Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1302: No True Outcomes

Episode Date: November 28, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Robinson Cano, Madison Bumgarner, and Paul Goldschmidt trade rumors, what makes for a slow or exciting offseason, and the cooling effect that superteams can have on the hot stove, then (16:14) bring on Superpesis marketing and communications director Jussi Pyysalo to talk about the Finnish national sport of […]

Open up your mind and let me step inside Rest your weary head and let your heart decide It's so easy when you know the rules It's so easy, all you have to do is fall in love Play the game Everybody play the game All right Hello and welcome to episode 1302 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, joined by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs. Hello. Hello. So we are doing something completely different today. I guess we do almost every day, but we're in sort of a lull right now with real baseball, even in terms of rumors and transactions. So we are going overseas for this episode. We are going to talk about Finnish baseball, Finnish baseball, also known as Pesopalo. And I have to thank listener Junus Lukkonen, who I hope I'm not terribly mispronouncing, a Finnish fan of the podcast who emailed us this

summer to say, subject line, we have Finnish baseball and it's weird. And he then explained what it was and why it's weird. And we said, well, of course we have to do an episode on that once we roll around to the slow part of the calendar. And here we are. So later in this episode, and for most of this episode, we will be talking to one of the bigwigs of Finnish baseball or Pesopalo, Jussi Pusalo, who is the CEO, I believe, and the senior marketing person of Super Peses, which is kind of the highest level league of Pesopalo, but also just for Finnish baseball itself. And there's a lot to like about Pesopalo, a lot of things that perhaps we could import back into baseball. They originally developed Pesopalo as a variant of American baseball,

which we discuss with UC, but maybe they have made some innovations that we should look at and consider importing into our own game. We'll talk a little bit about Tony Kohonen, who sounds like he is the Mike Trout of Pesopalo, which is interesting. They also, as will be revealed, have difficulty with defensive statistics. That seems to be a global problem. And yeah, just having watched some video, of course, anything that's different feels fresh. But I like the action of it. And I know you and I generally sit here and come to the defense of where Major League Baseball is now with the strikeouts and the walks and home runs, and everyone is more talented than ever.

And it's still an interesting game, but I'm not going to lie to you. I like the idea of things just moving around really, really quick. I like the idea of pitchers who don't get injured because all they have to do is toss a ball straight up a meter in the air. So it's interesting, and I would love to see a game in person, and all I have to do is get myself to Finland to do so. That seems like something I could just solve with about three clicks of the mouse, see if everything is on SeatGeek. Yeah, we should have a meetup. It'll just be you and me and Junus, I guess, just hanging out next year. But I will link to the rules and videos of it so you can see it in action as you're listening to Yussi explain it. It's helpful to see it too. you're listening to Yussi explain it, it's helpful to see it too. So before we bring him on, there just really is not a whole lot going on right now. We are in the two weeks leading up to the winter

meetings, and presumably a lot of things will happen then, but that's the week after next. And I guess the most interesting non-news that could become news right now is the idea of trading Robinson Cano, which reportedly Jerry DiPoto is pursuing. And there seems to be some interest on the part of some teams. And you can see why teams might be interested in Robinson Cano. He's still a good baseball player. I think that is the primary reason. Of course, he was suspended for much of the last season, and yet he still ended up basically being a three-win player, according to Fangraphs, because he can still hit in terms of guys who've signed giant long-term contracts at a point where you worry about them declining.

Sure, his career years are still during his Yankees years, but his bat at least has held up very well. Yeah, you look at Cano, and he's going to be 36 years old. I mean, his contract is easy to figure out, aside from I believe he has no trade protection, but it's $24 million every year, and he's going into year six of his contract. My God, everyone gets older and dies. But Cano, if you just want to use one of those standard dollars per war conversions, then Cano will at least project to be worth his salary next season. And from there, he will decline. He's presumably not going to be worth $120 million over the next five years combined.

But I haven't done a lot of the math on this. But the Mariners, in theory, wouldn't have to pay down Cano's contract that much to make it palatable. But on the other hand, I mean, if Cano were a free agent right now, which is really what we're talking about, what's, I don't know, Daniel Murphy projected to get on the market? Because Murphy is another guy who's not long for second base. He's a quality hitter. Now, Cano hasn't had the major knee surgery, but Murphy also hasn't been suspended for half the season because of performance enhancing drugs. And I don't know. There are other considerations beyond that, but it's just something to watch.

And I more generally, I agree with you that right now it feels like, oh, nothing's happening. Baseball is kind of in a lull. But I wonder, what does it take for that not to feel like the case? Because like yesterday, one of the most visible trade agents signed with a team.'s josh donaldson there are trade rumors there were always trade rumors like what what isn't a lull does something have does something like have to be happening right now because it seems like baseball isn't dull like there are rumors we know manny majado is not signing today and bryce harper isn't signing today but like things can happen but it still does kind of feel

like nothing's happening is that just are we jaded are we wrong because like every single executive right now except for whoever's in charge of the Orioles is like sending frequent and frenzied text messages to like every other team lots of stuff is happening we just don't know I guess enough details yeah well yeah I mean when Jamesson was traded, it seemed like things were happening and we had stuff to talk about. So all it really takes is one interesting transaction. I mean, a trade is much more interesting to discuss than a signing, especially a one-year signing like Josh Donaldson. I mean, he's an interesting player going to an interesting team, but there are only so many ways you can break it down. A trade, you have future considerations versus present considerations,

and you have this team's side and that team's side. And that's interesting. There are many pieces generally going one way or another. So this has not been like last November, I don't think, where it was just completely dead. And that turned out to be a prelude to a very slow winter. But at this time last year, we didn't know why that was. There was a lot of speculation. Is it just free agency is dying? Is it Otani and John Carlos Stanton holding up the market? I remember writing an article almost exactly a year ago about how last November was like the slowest November in terms of transactions that we'd ever seen in the free agency era. And things didn't pick up a whole lot more from there. But it's been better this year. I think we've seen some signings. We've seen some trades. But I don't know. Other than winter meetings time and the aftermath of that when there's like a flurry of transactions, the offseason is slow. It's the offseason.

So this is when we talk about Twilight and Pesopolo. It'll be interesting because we know who, at least we think we know who the best teams are. Because of the tiers, the hierarchy of Major League Baseball, and I think this might have been the thesis of Dave Cameron's last post at Fangraphs, that the offseason is altered a little bit because we have clear worst teams and clear best teams. And a lot of the best teams are almost full. Obviously, none of these teams are perfect, but it's really hard for many of them to upgrade. And a lot of the worst teams, it's really hard for them to find good players still to trade. And if you were a team somewhere in the middle, a team maybe a little worse than the Braves, but even similar to the Braves, like you were a little less incentivized to want to spend a lot to get better because you were unlikely to get as good as the best team. So it's just this interesting market dynamic where like I know the Mariners have made some trades but like the mariners are one of those teams in the middle uh the worst teams in baseball just don't have that much to move and the best teams in baseball are are kind of doing pretty well which is it's going

to be like the the diamondbacks are thinking about trading paul goldschmidt well there's not a a whole bunch of suitors out there for one year of Paul Goldschmidt because many of the best teams already have a solution at first base so that's just I don't know how unique this is relative to other off seasons but you'd think in a year that didn't have five or six apparent super teams that there would be a big market for Paul Goldschmidt but right now if you were I don't know the twins for example twins can think about maybe grabbing like the second wildcard. But how much do the Twins really want to pay to lose another game in the Yankee Stadium or whatever? So it's just, I don't know.

They want to pay for CJ Krohn, I guess. last winter about how the playoff teams from 2017 returned a very high percentage of their players, like an unusually low turnover rate. And I imagine that will probably be pretty similar this year because yeah, there just are certain teams that seem like they're pretty set and they really can't blow it. I mean, things can go wrong and there's always one team that's supposed to win that doesn't, the Nationals. But I think, yeah, there's less uncertainty. And I kind of wonder, I mean, just like having year-round projections to me, which is nice. I wouldn't want to go back to not being able to look at projections. But the fact that Fangraphs has depth charts and projections and like team

win totals for next year already right like any day of the year you can look and you can see what the most likely outcome of next season is and it's not like you didn't know at all who the favorites were before but it used to be an event like you'd get to january or february or whenever and the pakodas would come out and there'd be team projections and it would be like oh this team is supposed to be good and that team's not supposed to be good and now we just kind of always know what the stats say at least and that i don't know it takes a little bit of the uncertainty out of the offseason you could at least like tell yourself, hey, we've upgraded this and that. Maybe now we're the favorites. Yeah, I agree with that. And I guess sort of related to transactions, but one name that is starting to surface a little more that

is a prominent name, but someone we haven't discussed is, what do you think, Madison Baumgartner has one year left, and he is an extremely prominent name on the Giants. He's like, you know, he's a postseason hero. He basically hasn't allowed a postseason earned run ever or something like that. And Bumgarner's got one year left on his deal. He is, of course, one of the most popular Giants and someone who many Giants fans probably wish would be extended. But Bumgarner is also coming off a career-worst FIP, a career-worst ex-FIP. He's coming off like a good and low ERA, but if you look at like

his peripherals, they're worse than ever. His expected WOBA last year was worse than ever. Madison Bumgarner clearly has declined, whether that's age or related to his accident that he had a couple of years ago. It's hard to say. His stuff is down. If you were an an executive it would be easy for a team to look at bumgarner to be like well we're not going to pay a premium price for this guy because he's worse than ever and so you know we'll give you something but we're not going to give you a haul but the fact of the matter is that bumgarner does have his reputation how easy do you think it would be for a major league executive to try to push that aside? Or is it something that you would take into consideration to think, you know, people do think this guy's

a bulldog and I do want this guy getting the ball in the playoffs. Does that matter at all in these negotiations? Probably matters a little bit. I don't want to be the standard sabermetric person who says that something we can't quantify has no value at all, but the things we can quantify about him are trending in dangerous directions. So, I mean, as of two years ago, he was a guy who threw 200 plus innings year after year after year. What was it? Six years in a row, I think he got over the 200 inning mark and was one of the best players in baseball, best pitchers in baseball over that period. He was never like the biggest strikeout artist, but he had great control. He got some grounders. He was just really good. And these last couple

of years, he has had neither the durability nor the peripherals that he had in the past, and he doesn't throw as hard as he used to. So he's only, what, 29 still and could bounce back as he gets further away from that injury. I don't know, but you wouldn't really bet on it at this point. So would you evaluate him any different from someone who has never pitched in the postseason let's say i guess there's like a a little extra bonus there but it's it's not something i would bank on like clearly he has name value and marquee value maybe that comes from that that he wouldn't if he weren't a playoff hero so that's something and you know I just don't know what the value of having been there and having been good there is. Yeah, I agree.

And it's always a little bit of a bummer. You think of, like, Madison Bumgarner and Paul Goldschmidt are two of the best players from the past five years. They are, like, Goldschmidt is always somewhere on the MVP ballot, and Bumgarner used to always be up there in sort of the Cy Young voting or just public support. And it's always a little, it's simultaneously enlightening and disheartening to see what a one-year player's value actually is on the market. Because on the one hand, it's like, it's good for writing because, like, people want to know how baseball works. And the fact of the matter is that baseball teams don't highly value one-year players that much. works and the fact of the matter is that baseball teams don't highly value one-year players that much but it's also just like you intuitively think it should cost more to get one of these guys because they are two of the best or at least they've been considered two of the best so

i don't know i don't know if it's realistic to expect far anxiety to trade mattis bumgarner in his first offseason with the team that seems like it's a surefire way to uh make people not like you in san francisco you know you give it another go and you trade him in july but like goldschmidt in arizona if he gets moved and you know there are only so many teams who would be interested in him right now anyway but if he gets moved he's probably not going to get like a blockbuster package and that sucks if you're a fan of the diamondbacks you're a fan of the next team who's going to trade one of these players because it's just not out there. And it just further underscores how all these players are viewed as assets, which in the context of the game, that's how they should be.

But it is weird. And it's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that someone is not going to pay a really high price to get one of the best hitters in baseball. All right. Shall we take a quick break? And we will be back to discuss Finnish baseball, which is picking up the slack for boring American baseball

right now, thanks to Finland. Finland, Finland, Finland The country where I quite want to be A mountain so lofty Your treetops so tally, a tree top so tall. Finland, Finland, Finland.

Finland has it all. All together, Philophiles! Okay, so if you have not been introduced to Pesopalo, sometimes known as Finnish baseball, you are about to be. And at first glance, there are a lot of similarities between the sports. One team is trying to score more runs than the other team. There are innings, there are three outs and three strikes. There are nine players on the field, batters hitting a ball and running around the bases, fielders trying to catch the ball and throw to bases to retire the runners.

Sounds very similar, but there are a lot of departures from there. And to help explain why the game is different and perhaps even why it's superior in some ways we are now joined by Yussi Pusalo he is the marketing director for Super Peses which is the main league of Pesopalo but also for the sport of Pesopalo itself so hello Yussi welcome Thank you and hello to everyone. So I mentioned that it's sometimes called Finnish baseball. Is it only in America that it is called Finnish baseball or do you prefer to call it Pesopalo? Is it offensive to call it Finnish baseball? Do you call American baseball American Pesopalo? No, we actually prefer Pesopalo. It just

used to be so that even us, we call it Finnish baseball. But let's say during the last five to 10 years, we started just using Pesäpallo because baseball is baseball and Pesäpallo is Pesäpallo. So I think this is better. And even our players who play outside Finland, they call it Pesäpallo. And does that term, does that word mean something does it refer to something in the sport well if you would directly translate it would actually mean baseball okay great yeah so as long as we're talking about this we might as well talk about the the origin story so pesa palla dates back to what it was uh around the 1920s? And I'm not going to... 100 years.

100 years. It's before the... Yeah, before both great wars. So the founder of our game called Mr. Tahko Pihkala, he visited US, I think it was 1912 or 13, around there, and saw his first baseball games. And he thought, okay, it's a nice game, but it would need some fine

tuning or improvement and then he made up these rules where it's more active game and after he returned from the US he made a couple of different versions tried them out and in the 1920s I think it was 1922 was the first year when the official championship was organized in Finland. So those were the first days. So it's going to be a hundred years in three years. And can you tell us about the growth of the sport and how the popularity has increased over the years and where it is now relative to other sports in Finland? Well, it is our national sport. So we got independent, 1917.

So in those days, it really wasn't that big yet but between the wars like after 1920s and before the second world war that's when it really grew in popularity they played it in schools they played it in some like military units and they played in the yards and so that's when it started to really grow. And when the championships were organized, it gained popularity. And ever since those days, except a couple of years during the war, we've been playing it every summer or our season is like from early May to late September. And the popularity in summer Finland, we have soccer or football, European football, whatever you want to call it and

Pesäpalla and those are the main games and currently the spectator numbers are about even so some years I could say that we are the number one summer sport and some years the soccer guys can say that hey we are number one but it is the most popular or second most popular summer game here in Finland. And in schools, kids really love it still. So, okay, it's a summer sport. They don't play it that much in school, but when they do, they really like it. And it's still very popular for young people also. Yeah, I wanted to ask about the playing season, of course, in baseball, which is all that we're really familiar with. It is a summer sport and also a spring and fall sport. It's a sport that's never played in the rain or in the snow, but I was curious, are the conditions required pretty similar?

Is this a sport that you can still play in the rain, or how short is the playing season? If it rains super heavily, then we stop the game. But otherwise, in a small rain, yes, we can play. Sometimes the temperatures are quite close to freezing point, like over zero Celsius. heavily then then we stop the game but otherwise in small rain yes we can play sometimes the temperatures are quite close to freezing point like our zero celsius degrees that's not very nice for the audience or for the players anymore so that's why we start in may when weather is generally quite nice in here can hit the 20 celsius degrees but sometimes it can be a bit cold too because finland is quite a big country and it's played from the north to the south. But in the September, the problem is also the light.

We don't have huge stadiums like you have in baseball. We don't have the artificial lighting that well, and the ball, well, it travels about the same speed as your baseball, but players really have to be able to see it. So we have to play according to the daylight also. And that's because in here, you know, in the wintertime, there's not that much sun. So September, end of September, we have to start the games quite early, which makes some problems when you want to get some audience in there. So for those reasons, it's made to September and we really can't fix it. But we do have an indoor series in the wintertime.

And so is Super PESES, is that the Major League Baseball equivalent of PESEPALO? And what is the larger structure of the sport? I know Finland has, I think, about five and a half million people. So even though it's the national sport, as you mentioned, you're not getting gigantic crowds to see games usually. Yeah, well, there are a couple of problems. Okay, our whole country has the same amount of people as some of your cities in there.

So, and when you divided that, like the whole big country, the main, let's say our finals this year, about 5,000 spectators. But for us, that's like a big number. But yeah, so Super Pesos, that's the only, well, it's not fully professional. I would say semi-professional league, but it's the top league in the whole world of Pesopallo. And in Finland, we have 14 teams on men's side and 12 on the women's side.

Whenever there are some teams who play in Switzerland or Australia or nowadays in India, they have their own small championships, but really nothing really compares at the moment to the Finnish league with the superpossession. It's been like that ever since the beginning. And you said it's semi-professionals or are the players being paid to play or do they all have full-time jobs in addition to playing? Well, some teams can have even three fully professional guys, but out of generally around 15 players, that's not so much. A couple of them can be students who get some money for playing and then the rest are, they work full-time maybe eight months a year and for four months they just play Pesäpalloa. So and that's because of the financial realities as I said about the spectator levels and Finland as a TV market is not so huge either so we can

we can only dream of the TV money that baseball gets. We really can't pay millions to anybody but some people are fully professional. It's okay. You had mentioned that there are uh that men and women have have their own leagues their own series and i was curious about that that uh the history of the gender gap because of course in north america women are generally funneled whether willingly or against their will into playing softball while baseball remains mostly a man's sport but women seem like they are very competitive in baseball if you look up a lot of media then you'll you'll commonly find women playing so have have women been invited to play and then free to play from the beginning

i think it was 30 so men started in the 20s 1920s and women started to play in the 1930s so in the beginning there was a small gender gap as you said said it. But ever since that, they've been quite even. Of course, there is a little bit more money on the men's side, a little bit more spectators, more professional players. But we try to keep them on the same level in everything. Even our new TV deal here in Finland, it actually includes both men and women, and it's almost equal. So we should talk a little bit about the game itself. It actually includes both men and women, and it's almost equal. So we should talk a little bit about the game itself. I guess the most obvious difference when you first see it is the lack of the pitcher-batter confrontation, because there is a pitcher, but he is standing off to the side of the plate,

and he is just throwing the ball vertically, and then it comes down, and obviously that limits the extent to which you can try to avoid the bat. But how much strategy is there in terms of the placement of the pitch? Because the pitch does have to be over the plate. It's a ball if it drops wide of the plate. It's a strike if it drops on the plate. So can you vary the height or the location in a way that confuses the batter generally batters are hitting the ball so you're you're not getting

guys swinging and missing all that much yes so okay it might seem for baseball fans it might seem obvious that hey there is no tactics involved in that but for sure there is and yeah you can vary the height you can vary the placement if you are able to do it and you can also do some tactical how do you call it balls like so that it's not on the plate so depending on the situation on the field where the runners are how well the pitcher knows the batter like if you know that this batter almost always tries to hit a certain certain kind of swing with his bat, you can try to always pitch the worst possible pitch for that kind of batting.

So there still is the duel between pitcher and batter. But for the audience, I would say the most important thing is that almost always the batter is able to hit the ball. But if the pitcher is very good, the ball doesn't go where the batter wanted it to go, but at least there is action. If I'm understanding correctly, one of the rules is that before there are three strikes on the batter, the batter can hit the ball into fair territory, but he doesn't have to run on that play. So how commonly does that happen, that the batsman will hit the ball between the batteries, but then decide, I'm going to take my chances and try to hit another fair ball instead? It depends if there are runners on the any of the bases they don't have to go either as I know that in baseball if you hit the ball

everybody runs but in our game or not always but pretty often but in our game depends on the situation let's say that on the second base the fastest runner of the team is there on the first base is a very slow guy and on the first bat the guy hits a nice hit so that the fastest guy can go to the third base he does that successfully gets there but the next two strikes he might want to use for a very very high ball so that he and the other slow guy just go to the next base safely. Somebody catches the ball from the air and they are taken out of bases, but they are not out. So the team strategy, of course, is to keep the fastest runners on the bases and the strongest batters batting them home. So it can vary depending on the players, on the situation, but if there's an empty field and you hit the ball and it's a nice strike, you pretty much start running then.

Unless it was so bad that you know that you're not going to make it to the first place, then you just stay next to the plate. So if an American fan thinks, well, gee, so much of baseball is the pitcher and the batter, and how could this be as interesting if there's not as much strategy involved there? But it seems like a lot of the strategy then becomes the batter versus the fielder, right? And you can decide where you want to place the ball or where you want to hit it with a much greater degree of control than you can in American baseball, where you're lucky just to get the bat on the ball and you can only control where it goes so much. So because of this vertical pitching style,

you can place where you want the ball to go. And of course, the other team knows what you want to do and what you usually do. So there's probably a lot of strategy there. So I would think that the defensive shifting and positioning that we've seen in the last decade of american baseball that has probably been a part of pesa palo from the start sure exactly like that and the teams have like their coaches like you guys have your coaches there is a coach for the defending team and depending on the situation they might have signs and uh try to tell hey now we make this and for this batter we do the other way around and of course the team who is batting they have the same thing like you mentioned that

they pretty much try to do what the others are not expecting and that's why in Pesapallo the defending team players actually get a very lot of movement or they really have to run on the field too like not just standing there and waiting if somebody can hit the ball but making their defensive positions can actually change even just before the strike so as long as we're covering some of the basics let's just go over what would you say is about the the average and average score of a game and an average time of game from start to finish it's about two hours and 15 minutes is the average time on the men's side. That includes a break, which is about 18 minutes at the moment. And the score this year was actually quite good. We had very good weather, which makes the ball travels faster. So about 18 points, which means that 18 runners got to the home base in total. So it can be nine, nine,

nine or whatever it is then. But that's about the number of runs that you normally get. And the field is an artificial turf and very short. And then there's a layer of sand over it. How is the ball compared to the American baseball? Men's Pesa ball is 20 grams heavier and women's is actually exactly the same weight as baseball it's about the same size I think up to about a millimeter or two but our ball doesn't have those seams like yours it's like more on this more flat the seams are flat and it's a little bit harder the men's ball but they bounce still quite well out of the artificial sand turf so we can use techniques where you hit the ball from above if you are a

tall batter and make it bounce from the from the field so that the catchers really have to run run after the ball so if you if the batsman hits the ball on the fly beyond the field that in baseball that would be a home run but in baseball that is a foul ball what uh what happens if a batter hits the ball and it bounces fair and then rolls beyond the boundary? Well that's the way in our game to get the home run so you try to hit the corners of the field so that the defenders cannot catch the ball so that it rolls away but the main thing is that no matter how strong you are you really can't make a home run unless you also have the technique to place the ball where you want it and that's the main thing in our game that you don't have to be a huge strong guy you can be a smaller one with very good technique hit the first the corner behind the

second base for example and make the ball roll away from there. And if you're a fast runner, that's then the home run. And so another obvious difference, the field shape you mentioned, it's sort of more elongated. It's not really a diamond. And the base paths, instead of running around the diamond counterclockwise, the bases are kind of a zigzag. So you start to your left to get to first base, then you cut across the field to get to second on the right, and then you go back to third, and then you run all the way back home. And each base is farther away from the last one than the one before. So third to home is much farther than home to first. So how does that change things? Or how does that change base running? Is there more strategy involved, more decision making involved? Sure. But also I would say that it makes a lot of, you have to really put a lot of emphasis on the speed of your players or the whole team, actually. So a slow player in Pesapallo, unless you are a super good batter, there is no place

for you. So everybody has to be able to run those distances between the bases very, very fast because our players can throw the ball almost the same speed as your pitchers. So when they catch the ball, you really don't have much time to hit the next base. And if you catch the ball, then it's an out but the the runners stay on the bases the only way to retire the runners who are on the bases is to get the ball to the base ahead of them right there's no tagging yeah no tagging uh yeah it has to be on the base before the runner and i really don't know what would be the best term for like if you catch it directly from the air as you said it's not an out automatically but if you catch it from the air

and somebody is running they have to the runner has to try to get to the next base but if you can throw the ball or the defending player can throw the ball to the next base before the player then it's an out but if the runner is there before the ball uh he will be you use the word retire maybe that would be a good word for that. He's taking out of, he's no more a runner, but it's not an alt. Okay, so you had mentioned, and it's pretty evident from watching some videos, that one of the most important skills is to be fast, but there is also the concept of jokers. So, this is all foundational and basic stuff to you, but if you could please explain in, I don't know, a minute, what are the jokers?

So, at the moment, the number of joker players in each team is three. And most of the teams, well, either they have like two very good batters, you know, the more slower guys, but the strong ones. And maybe one or then the other way is to have two very fast runners so if there's a situation on the field that you don't have any runners you put the fast joker player in there who has skills to make first a strike that can make him to the first base so then you have a runner in there or if there's a situation that the bases are full but out of your regular players the next player is not a very good striker then you can use your striker jokers instead so it kind of it helps the coaches that they have some extra extra players that they can call in whenever they

are needed and they can these three jokers they can be, each of them can be used once in one inning. Why are they called jokers? Is that an insult? No, yeah, I think even in some other games here, in our own language, the term joker, it's the same as, you know, in the card deck, the joker. Like, I think in volleyball, you can have an extra player. Joker is not the same as it is in english so okay nothing like that in there right obviously when you have a a smaller country and you don't have the the tv contracts they're just financially it's a it's a smaller business than than major league baseball which means there are fewer let's say illicit incentives but i was curious

is there a history of breaking the rules? Is there a history of scandals in Pisa, Paolo? Is it sufficiently big? Well, there is one. And I think you have the same. You had this kind of betting or what is called fixed game scandal once. We actually had that. That was 20 years ago.

Even in, okay, you say it's small. Yes, it is small, but when you compare it to the size of our country and the cities in here, it is still something. And betting in Finland is legal so that there is a governmental or government-controlled betting agency. And Pesapallo has been on their list for a long time.

And 20 years ago, there was this kind of game fixing scandal which then caused a lot of trouble for our sport some teams were banned for many years the popularity went down for some years so yes we had that kind of thing but now it's 20 years ago some people still remember it for sure yes, but I think we've gotten over it. Yeah, I know it took a few years in baseball for fans to sort of recover from the work stoppage back in the 90s. So how, about how many years or months did it take until you saw the popularity recover from that scandal? Well, there are places in Finland where actually Pesapalo is the only sport. In those

places, things continued about as they were before. But of course, there was some talk on the streets about what happened. But in some places where the teams even went to bankruptcy after that, it took years, many years. And we talk about sign stealing a lot in American baseball and there are signs in Pesopalo too but they're given by the manager with a kind of multi-colored fan it looks like a peacock tail almost can you explain how that works and whether it's possible for the other team to decipher the signs? Well, for sure, we try. I also, well, now I only play on the hobby level, but when I used to play myself too, of course, you try to do it, you try to read it, but there are so many varieties on how

to use it that it's almost impossible. But what you do with that is that you just can't shout to the runner on the second base that, hey, now on the second strike, we're going to gonna do it's called a bunt when you do the short one so if you shout that out of course the defending team will know what's gonna happen but when you have a sign that let's keep the red on the left side and yellow next to that then the runner will know that the striker is gonna strike a small bunt in the front field and the runner should start running immediately when the pitcher uh pitcher's hand and the ball how to say when he throws the ball upwards so that's a way to signal everyone what's going to happen and be ready for for the next event whatever it is and sometimes our game is quite fast paced so sometimes there is really a big hurry and they really have to be

well prepared to change the sign for the next whatever is going to happen in there so how widespread are statistics record keeping of of the games is it pretty well understood who like the five or ten best players are what are what are the most important statistics well the challenge is okay we have statistics a lot of that in striking yes so we know who are the best important statistics? Well, the challenge is, okay, we have statistics a lot in striking. So we know who are the best strikers of all time, of every year, of every month, every game. But on the defending side, that's where we lack the statistics quite a bit, I think. So, okay, of the pitchers, we do know something, but it's quite quite hard because let's say that they they make an out of the fast runner was it pitchers good pitch or was it the outfielders fast throw to the

base or was it a combination of those it's actually quite hard to make that decision and yeah because it is the whole team pretty much in the defending side. So pitching, yes, almost the same as in baseball. Defending, quite minimal. We have the same problems. Yeah, okay, yeah. Is there like a Babe Ruth of Pesopalo, like clearly the best player of all time? Pesapallo, like, clearly the best player of all time? Sure. Actually, he even hasn't finished his career yet.

It's a guy called Toni Kohonen. He's been, we have an all-star game, which is a tradition. I think next year it's going to be the 84th all-star game in the history of Pesapallo. And this guy has been in 21 of them, or even 22 now. So he's played, like, his whole career on the top level before this summer he had never missed a game like no injuries nothing and he he's been a top pitcher and also quite good in striking and this was his last season now in superposes next year he's gonna play in our what do you call like the first division like the next level but he still didn't end his career and i think our this second level league is gonna get

a lot of boost from him him being there but in almost all of our statistics like the all-time statistics he has played most championship level games yeah he has most all-star games. And even on the strikers list, he's quite high, even though he's never been the number one, like the hardest striker of the team. But yeah, that's our Babe Ruth and still playing, which is very nice. Yeah, that's another advantage I didn't even think of, injuries. Just getting rid of pitchers who throw as hard as they can, you're cutting out most of the injuries right there. So that's probably a good thing. And in terms of career length or trajectory, is it similar? You know, in American baseball, typically you peak around 26, 27, and, you know, then you decline, say, after you're 30,

and then you decline, say, after you're 30 and it's rare for someone to be playing at 40 or after. Is it kind of similar? Because I would think, on the one hand, you don't have to catch up to a 100-mile-per-hour fastball, but you do have to be able to run really fast. Yeah, well, it's pretty much the same. Like I mentioned, this guy, Tony Cohen, and he is now 42 this year,

which was his last top level year and he's an exception normally I would say they are below 30 there are some above 30 that are still playing in a very high level but of course at some stage your role might change from the fastest runner then you start to be the striker and in the end you are a joker striker and you don't run that much anymore. But because there are so many different roles, like if you have a very good hand, you can play on the backfield. And when you have some experience, you don't have to be super fast runner in the backfield.

But with your eye hand coordination and good throwing hand, you can still get a place even in the top level. And there are some players even in the backfield who are above 35 at the moment. But our players who are numbers one and two in their teams, those are normally the fastest runners. I would say that their average age is almost always below 30. I guess as long as we're talking about injury risk, another foundational bit of information here is how many games are in a season? If you go to the finals, it can go not 40, like, well, around 40. That's the maximum.

And then there are some junior players that play in the junior leagues, too. So there are some individual players, even at the top level, who play this maximum 40 games plus maybe another 25 in the junior league. Well, I guess one of the big advantages from a spectator perspective, not only the shorter games, two hours and 15 minutes or so, but also just the amount of action. and that's the most common complaint about baseball these days, is the three true outcomes, the home runs, the walks, and the strikeouts, now make up more than a third of plays. And in Pesopolo, there are strikeouts, there are walks, there are home runs, but they are all much, much rarer. If you added them all together, I would imagine it would still be a very small minority of all the plays.

And even the home runs are technically in play. You can chase after them. So there's just a lot less standing around and everyone is running all over the place all the time. So it seems like a very fun spectator experience. There aren't really any times, I guess, to take a break and look at your phone or something, which is maybe why there is a break built into the game. Sure. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's what we are proud about.

But there are some breaks, like after three outs, when the teams change the defensive positions and the striking positions, that's where we normally have like about one minute. So if I'm in the audience audience that's when i check the games the other games around finland and check the scores but then when the game starts again it's gonna be like five to ten minutes that you just watch because as you said defending team is moving the runners who are on the field even if you hit a very good hit and you can make the home run you really can't walk you always have to run because the defending team can get the ball sometimes from the river we have fields that are on an island and if they get it from the river and they throw it to the third base before the runner it can still be an out that's good yeah we need to bring that to baseball so at a at the super pacers level

are there are there transactions between teams are Are there trades? Is there free agency? Can players move around? So, of course, some other team can buy them out, but it doesn't happen that often because it's a semi-pro. So if a team gets a very good player, it's not all about the salary from the game itself. But if they can organize him a nice apartment and a civilian job, too, it's actually quite hard for trades as in some other sports which from my perspective as i'm watching the league financial records also is i think it's a good thing this way but i don't know i don't think that we lose much in this if we would be an international sport like soccer here in europe of course that could bring along a lot of money, but since we are the only real top league in the world in Pesäpallo, this is the current situation. I don't know. I'm happy with this. Yeah. Is there any American baseball played in Finland, and do people pay any attention to American baseball in the major leagues there?

Sure. We do have – it's on two levels. We have a championship level in baseball here in Finland and we also have a second division. And we are actually under the same organization. So it's a Finnish Pesäpallo Association, but it includes baseball also. And do we pay a lot of attention? I think the honest answer is no. I think the honest answer is no. But actually, we just got our first baseball field this year, yes. So we used to play on fields that are not wide enough sometimes.

And sometimes the one corner of the field was on a bicycle road or something. I tried it myself a couple of times here also. But this helps a little bit. I don't know. We don't compete. And as I said, we are together. We don't see any problem in baseball growing in here. But because of the nature differences of the games, I really think that Pesapallo will hold its place in Finland for a long time. Yeah. And there's only been one Finnish-born American major leaguer, John Michelson, who was a pitcher for two games in 1921 with the White Sox. And I know that there have been some American baseball scouts who have started going to Pesopalo games and have shown some interest there.

And I don't know whether Pesopalo players are interested in potentially playing baseball if a scout wanted to sign one. But has there been any signing there? Has there been progress toward maybe teams being interested in Pesopalo players? And what do you think would be the most interesting quality to an American scout or the most interesting type of player? Well, I've been, I was involved. There was a New York Yankee scout here maybe four years ago, two years ago. I was actually helping as a translator because some of our players,

the younger ones, they were either afraid to speak English or thought that they can't speak English. And I remember translating the discussion between the Yankee scout and it was our rookie of the year, a very good player from our team Kankaanpan. I remember the guy said to this Finnish young boy that, do you know what is the minimum salary in baseball? And then whatever it is, 600,000 or something. And then, oh, well, that sounds high. And then would you be interested in leaving? And then he he said I'd rather be a Top player here in Finland than an average player in the US because and also because all my friends are here. Yeah So it's nobody really has it as a dream in here and I had to be proud of that as a From my current position that there's really not about not much of a talk about that because they love our game

It's as I said, there are many things that make our game like much more interesting for the players too if you only talk about money then of course you would probably aim for for the major league baseball but our players the best quality what the yankee scout also said is that the throwing hands because almost every player in our team unless you are the joker striker can throw as fast as yours your uh pitchers but they don't know the curve balls and those but just what do you call you call it fastball right when you just throw in that they really don't lose to anybody yeah i guess you need seams on the ball too yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i guess you need seams on the ball too yeah yeah yeah yeah but they never practice it either so right and of course they can catch the balls as your players the drawing hands are super good

and they are i would say much faster than an average baseball player so those qualities would be there and uh even myself i never played on the top level but i played pesa paulo for over 25 years i when i've been training for baseball for me it's been quite easy to hit those balls when of course it's not a pro level pitcher but i know some other guys who have a long history of pesa paulo but for them it's very very hard to hit that ball when it comes towards you like in baseball so i think that's something that's individual and up to training that for some people it could be easy to hit that ball too for some it's very difficult so ben mentioned before that one of the complaints about baseball in in north america is that it's too slow

there are too many walks too many strikeouts too many home runs uh i was curious you mentioned that pace apollo is it Apollo remains popular among younger people. Are there general complaints, are there common complaints people have about the game rules they want to see changed? Anything that's evolved or gotten worse, maybe, over the previous decades in terms of entertainment? Well, we used to play like judo, that it was nine pairs of innings, or however you call it, nine innings each. pairs of innings or however you call it nine innings each uh but because if it happens then that one team gets 20 runs on the first inning and the game is kind of over and there's nothing to do for the next eight ones so we changed that some 25 years ago i would say or 30 so that we play four innings which is the first half four innings the second half if one team wins them

both okay that's three points for them if they are even they play an extra inning which decides who gets two and who gets one point and if it's uh one inning one by one team and the other reading is even then the winning team gets two points so this was a big change in our rules that we made and actually helped everyone, helped the audience, helped the betting companies. And I think also for the players, because then you really, even if you lose the first set, you really haven't lost anything. Only one point, of course, but that's it. Yeah. And there's also, I guess, an inning can end or a half inning can end if the batting team does not score two runs, right? They have to adjust all the stats because it will be a high scoring era and then a low scoring era. And there are certain strategies, you know, bunting was very common before and now it's not common. Is there a lot of change in that way also?

Of course, in the strategy. And even we have been increasing the size of the field during the history because the players started to be faster and uh so there we have made some adjustments yes but during the last i would say this millennium it's like 18 years the average number of uh runs has been about the same like as i said this was a good summer maybe two runs higher than the average, but still, if that's the variety, it's only like two or three runs during the last 20 years, it's not a huge difference. And in the women's side, it's about the same. So for the last 25 to 30 years, it's been quite similar. Before that, when they played on the old system, like nine innings, I think you really can't compare those with the current ones. So the last thing I wanted to ask is kind of a basic question.

It's more pertinent to you. How often do you do an interview like this? How often does somebody from North America decide, oh, we just heard about baseball and we want to learn about it? How often do you have this conversation? Only about one or two times a year. And it's also from Japan. I think my last guest uh there was a

japanese baseball journalist visiting finland some months ago now and sometimes it's been the new york times wall street journal have been sending their people nbc has been contacting us so as i said one or two times a year that's about it and but we also actually we have some fans who really follow pesa paulo or the top-level super PESs. But they use Twitter, they use our web streams. All the games are streamed live. So if you want and you are really super interested, you can actually follow it from the US also.

It's been fun to see the small fan base growing there also. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you about that as a last question i know that there is some international pesa palo there's a world cup since 1992 and it's played in germany and sweden and switzerland and australia and from what i understand finland always wins but do you see it as a big part of your job to export the sport to help it spread? Or does it not matter as long as it's very popular in Finland? Well, we really haven't done much of an export.

But what has happened in the last years is that India, where they do play, they play softball, baseball and cricket, of course, is the number one sport in there. But they also they found our game actually through YouTube videos of Pa palo and they started it by themselves around 10 years ago and the last world cup which was played 2017 in finland that was the first time when india was in and now there is nepal also they have their association in bangladesh so those cricket countries have started to play pesa palo and that's been a project where I've been involved from the start. And that's the only thing that I really kind of feel that we have to do. Because if we miss this opportunity, you know, one billion players in India. That's something where we have put some real effort and we're going to do more.

I think my next trip to India is in one and a half months again. And the next world cup is going to be in exactly one year in pune india and that's the first time the world cup is going to be played in that part of the world so not not much of an export effort but for these indians who really have needed help we've been helping them in referee coaching and trainer coaching and whatever drawing the fields on any sand field just basic stuff and giving them some equipment that's what we've been doing but we really don't have an department who is responsible of the export it's just i see a couple of us who do that for a small part of our job and also for fun it's been really really nice to see the game

growing there uh-huh oh one more thing i wanted to ask if you watch, another thing that stands out is that the whole batting team stands around the plate and when they're not hitting, they're just standing there watching what's happening. There's no dugout where everyone goes. What are all of the other batters doing? I read that they heckle the pitcher. That's one role, but I would say in almost every team that all of the guys, like 12 of them, they have a role. Somebody is helping a runner. They have signs. They can show with their hand how close the next defender is to them, that can they steal from the base, how much they can steal safely. Some of them are watching the pitcher and trying to see what's coming up.

Or if it's going to be a ball, they can shout and help because they're going to be a decision made that if it's a little bit out of the plate, you still hit it. But everybody has to know and that's where we use the sign for. But I would say that almost every one of them has a role and uh it's a team sport so you really need it you need all those eyes on the game okay and if our listeners want to get involved and check it out and watch from afar what's the best way for them to do that a website or twitter account or youtube account yeah, it's SuperPessis, and you can find us from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, for sure. Our website is superpessis.fi, and

from there, once the season now starts in May, and okay, our winter season starts in February, you can find links to our streams from there, and some of the games are under, or behind the paywall, of course, but I think we actually, we do have people who pay for that in the US.

So you are welcome to do that too. It's not very expensive, but that's the best way to watch the games live. But unfortunately, most of the material is in Finnish. So just use Google Translator. Okay, well, thank you very much for coming on and explaining it to us No problem, and if you have time next summer, please come and check it out for yourself Yes, I would like to, alright, thank you Yeah, bye

Yeah, thank you Alright, that will do it for today This is your final reminder, if you're interested in signing up for the Effectively Wild Secret Santa, do it today This is the last day before registrations are closed. So check out the link on the show page at Fangraphs or in the Facebook group to sign up and give and receive baseball-themed gifts next month. You can support the podcast on Patreon

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