Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1311: Rickrolled

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the Royals signing Terrance Gore and turning themselves into a bad-but-entertaining team of stolen-base threats, the Angels signing Matt Harvey and how they stack up, the renaming of Safeco Field, and the new posting system for Cuban players. Then (28:18) they talk to left-hander Rick Teasley about becoming […]

It's just a brief smile, crossing my face While it's deep, dry, standing in place It's just a brief smile, crossing my face The right speaks loud Coalescing the face The right speaks loud All over the place Hello and welcome to episode 1311 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I am Jeff Sullivan of this podcast, joined as always by Ben Lindberg of this podcast. Hello, Ben.

Hello. Also of The Ringer. Good to talk to you. We are going to talk to an exciting guest today that you arranged. Oh, my goodness. Who is the ultimate guest for us to have aside from Mike Trout? I guess it would probably be Williams Estadio. But if you were to have the second best guest behind Williams Estadio,

it would be the first and only pitcher so far to have struck him out twice in one game. And it's Rick Teasley, a Southpaw, 27-year-old Southpaw, who has pitched, I think I checked my map, everywhere. He's pitched everywhere, including Venezuela, where last week he struck out Estadio two times, including once, as you'll hear, on three pitches, which I didn't think was possible. Anyway, so later on this podcast, we will be joined by Superman himself. But before we get to that, we will have a little bit of banter. What do you got? Anything you'd like to banter about? Well, I think we have to talk about the Kansas City Royals, which is not a sentence that I

expected to be saying this month or anytime soon. But the Royals are suddenly interesting. Not good, mind you, but interesting. They are now the proud employers of Terrence Gore, recent Effectively Wild guest. They, of course, previously employed Terrence Gore, traded him to the Cubs earlier this year. They have now resigned him and to a major league contract. Somewhat surprisingly, he is on the 40-man now, which means there is actually a chance that he might be kind of a regular player in the majors this year. Might not be, but when we talked to him a couple weeks ago, he said that was his goal to go to a non-contending team

and try to play every day and try to play in the majors. And at that time, he said that he had had interest from 13 or 14 teams. So clearly he was in demand. And evidently he was able to leverage that demand into a one-year major league deal that will pay him 650K while he's in the big leagues, if he's in the big leagues, and 350K when he's in the minors. And since he is on the 40 man since he is out of options the royals could stand to lose him entirely if they do try to demote him and so

there's a chance that we might see regular season gore before september and now to be clear okay so last year in triple a terence gore was notrence Gore was not a very good hitter. I certainly don't want to besmirch Terrence Gore's good name, but when he was playing for the Royals in AAA, he slugged.254, and then he went to Iowa, AAA affiliate for the Cubs, and he had four hits and 34 bats. So we know Terrence Gore, not that much of a threat at the plate, but I think he said he sort of models himself after Gerard Dyson. And now it's one thing he has the opportunity, he's on the 40-man roster.

But not only is Terrence Gore on the 40-man roster, but of course the currently projected starting center fielder for the Royals is none other than Billy Hamilton, who is Terrence Gore, basically. I don't really know another way to put it. Terrence Gore told us he doesn't really enjoy uh the concept of like racing a teammate he just uh he said he doesn't really like to to actually run unless he's doing it in a game but if you're the royals i mean i don't you can't really what platoon them that doesn't make any sense but on the other hand i guess it's not it's not a classic platoon but terence gore bats right-handed billy hamilton bats from both sides neither one of them is much of a threat but i know travis sachik has written in the past and a lot of people i guess have also written about ways you could

strategically use billy hamilton that doesn't involve him necessarily being the starter and you could kind of imagine the same with terence gore so i don't know how much fun the royals are going to have because they need people to get on base. Billy Hamilton and Terrence Gore are likely to get on base very often themselves. But I don't know. In a weird way, the Royals could dominate the late game pinch running industry, I guess. I don't really, I don't know. I think it's going to be fun, but it's hard for me to imagine exactly how it's going to manifest as fun. But I don't know. It's cool now. Well well they seem to be collecting all of the fast players and none of them are very good hitters or at least most of them are not so as you said they may never get on base but when they do it's going to be pretty fun

because not only do they have hamilton and gore now they of course have adalberto mondesi who is very fast and the best of these players. And then they have Whit Merrifield. They have Brett Phillips. I don't know whether he'll be starting, but he could be potentially. They picked up Chris Owings recently, who has speed also. Hunter Dozier's pretty fast. I was reading an article at MLB.com by Andrew Simon, and he pointed out that it's possible that the lineup next year,

maybe Salvador Perez could be the only player whose sprint speed was not well above average, and that's with Gore on the bench. So it seems like they're going to be fast. And my colleague Zach Kram wrote about this for The Ringer on Wednesday as well, and he pointed out that the combination of Merrifield and Mondese last year, in the second half of the season, they together outstole 27 entire teams in the second half of the season. Mondese and Merrifield had 55 combined steals in the second half. That was, yeah, more than 27 teams. So add Billy Hamilton to that, add potentially Terrence Gore, Chris Owings, Brett Phillips. I mean, this could be a super fast team and kind of a fun one.

And we asked Gore when he was on, you know, do you wish that you had played in the 80s when everyone was running wild? But this is going to be like the closest that 2019 comes to the 80s. Is this the kind of team that is a lot more fun in the offseason than in the season because it's fun to imagine right but like as constructed the royals are quite bad yeah they are yes it may very well be disappointing i mean if all of these people have 300 on base percentages and just are not getting on base then i don't know how much it helps that when they are on base, at least they're a threat to go. But it helps a little bit. I mean, look, we've seen stolen base rates decline, again, not relative to the 1930s through 1960s, but compared to the expansion era seasons, we're at a low.

And that's, I think, because teams recognize, A, that caught stealings are much more costly than steals are beneficial, but also that in this current run environment, it just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to steal because everyone's hitting homers and no one's hitting singles. So you just kind of want to wait to just have someone hit a homer and score that way, because even if you steal your way into scoring position you're less likely to get a hit that knocks you in anyway so in that sense steals do not really make a whole lot of sense in today's game but on the other hand with this royals team they're not going to be hitting home runs either for the most part so i mean i like it i we i think

we talked about this in the past like why not if you're the Reds when they had Billy Hamilton and the Reds were bad why not just have Billy Hamilton go for the single season steals record like who cares what are you playing for do you really need to optimize every time on base or are you just trying to entertain people if you're not going to win anyway and sort of seems like that's what the Royals are doing here okay that's fair I'm looking at the Royals right now on Fangraphs. They are projected as a team to slug 398, projected to be 73 runs below average offensively,

which I think is actually generous in their favor. But, I mean, you're right. Now, this is the Royals, and the Royals are going to do their own thing. For an MLB Now segment, I believe it was last week during the winter meetings, it was Meg Rowley's segment and she was going on and talking about the shifts and leading into her segment, they had a little,

I don't know, montage isn't the right word, but they showed clips of a bunch of managers at the Winter Meetings who were being interviewed asked about the concept of banning the shift

and they had one manager up there and he was like, no, I think it was like Gabe Kapler said, no, that's a bad idea and then Craig Council up there and Craig Council went down to rant about how it was a bad idea and a bunch of managers said no it's a

it's a terrible idea and then they showed a clip of ned yeltsin he was like yeah ban the shift just ban it get rid of it it's bad for the game and it's in so many ways this is not new for the royals but they're they sort of zig while the league zags you know they kind of have their philosophy and they're going to stick to it and it's uh it's both won them a world series and led them into last place in the worst division in recent memory so you know the royals are all over the map but how would we be talking about this if like this were the dodgers or the rays or the athletics now in the sense we it's hard to kind of imagine that because if this were the dodgers or the rays of the a's we'd say oh the dodgers the rays of the a's are a bad baseball team because look at this roster they put

together but like what if what if we saw those teams like getting whit merrifield and billy hamilton and terence gore what would we say we'd probably be pretty confused i would think i mean yeah if they were it would be different if these were all fast and really good players. I mean, Mondesi was good this year, and Whit Merrifield has been pretty good. But I think if they were just collecting speed guys who were also good and stars, that would be a little bit different. There just aren't really that many of those guys anymore. So it sort of seems like the Royals are just trying to make the best of a bad situation here and collect a bunch of guys

who were available and also entertaining. And, I mean, you could imagine that if speed were correlated with defense, then maybe this would be a smart thing for them to do. Just go all defense and speed, which obviously is what took them to the World

Series. But these players are not, you know, Lorenzo Cain. These players are Billy Hamilton and Terrence Gore. And Billy Hamilton is a great defender. Terrence Gore, I get the sense, is not particularly. We don't really have much major league data on him, but his minor league stats are not great on defense from what we have and you know he's mostly a left fielder which you figure would not be the case if he were capable of playing a great center field which is sort of unfortunate because you could kind of squint and imagine like a hamilton gore platoon if they were both as good as hamilton on defense and they always had the platoon advantage, you could kind of see

it like maybe in Kauffman Stadium too, where you can just kind of slap the ball around and get a bunch of triples. I mean, maybe, but I don't know. This is just, I think, about making them entertaining. I mean, I don't know if they're thinking that way, like, boy, we are going to suck. So let's at least give the fans something to see here. I don't know if they're thinking that way, but that might be the byproduct of all of this. Has the, I haven't, I haven't looked it up.

Have you seen any reports on what the Royals intent is with Terrence Gore? Because right now they do have kind of a crowded outfield picture. I haven't followed up. I did, I saw that he was signed and then I just thought,

well, he'll be buried or he'll end up in the minors again. I didn't really consider that he could be given a semi-regular major league job. But have you seen reports to the contrary? Well, well, he'll be buried or he'll end up in the minors again. I didn't really consider that he could be given a semi-regular major league job. But have you seen reports to the contrary? Well, no, but just the fact that it's a major league deal makes you think there's a chance. So I don't know.

I mean, it's funny. Joe Sheehan wrote about the Royals and their speed this week in his newsletter as well. And he pointed out that the attendance gains that they made when they were good have completely evaporated already. So to the extent that there is sort of a grace period and a halo effect and when you win, you get better, they've already lost that. So they drew 1.67 million this year and they were at 2.71 million when they won the World Series in 2015. So they've lost about a million fans and they've gone back to basically what they were drawing before they won the World Series when they were terrible forever, which is sort of sad. You don't get a whole really long tail to that attendance effect, at least not in this case. So maybe they're thinking, well, we want to draw some fans.

Maybe this is one way to do it. So maybe they're thinking, well, we want to draw some fans. Maybe this is one way to do it. And I saw that Sam Mellinger tweeted that Whit Merrifield has led the league in steals each of the last think the same way they tend to go after the same players and the royals for better or worse let's be honest probably worse but they are doing things differently and uh that is to our advantage at least speaking of i guess high peaks that don't last very long the angels signed to matt harvey uh so that that was uh that was the transaction of Tuesday, I think, the big one. And Harvey got a one-year $11 million contract, incentives that could take it up to $14 million. When this podcast is over, I'm going to try to write something about Matt Harvey. And there's this pressure that I feel because I feel like it should be some sort of

big, meaningful piece. Because when Matt Harvey was at his best, he was a genuine superstar beyond just the numbers. He was one of the most visible, well-known baseball players in the sport because of his personality, because of where he played, because of his performance. Of course, he was in the World Series. But Matt Harvey now is kind of boring, you know, like as an actual player. And I look at Mattvey now and he's he's a fourth starter and you could say okay well he he throws 94 miles per hour he has the stuff to be better than that but so does every fourth starter who like that we don't really the way we understand ceilings and stuff is is incomplete and insufficient so how i don't know i i'm assuming

you are not going to be writing about matt har, but how would you write about Matt Harvey? Like, would you worry about doing, making a nod to his earlier career? Or do you just say, well, you know, the Angels are, they needed starting pitching. So they found an affordable starting pitcher after missing out on Patrick Corbin and Jay Hepp. Yeah. And after non-tendering a bunch of guys and not really having any pitchers left. So, I mean, you have to mention it. I mean, he's always going to be different from your average guy with his stuff and with his performance just because he did have that past and because he has very scary looking facial masks. So I think that,

yeah, he's always going to be a bigger name than the performance, assuming that he does not get some modicum of the performance back. It's always going to be, oh, man, I remember when Matt Harvey was briefly one of the best pitchers in baseball and very exciting and a big star and potentially a cornerstone of a big market team. And that sure ran off the rails pretty quickly. It's kind of a cautionary tale and a reminder of how quickly pitching talent can disappear. And I don't know. I mean, did you write about him at some point in season when he was with the Reds? Like there was a time when it looked like he might be making some changes or might have some potential.

I don't know if you did. Someone at Fangraphs did, I think, during his Reds tenure. But ultimately, you look at the numbers and he was better than he was with the mets but not so good that you look at him and think there's a huge amount of potential here i don't know if he's a he's someone that i mean we've seen other pitchers go from the reds to other teams and make changes to pitch location pitch mix and suddenly be a lot better but i don't know if he has that potential now. Yeah, I know that his fastball played up by like a tick and a half when he went from the

Mets to the Reds this year. Now, I would imagine part of that is because he was with the Mets early and then with the Reds later. So, you know, arm strength just gets stronger as the season progresses. But if you look at Matt Harvey's performance, he is a strike thrower. He throws two-thirds of his pitches for strikes. He pounds the zone. But he doesn't miss bats anymore.

He doesn't miss a small number of bats, but he doesn't miss a high number of bats. He just throws strikes, doesn't get a lot of strikeouts. He has a changeup that's bad. He has a four-pitch repertoire. His changeup got worse, and his fastball has just... It's not as hard as it used to be, but I think maybe more important than that, it's it's not as hard as it used to be but i think maybe

more important than that it's it's lost spin it's lost its rise so it's it doesn't move in a special way anymore so he's a guy who has a slider which is i think still a useful pitch but i don't know i remember years ago i wrote about the the indians had this picture named cody anderson and i i it was this is back when I was writing about pitch comps. And I was really interested in seeing whose repertoires looked really similar. And I remember I wrote a post that was like, Cody Anderson looks a lot like Matt Harvey, which at that point was a compliment. And now Matt Harvey looks a lot like Cody Anderson, I guess. It was accurate in the moment, but in the negative way. Now, Cody Anderson has missed

a bunch of time with Tommy John surgery. I don't know what his career is going to have for him. But now Matt Harvey, I mean, there would have been a time when he entered free agency where you thought, oh, this is going to be a $200 million pitcher. This is going to be a guy who, like, breaks records as a free agent. And here he is now. I mean, he's been through Tommy John. He's been through, what, a shoulder, a scapula fracture, I think, a stress fracture maybe it was. And he's had thoracic outlet syndrome. So he's back pitching.

He's not bad. Tyson Ross we've seen come back from thoracic outlet, and he is close-ish. He resembles what he used to be. If you watch him throw an inning, you can see him look really good. With Matt Harvey, I guess after these these five minutes we haven't settled much but he's uh i don't know he's a starter he'll give the angels 25 or 30 starts and they'll be fine as the angels try desperately to claw their way into contention before mike trout hits free agency and every other picture the angels have had for the past few years has had some sort of serious injury either usually while he was with the angels so i guess they kind of uh pre-qualified matt harvey and that he has already had some serious injuries

so i don't know if that team has enough pitching i mean that's kind of the thing that's holding them back that's been holding them back so it remains a really interesting team and will as long as they have mike troutout and Shohei Otani And I think what if you look at the fan graphs projections they're probably in playoff territory right now right or somewhere close to it Yeah they're in the vicinity Yeah so I don't know he gives them innings I guess potentially maybe I think a lot of people were sort of surprised even to see him get 11 million plus incentives, which sort of sounds like a lot for someone who just got let go by his team and then picked up by the Reds and was pretty mediocre with them too. So I don't know how much of that is based on the name and the face, not the facial mask, but the face under it.

And, you know, if this were some other guy with the same stats and performance would he have gotten quite as much money as matt harvey i don't know maybe there's still a little bit of that luster there where teams think well maybe there's more in there yeah but i mean remember it was just a year ago that the mets gave jason vargas two years and 16 million dollars and he was coming off the season that actually as i look at it looked an awful lot like the season matt harvey just had the league and wins led the way oh my god i forgot that ever happened jason vargas 18 and 11 anyway i have uh i have two more things i don't know about you they're kind of quick uh one of them safeco field is dead we knew safeco field was dying i guess as a as a name as a brand

but safeco field is henceforth going to be known as t-mobile park i don't care about that even a little bit but it is t-mobile park i think it's official as of the first of next year it's something that will take some getting used to like any other name but it's not like t-mobile park sounds any better or worse than safeco field which is just a company a field named after an insurance company uh t-mobile if you are at all uh confused or curious there is already a t-mobile arena which is where the vegas golden knights play in uh in las vegas so t-mobile has at least two venues presumably more than that but two major league venues and i don't know uh i will express again i don't care but this is our

new terminology t-mobile park yeah it's it's strange how it takes a little while to adjust to that. The first second you said it, I thought, no more Safeco, the fine baseball tradition, the name Safeco. You just hear Safeco, you think baseball, Mariners baseball, which you do. But yeah, it's just another corporate sponsorship. There's no real difference. I mean, it's kind of a tradition in that they've held the naming rights, I think, going back to the beginning, right, when that park opened in 1999. So it's always been Safeco. I think of it as Safeco. I have almost a nostalgia for Safeco, the name, but it is completely corporate and money-based and really no different from T-Mobile.

And maybe in 20 years, we'll be thinking of T-Mobile Park the same way we think of Safeco Field. Yeah, right. And you could say, well, you know, Safeco at least contains safe, and safe is like a baseball term. But so is T. Players hit off Ts, I guess. They have T-shirts. They're mobile. Yeah, right. People wear T-shirts they're yeah right people weird well i mean they're not the royals

but keep in mind like the the giants when they moved from candlestick park they played in three com park and then pack bell park and then sbc park and then at&t park it's all the same park well that's four names within the span of one decade one decade decade, the Giants said. So now, actually, you'll have to remind me. 3Com was different from Candlestick, or was 3Com actually the renamed... Did Candlestick rename as 3Com? Looking at the attendance, I think Candlestick renamed as 3Com,

and then the new stadium was Pac-Bell Park, then SBC Park, then AT&T. So anyway, the Giants, though, did play with Candlestick Park, 3Com Park, Pac-Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park. That is five different names within 12 baseball seasons and two stadiums. So it's weird to have one change, but I don't know. Are we used to guaranteed rate field yet?

That was stupid when that first came out. Yeah, I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that one. I mean, I think it's really better if it's just one word also is probably better than guaranteed rate. I don't think I'm ever going to get used to that one. I mean, I think it's really, it's better if it's just one word also is probably better than guaranteed rate. I don't know. But Safeco, it flowed. Maybe we're just used to it and it was just as jarring at the beginning. I don't know.

You were a Mariners fan then. I wasn't. Yeah, I don't know. Do you want the first? I agree with you that having one word is best, but Safeco, you have the emphasis on the first syllable, which I think just kind of helps it flow. And guaranteed rate, that's just stupid.

It's a bad name for a company and a bad name for a ballpark. It's a bad name for anything. But T-Mobile, the T is still what you emphasized. So just kind of T-Mobile Park. It's easy to say. You don't have to have some kind of weird crescendo in the middle. I think it's fine. Well, look at all this free advertising

that T-Mobile is getting on this podcast right now ballpark sponsorship works unless you're guaranteed i mean i guess if any publicity is good publicity then way to go guaranteed rate you i don't know what you are uh i think the only guaranteed rate in baseball is chris davis's batting average but anyway the last thing that i had was that even though jeff passon reported that it's not yet official there are are reports coming out of Cuba that Cuba and Major League Baseball are shortly at least going to agree to a posting system so that we can start to put the end to the horrible practice of human trafficking that has been, I don't want to say necessary, but that has been part and parcel of bringing Cuban baseball players to the States.

So even though it seems like maybe nothing is official yet, it should happen soon. I don't know all the details of the posting system, but based on the report I read out of Cuba, it seems like the league or the team of the player would get 25% of whatever the money is that a player is guaranteed in his major league contract. So this seems like it's a good thing. It's been years in the making. I can't think of a downside of ending human trafficking of baseball players. Maybe I'm not thinking hard enough. It's probably a win for everyone involved.

I mean, we don't know exactly what this will look like, but it's hard to be worse than a system where you have to have human beings smuggled and endangered and separated from their families and i mean you know you have these very unsavory characters who have been getting these guys to other countries and in many cases they just haven't seen their loved ones for years i don't know whether that will completely change. Hopefully that, you know, there are still players, I think, who escaped and came here and have not seen their loved ones for years. I don't know whether this opens things up for them to have that opportunity, hopefully. But you read about the horror stories that people like, I don't know, Puig and others have gone through. Some of them have

told their stories of how they got here. Jose Abreu is another one. And it's always very harrowing. So if it gets less harrowing, then that has to be an improvement. Yep. So that's that. Look for an announcement on that before too long. I don't know how much longer it's going to take. Maybe the reports out of Cuba are accurate and there actually already is an agreement and we're just waiting on some sort of, I don't know, official major league press conference. But in any case, that's good news. And do you have anything else you'd like to talk about before we get to Rick Deasley? No, I guess not. Yeah. I don't know whether this will cause a bunch of players to become available. I mean, obviously a lot of the top

talents there have already come here and have been signed. And so this will maybe be kind of a future oriented thing that young players coming up can go this way. I don't know how this works in tandem with the international signing limits and, you know, having to have bonuses that are very restricted unless you're over a certain age. So not sure how this will look exactly. I don't think there will be like a giant wave of talent suddenly coming over because a lot of the best players already have. But yeah, hopefully this will improve things for future players. And I don't think I have anything else to get to. Yeah, I guess it'll be interesting to see if there are going to be age thresholds where they are put,

because the flood of Cuban talent has slowed down a little bit. It is a league of a lower caliber than the NPB. There are fewer players who are ready to make an immediate major league impact going from Cuba to the States. So I don't know if those players are going to be treated as free agents or whether they cuba to the states so i don't know if those players are going to be treated as free agents or whether they're going to have to be signed to small deals like we saw with shohei otani so lots we don't know but i think the the baseline here is it's good that players won't have to be smuggled anymore at least in accordance with new rules so to whatever extent one is just naturally skeptical or cynical of any agreement

that giant corporations or billion-dollar industries enter into, I think in this case, no matter, and governments, of course, maybe even the Cuban government specifically. But in this case, I think we can probably all agree that this is a lot more good than dead. So that's the hot take. All right. So we will take a quick break and we will talk to Rick Teasley, double striker outer of Williams' studio. I'd like to do the same thing twice I love you so much So much Love you Love you, baby, so much

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, so we have on the line a guest I'm very excited for. We heard from a podcast friend of ours, Octavio Hernandez, of something that happened last week in the Venezuelan Winter League. It's something we've mentioned on this podcast already. For the first time, for the first time in his career as a baseball player, Williams Astadillo struck out twice in one game against the same pitcher. And we are now joined by the superhero himself rick teasley rick how's it going it's going great thank you guys for having me with there's no need to beat around the bush here did you have any understanding going into the game the game you're pitching who williams astadio is

well i i didn't know much about him coming into this season seeing him play a couple games before i pitched against them you know you try to watch the guys closely and ask questions to guys who've been here, the local guys. They said, you know, he's a big leaguer and he doesn't strike out. They said something like he's the least struck out guy in the MLB. And, you know, some of that you take with a grain of salt. You're not sure how truthful it is, but that's all I really knew was, okay, the guy didn't strike out a whole lot. And then you watch his at-bats and you see him put the bat on everything, swings early and counts. So you say, okay okay, the guy didn't strike out a whole lot. And then you watch his at-bats and you see him put the bat on everything, swings early and counts.

So you say, okay, yeah, he doesn't strike out a whole lot. So that's about what I knew. It is true. We can definitely confirm that that is the case, that he never strikes out except when he's facing you. So tell us about those at-bats. Tell us about the first one. What did you try to do against him?

So he let off the second inning. And obviously I faced him once before and i came in a relief appearance i threw one pitch it was a change up away and he squibbed it uh between first and second off the end of the bat i think he was sitting on a fastball so i said you know what just just get ahead here he's probably gonna swing just make it a good pitch down the zone that he can't do much with and uh so i threw him i actually threw my first pitch cutter in that he swung and missed at. Okay. So that worked out well. We then went away with a changeup, which he fouled off into the stands right behind first base. And we went fastball up. It was a good pitch. It's a pitch that's meant to be out of the zone to get him to chase and he chased after it. So we got him on three pitches the first set bat and that felt pretty good. Yeah. Can you tell

us, I guess we should have started this way, but tell us a little bit about yourself as a pitcher. What were your options against Williams-Estedillo? What do you throw? Well, I throw a cutter. I'm a lefty, so a lefty cutter, a change up, a sinker, and a four-seam fastball. I mix in a slider occasionally. I don't throw it a ton, but it's more of something. It's a little slower. It's just something I don't try to work on crazy because I'm really trying to work on my other... You put too much in the arsenal to work on, and all your pitches suffer from it. So you get Estadio the first time. You get him on three pitches, which I didn't even realize the extent of that miracle. But then you get to go up against him again. Now, I don't know how your own

dugout, your own teammates might have responded to seeing you strike him out once i know that you have you've thrown 20 and two-thirds innings down in venezuela so far this winter and at this point you'd thrown even fewer so you're still kind of new to this team i know you'd played in this league before so anyway you you get asked to do the first time and then you get to face him a second time so what what was your experience how did you mix things up the second time or did you get to face him a second time so what what was your experience how did you mix things up the second time or did you just go right back to the well and then pitch him in the same way well i you know he came up the next time i believe it was guys on second and third with one out uh so as a pitcher you don't have a double play in order so you know you kind of pitch around

the guy if we're not going to intentionally walk him i i knew i had to throw him pitches that were on the back or off you know just pitches to get him to chase pitches that he can't do a whole lot with and um started him off with a fastball away off the plate and he was swinging so he fouled that back and then we went cutter in again and he it was a perfect you know i executed very well in that at bat he pulled the cutter hard line drive foul. It's a pitch that you throw with the intent that, hey, if he hits it, he can't keep it fair. So he did. He hit it hard, but foul. Went back to a fastball up that he didn't chase and then got him to chase a change up down. The plated change up buried it and he chased it down for strike three. So did they stop the game, flash it on the scoreboard? Rick Teasley is the first pitcher

ever to strike out William Tostadillo twice in one game. And then you tipped your cap and both dugouts stood on the top step and applauded and they gave you the ball and it was a great moment, I'm sure. know that that had never happened before. I knew it was definitely a big deal to strike that guy out twice. Yeah. He actually, he was telling the umpire he fouled it off, you know, so they actually stopped the game. The umpires came together, agreed, no, he didn't, he didn't foul it off. And it was honestly, unless he, you know, Vladimir Guerrero'd it, kind of hit it like a cricket player, he wasn't going to foul that. So, you know, they came together and called it, yeah, strike three. So that at bat was over. And at that point, the umpires came together and said, yeah, he didn't foul it off. And so in that situation, you know, you don't realize how big the moment was. You know, he doesn't strike out much, but you still got guys on second and third, two outs. You got to lock back in because you don't

want those runs scoring after something like that. I think the way that it works, your jersey has been sent to Cooperstown. You get an automatic invite to somebody's 25-man roster. You strike out Estadio twice, and that's like something that goes to the top of the resume, I think, as a pitcher. Well, it was after the game was when the tweets started coming in, and I saw you guys had messaged me, and I was like, oh, man. So I went and looked at his career stats. He almost never does. He had one strikeout on the year here in 100 and something at-bats. I was like, okay, wow, that really was some good pitching right there, I guess. hundred and something at bats, I was like, okay, wow, that really was, that really was some good pitching right there, I guess. Yeah. Well, just generally, we'll ask you about your baseball

journey because you've been everywhere, but when you are pitching somewhere that is not the major leagues and you're facing a major leaguer, either an active major leaguer in the winter leagues, or maybe someone who's been in the big leagues before, are you looking at that as a special challenge, like kind of transitive property if that guy was good enough to be in the majors and you're good enough to beat that guy, then you're good enough to be in the majors. Oh, absolutely. You have to think that way in order to be successful as a pitcher or even as a hitter, anybody, you have to kind of rise to that challenge and enjoy facing guys like that because it kind of can prove to yourself and maybe facing guys like that because it kind of can

prove to yourself and maybe prove to other people that maybe you belong to be there or you know it just makes it more fun enjoy facing better guys because it's it's just more of a battle and it locks you in and it finds out exactly who you are as a competitor so you said that you you knew astrodia was hard to strike out but you didn't realize the magnitude of your achievement at the moment but even as you are talking to us now, you are recalling every individual pitch that you threw him in consecutive at-bats. So is this, I mean, I used to pitch, but not professionally. So maybe just part of being a professional pitcher is that you have a very photographic

memory for everything that you've thrown. But how deep is your recall for every bat that you have during a game, even a game that was at this point a week old? How well do you remember every single pitch that you've thrown? Well, sometimes some of the bats get away from you, and sometimes guys will occasionally say, oh, what did you throw Johnson last inning? Oh man, which one's Johnson? Sometimes you just get too locked in or you get too worked up um but some guys like him knowing he is a big leaguer and he doesn't strike out much you remember what you throw that guy because he's one that can really hurt you so if it's a guy that's maybe a four hitter a five hitter a big

name you want to remember what you throw that guy because you don't want to pitch in the same way every time um because big league hitters make adjustments. So that's it. And had you faced him in previous years? Because I know this is not your first winter in Venezuela. I pitched against Caribe. That's the team he's with. I pitched against him last year. If I did face him, I don't recall because I hadn't heard as much about him before that. So I heard, you know, he was hyped up this year and that was why I really remembered, you know, that's the guy. And that's why I remember the at bat so distinctly. Yeah. But I'm sure I could look through something and find out if I had faced him before that. I just didn't do that before this.

Yeah. He made his big league debut this year. So even though he was not someone who ever struck out before that, he was not quite so well known for that before. So yeah, he's kind of a legend. Oh yeah. So I hear. So you were, you were drafted by Tampa Bay back in 2013, and you spent a season pitching in affiliated ball. And since then, for one reason or another, we can talk about this a little later, but you were with the Rays. But then the next year, you pitched in the Frontier League. Then you pitched in Australia, and you kind of did that for a couple of years, Frontier League, and then Australia in the winter. And then in 2017, 2018, you went down to Venezuela

for the Winter League, and that's where you are pitching right now. You've also pitched in the Atlantic League with Somerset the last couple of years. And Taiwan. Don't forget Taiwan. And Taiwan. That's not on the baseball reference page. But what's most interesting here is that as you know, you are talking to us from Venezuela. You are pitching in Venezuela. This is your second consecutive winter doing it. And I don't know if you've heard, but Venezuela is a country in turmoil. How do you decide to go pitch in Venezuela? And how does your family respond when you tell them, hey, I'm going to go spend the winter pitching in Venezuela? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I heard about all that

before it came down. I've heard of guys coming down here and I said, who in the world would go play down there, you know? And they pay pretty well. They pay well. They pay their imports well. And when you talk to older veteran guys that are in the Atlantic League that actually have played in the big leagues and double A, triple A, and they're coming out here every winter. So you say, man, well, you know, what's it like? And they explain to you, hey, we've got security. We stay in nice hotels. You know, they take care of you. They're not going to let anything happen to you. You're going to find food. It's all good. The people there love baseball. They're not going to mess with you. And it's kind of how it is. We're fine. There's

no worries. Yeah, there's definitely stuff going on. But yeah, they take care of us. The family wasn't thrilled about it. But when I reassure them and I keep sending them pictures and videos of where we are and what we're doing, they're like, okay, it's not so bad. They're much more at ease about me being here. It seems as if you feel protected and safe by the team, but how did the deaths of Valbuena and Castillo, I mean, how did that sort of hit players in the league? And I don't know whether you had faced them, but what is the response been among the players? Yeah, I was set to face them that next day, actually. I fell asleep that night preparing for my start against laura i woke up in the morning to the game is canceled because of the accident and i said the accident you know i had to shuffle through and find out what happened and it was crazy i i was teammates with castillo last year when i was with the tigres and uh great guy i mean everything everybody says

about those two guys is true they're great guys and it's a very big shock to all these guys here and the baseball community yeah i had a buddy with another team that actually left two days after that. And he said, you know, that's enough for me. I'm, I'm going home. So you look at that and that's tough to swallow being out here. And it kind of puts you back on guard because you start to get carried away with, Oh, we're safe. We've got security, but you know, things like that can happen very fast. And those guys had no idea that was going to happen so it definitely puts your guard up a little bit again and uh it's tough but we've been we've been you know having the memorials uh before games when they came into town and uh it definitely definitely hits you like reality for sure one of the things we we kind of take

for granted when we deal with with the major leagues or even affiliated ball is that you have a lot of players coming over from from latin non-English speaking countries, and then you just sort of assume that they will be able to assimilate as best as they can. And then you just evaluate them by their performance. And you are in the opposite situation. Now you having pitched in Taiwan is also a comparable story here. And you look at the roster of the Bravos de Margarita that you were playing for now, and you have some, you know, English speakers in Cole Sturgeon, Dietrich Enns, Logan Darnell, some teammates, but you are playing in Venezuela with a lot of Venezuelan players. And how is your Spanish? How is the communication on the team?

I mean, a lot of the guys on our team specifically speak English, enough English for you to communicate with them. I'm doing my best, and it helps me learn some Spanish too because I'll always be able to ask them what certain words mean. I'm learning as much as I can in as little amount of time as I can, but it's definitely an adjustment. It's not your comfort zone. It's not what you're used to. For the first time in my career, probably when I went to Taiwan

and when I came here this year, you say, man, these over to America, they definitely don't have the easiest go when they're trying to adjust to a whole new life, a whole new game, it seems. So you go through it in the reverse and you start to gain respect for those guys who have done it and done a good job immediately coming over to a new country. So it's definitely different. So as Jeff mentioned, you were drafted by the Rays in the 23rd round in 2013, and you just spent that one year with them and then leaving the Rays kind of

kicked off all the other places that you've been since then. From your perspective, how did that time in their farm system go? Why do you think it ended? And do you think that you've changed and improved things since then? I was fresh out of college when I went to Tampa Bay, went over to Princeton for a week. And then on the Hudson Valley, I definitely put up good numbers. I had a good season. But I don't think I ever threw as hard as they would have liked me to. And I think that played a role.

I came into spring training in good shape. And I worked hard. But when you look around and there's, I mean, Blake Snell. Blake S snell is there right next to me and he's throwing eight miles an hour harder than me and he's three years younger than me so i'm like yeah then they got a lot of guys like that young guys that threw through really hard and they feel like you know we can teach these guys to command and control and their stuff will get good and a guy who's upper 80s isn't gonna be able to make as many mistakes as these other guys will in the future. And they just didn't.

I guess they just didn't project me to be a big league pitcher. Since then, I've taken that. I've learned. I've gone to many different places, played for many different pitching coaches, really good pitching coaches. And, I mean, I've definitely become a much better pitcher, much more polished. I look back and I kind of smile at, you know, the pitcher I used to be. You always do.

And I'm sure in three years, if I'm still throwing, I'll look back to now and kind of smile. But, you know, that's just, it happens. I was grateful that they drafted me. That was a dream for me to just sign a contract. And I actually got drafted. So it was really cool. I cherish that year and definitely hope it's not over with. Still waiting for another opportunity. That's funny. I can't, I can't speak for for ben but i know when i look back five years at the writer i used to be i just grimace and shake my head and i can't believe that that's how i used to write but anyway you you evolve over time so you are currently 27 years old and you're you're pitching with the rays when you were 22 and and you have at least intimated in our conversation that you haven't just evolved as a pitcher but you were

also throwing harder so So are you, are you, are you up into the, like the low nineties now? I can, I can, I can throw. I think in Taiwan,

that's, that's the one place I've been where I've known there's a gun on me consistently. And I could watch footage and see exactly how hard every pitch was. My fastest pitch in Taiwan was 149 kilometers an hour, which equates to, I believe 92.9. So 93, we'll, we'll round up for the for my sake but uh 93 was my hardest pitch and that was a pitch that I actually reared back and tried to

throw hard but I don't I just as a pitcher I don't do that a whole lot I try to command the inside of the zone locate those pitches that make it really difficult for hitters to not only know what I'm going to throw next, but to time it up and to be ready for it. Change speeds, go up, go down, go in, go out. And, you know, you get to the sixth inning and you haven't given up very many runs. So that's been successful for me. And I'm almost too competitive to just try rear back and throw it hard. And if we beat that way, I'll be mad at myself. So I know I can get a little higher, but I don't think that's a reliable way for me to pitch, especially as a starting pitcher.

When you are thinking about your own profile, do you just sort of look up to Dallas Keuchel then as sort of a role model, just someone to model yourself after? Yeah, definitely a guy who can locate, who doesn't throw just absolute 100 miles an hour, but can pitch and make the ball move i think late movement gets more outs than velocity does nine times out of ten i'd love to throw a hundred and i'm jealous of the guys who can but i'm not that guy and if i'm not going to throw a hundred then what's trying to throw a hundred going to do for me other than probably make me throw flatter and more over the zone at maybe 93 It's much more hittable than 89 on the black with movement. So that's what I kind of stick to. So of all the different teams you pitched for in

the different countries you've pitched in, what has been the best baseball environment just in terms of, I guess, the atmosphere surrounding the team and the way the league is run and sort of the fan support? Oh, man, the fan support in Taiwan was wild. Those games are like college football games. There's constant noise and music and chanting. It's like nothing I've ever seen. I'd say the most fun I had was in Australia. That's a great country. The traveling, the beaches, the people are awesome. And the most passionate fans I'd say is out here in Venezuela. I mean, I say it all the time. 5,000 Venezuelan fans are louder than 15,000 American fans. It's just how much they care. It's wild how into the game they are. So every country

has its own niche as far as fans or the environment that the game is under. But it's cool to experience all of them. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the chants and the crowd participation, because that's something that we hear a lot, that other countries just do it way better than we do. And I am curious about how we could try to import that, bring that back to American baseball. So what kind of coordinated chants or fan participation is there? So in Taiwan, you know how here we have like walk-up songs. In Taiwan, each hitter has their own basically walk-up song, but they start it from the time they leave the on-deck circle

through their entire at-bat, and it's run by, you know, there's a band back there, and there's a guy like coordinating it on the top of the dugout, and all of the fans are in simultaneous movements, whether it's kind of like a chop, like you would see at a Florida state Tomahawk chopper. They have all their different movements. They do the entire at bat long and it doesn't stop. And you know,

it's definitely, it'll, it'll, it'll kind of your first time over there as a pitcher, it's, it's strange to try to pitch to a guy while that's going on. So it's, it's awesome.

I, you can YouTube, try to look up some videos on it, Taiwan, baseball, Korea, Japan to do it the same way and really so uh it's it's awesome i you can youtube try to look up some videos on it taiwan baseball korea japan do it the same way and really see what it's like it's it's wild have they built chants that are around you personally have you had your own specific chanter tears um and while i was pitching they actually try to stay quiet while while the home pitcher is pitching so when we're hitting they're, but when we're in the field, the crowd is almost silent trying to let the pitcher focus, I believe, is the intent there.

But every once in a while, they give me a small cheer. They'd say my Chinese name out loud, and I didn't gather a whole much else than that from the chant. But, yeah, it was more quiet when you were pitching at a home game. I guess from a psychological perspective, you don't have to speak for the entirety of the baseball playing universe here, but how does your focus change or how does your performance change depending on the volume level of the crowd? Does it matter if they're, say, for you or against you?

Is it just more fun to play in the electrified environment? Well, honestly, I was having a conversation with one of our pitchers here about it. I don't know what's better is striking a guy out and having the crowd go insane or having a crowd loud for their team to hit, and you strike that guy out and it goes dead silent. Both feelings are pretty good. When it's really loud, it gets your adrenaline going faster, so they say the game will speed up on you. Yes, you have to learn to control your breathing, learn to control your breathing and relax yourself.

And the more relaxed you are, the better your body is at doing what you want it to do. So it's something that you have to learn with basically being thrown into the fire. You've got to learn it yourself and just go through it and find a comfortable way to pitch in that situation. So your Twitter bio says, I get paid to play baseball with my friends, which sounds like you're enjoying life as it is. But of course, you, like every other player, have the goal of getting to the big leagues. So where do you feel closest to that? And where do you feel furthest from that? Because I would guess you're in the Atlantic League, you're playing with a lot of big leaguers. You played with Ryan Webb this year, whom we've

talked about a lot in the past. Is that where you kind of feel like you're getting seen and where you might actually get the call as opposed to somewhere like Taiwan or Australia? Yes. Yeah, I would say definitely the Atlantic League is where you're closest to getting called or maybe out here. There are a lot of pitching coaches or any of the coaches out here are in affiliated ball somewhere with a team. So there's eyes on you here as well. But Atlantic League, like, yeah, there's guys that go down in AA or AAA and people get signed

pretty quickly out of the Atlantic League. I think I had heard that the reason why that hadn't happened in the last two years for me is I just don't have double a time so teams don't really want to sign a guy and just throw him in double a if he hasn't been there yet they want a more experienced guy who's been there and done that so you know part of it gets frustrating but you just wait for the the right time somebody somewhere is going to see you and like you and you get a shot and if not you know just play until you can't anymore and have fun but uh the atlantic yeah, there's a lot of ex-big leaguers there, a lot of eyes on you.

So that's where you feel the closest to getting that shot. And one might argue that with your time in Venezuela, you're sort of pitching at, let's say, a double-A equivalent level. You know, there's Franklin Barreto is down there. Luis Felbueno has been down there. Alejandro Diaz is down there. Delman Young, Harold Ramirez. Like, they're major league talents or former major league talents.

So I guess if you had the opportunity to sell yourself, you'd say, well, look, I struck out Williams Estadilla twice in a game. What more do you need to know? Absolutely. Yeah, definitely facing guys here and knowing that people who are making those decisions know that those guys are out here. It'll really help putting up good numbers here to, you know, make that push and hope for the best. And how far in advance do you typically know where in the world you're going to be? I mean, do you know next season where you're going to pitch or if it's winter, do you know

where you'll be in summer? If it's summer, do you know where you'll be in winter? Because I mean, just Instagram stalking you, it looks like you're engaged. So I guess that, you know, you have someone who is maybe traveling with you or, or not seeing you for long stretches of time. So how does that affect your life and your connections to family and friends? Yeah, well, it's important to find someone who's very supportive. And my fiance, Carly, is very supportive of me. We definitely stay in touch via FaceTime or whatever we can. Family also very important. We stay in touch via FaceTime or whatever we can. Family also very important.

We stay in touch. Obviously, I'm not going to be home for Christmas, so that's tough. But these are times that aren't going to last forever and you got to make the best of it. So they all understand that and they're a very good support base. As far as knowing where I'm going to be, I don't know where I'm going to be next year yet. The Atlantic League is definitely a strong possibility,

but there's also a league out in Mexico. They pay pretty well. And, you know, at this point, how many more years are you going to play, make some money while you still can? You know, I'm really on the fence of what to try to do here. So either Mexico, the Atlantic League, throwing some feelers out in Taiwan to try and go back there. But really, just right now, I want to worry about this,

worry about succeeding here. And then when I'm home in January, February, try to figure out what the next move is as quickly as possible. How does it work for your body? You've probably heard before that pitching is bad for your body. It's hard on your elbow. It's hard on your shoulder and et cetera to say nothing of the knees. And of course, you pitched almost a full season with Somerset in the Atlantic League this summer. And now you are pitching in the Winter Leagues as well.

So you don't give yourself a whole lot of downtime. Now, part of that is just the hustle, right? You're trying to pitch when you can and find work when you can, get paid when you can. You know, Rick Teasley, go get yours. But when do you give yourself a chance to rest? Or do you just kind of feel it? Are you not feeling it? How is your body holding up when you have such a crowded pitching schedule?

It's another reason not to try to throw it as hard as you can every pitch, I'd say. Try to pace yourself throughout the season. When your arm feels good, throw. When it doesn't feel great, you know, go light and manage yourself. I try to take a week or two off between seasons because, I mean, any more than that, you kind of get rusty anyway. So, you know, it's all about make sure your arm, if it feels good, you can throw. If it doesn't feel great, you know, take it easy.

But definitely a grind to go through season to season without much of a break at all. Big time grind. So, I'm looking at the leaderboard right now in the Venezuelan League. And second place in home runs is a tie with uh with seven two players of seven home runs delman young is in first place with 16 of course anyone who is a major league baseball fan remembers delman young but have you had the experience yet of pitching to delman young this winter no i haven't yet i'm actually think i think my next start is scheduled to face maggie so i will be and uh that's definitely a guy that when you sit and watch

us play Magallanes, you ask the guys who have faced him, all right, what are you going to throw this guy that he's not going to hit out? So I've gotten answers of, hey, don't pitch him in. I've gotten answers, hey, don't pitch him away. I'm just going to have to go up there and just try my best to keep the ball down and hope that he's not ready for it. Yeah, that's interesting that the scouting down there, it's very much kind of word of mouth. And whereas here you have all this information, you can look up heat maps on Delman Young or the Delman Young equivalent. You can watch video on everyone. And where you are, it's just still sort of, hey, what have you done against this guy? And kind of relying on people's memories yeah absolutely i mean we're thankful and we have a catcher francisco diaz he spent a lot of time i think in yankees triple a and he's been out here a long time so you trust guys like that who know your game plan but also have played against these guys for years and you just kind of work together and you talk about

things and trust him and just execute execute pitches i haven't seen many guys get crushed when they're executing well throughout a game. So it's more so focusing on not beating yourself than it is worrying about who you're facing. You adjust if a guy has a really big strength, you adjust to it. But if you guys can send me some charts on Delman Young, that'd be great. Pitch him out of the zone, I think is the answer. That was always the weakness. Pitching at any of the levels you've been at, I would assume the answer is no. But have you been able to receive in-depth information of your own pitches? Are there cameras that are tracking you? Is there anything maybe in Taiwan?

Or are you still kind of pitching in the traditional classic mold where you have the information that people observe and nothing beyond that? that yeah that's what i have i have what people observe in taiwan i could watch every start and uh there were some good camera angles i could get but as far as any kind of spin rate or any they talked about there's a tracker that are installed at every mlb stadium i believe and uh people can follow stuff like spin rate but there's none of that anywhere that i've pitched and uh i knew there was one in port charl I was with the Rays, but I never made it to Port Charlotte. So there's really not a whole lot of information as far as any of that goes that I know about myself or that probably anybody knows about me. And you mentioned kind of, you know,

not knowing what you'll be doing next season, next year. Do you think much about life after baseball whenever that comes along? Or is your focus now just on trying to push that conversation as far into the future as possible? Well, you'd love to push that conversation as far as possible because, you know, still playing baseball for a living. That's great. But definitely you think about it. You're going, OK, now I'm 27. This is all happening pretty fast. You guys start mailing it in pretty soon. So what's the plan? I mean, I went to St. Leo University in Tampa. I got a degree in accounting that I'm still, I've got two classes left.

Just haven't been home in a winter to get them done. I have to do them on campus. So it's either play ball, make some money, or go take classes. So still got to finish that up, but, up, but take that, maybe do some lessons. I don't know. I don't know if I could sit at a desk and be an accountant all day. It's more of a thing that I'm just going to have to wait

until later and really give strong thought about when I have some downtime and just figure it out based on where I am and what I want to do. Well, I know that in your background, you do have a no-hitter that you've thrown. You have pitched all over the world in a variety of

different leagues you've had just hundreds at this point maybe even thousands of teammates i don't know how to count and you have had a lot of different playing experiences and you are not only the first pitcher to ever strike out williams estadio twice in one game but you might well be the last pitcher to ever do that as well so you, you know, if and when the day ever comes that you have to hang them up, you have a pretty good list of achievements, life experience. You've had a career, Rick Teasley, already to this point.

So we would like to thank you very much for your appearance. And thank you for finding time and finding a connection because we weren't sure if we would be able to connect with you at all while you were in Venezuela. So this has been a great treat for all of us.

Great. I appreciate it. I love the opportunity to do it. I had fun, and I hope it comes out smoothly. Thank you guys very much. All right. Thank you, Rick. All right, so a couple quick updates here. One, there was a huge brawl in the Venezuelan Winter League on Wednesday night. This is just a Venezuelan Winter League podcast now. It was the Leones versus the Tiburones.

So it was not Rick's team. It was not Williams Estadillo's team. But our recent guest Octavio was tweeting about it. You have to see the videos. I will link to them on the show page. And you can also get them from the podcast description in your podcatcher. Octavio has the whole video up. So it seems like it started because the pitcher threw behind the hitter a couple times so

he charged the mound i don't know what the bad blood was about but this was the immediate precipitating incident so he charges the mound he throws his helmet at the pitcher then the pitcher appears to try to kick the hitter as if he is a soccer ball both teams come out onto the field while both teams are milling about there on the field. A dude runs in from center field, just a fan, and starts picking up the gloves in the outfield and running back to the stands with them, just stealing the gloves. Security guys chase him, but they're way far behind him. Then something causes the brawl to break out anew,

and it gets even more intense, so there's a close-up video that I will also link. And this is not your standard base brawl where people are just milling about. This is a full fracas, or as Octavio called it on Twitter, una trifulca completa, a full-on brawl. So you can go check that out. Also, update on the agreement between MLB and the MLB Players Association and the Cuban Baseball Federation. That formal announcement came out. So it's only players who are under contract with the Cuban Baseball Federation who are eligible for this posting system. Others can just sign with teams under the same system as other international amateurs. Sounds like the release fees will be similar to what the NPB

and KBO posting systems use. So it seems like Cuba and the Cuban Baseball Federation have a lot of control over their players, and there's some pretty severe punishments for people who defect and try to circumvent these rules. Evidently, the Cuban Baseball Federation has to release all players who are at least 25 and have six plus years of playing experience, and then they can just sign without having to defect. Anyway, don't think that dramatically changes anything we said in the intro, but more details are available now. Also, this sort of surfaced after we spoke earlier, but more details came to light about Addison Russell's treatment of his ex-wife, Melissa Reedy, as well as a woman named Mallory Engstrom, who also has a child with Russell and had that child while Russell was engaged to Reedy. The Engstrom post details some just petty,

petty doesn't even quite cover it, also vindictive behavior, paying child support in quarters and singles, trying not to pay child support at all. And Melissa Reedy's account, which was published at Expanded Roster, just describes some of the specifics. I don't think any of it would be particularly surprising, given what we have already heard about Addison Russell. But of course, this has touched off yet another round of anger about his continued employment by the Cubs. For all I know, that employment may have come to an end by the time you're hearing this, but obviously they have not shown any inclination to release him to this point. I don't know whether anything here is new to the Cubs or whether they know about all of this from their own investigation and MLBs. But regardless, having the details

surface makes things more uncomfortable for them. Boo hoo, sorry, Cubs. It's sort of like when one of the football players who's been an abuser has a video come out that actually shows that abuse, and then, oh, all of a sudden they're gone or the penalties are steeper. Just seeing it makes it harder for people to ignore. It would be nice if it weren't that way. So this isn't an elevator video, but it is still a harrowing account that makes it harder to hold on to a guy and imagine that he could be redeemed. Clearly, this is a long-term pattern

and doesn't sound like something that would be easily rectified. So we will see if this is enough for the Cubs to cut ties. Lastly, a couple people asked us about pando pooling. The last episode we did. Matt tweeted at us, for instance, to say, I wonder how MLB feels about players with financial interests in each other's careers playing each other. If I'm a journeyman pitcher with few real prospects and I'm facing a hitter in my pool who is a free agent at the end of the year, am I incentivized to throw

them a meatball? And if I had thought of this during the interview, I would have asked about it, but I think the fact that I didn't think about it reflects how unlikely this seems to be to me and to Jeff, because I asked him about it too. It's kind of an interesting thought exercise, but in practice, I don't think it's much of an issue. I think there are very few cases where a player would actually consider it to be to his advantage to try to help out a player who is in his pool because obviously players are just trying to do the best they can themselves so you'd have to have a guy who maybe has already decided that he is going to quit baseball and it's I don't know at the end of

a season and he happens to be facing one of his pool mates it's kind of a remote possibility plus it's minor league games so even if this were to happen in a minor league game I don't know that anyone cares all that much about the outcome of these games, other than the player's teammates, who of course want to win. I don't think this would happen in the majors, because once you get to that point, then you really want to do well to maximize your earning power. So I could envision some very rare circumstances where this would crop up, but for the most part, doesn't seem like a serious problem.

All right, that will do it for today. Thank you for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. Calling 5 listeners have already done so. Frederick Hines, Ryan Beck, Alex Friedland, David Lizerbrom, and Nicholas Rapp. Thanks to all of you. You can also join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild, and you can rate and review and subscribe

to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. We will probably do emails next time, so please do send us some. Podcast at fancrafts.com. You can also message us through the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing assistance, and

we will be back to talk to you very soon yes you do yes you do yes you do yes you do you do the same thing twice