He did make outs.

So that's one thing. Number two is that this was not David Ortiz's first game at first base in 10 years. It was his first game at first base at Fenway in 10 years. In an AL game, maybe? In 10 years? Well, at Fenway is the way that it's been. His first at

home is the way that it's been. I think I read in an AL game somewhere. But all the same same no distinction there he's played first yeah first you know not a ton but he's played first a bunch david ortiz plays first base yeah so this was not like the first time that he'd strapped on a glove in 10 years and he couldn't use it it was the first time he'd strapped on a glove in like three weeks and he did use it uh thirdly, maybe there would have been, I didn't watch the game closely,

I'm sure that, probably this is not the case, but maybe there would have been put outs if David Ortiz hadn't been at first base. Maybe a ground ball went two feet beyond his grasp that another first baseman would have fielded and stepped on the bag for the put out, in which case, maybe this is a self-fulfilling fun fact probably i doubt it but i'm just saying like if the point is david ortiz

can't field and and look he never got the chance put outs don't necessarily tell you whether he got the chance so definitely definitely something i probably if I discovered it, I would have written it up. I'm not going to be too cool to claim that I wouldn't take the retweets, okay? Yeah. If I discovered this, I would have lied to you all. I would have disguised these flaws in the logic, and I would have tweeted that thing, okay? But as I am in a position where I get no credit for it now, I will tell you all the hard truth, which is that this fun fact sucks.

Okay. It's not quite a no-hitter level of bad fun fact or bad thing that people are interested in. It's not a cycle. It's not a cycle. It's not someone having a team having a really good record after leading after a certain inning or whatever that one is. It's not Barry Zito's record when his team scores four or more. Right.

Right. It's not any of those. Okay. David Ortiz did something no Boston first baseman has ever done. I wanted to know the last time it happened. I didn't really care that it was the only time a Red Sox First Baseman has ever done that. I might have cared if I were a Red Sox fan, but as a generalist, I just

wanted to know the last time it happened, period. Yeah, so that was his fourth game at first base this year. I thought I saw that, but maybe I didn't. I thought I saw that, but like I just said. I thought I saw that, but like I just said, I thought I saw that. Like I just said, maybe I didn't. All right. So Ben, let's talk about the Angels. Okay. Yeah. We've gone a week without a podcast. A lot of stuff happened

while we were gone. So that was one of the things. So I will not talk about that. Oh, are we going to banter? Do we want to do all banter? Well, maybe. Maybe so. Maybe we'll just catch up on a few things. There have been a few storylines that we've talked about that have been resolved. Or there have been further developments.

And there's been some other stuff. So briefly, what did you think of the Bryce Harper pickoff play? I didn't see it. Okay. What do you think of the bryce harper pickoff play i didn't see it okay what do you think of it in principle the didn't hear about it no idea what you're talking about so what do i think of it with no with no no context honestly ben i you know i think that uh he had it coming and i'm not sure that I like the way that everybody reacted. But in retrospect, you got to play to win. And I think that it's good that everybody out there has given it their all. That's about the level of commentary that you hear on your typical studio show about any story.

What is this? Tell me about this thing the giants attempted to pick off bryce harper at second base with gregor blanco jogging in from centerfield yeah so you like it that's the move i did that every game you did that every game. You did that every game? Yeah, I was a center fielder for a little bit, and that was our move. I love that move. How often did it work in Little League? Once. Really early. Yeah, right. It didn't work. It didn't come very close to working.

It doesn't seem like something that would ever work, frankly, to me. It's not only the fact that once you do it once the advanced scout will probably warn your team that that you do this and someone will communicate that and it'll be a a known thing that you do this and they you know maybe they burned it in a 9-3 victory i think it was like 6-1 at the time or something late in the game. Maybe they could have saved this for a World Series or an LCS matchup or something. Instead, they used it in July. So that's one thing. But the other thing is that the batter has to be asleep for this to work.

Like, Wilson Ramos was at the plate, and he was yelling and gesturing at Harper when Blanco really wasn't even close to the bag yet. And I don't think Harper heard him immediately because he didn't move back to the bag immediately. But even so, he made it very easily. And I will send you a link if you want to watch it while we talk. But it didn't really come close to working. It didn't seem like it could conceivably work. I appreciate the effort and the creativity but i don't know if this is really a plausible trick play well i'm sure it has happened

in major league history so so probably it is but yeah it is tough because major league i mean when i was in little league i probably played 30 feet behind second base, right? Like we were little kids. Nobody was hitting the ball 420 feet. So you weren't that deep. And also the guy at the plate was just absolutely out of his mind scared of getting hit by a pitch and was not paying attention to the center fielder. And so it could work a little bit in Little League. But the only way it could work here,

the circumstances would have to be such that, A, it's so loud that you get at least two seconds before the rest of the team has any hope of shouting to Harper or shouting in any way to get his attention. So you need a loud crowd, and you basically would need Blanco to probably to somehow sneak

in behind the pitcher, like be completely lined up with the pitcher, so that the batter doesn't necessarily get a real good look at him. It was Yuzmira Petit pitching, so you'd think there would have been some deception there somehow. You'd want a fat pitcher, skinny outfielder, and he'd need to just kind of do it fairly slowly but the problem with

doing it slowly is that while you don't look as suspicious and it might be harder to for somebody to notice that you're doing this it's going to take you a lot longer and give them a lot more time to notice this so it does seem tricky to pull off, but I would love it if it did. Why? Are people saying Bush League or something? No, not that I know of. And you've sent it to me, okay. I have. Oh, this is the part of the show where everyone gets

to listen to me hear an ad. Maybe not. I am looking forward to watching this. I wonder why they did this. It was a strange time to do it. And they were down 6-1 in the 7th? Yeah, it was not close. It was not like a wildcard rival or something.

It was not, I don't know, you'd think, this is Giants-Nationals. This could be a crucial matchup at some point this year. They could have saved it. This is so dorky. This is so dorky. They look so dorky. Gregor Blanco just coming out of nowhere. This is something that

had to have been talked about at some point. You know, you say it wasn't close, and it wasn't close. The throw was horrible. I'm not sure Petit knew it was coming, but it could have worked. That definitely could have worked. I mean, look, Blanco was at the bag waiting for a throw,

essentially before Harper moved. And so if the point is to get a defender in position to take a throw and tag you, and he's watching the second baseman in the shortstop, so if the point is to get the defender there, then he did it. Now, Petit wasn't ready for it. The throw wasn't good. And Harper didn't have a giant lead. So all

those things wasted it. But I mean, there's a shot here where... Let's see here. Rigger Blanco just kind of coming out of nowhere. This is something that happened. Yeah, there's a point. Oh, yeah. This definitely was executed.

They could have gotten him. It's strange that he didn't hear Ramos, who was yelling at him for a long time. I guess it was very loud. It was loud. I mean, what is it? Okay, so I've always wondered about, you know the daylight play? You do, yeah? What do you mean?

Well, like, the normal pickoff move is well this is what i'm going to ask you but we refer to the daylight play at second base which involves you know it's a pickoff play when the one of the middle infielders just sneaks in you mean yeah yeah exactly and i've never figured i i'm not exactly sure what specifically the daylight refers to here so i'm gonna i'm gonna look it up there's a lot of references to the daylight play i mean i kind of know what it is oh okay are we gonna we might watch an mlb.com tutorial seems like a job for the dixon baseball dictionary yeah but i'm not in that room i don't want to watch four minutes of this okay i'm going out i'm getting the dixon okay minutes of this. Okay, I'm going out. I'm getting the Dixon.

Joe McGrain is literally defining daylight right here. He is doing exactly what he said he did. Alright, so I got it. So daylight play is a defensive maneuver performed by an infielder and the pitcher. While the runner takes his lead, the infielder

quietly slips back to the base. Simultaneously, the pitcher steps off the rubber and spins around toward that base. If the pitcher feels there's a chance to pick off the runner, if he sees daylight between the back to the base. Simultaneously, the pitcher steps off the rubber and spins around toward that base. If the pitcher feels there's a chance to pick off the runner, if he sees daylight between the runner and the base. Oh, between the runner and the base. See, I would have definitely thought the daylight was between the infielder and the runner. Yeah.

I still think it is. I'm actually going to hate to not, I hate to go against Dixon. We went against Dixon once recently. Oh, yeah. When he had like a circular definition. Batting around, wasn't it? Batting around. Yeah.

He throws the ball to the infielder. If the pitcher does not see daylight, he simply holds the ball. Now, the way that Joe McGrain has decided to find this with me and Barry Larkin is the daylight play is basically when the shortstop slips behind the base runner and darts toward the bag to cover the bag. And when the catcher sees that he's got the edge on the base runner, he puts down the sign for the pitcher to simply spin and throw. And you just spin and throw. You don't even look. You just spin and throw. Anyway, the point is that, let's say the daylight, I forget why you even mentioned daylight play, but the whole point is to get a fielder to the bag, and then you simply spin and throw. And they got the fielder to the bag.

I can't remember why I thought it was important to know about Daylight. It's been a while. See, the studio, the audience doesn't realize that there was like 40 minutes between the first time I said Daylight and this time that you're hearing it right now that Ben edited out. It's been a while. We've actually have each we've actually each moved on to other jobs since then.

I've had another child. Life has gone on since we started this conversation and Ben edited most of it out. So forgive me if this is not smooth. Life would always be better if I edited out most of it yeah anyway my point is this play worked it was not executed well on the other ends but this play worked and so i would

expect that in the next 10 years we will see it again succeed okay all right uh Royals All-Star voting is over now. Sanity prevailed. There are only four Royals All-Star starters, Kane, Gordon, Perez, Escobar. So in the end, not much came of that, I suppose. There wasn't. I wonder if there is enough of a threat, if it came close enough to reality for MLB to change something about the voting procedures Next year or maybe not Maybe even though there was all this attention Given to this and many votes Cast and lots of attention paid To all-star voting

And the all-star game which is probably exactly What MLB wants They ended up with a game that looks More or less reasonable probably Alright so let me ask you I'm going to ask you a question and then I'm going to ask you a follow-up question. Do you think MLB rigged the final results in any way?

Actually, I got two follow-ups. Maybe even three. Okay. I don't. You don't think any steps were taken to make sure that it was Josh Donaldson and not Mike Moustakis? I'm going to say no. Okay. Would you mind if there were? is there anything that requires

price waterhouse accounting methods to make sure that these votes are all perfectly on the up and up and that the integrity of the process is great like does this matter at all to the point that mlb can't engineer the all-star game at once no i don't think so it would just the only reason not to do it is that it'd be a scandal if they were caught not a scandal that you and i would care about as you've just said and that i will concede i agree with but someone would lose his job probably if caught doing it but maybe also if they didn't do it and if it turned out to be an all-royals all-star game. Someone might lose their job.

Yeah. I don't know who. Is it conceivable that Ned Yost will pick Omar Infante? I think there's, I don't know, there's like a multi-day all-star unveiling process which seems overly extravagant. And then, of course, there's the extended process of people pulling out of the game

or having injuries all of a sudden, and then the All-Star game being half players who weren't actually elected or appointed or whatever. So that goes on for a few days, too. So there's still a chance. So Quiz Show, you know, the game show movie about the game show scandal, that also isn't a thing that matters to anybody like nobody who is watching was affected by whether it was this

guy or that guy who won and yet lots of people lost their jobs and there were congressional inquiries into it so maybe we're somehow underrating the response uh if if it were revealed that there was some sort of manipulation going on. Although I think that was also that Quiz Show was pre-Watergate, and now post-Watergate, we all just assume everything is rigged. I mean, I don't think anybody would really even be remotely surprised. We think that, you know, like one out of five of the people listening right now, Ben, thinks 9-11 was an inside job.

It seems a little high no that's a that's about it it's like one in five i'm gonna give our listeners more credit than that one in five of our stompers do probably more i'm serious i was having this conversation not long ago well our stompers don't listen to the podcast sure so anyway i mean if you think about it like let's just say it is one in five one in five people is walking around thinking that the u.s government mass murdered its people right and they still like pay their taxes and do everything normal like life is just normal so how fed up i mean really what kind of mass response would you expect if it turned out that the All-Star Game vote tallies were slightly thumbed on? Probably not that much, right?

There was controversy over Eric Sogard and David Wright or whoever, right? Face of MLB. And nothing came of that, really. All right. third question is though is there a conspiracy theory where mlb rigged the first part of this to create the false drama to get everybody paying attention to it that would be clever if they if they submitted all those votes and then invalidated them or they do or didn't maybe didn't even invalidate them knew that the process would overwhelm their first tiers of voting and i mean maybe they didn't validate who knows but they

wouldn't even have to if you just if you just release the first round or the first two rounds of voting and omar infante is in there and you know based on historic voting patterns that uh if you just stop at a certain point that the numbers will fix themselves. I mean, Josh Donaldson got 14 million votes. That was a record. Josh Donaldson. It's not like Josh Donaldson is the most

famous player in the world. I mean, I imagine there were a lot of votes. This was a big year for votes, right? I think so. Way more than usual, weren't there? Let's see. I don't know, but you would think with all the attention paid to it. 2014 all-star vote totals.

Surprisingly hard to find last year's vote totals. It's part of the conspiracy. Swept under the rug. So, like last year, this was a couple days before the final day. But only a couple days. And it's like all the leaders have, like, two, three million. And, yeah, so this was the day before. This was last year.

It was the day before they shut down voting. they shut down uh voting and the nl leader had 3.2 million andrew mccutcheon had 3.2 million and so he had the most of anybody bryce harper had 13.9 million this year josh donaldson had 14 million this year so whatever it was this does seem to have i don't know something seems to have created a huge increase in voting, right? Yeah. And they didn't even have the ballots at ballparks. And so it got a ton of attention. And so maybe, I don't know, maybe that's it.

Clever. Well, I would give them credit for creativity. I guess it would be hypocritical. I would give them credit for creativity. I guess it would be hypocritical. It would be inconsistent with the whole this time it counts thing to rig the totals. So that would be the only thing I would care about. Not the sanctity of the all-star rosters or anything, but the combination of manipulating the vote totals

and also making the game mean something competitively. That would be a little sketchy. I don't care. Yeah, I guess. I don't care about also making the game mean something competitively that would be a little sketchy i don't care yeah yes i don't care about the making the game to me i don't care about the game meaning something they for 100 years right decision of how to do it was well let's arbitrarily pick one at random and this is this is just let's arbitrarily choose one at random it doesn't like really doesn't really matter yeah you however i mean you can just have the best team have home field advantage that might be better than either of those arbitrary options but that's what we're talking about now huh we're talking about no no no we're not i don't care how mlb picks the all-stars if they had a process that was

a fourth letter in your middle name alphabeticalical, chosen at random, that would be fine with me, pretty much. But I would not want them lying about how they do it. What I'm saying is that this way is as good or as bad as any other way of picking the people. But if they were then manipulating it subversively, secretly, then I think i would be fine with that being a scandal and i would join the outrage yeah okay all right quickly um steven strasburg we talked about him when he was at his low point and we did the the tim lincecum game with him also and i think at the time i said there was a 60% chance that Strasburg would finish with a better ERA than Lincecum. And then I immediately regretted it because it seemed too

optimistic. And now I'm feeling okay about it. Because Strasburg came back from the DL, he made two and a half starts, or he made three starts and didn't finish the third one because he got hurt again. But while he was back, he looked like Steven Strasburg. He had a 115 ERA and struck out 18 with four walks in 15 innings, something like that. He looked like Strasburg again. And so I'm more confident now that when he comes back from this oblique strain, whatever that is, he will look like Strasburg again. I'm not as worried that there is some kind of problem that will destroy his season or destroy his career or something. And we've covered how bad Lincecum has been, of course. And so now it's much closer. So and strasburg's is down to 5.15 so it's a one run difference and we have three months

to go and strasburg is going to be hurt for some part of that but i'm feeling better yeah it's just that it seems to me extremely unlikely that lindcombe gets even five more starts this year. Yeah, he'll get bullpen games. He will, but those will, I mean, my guess is that he'll lower his ERA. Probably. He's pitching in relief. Yeah, so that could hurt. So I need Strasburg to come back and be Strasburg for a couple months,

which now I'm kind of confident could happen. Okay, and then we can talk about the Angels. Did you see the Trevor Bauer batting stances thing? I did. Okay. Well, I just wanted to tell people to watch that because I thought that was great. Very good. And soon to be ruined.

Certainly soon to be ruined. If someone else does it, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. does it you mean yeah it's yeah so he he imitated jason kitness and mike avilis and ryan rayburn in his at that while he was having a good at bat and walking he did really good imitations of at least two of them and i'm that's uh that seems like the sort of thing that would get hot taped or would get you criticized by someone but not by terry francona i guess terry francona is a live and let live kind of guy but when you're having a disappointing season to

show any any whimsy can kind of be criticized and that was extremely whimsical but very well done yeah they're you know they're not quite the a's as far as meme fuel, but they're getting there with the, uh, the bullpen, you know, the bullpen, the demands for the guys first hit, you know,

that was the Indians pitching staff. Yeah. And so, uh, so I don't know, maybe there's something about certain teams, but the A's and the Indians are, are kind of in a lot of ways,

very similar teams. And so maybe you can get, maybe you can get away with things like this on certain types of teams, either small teams or stat head teams or young teams or teams that have a lot of turnover. I don't know what the common link would be. But this seems like, yeah, obviously wouldn't go over probably as well

on the Angels as it did here. But it was well executed and he didn't break a smile at all which is really what made it i mean you almost could not tell that he knew he was doing it like that's how that's how serious he was about this yeah and that's why it worked if he had had given any indication if he was looking at the dugout for a reaction it would have cut the enjoyment by 50 but he wasn't he was confident he had a routine and he was confident in it yeah well done and uh you know we were talking not long ago about how when we were more inexperienced, we would devote way too much time to researching some topic that we thought would make an interesting article that wouldn't actually. And I was thinking that if I were at that stage in my career, I probably would have done that to try to figure out how unusual the Cubs-Pirates trade for Clayton Richard was.

It struck me as strange that those two teams made a trade. It was an insignificant trade. The Cubs acquired Clayton Richard for cash from the Pirates. It just seems strange that two teams that are locked in a pretty tight wildcard race, potentially even a division race, would help each other out, or one would kind of help the other out, or that they'd make any trade whatsoever. That seemed unusual to me, and I

would have researched how unusual it was. And I didn't, so I have no idea whether it actually was. Are you sure that you've never written about trades within the division? I may have written about trades within the division. We've definitely talked about it i think we definitely have yeah yeah so that was that was one i guess i don't know you kind of get the feeling that maybe

we'll see more of those because when we talked about it we said that there should be more of them right or at least that there's no real reason not to make one if you would make one if the team were not in your division, usually? I don't think that's what we did say. In fact, I think we do think there should be more because there are so few. And I think there's a sort of scared GM element to it that probably a GM who trusts his process and all that should be willing to make more than do get made. However, unless you're assuming that you're... Well, in fact, I could just say,

go listen to episode 485, because I'm sure we said all these words. Episode 485, trading within the division of Effectively Wealth. But if you're... Was that a Russell Carlton episode? Was it? Why would it be? I just kind of remember it being one. Was it? Yeah, it was.

I wasn't even there! No. Well, we might have talked about it too. I don't know. I think we did. I have fully formed opinions about it. Oh, look at this! We also have a spreadsheet. Ben, we have a spreadsheet of three years of trades within the division. Okay. Five years, in fact.

Five years of trades within the division. So you did do all that. I did do it. So when you make a trade, yes, ideally the trade benefits both teams. And so there are some trades where you just think, okay, I'm so much better at assessing these players than the other guy is that I'm just going to take advantage of it. And in a lot of cases, the appropriate thing to say at that point is, no, I'm not. I should probably be humble and figure out why my biases are leading me to believe this. My two-person

fantasy league, I don't know if I ever mentioned this before, but when I was like 10 years ago or 12 years ago or so when I first got Pakoda Spreadsheets, I would go into this draft with my Pakoda Spreadsheet and he'd go into the draft with his just knowing about baseball

stuff. And then I'd do all this manipulation so that the projections would be suited for our league format. And then i would just basically draft right down the list uh whoever was the best player on the spreadsheet left that's who i'd take and at the end of it i would take all of his players and then all of mine and put all their projections together and i'd be like yeah i'm gonna kill him like but of course I am. I'm taking the highest guy on the spreadsheet. In every round, I'm going to have the higher projections because that's what I'm using to make my decisions. And while Pocota projections are really good and

I've had great success in that league and in life, I realized that you can't really just do that. You have to regress because there are some blind spots that I have and there are some things that he has. Anyway, so if you think that your trade partner is an idiot, sometimes yeah, but usually no. Usually they're doing it for their own self-interest and they're trying to help. And so trades are not zero-sum is what I'm saying. Both teams can improve. And so by trading with an inter-division partner, you might be getting two wins better and you might be helping them get one win better.

And if you could find another guy in another division who would get one win better while you get two wins better, that's even better for you because now you're gaining two games on your division opponents instead of just gaining one game on your division opponent, right? And so if you think that this is that sort of a trade where both teams have a rational reason for making the trade, you're gaining less and it's not as though there are a scarcity,

a paucity of trade partners in Major League Baseball. There are 25 teams that are not in your division, and maybe it would have been impossible to sell Clayton Richard or to buy a pitcher of Clayton Richard's stature. And they tried and tried and tried, and they ended up with nothing, and so they decided, okay, well, we'll both get a little better and we can make this trade. But theoretically, if the, who traded, who, who, the Cubs got Clayton Richard. Cubs got Clayton Richard. So if the Royals had been able to get Clayton Richard from the Pirates, that would have been better for the Pirates. Because it wouldn't have filled the Cubs' need. Exactly.

And so, so it makes sense that there would be fewer trades within the division and it i i think that it's not it shouldn't be a hard and fast rule by any means but i get why they don't happen unless the pirates thought the cubs wouldn't be worse with clayton richard right unless the pirates think that they're just so much better at evaluating players than the cubs are, or that they have an information advantage. And if they think these idiots are going to take Clayton Richard, we cannot miss the opportunity to put Clayton Richard in their rotation, then that would be. But again, if you think that, probably, probably you should rethink your position.

Because the Cubs are also smart. Yeah. As they say, the Cubs also live in big houses. Mm hmm. Okay. And the Cardinals hacking scandal development, Chris Correa, the scouting director, was fired and he fired himself a parting shot or his lawyer did. And he said, Mr. Correa denies any illegal conduct The relevant inquiry should be

What information did former St. Louis Cardinals Employees steal from the St. Louis Cardinals Organization prior to joining the Houston Astros And who in the Houston Astros Organization authorized Consented to or benefited from that Roguish behavior Which I enjoyed

I like the Chris Correa heel turn Even though that doesn't seem like a very Very solid argument Like the relevant The relevant inquiry should be What those other guys did Not the crime that I am Alleged to have committed

Only the crime that they that I am Alleging that they committed I don't think that's how it works Unless I mean unless he's right well they're both even if he's right they're both guilty right it's not like luna stole something first so he's allowed to go in and take something probably well if he's right if he knew for certain that luna look look think about it like this ben and i don't know any of the details so i don't want to get like i don't i don't want to besmirch any names okay

i'm just giving hypotheticals here let's say though that he knew for almost a fact that luno had stolen his you know their their proprietary stuff right like it was obvious there were fingerprints all over, and the moves were clear indications, and he was bragging about it at the winter meetings. Well, what are his options here? He can get evidence in a way that kind of,

you can talk yourself into thinking, seems pretty benign, right? It's your old pal. You're just using his password. You're not necessarily like, this is not Cold War secrets. It's just baseball. It seems kind of benign in the moment. You later figure out that it is not benign. You messed up, but it seems kind of benign in the moment. back to your boss and go seriously dude he did it i i went in and i looked he did it i told you he did it and he did it right right and then you can choose to do whatever you want with that but maybe you maybe you can play in a major league baseball maybe your boss calls jeff and goes hey knock it off bud yeah but you can't acknowledge that you found that information you can because it seems

benign this doesn't seem like a big deal until you get caught covering it up and doing it right it's it's not it doesn't the scenario i laid out where you're not planning on doing anything with the information where you're just trying to bust your old buddy on a thing that he did yeah but you still have to admit that that you went in there uh probably not going to be looked upon favorably hang on hang on i haven't finished my so you can do that or you can like report luno to the fec or something like you can like props about the fec but you could like you could try to send him to jail which sounds like horrible right you would you don't you're not gonna do a lawsuit you're not gonna like press charges you're trying to keep it cool you're trying to make it loose and so you do this thing all right so then

now can he can he acknowledge that he did it you're saying that he should just put out a statement that says that i broke the law and the charges against me are going to come back guilty and i'm going to go to jail and that i'm putting out a statement because I'm an idiot. What? No, I guess if he's, I guess if he's caught and he admitted it evidently, reportedly, then I guess in that case, what's going to happen to him is going to happen to him. He's not pretending he didn't do it. And so he might as well just try to burn the other guy. Well, yeah, he, maybe we don't know, but I mean, he admitted it to his employer, but there's still potential legal proceedings against him that you wouldn't want to be making public statements admitting guilt in that way necessarily. Yeah.

Or without at least having some smoothed out message. I don't know. I mean, again, it sort of goes to to motives here it seems to me and if you if you give this statement like kind of credible benefit of the doubt and it really is in his mind about figuring out whether his old buddy had stolen a bunch of his stuff and that that was the issue all along it changes the it changes the details a little bit it's not about trying to hurt another team steal from another team embarrass another team it's just about looking into it which is what his statement says

then yeah yeah we should we don't usually have front office people on because they're so constrained in what they can say. But maybe we should should find a former front office person to just ask what the information sharing that goes on everywhere is because there must be so much of this. Science and NDA and you're not allowed to maybe physically copy things and bring them with you, but you know those things and you can't forget that you learned them and that you know them and you can't force yourself not to apply knowledge that you gained for another team. And people are moving from one team to another constantly. So what are the unwritten rules about what you're allowed to take with you or what you're allowed to use that you know. I mean, there's so much movement from one team to another that these things must be getting passed around all the time. So I wonder what it could be, like what could a front office person take that would violate the unwritten rules against taking things? So I'm going to lay out three quick scenarios, and then I just want numbers from you, okay?

Okay. So scenario one is going to be that this was just a fact-finding mission to find out if Luno had indeed done the thing they suspected him of doing, or that they now claim, at least, that maybe they never did believe this and maybe this is just the convenient explanation after the fact. But scenario one is that. Scenario two is they figure out that they could probably access the Astro's information and they think there might be some competitive edge to that and so they go in.

Three is they figure out they can access the Astro's information and they think that they could embarrass the guy vindictively for that. All right, so those are the three scenarios. Now, I want to know what percentage of Major League front office people you think would avail themselves of that opportunity if it were extremely easy for them to do it. Like if someone came in to them and said, oh, yeah, no, I got Luno's password and I

can pull it up for you in one minute. Now what percentage says, yeah, cool. Let's do that right here, right now. Alright, so scenario three. It is specifically to embarrass and you go in with the intent of leaking it.

Are we factoring in the risk or not? Like the risk that you get caught it are we are we factoring in the risk or not like the risk that you get caught because that we're factoring in the risk as it was known six months ago uh-huh so not now i think it would be different everybody i think realizes it's riskier than probably you would have thought on first blush my guess is that if you'd ask everybody if you'd laid out this scenario five uh you know a a year ago and then asked people, what are the chances that the federal government would prosecute, that it would be zero, that we would all have 0% chance that there'd be federal prosecution?

And now that there's the chance of that, it changes the risk a great deal. So let's put ourselves in a six-months-ago mindset. How many would do the embarrassing leak scenario? I think it depends a little bit on if you're sitting in the war room at the time. I think there'd be some residual level of caution that some percentage of people would not want to do this from your place of work. So if you were at a hotel or something, you're at some place where you think you can't be tracked as maybe the Cardinals people were at a spring training house or something. Something like that.

It's nuts. Yeah. So I would say scenario one. Scenario three. Start with three. I have to start with three. Okay. All right.

I'll say 15. That is exactly what I per se. Okay. Okay. Scenario two, use it for competitive edge. Competitive exactly my percent. Scenario two. Use it for competitive edge. Competitive edge higher I think. I'll say

25. I can't decide whether higher or lower. I could see 8 on the low end and 30 on the high end. Somewhere in there. Kind of similar percentage total but different groups of people. Uh-huh.

All right. Now, three, just checking to see if the dude stole from you and you're not planning on doing anything with it other than maybe yelling at him or whatever. I don't know what they plan. But just checking to see if your former employee has stolen from you. And you have suspicions that he has. You have suspicions. Yeah. Presumably you have some suspicions. Although it's debatable how good your suspicions are.

But everybody, yeah, probably. Look, the day he left, they had suspicions. They probably had suspicions that you would do this. Or probably everybody suspects all their former employees is what I mean. Right. I'll say 70. 85% So this is why Correa's statement

Makes perfect sense Because he's telling us this was an 85% crime Not a 15% crime And if you believe him Which is the point of the statement is to make you believe that that is the truth It dramatically changes what you think about him as a person. Yeah, that's true. That's all I'm saying.

That took me a long time to get there, but I found daylight. Yeah. Well, just the fact that he is involved makes this seem more conspiracy-ish than we initially thought it was when it was just when it sounded like it was just some lower level people although he was not i think scouting director at the time but he was he was well regarded and uh clearly a person on the rise and just the fact that he was involved makes it more plausible that someone above him was involved which i considered highly unlikely before so makes it a little a little bit more suspicion cast on the whole front office or it makes it seem

less realistic that he would do this for the 15 reasons and more likely because probably the 15 percenters would be i don't want to i don't want to say this too generally, but probably the 15% scenarios would be more likely to be the lower level people who have less to lose, less high profile, probably less experience in the field, probably fewer relationships with their competition. And so if you knew it was designed to embarrass or to steal, then you might think it was more likely that it was a lower-level guy. And if you knew it was designed to test the integrity of your information, given the possibility of a leak to a competitor, then maybe it's more likely that it would be a higher-level executive. And so maybe Correa's involvement is, you could say it seems more conspiratorial. You could also say it seems more professional.

It seems more official. Okay. All right. We've finally worked through the backlog and we have gotten to the angels. Tomorrow. Okay. All right. So we bantered.

We partially caught up and we'll talk about the angels tomorrow. Maybe we bantered. We partially caught up. And we'll talk about the Angels tomorrow. Maybe we'll talk about something else tomorrow since people have been talking about the Angels for a while. But all right. That's enough for today. So you can send us emails as people have been. And we've been collecting them at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. We will probably answer those at some point this week and you can join our

Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. You can rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes and you can support our sponsor, the play index by going to baseball reference.com and using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one year subscription. We will be back tomorrow. Three, two, one. What number, Ben?

7-0-1. Of course. Oh, we ended it on a multiple. We did. Not the way I wanted to, but I'll take it.