Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 772: Slide Rules, Innings Limits, and Cano Contracts Revisited

Episode Date: November 23, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss MLB’s track record with rule changes, Scott Boras’ involvement in Jose Fernandez’ pitching plans, and Robinson Cano’s contract.

Good people feeling strange things happening in front of their eyes. Wrong side of right, right side of wrong. Good morning and welcome to episode 772 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Respectus, brought to you by The Play Index and BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight.com. Hi Ben. Hi. How you doing? Okay. How was your weekend?

Alright. Okie doke. Yeah. Good big show ahead of us today. A lot of great stuff to talk about. Let's jump right in. Okay. Do you have anything to talk about that you want to jump right into? Not really. All right. So I wanted to talk about a few things that are all sort of newsworthy and any one of which might make a topic or any one of which might not.

One of them will. We'll see. All right. So first topic, first mini topic, two mini and one bigger, but we'll see. Who knows? You never know. They're they're like prospects yeah you never know where the degrom is going to come from right all right so uh the utley rule okay ken davidoff uh wrote in the new york post that quote momentum continues to build toward a rule that would um i guess legislate slides such as the one that chase utley did in the playoffs to break Ruben Tejada. This was a slide that we talked about that I thought was, you know, maybe one of the most egregious of the year and not simply a hard slide, but one worthy of considering why a slide like that seems to be legal or something. And so we didn't know, it seemed clear at the time that probably given the impact of the slide, as well as the high profile nature of the slide occurring as it did in the middle of a playoff

series in front of many children, many children, that there would be something done about it. And so now it seems like there will be something done about it. And I'm curious what you think about baseball's general history of fixing problems with more specific rules. Well, I mean, people still kind of complain about the catcher rule, but for the most part, it works, right? I mean, it doesn't really disrupt the game anymore. There was initial confusion, and then it was kind of clarified, and now it mostly works okay. There are some people who still aren't happy about it, but we have fewer collisions and fewer guys breaking legs, and it doesn't really make the game that much worse. I guess it does deprive us of some

exciting plays at the plate, but it seems like an okay price to pay. So I don't know. I mean, are you thinking of any specific rules that backfired? Replay is, you know, a new thing and then it has to be clarified. I mean, every rule has a period where no one totally understands it or they seem to work the kinks out. It doesn't seem like baseball has a great history of just getting it perfect when they amend a rule or they put a new rule in place. a rule or they put a new rule in place there's a period where there are unintended consequences like the kind of you know slides that we've talked about in replay and people getting tagged out for plays that they never would have been tagged out for before and kind of cheaply in that it's the proper way to slide and they come off kind of inevitably and people are talking about amending that kind of call also. So there's always some unintended consequence that maybe MLB should have anticipated in some cases.

But you put the rules in place and then they play for a while and then weird stuff happens that no one thought about and then you have to fix it again. So maybe that'll happen in this case also. and then you have to fix it again. So maybe that'll happen in this case also. So the reason I was thinking about this is because Craig Calcaterra wrote that the rule as already existent covers this. It just requires, I mean, it has squishy language that requires judgment calls by the umpires.

And so as Craig writes, it does involve a judgment on the part of the umpires and baseball has run screaming from umpire judgment in recent years, preferring overly complicated bright line rules, which make for more, not less, confusion. In this case, I'd be shocked if whatever spins out of the commissioner's office doesn't involve zones governing the precise geography of acceptable slides and finite measurements between a base runner and the bag. This despite the fact that it's pretty damn obvious when a

runner is trying harder to take out an infielder than he is simply to simply reach a bag safely. And I was, uh, I, it called to mind some examples, uh, not all of them safety related, but just examples where there's, there seems like there is kind of always a tension between trying to be more specific with rules and then having the specificity of those rules either completely blow up in your face or, like you say, sometimes just lead to a adapted rule that then works perfectly and we never think of it again. And so like we mentioned on this show not long ago, the year of the balk in 1988 when Major League Baseball tried to codify to a more specific detail how long a pitcher needed to stop in his pitching motion in order for it to not be a balk. And you can understand the impulse because as you pointed out, no one actually agrees or understands what a Bach is. Right.

Bachs are one of the weirdest places in the baseball rulebook. Thank you for reminding me. I wrote a piece about the Bach about two summers ago in which I looked at what every Bach called that year, didn't I? Yeah, I think so. A lot of them. Yeah. And I categorize them by type and then, uh, tried to figure out what the, uh, what the unifying philosophy was behind the Bach and the Bach is a mess. It is, it is a building that was constructed and renovated by like 15 different owners over the course of 100 years with no, you know, never once going to City Hall and getting your permit for it. And so it's like this weird thing with like doors that lead nowhere and you don't stand there or it'll collapse.

But also like, you know, it's not horrible uh it could probably be a lot better i wish it were a lot better but when they tried to make it a lot better it was a disaster and you had this entire year where there were like nine times as many box called as ever again and they immediately went well that didn't work and stopped and went back to the vague. And the strike zone itself has been a constant attempt at re-specifying, and yet it has had almost no effect on the consistency of that strike zone or the adherence of umpires to that rule. Now, the implementation of PitchFX has of, you know, a method of assessing umpires to see who is kind of most outside the mainstream on their calls has, but the definition itself doesn't seem to ever dramatically, I mean, it changes the strike zone, but it doesn't ever seem

to actually make the strike zone any more uniform. And to see that, all you have to do is look at the fact that the clearest possible definition for a strike is, is it over the plate, left, right? And even that, umpires don't seem to care about that. Even with something so specific and irrefutable as the actual existence of an actual plate that it has to cross over doesn't stop them from moving the strike zone all over the place left right depending on the situation and who's

batting or they just can't tell they can't comply with the rule because it's too difficult yeah although the 302 thing would at least that it shows some agency on their part um so the and then uh you have the neighborhood play which i think i sort of like that they didn't go specific on that they basically said uh we are going to leave that um kind of weirdly undefined and just say it's it it's good baseball and uh so that would be the exception to this. So I don't really know. I do think that there is kind of a way in which, well, okay, so like robots, right? Robots are pretty good.

Like robots can do things, like robots can make a car much cheaper than we can make a car, right? They're really good at a lot of things. I can't make a car at all. No, you're horrible at it. One of the worst. And robots will soon be driving for us and they will be much safer and they'll be awesome and we'll love them for it.

And yet there are certain things that seem so, so simple that a robot can't do. Like, it's like no matter how good robots get, they seem to be unable to catch a ball. Or, you know, it's like really hard to have them pick things up. There are certain things where it doesn't require, it doesn't seem like it requires a lot of great brain space. And yet there is something about the human capacity to,

I don't know, use judgment, I guess. That's what it comes down to, to use judgment that is irreplaceable. And it does sort of seem like an umpire should be more capable of, like, you don't want this to be a zone thing. You want to be able to just say, well, what did it look like? And was it clean or not? Because we all know, like, we all see it and we all know whether it was clean or not most of the time. And you can kind of make the case that there is never going to be a map of where you can slide that will adequately capture all of the different variables coming at you. But the human brain is very capable of it. Like, it's very simple.

It's very easy to look at and, you know, pretty much decide, like, clean or not clean. And so I can see Craig's point that this doesn't actually seem that hard. Catching a ball is not hard. Designing a robot that can catch a ball is insanely hard. So why are we, you know, why put so much effort into creating a poor ball catching robot? Well, umpires aren't doing a great job of

enforcing this. Right. That's the thing. It's the umpires don't call this. And so I don't know, maybe you can't simply say, hey, you guys, we're sending out a memo that says we want you to call this because it does seem like where umpires don't like to step in, they generally don't step in. Like, for instance, pace of game type stuff. For a really long time, even though there were all these pace of game rules written into the rulebook, umpires didn't enforce them in any meaningful way and showed no interest whatsoever in enforcing them. And I don't know if a memo would have helped. And so the league essentially did have to codify it and specify it and say, it's this many seconds. And if this many seconds pass, or if you put your foot

right here, then it's this fine. And that's what made the umpires kind of and the players kind of actually change their behavior and the sport changed. So that was a case where it actually worked. And I don't know that I would have been pro. I mean, it seemed almost impossible that umpires would ever enforce pace of game things the way that they were so disinterested in it for my entire life. And yet here we are.

And when I spoke to a former umpire about the pace of game stuff before they added those new rules, he said that umpires just didn't like to enforce it because the league wouldn't back them up on it, that if they did enforce it, it was rare enough that someone would inevitably complain and they'd complain to the league and the league wouldn't really support the umpires and they were just kind of hung out to dry or at least they felt like they were. So if the league did send out a memo and said, really enforce this rule, we mean it this time and we will support you and you won't get in trouble or you won't have to feel like you're on your own,

then maybe that would work. Maybe it would work with the existing rule. I don't know. But if you do figure out a way to classify slides so that it's inarguable, it would be easier to enforce. But you're right and Craig's right. it would be easier to enforce. But you're right, and Craig's right, it might be difficult, or it might be that just by trying to classify it or define it or break it down into these component parts, it makes it harder to actually make a call that you could just kind of look at and make a common sense call about if you didn't feel self-conscious about doing it.

Yeah, it basically comes down to whether you think that it's better to have a very imperfect rule enforced consistently, you know, or which would be the, you know, geographic zones idea. Like I would imagine that in most cases those geographic zones or whatever they do will be worse than the Empire's Judgment. However, you get to choose whether you want to have an okay rule enforced all the time or a great rule enforced never, which is what we have now.

It's a sliding scale whether you can get it enforced more without having to resort to that and maybe you can't. Alright, next thing Ben. Jose Fernandez uh this is from some wire service jose fernandez says any conversations regarding his 2016 workload will include agent scott boris contrary to what the team has said marlins president david samson last week pledged to exclude boris after the agent complained about

the marlins handling of another Boris client, outfielder Marcelo Zuna, who is believed to be on the trading block. Fernandez innings will be closely watched in 2016 as they were this year after he returned from Tommy John surgery. Now, I guess there are a couple of things here. One, do you think it is within the team's rights to exclude a player's agent from this conversation? Two, do you think that the player is, I don't know, do you think the player is right to bring his agent into it? And three, as partly an answer to both of those or as a complicating factor in both of those, it does sort of feel like weird that your agent's behavior or what your agent can do or will do or is allowed to do on your behalf would in any way be affected by his other

clients. And yet, that seems like probably a thing that happens, right? Yeah. Okay. That's my three my three so you answered the third one good work there are teams that don't like boris because of previous negotiations and they have some sort of loose or strict policy about not negotiating with him which obviously influences negotiations or non-negotiations with other Boris clients. And we've talked before about how when you have so many free agents in one offseason, it seems like you almost have a conflict of interest in certain cases. So as for whether an agent should be involved,

I think the player has a right to involve his agent i mean that seems legitimate i guess the degree of involvement is up for debate i mean fernandez says i get to decide who's going to be on my phone calls on my conference it's that simple scott boris will be there because he's my agent i mean that that is it um right legally sure is it are you surprised i guess what i'm saying is there is it is it the sort of thing that you would think there'd be an unwritten rule about that this would not be seen as a that like your team do you think that your his teammates for instance will react differently to uh him bringing in his agent as opposed to him simply advocating for himself. Like, it makes it look a little bit more, you know, explicitly commercial.

But these are big league players. So, yeah, I don't know. I think there's so much at stake. I think the players would probably all understand that. I mean, Jose Fernandez has an enormous contract coming, so you can see why he would want his agent involved, and I would think players would understand that. They all have a lot of money at stake,

and maybe they don't totally trust the Marlins to handle them differently. Maybe it would vary depending on if you're with the Cardinals or some organization that's perceived to be really great at every aspect of baseball, and the Marlins, who are perceived to be kind of a clown show. So I would think that might affect things. Maybe the question, though, is how much it helps to have your agent there. I mean, the presumption is that the agent is going to have your back and has your interests in mind because your interests are his interests because he's working on commission.

But that sort of implies that maybe the team won't totally have your interests in mind. You know, maybe the Marlins are going to trade Jose Fernandez anyway, and they don't really care if they work him hard right now because it'll be some other team's problem in the long run. I guess that's, I mean, that's possible. It's something you might want to have in mind as a player. I don't know what medical expertise Scott Boris or any other agent brings to the discussion. I mean, there could be some if your agent is paying for a second opinion or a third opinion or whatever it is then maybe yeah maybe boris's organization is big enough that his company has done studies and actually has a something to add to this because it's not settled science it's not like some other thing that teams know for sure it's like everyone's kind of feeling it out and everyone has an opinion and we're not

sure who has the best opinion yet. And so maybe Boris has actually something to contribute to this discussion. I don't know. If you were surgeons and team physicians that are involved in this, maybe you would think it's just meddling and this agent has nothing to add doesn't know anything that you don't know so i don't know i mean if he's just on the call just sort of blindly saying we don't want this guy to pitch a lot of innings because that feels like it would be bad then that would be you know a problem for the team like if the team has actual studies and doctors and knows things

and the agent default position is just we want him to pitch less because if he pitches less there's less of a chance he'll get hurt then that just kind of derails things a little bit but i don't blame fernandez for wanting to have him involved yeah i i first of all i think that we can rule out probably that boris is whatever information boris brings to the table in terms of research like we've seen boris's research you know yeah we know when he presents to teams that's the clearly skewed i mean that's when he's trying to talk a team into doing something silly you know if he's just making a binder that goes to the owner and tries to pull the wool over the owner's doing something silly you know if he's just making a binder that goes to the owner and tries to pull the wool over the owner's eyes that's you know it's possible that he's like

actually doing some useful research but i don't know yeah it's hard whether he is or not it's sort of hard to imagine that clubs are going to be reading it with great care but like i i think you're right that they would see it like Like, coming from Boris, coming from a, obviously, interested party, well, his interest isn't a disqualifier, but all the same, I don't know that they would take it seriously. But maybe, anyway, I mean, but that's not why. Like, the reason that Boris is involved in this, the reason that your agent is always involved in this,

is because they are better at demanding things than you are. And they are better at issuing threats than many of us are comfortable with. They do your dirty work. They're bad cop, right? And you get to keep being good cop. And so you bring in your bad cop and he threatens and says no and this is going to happen and we refuse and says all the hard words that we're not really good at saying. going to happen and we refuse and says all the hard words that we're not really good at saying and i guess that probably um the position that i'm sort of half-heartedly introducing that maybe

there's something wrong with this it probably is what i'm maybe reacting to and what maybe in 20 years i will look back and think how quaint that I even half-heartedly put this position forward. But basically this was like 50 years ago, teams got to tell players what they were going to play for. Like this is how much we're going to pay you. And the players didn't really have the pull and they didn't have the representation to get more. And gradually, based because of their unions first, and then later because of their agents like Scott Boris, they were able to bring in these bad cops who were able to demand and threaten and do the things that we're not as good at doing on our own. And they got the players market value for their services. And that was a good and fair thing. And we, I think that

to this point, until fairly relatively recently, we have seen the role of the advocate as ending there for the most part. And Boris has always been a little bit of an exception to this, but all the same, you didn't really hear these conversations happening. The role of the advocate stopped with, I'm going to get you as much money as you can, get you in the position you want to play, and then the next time you have a chance to make more money, I'll get you more money again. And it's increasingly being that,

no, I'm also going to advocate for your entire career, for everything about your career, including your health and including you being in the right opportunity even once you're under contract. Like, for instance, I think it was Boris who said Frankie Rodriguez was not going to go anywhere where he wasn't a closer when he was being traded.

And I think he did go somewhere where he wasn't a closer, but all the same. And because this is still sort of a new area of advocacy that isn't the norm, it looks kind of like, at first glance, it sort of looks like overreach. And you have to think, well, okay, is this far enough? What else can he, like, is this a slippery slope? Is there any point where the agent can't advocate for the guy or shouldn't advocate for the guy?

Is there any point at which, well, you signed a contract, part of your contract says that we're your boss and we tell you what we need from you. We ask you to do tasks and it is your job to do those tasks. And you're not going to bring your agent in for every thing we ask you to do and fight us over it. do and fight us over it. And I don't know if this is overreach or not. I don't know how far this would go. It seems somewhat tacky on first glance. And it's quite possible that after a few years of this, I'll get so used to it that it won't seem tacky at all. And it'll be like, yeah, of course, can you believe there was an era where guys didn't get to advocate for their own health and career? It's nuts. I'm just not sure emotionally, from an emotional response, I am still a little bit eh about it. That's all. Yeah.

I mean, if it were something different, if it were like a guy wanted to hit in a certain lineup slot or something and he didn't like the lineup slot he was in, or maybe we have seen guys dissatisfied with whether they're starting or relieving or that sort of thing or maybe what position they're playing so you could imagine it getting to a point where players just you know like feel entitled to play exactly how they want to play and when they don't get their way their agent comes in and makes a big stink about it and that would be a problem maybe we haven't seen that so much like there's a certain degree to which you know paying for a player

seems to entitle the team to use him the way it wants to use them so if if he's starting if they want him to start then he starts or if he'sving, then he has to be in the bullpen. And that's just the way it goes because he sort of signed over his usage to the team or his role to the team. And this is maybe a little bit different because it has this health aspect to it, which you couldn't really claim with where the guy hits in the batting order or something. So you could see this being applied to things like starting or relieving if you wanted to claim that there was a health aspect to that so it could be pushed too far i suppose so maybe you're opening the door for other ways that you could exploit having a powerful agent when some other player might not have a powerful agent. Yeah. Or when your agent's decisions are, I don't like, I think that most agents would probably

shudder at the idea that I would even suggest this, but you, if you have 40 agents, I mean, if you have 40 clients, there is some potential that, that what you do for one affects what you can or will be able to do for another and creates some incentives that might be a little bit perverse, perhaps. I don't know. I mean, the fact that it's a health thing makes it easier to swallow. And in a way, if, say, Boris and or other agents are trying to expand their power in day-to-day decisions. It is like as they say, what do they say?

What do they say, man, with the Supreme Court? How like if you want to take a case to the Supreme Court, you sort of like you look for the perfect. The perfect test case? There's a phrase for it, though. I think shopping might be part of the phrase. Plaintiff shopping. If Boris and or other agents are trying to expand their day-to-day roles and to sort

of create, you know, like sort of gradually broaden how much they're allowed to be part of these discussions and decisions, then in a way, choosing an issue like health, choosing health for young pitchers is a great entry point, right? Because it's sort of, it's a very attractive, it's a very attractive plaintiff in a way. And so maybe this is the way that they sneak in through the door, or maybe this is just, maybe they're pursuing this because this is an important thing and that nobody is going to really disagree that a 23-year-old player should be represented in important issues that affect his long-term health by an adult who is paid to represent him and advocate for him. So I don't know.

I guess maybe this is one of those things where the specifics are good and obvious, and maybe it's where we are in 10 minutes, 10 years, will help me decide how I feel about it. Time will tell. Time will tell. It usually does. Okie doke. Time will tell. It usually does. Okie doke.

Last thing. Robinson Cano is, according to New York Daily News, unhappy in Seattle. The New York Daily News is John Harper writes about what Seattle thinks of him and quotes a friend of – oh, come on. Capital P in DePoto? Oh, no. and quotes a friend of oh come on capital p and depoto oh no oh forget this topic we'll uh we'll stick to this topic talks to a friend who says that uh he wants to go back to new york any way he can uh and i uh just wanted to know on a blunder scale, how blundrous was this signing two years in, would you say? How bad is this for the Mariners? Is it bad? Is this a completely sunk ship in your mind?

And is it now like one of the worst contracts in the game? Or is it not? And then I have a follow-up i wouldn't have said that it was a week ago before we knew that that any events like thought robinson cano was the worst player ever and uh and now there are reports saying that cano feels the same about the mariners i guess if they they both think the other is terrible, then that makes it more of a blunder. But based purely on stats and dollars, it's still not unsalvageable, I don't think. I mean, Cano in the second half was still Robinson Cano,

still the player that they paid for, and the Mariners are still trying to compete. It's not like they totally missed a Cano window or something. So I wouldn't say it's unsalvageable, other than the fact that they might hate each other, in which case that's always a bad thing. Better or worse than where the Albert Pujols was deal at the same time? I think better because Pujols was diminished immediately, like significantly. I mean, Cano, his first year with Seattle was a Robinson Cano year. It didn't really look the same. He didn't hit for as much power.

But overall production, he was as good as they paid him to be, whereas Pujols really never was with the Angels. And like you say, he had a very good second half last year. He was physically compromised, which isn't always good. Sometimes that can be even worse. But there at least is a reason why he was bad in the first half, and then he had a very good second half. Probably the most worrisome thing might be that he's gone in the last four years, his defense, according to DRS, his defense has gone from plus 15 to plus 6 to 0 to minus 9.

By the end of this contract, that's like minus 40, 50, if I do the math correctly, 60. Okay, so not a blunder, so maybe this isn't the greatest time to ask this, So not a blunder, so maybe this isn't the greatest time to ask this, but it always feels to me like we talk about how horrible these deals work out for the team and that these, you know, like, oh, geez, why do they keep giving 10-year deals to guys? We know that it's never going to, it's going to be ugly by some point, and often it's ugly almost immediately. But I always am struck by how these deals seem to so often work badly for the players. And in one sense, they turn out great for the players. All the money. Good. But they

just seem like these guys, like if you could somehow quantify it, it feels to me like there is a very high correlation between length of deal and how sad the dude looks. There's this extra pressure on them. I mean, guys with these deals, sometimes they get booed by like the third week if they're not playing well. It's just such a different thing playing for a team that gave you $200 million than it was when you were playing for the team that drafted you

or that traded for you as a young player or that signed you for even a two-year deal or whatever. And I know that the money is how we judge whether people are successful in life. So I would never, ever go against such an obvious thing as that. But these guys have all the money. I feel like that everybody would benefit. Everybody would benefit by some negotiated rule change that says four year deals

max. You just cannot even three. I'd go three. You cannot have longer than three. You can renegotiate every year and extend that deal, but three-year deals. You guys cannot be trusted with the power we've given you. You're continually making decisions that make you sad and unhappy and miserable. And just don't do that. Like, we're going to make it so that you cannot do that. And I am coming off as a somewhat paternalistic Government here And yet I just don't like seeing all these players

That were happy, sad Well there is definitely more of a chance That you'll be unhappy Because as you mentioned There's the pressure And there's the fact that you make yourself a target By being paid like a franchise player If you have a bad year

Everyone gets mad at you To a greater degree than they might if you were only signed for a few years. And no one can predict what the state of a franchise is going to be in seven years or eight years. So you lock yourself in when things are good and when this seems like a team that you'd want to play for. And then for all you know, by by the end it's a new owner or it's a new management or it's a new manager and the team is terrible now and you're stuck with a dead-end team and you couldn't have seen that coming so you definitely make yourself more susceptible to a bad situation because you just can't be as responsive you can't get out so i don't know if you looked at the the dollars per war or whatever of long-term deals i wonder if you'd find that they favored players more than a three or four year deal maybe you would find that seems

like you would find that but i'm not sure i haven't looked so if you would find that, but I'm not sure. I haven't looked, if you're Vernon Wells or something, then you're probably happier. Are you happier because you're making $20 million when you're terrible? No. Or are you miserable because everyone uses you as a punchline? I think you're miserable. And, like, look, I mean, Vernon Wells signed a seven-year deal for $126 million or whatever, right? And probably if it had been a three-year deal, he probably gets $90. And so I think that, you know, I don't know that there's that much value in life to the $36 million at the back end of $126 million. Like, I think the first million dollars at the back end of

126 million like I think the first millions pretty cool and the 90th then it's just going into a bank account Like you don't even you never see it. You never touch it. You never spend it. You never hold it It doesn't exist in any particular way. It's a symbol in your life and nothing more So I think and he like it did suck to be burning like it was it was it was hard to watch vernon wells like vernon wells had to be the guy that everybody kind of averted their eyes around for a long time and he was a really good dude who would have been a great veteran i think if he had been paid a reasonable amount and i mean mean, he did. He seemed like he was happier when he was in New York because New York wasn't really hardly paying for him. I don't think I've ever shared on this podcast my philosophy for tipping, Ben.

Nope. OK, so, you know, I think that you should tip generously. Right. And as a as a good person, I believe that. And I struggle with what to do when you get really bad service because I don't want to give them a big tip, but I also don't want it to be sort of like self-serving. Like I don't want to have the incentive to not give a big tip because it profits me. Like if I get bad service, it's not an opportunity for me to get richer. And so my philosophy is feel free to tip less to horrible service,

but whatever you would have normally tipped the difference, you got to make sure you give that to somebody else down the line. You got to make sure that you're tipping the same amount in aggregate. And if you're distributing the money more efficiently to the good servers than to the bad ones, that seems good. That's a good market incentive for them just as long as you're not doing it to keep the money yourself, to be selfish. And anytime we talk about any changes to contracts or to collective bargaining agreement or anything like that, you don't – like we want to avoid anything that just makes owners richer.

don't you like we we want to avoid anything that just makes owners richer and that's one of the nice things i i think if i understand it about like nba contracts and having the salary cap and all that is that the amount of money that owners spend on players is basically fixed the amount of the percentage of revenue that players get is essentially fixed and so then it just becomes about trying to figure out how best to distribute the money. It doesn't seem like they do it in a great way in the NBA because horrible guys all get $4 million and LeBron gets like $4.5 million, as I understand it. But at least the incentive is not quite so obviously there for billionaires to hoard the money when they're deciding how to distribute it and so baseball doesn't have that baseball doesn't have a you know 47 of revenue has to go

to players floor or anything like that maybe it would be good if they did i don't know maybe then it just becomes too complicated and opens up all sorts of unintended consequences but my three-year max contract idea i do not want to do it if it is just a way for Jeffrey Loria to get richer. I do, though, feel like it is a pro-player suggestion in my heart. The spirit of it is for the players. That's really what I'm bringing to this is that I'm making the case that the short-term contract is ultimately more humane. I'm making the case that the short-term contract is ultimately more humane. Yeah, I guess the problem is that now when we say that someone should sign a shorter-term deal for more money,

there's the option of the longer-term deal. Whereas if there's no longer-term option, then the team wouldn't necessarily have to pay a premium for the short-term because there's no alternative. So you need to figure that out. Yeah. The player couldn't say, like, I'm doing this for three years, so I need to get, you know, $40 million or something per year because you're not taking on as much risk. Whereas, you know, in this situation, in this scenario,

the team doesn't have the option of taking on more risk. So they don't have to pay a premium for less risk. There's a lot to figure out, and we have a lot of time to do it. Right after the Chase Utley rule, we'll figure this out. Yeah. All right. That's all. All right. So send us emails. PodcastedBaseballPerspectives.com.

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