Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1517: Show Minor Leaguers the Money

Episode Date: March 21, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about advice for working from home, Chris Sale’s Tommy John surgery, concerns about pitcher health in a shortened season, the possibility of playing more doubleheaders when baseball comes back, how late would be too late for the season to start, the overuse, injury, and treatment of pitcher Wes Ferrell, […]

The times I've cried, I fill the jar or two Now I drink that jar, whenever I feel blue Hello and welcome to episode 1517 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am doing fairly well, as I told you off-air, subsisting on seamless and video games. That's pretty much my life right now, and not so different from my regular life, but psychologically speaking, a little different to do that by choice than it is to do it when you don't have the option to do much else. So this has been obviously a weird week.

How has yours been? It's been weird. It's been a weird week. Time seems to be moving in very odd ways, sometimes very, very fast and more often quite slow. Yeah. It is Friday. And I thought to myself, what does Friday mean right now?

What is a Friday? What does that mean? Tomorrow's the weekend. I get to be home tomorrow. Right, again. Yeah. Well, I mean, for us, this has been disruptive in some ways, but a lot less disruptive than for many people in the sense that we were both working from home already. You are a managing editor of a baseball site. So obviously, that's been affected by the fact that there's no baseball right now. But it is at least a company where everyone is scattered across the country and works remotely already. So I guess in terms of just workflow, it probably hasn't been that weird. And I work for a website too and so I'm still sort of doing what I usually do except instead of doing baseball preview stuff I'm writing about video games and tv and blogging about bidets weirdly that's everyone needs content right now yep but uh I was wondering if we have

any insights to offer about this work from home life for our listeners who are just getting introduced to it. Because I have seen many Twitter threads or articles out there from work from home veterans who are dispensing what works for them. And I find that when I read those things, I disagree with almost all of it, or at least it's not what I do. And I think you probably do just have to figure out what works for you and someone else's routine or lack of routine while

working from home may not suit you. But I don't know if there's anything that you have found going from a regular office job to this. Maybe that would be instructive. Yeah. I think that you're right that people really just need to give themselves permission to find the thing that works for them and realize, especially if you're not used to working from home, that it might take you a little while to adjust. It would take a little while to adjust under normal circumstances and these are extremely abnormal circumstances. So I guess the first thing I would encourage people to do is just like be generous with yourself and with your loved ones. If you're working from home and you find that your partner is home with you or like I can't begin to imagine what it is like for our listeners or the members of our staff at Fangraphs who find themselves working from home with their kids who are now home because schools are closed. So like, you know, you're going to be snippy with each other sometimes and you should try to forgive that because it's just a weird,

it's just a weird thing. I think we've talked about this a little bit on the pod before. I, I started listening to vinyl when i started working from home because the rhythm of having to get up and turn the you know the record over made me stop and pause and you know refill my water drink a lot of water don't forget to drink water yes drink water uh i found that the the rhythm of sort of stopping to turn it over made me like check in with myself like do i need to refill my water? Do I need to use the restroom? Should I do a couple laps around my house so that I'm moving a bit?

I think that people respond to this in different ways. And obviously how your home is configured is going to have a lot to do with this. But I find it really important to work in a designated work spot, which I try very hard to not have be where I sleep. And I try to minimize the amount of time that it is where I hang out to watch TV. I guess a goal that will be easier now that I'm not watching baseball in the evening. But so I, you know, I find and this sounds awful. I'm about to acknowledge how irritating this is, what I'm about to say. It's that I work too hard and care too much of job interview questions,

but I have a really hard time like stopping work. I have a hard time being good and having a boundary between what is the workday and what is time to spend not doing work. And I find that I have a much easier time sort of reminding myself like, hey, you've done enough. Today's done now. You can go do other things, even though the list of those other things is now very limited. And so I work from a designated spot. I don't know. But I also think that there's stuff that has to get done, you know, to the writers at Fangraphs who listen to this podcast. Like, we gotta, you know we got to write words for Fangraphs.com. But I don't know that productivity is necessarily the right measure of what we're doing right now. So like, you know,

there's a lot of stress. This is like a looming icky threat that feels more present at some moments than at others. And so just, you know, try to get work done, but try to go outside for a walk and stay six feet away from everyone else. Just, you know, we don't want to feel our way through in a literal sense. We're trying to do a lot less touching, but we have to sort of navigate through a really weird situation. And so I think it's okay to try things and have them not work and then try different stuff because goodness knows we are all about to have the time to do that. Yeah. Both of our respective states seemingly are

on the verge of going on lockdowns and maybe should have already, but you can still emerge and see the sun briefly as long as you don't commingle. You can take your dog out for a walk if you have one or just go outside, see some natural sunlight, breathe some fresh air. That can be therapeutic and just confirm that there are other humans out there in their own respective pods and you can wave at each other from a distance. there in their own respective pods and you can wave at each other from a distance. So yeah, I find, you know, I sort of struggle with the work-life boundaries, I guess you could say, just because I am at home and working kind of at weird times. And that's the part of the work from home advice that typically does not resonate with me. The, you know, treat it like a regular routine and it's like you're going into an office, you're not and get dressed up in fancy office clothes and wake up at a particular time.

Yeah. I mean, you know, if it helps you, great. But I have not done that ever and it's been just fine for me. And in fact, I consider that one of the great advantages of being able to work from home is not needing to do that. So if it does inject some sense of normality into your day, then that's great. But I take full advantage of the situation from a cosmetic perspective. So there's that. And yeah, you know, I live in an apartment, so there are only so many places to work or not work. And so those things do tend to bleed into each other. But I do have a room that is the office and has a desktop computer and a desk. And so I can sit there in my desk chair and do work and don't really do that elsewhere.

Although, you know, I'll answer emails or that sort of thing when I'm ranging around the apartment. But that does help. And I don't really build in set breaks, you know, like I saw that Ben Clemens in his Right. I got to go get a refill. So that's something. And having a dog, she wants to play and that gets me out of my chair. At least she's loving the work from home. She gets me and my wife all day, which is nice for her. So yeah, get through it however you can. And if listening to podcasts helps, then we're happy about that too.

Yeah, I think we agree that there are a lot of things to read and watch and some of them feel very important. And we understand when you want to prioritize those, but also, we don't want to emerge from this just total nervous wrecks, although we may not be able to help it. So take some breaks. Hopefully you find the stuff at Fangraphs and the Ringer to be a welcome respite. We are sorry for all the COVID-19 updates, but you don't have to read those ones. You can read other stuff. I'm not sorry for them because they've been helpful for me to keep track of things. If you're trying to forget,

go get Animal Crossing. Go get Doom Eternal. That's what I've done at least, but if you are trying to monitor the baseball news, Fangrafts has you covered there. And I guess we should discuss a little bit of that. And we will be bringing you an interview a little later in this episode. We will be talking to Garrett Brushhouse about the state of advocacy for minor league pay. That's been one of the big concerns in the past few weeks is where will minor leaguers live and train and how will they eat and how will they get food and there have been some grassroots efforts that have helped out

with that and MLB has sort of tentatively announced some early steps to potentially extend some modest meager support but Garrett who has been working on behalf of minor leaguers for years now since he was himself a minor leaguer and has been on the show before, he's formed a new group called Advocates for Minor Leaguers. And we'll talk to him about that effort and the uncertainty that minor leaguers are facing right now and some of the long-term solutions potentially to this issue that keeps cropping up. But before then, I guess the baseball news, the non-COVID related news is Chris Sale's Tommy John surgery, which he will be having sometime soon, which is not particularly surprising given the elbow issues last year. And this spring, the Red Sox had said that it looked like he would avoid Tommy John surgery, and they shut him down for a couple weeks, and he got a couple opinions, and it didn't seem like there was new damage to the UCL.

But when he came back from that shutdown, he was still experiencing a lot of discomfort, and they just decided to go ahead and have it done, which, you know, he'll be out at least until midseason next year. But I guess the more games MLB does not play this year, the fewer games he misses. So I don't know if that was part of the calculus or not, but it seems like he just wanted to get it done and not have it drag even further into next season. So it seems very abstract right now to talk about missing time

when there's no actual baseball being played. But that would be big news and a significant loss if this were in any way a normal world right now. Yeah, it's wild how quickly this shifted from something that felt both inevitable and doomy to something that still feels doomy because everything does. doomy to something that still feels doomy because everything does but also like oh well yeah i may as well get this major medical procedure that might alter the course of your career out of the way yeah things are very odd right now i you know this was we had you know the news of his tommy john we had the news of verlander's groin surgery which obviously the timeline for recovery for that is significantly shorter but it's gonna be interesting to see how this goes because on the one hand, it seems like now is a prudent time to consider these kinds of procedures because you're

able to make decisions around recovery that are completely independent of any baseball timeline. They're just about the medically advisable, but we're also in a moment where we're trying to minimize the amount of elective medical procedures that we're going through as a country because we need to divert those medical resources to dealing with the novel coronavirus. So on the one hand, I expect to see more of these. When Jay Jaffe wrote about sales TJ for us at Fangraphs today, he noted that, you know, Tommy John's a little bit different in that it's very specialized. It doesn't always take place in a hospital because it's being done by specialists and they can do it sort of on an outpatient basis somewhere else. But it's not as if every, you know, baseball player who has some kind of ailments can be able to present themselves at a hospital and say, okay, here I am ready for my surgery.

Isn't this top of priority? The priority list for you. So I'm curious what the actual number of these is going to be because they are medically necessary, but they're not urgently needed necessarily. So it's just going to be interesting. I don't think that we know exactly what sales timeline for his procedure is either. The Red Sox acknowledge that there are other considerations in terms of its timing beyond just the decision to do it. So it's going to be, there's a lot of unsure, unsureity. There we go. That's not a word at all.

Uncertainty is though. There's a lot of uncertainty surrounding the timeline here. It's Friday. That doesn't mean anything, but it's Friday. Yes. Yeah. Tyler Beattie of the Giants is also having Tommy John surgery. So we'll see if anyone else chooses to do that. It's odd. Chris Sale was someone who people were forecasting injury for for years and years because of his unorthodox and sort of violent delivery. And people were saying he'd never last and he'd never be durable.

And maybe he couldn't even be a starter because he debuted as a reliever and a closer in the majors. And, you know, eventually the UCL Gremlins came for him, but they come for so many pitchers that I don't think we can say it has anything to do necessarily with Chris Sale's unique delivery. And clearly, he has held up very well and been quite durable. I mean, we've talked on the show before about how he does have this history of not breaking down physically necessarily in the second half until last season, but not performing as well as he typically does in the second half or in the playoffs. And whether that's because of his delivery or because of his build or because of something else unrelated, he does have that pattern. But clearly his arm held up a lot better than a lot of pitchers who have quote unquote perfect mechanics. So it's very difficult to forecast these things. And the fact that Sale is hurt now after what, 10 years in the big leagues is not time i

don't think to say oh see we told you chris sale he was going to get hurt someday but you know red socks uh did sign him to that extension and circumstances have changed somewhat since they signed him to that deal but that's something that i'm i'm wondering whether this will be a concern when baseball does resume. And I think, you know, Saris wrote about this this week, but the concern about injuries in general and the fact that this is such a strange abbreviated season and that whenever baseball does come back, players will have to come back from this layoff from the middle of spring training on and maybe have to build themselves back up again. And you kind of wonder if there is going to be some higher than normal injury rate just because of these really strange circumstances. And so I know that Bud Black in an article I saw this week that I will link to, he said something about the fact that there could be a three-week sort of second spring training once there is a timeline announced for opening day, which perhaps further postpones the start of the season but is maybe necessary for safety's sake because you don't necessarily want to throw guys who weren't totally built up to begin with and then went for months seemingly without really doing any focused baseball activity. I mean, you could train, you could work out.

If you have a home gym or something, you can come up with some ways to work out. We're going to talk to Garrett about that, but you can't really go to your regular gym or work out with a team or a trainer in the way that you usually would. And so guys are going to have to sort of restart. And so if you just throw them into the fire once the season starts, then they're going to get hurt, as we often see guys get hurt in spring training or early in the season. So I think that's something teams will be monitoring. And I know Jerry DiPoto, I think, said something about how, right, they're not going to

just rush guys back. Like they might start the season, have them on strict pitch counts or innings limits or something. So that's another thing that may make this season weird whenever, if ever it starts, is that you might see some weird pitching staff short term solution as guys are getting built back up. But obviously, there's some rush to get the season started to play as many games as possible. Right. And that's the other part of it, right? It's not like we don't know what the exact flow of this season, assuming there is one, is going to look like. If the league is keen to try to make up some of that lost time, you know, obviously there's going to be a point at which they just have to accept a shorter season. except a shorter season. But, you know, if we have more double headers, if we have, you know, there's all kinds of contortions that you could try to go through to try to pack in more baseball. Well, all of that puts more pressure on starters and relievers and everyone else. So I think that it'll be interesting to see kind of how teams think about that. Because on the one hand, and I got this question in my chat this week, people are saying, well, maybe, you know, you have four man rotations and guys can throw more often because they don't have that wear and tear on their arm.

But we also don't know what this ramp up is going to do for guys in terms of the state that they're going to be in when they finally do report. So I think that it's going to be really interesting to see kind of how teams think about that and whether – gosh, it would just be the worst – well, there are a lot of worst case scenarios. This is actually not one of them, but wouldn't it just be the worst? Wouldn't you just feel terrible? You finally get these guys back and then they blow out. Right. Like it's just going to – so I imagine the teams are going to recognize just how bizarre this whole couple of months has been and how unusual it's been in terms of guys' preparations and be very, very careful. Yeah.

And there's also been discussion about double headers and trying to pack in maybe a couple double headers a week just to get more games played in a short time. Right. And it'd be nice to have more games played. And I just kind of wonder what that does also to pitcher usage. Right. like it would necessitate pitchers pitching on short rest, or I guess just openers and bullpen days, like you'd have to get pretty creative to stick with what we've come to think of as the regular rotation in sort of this compressed or accelerated schedule. Yeah, it's just going to be, man, the stuff that's going to be written about this year will be very interesting

and a tremendous bummer. Yeah. Yeah. Is there like a number of games or a point where you would say this isn't worth it anymore or like we shouldn't try to play a season? Let's just either cancel the whole thing or just go to some sort of tournament or bracket or just, you know, kind of call off what you usually do and say this is just the year of covid19 we're not going to try to bring some semblance of normality to it we'll just we'll give you some baseball but it just it won't be a season or it'll be the one weird year when we just like had all playoffs from the start or something and yeah round robin tournament i just i don't

know what the cutoff is in terms of all all right, we're down to 81 games or a hundred something games and now it's just not worth it anymore. Well, I run a baseball website, so the answer to that is no, there's no, there's no game cutoff where I would say, let's just take a pass on this one. I do think that, you know, as I've had conversations with team employees and sort of taken their pulse on when they think stuff's going to get started and how much baseball they expect to play, you know, one conversation I had and this person brought up like a really good point, which is that it's not as if the pandemic will end and then we'll never see COVID-19 again, right? Like we may well find ourselves in a position where we now live through cold flu and COVID-19 season. And that reemergence might well line up to when we're ready to play baseball again or at least the tail end of when we can play baseball again. And so if there ends up being another compelling public health reason to sort of postpone things, that I'm very sympathetic to.

Sorry. I'm not laughing at the situation. There's like a hair bent in a funny way that's tickling me on my head. Sorry. I don't know, man. We're just leaving it in. Just leave it in just brings you joy this week if it's a hair that's tickling you that's great i guess that's true

you know just like i shifted my headphones a little bit because they were funny and then it led to a chain reaction of events that i just couldn't not laugh about. Here we are. Okay. Anyway, what I was going to say is play baseball unless there's a compelling public health reason not to, in which case, the league has demonstrated that it takes that so seriously. So that's good. But no, I run fangrass.com. So baseball, please baseball. Please do baseball. On the subject of pitcher injuries, can I just, as an aside, tell you about the career of Wes Farrell for a moment? Because I've plugged on this podcast before a newsletter that Craig Wright runs called Pages from Baseball's Past, which is at baseballspast.com. It's a great newsletter about baseball history and does sometimes incorporate statistics and advanced analysis too. And it's especially compelling at a time when there's really no baseballs present. So he wrote an edition of the newsletter this week about Wes Farrell or a few editions. And Wes Farrell, some people may know his brother, Rick Farrell, who is

a Hall of Famer. Rick Farrell had six brothers, one of whom was Wes, but also minor leaguers, George Farrell and Marvin Farrell. All seven of the Farrell brothers played baseball, and all of them except Rick were pitchers. So I feel like he was sort of set up for a Hall of Fame career. If you grew up in a family with six pitchers and you're the catcher, you're getting a lot of practice at an early age. But Rick Farrell got in via the Veterans Committee about 40 years after he retired, and he was a catcher who hung around forever. And unless his defense, which was reputed to be great at the time, unless it's better than war is giving him credit for, his brother Wes Farrell is actually twice as valuable. And Wes

Farrell is, you could say, arguably a pretty deserving Hall of Famer because he was not only a great pitcher, but he was probably the best hitting pitcher of all time, or certainly the modern era. So he had 38 home runs as a pitcher. That's the most ever. And he has a 100 OPS plus for his career as a hitter. And that's easily the best that any pitcher, at least in post-dead ball years, has hit. So he was basically a league average hitter, even as he was starting and being great at pitching. So he was very valuable to teams and his career had kind of

a weird trajectory because he was extraordinarily good early on. And then essentially his career just kind of ended. And it was because of injuries and it was because of the way that teams handled pitchers at that time. And it's just kind of nice to read and be reminded about how pitchers were handled at that time, because even if this season maybe increases the risk in some ways, at least baseball has gotten smarter about not overworking pitchers to just a completely irresponsible and almost sadistic degree. So, Wes Farrell, only three pitchers have ever been worth more war when you combine offense and pitching through their age 29 season than Wes Farrell. And they're all

obviously all-time greats, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Roger Clemens. So Wes Farrell, if you consider his holistic contribution, was in that kind of class. And even just as a pitcher, without even factoring in his bat, he's like 13th on that list. And again, this is going back to 1900. He was worth about 50 war as a pitcher through that point and another 10 war as a hitter. And so he was worth more than 60 wins above replacement through his age 29 season. And he was also just like the most valuable pitcher of any age at that time other than Lefty Grove. But he was overworked.

And as Craig detailed here, so this is an anecdote from the 1932 season when Farrell was with Cleveland and he was 24. So Wright says, hurler had been worked tremendously hard and had thrown more complete games 86 than any pitcher in the league he went through a dead arm phase that was exacerbated when he threw eight complete games in a row and then with just one day of rest the team called on him to pitch in relief in the seventh inning of a tight game the game went into extra innings and just kept going and going until an exhausted feral finally lost in the 18th inning. The 24-year-old pitcher had been knocked around in 11 and a third relief innings, faced nearly 50 batters, and had thrown an estimated 175 pitches. And that, again, was on one day of rest.

One day of rest. And this is like your 24-year-old franchise player or pitcher, and you're just throwing them out there to eat as many innings as these teams were going to play it makes no sense at all and Craig continues in his next start Farrell was knocked out in the fourth inning and reported I just didn't have anything on the ball surprise surprise Wright adds his fastball would come and go the rest of his career and he limped through the rest of that 1932 season. He then had a down year the next year and played some left field, and there was discussion of whether he would just convert full-time to being a position player. And then his arm kind of bounced

back for a while, but it just sort of came and went, and he had symptoms that Craig thinks are consistent maybe with a rotator cuff impingement. And basically one of the best pitchers of all time through his 20s and then was sub-replacement level after that age and really didn't pitch beyond his early 30s in the majors. And that seems to have been the precipitating incident that caused these career-long shoulder issues. And that sort of thing just happened and no one thought anything of it. And I get that guys weren't throwing as hard back then, but that is just wild to think that that happened. And things like that happened much more recently than Wes Farrell's career. But that's someone who, you know, he's

pretty close to Hall of Fame caliber anyway, but I almost just want to put him in as like posthumous compensation for just being misused in such a completely irresponsible way. Oh, and the other thing is how they tried to treat Wes for this injury. So again, this is in the newsletter. But then feral shoulder began troubling him again and never recovered. This is later in his career. He continued to go gamely to the mound while experimenting with a variety of home remedies, including having honeybees sting his arm. Stop it. Until it swelled to twice its normal size. Nothing helped.

Even the honeybee sting cure didn't repair Wes Farrell's shoulder problems. I mean, if that fails, if you have honeybees sting you until your arm is twice its size and still that is not the panacea, then I guess you just call it a career. Do you think the doctor was like, well, we tried the bee thing, so I don't know what's going to work now. That's the last resort. What else are you going to do? You do the honeybee stings. I mean, you've already gone above and beyond. end sometimes you like you know it just helps to sort of put like these sorts of things into perspective to to think about the raw numbers relative to what we're used to now and like

obviously the like the the 200 inning pitcher has become far less common uh in the modern era but you know like like justin verlander led baseball in innings pitch last year he threw 223 innings pitch last year. He threw 223 innings and he faced, let's see, batters faced 847. And then you go to Wes Farrell's baseball reference page and you look at his 1935 season where he threw 322.1 innings. And that feels like a big number on its own, but then you think about it in terms of the leader from, you know, 2019, you're like, whoa, 1,391 batters faced. Yep. And he didn't even, he came in second for the MVP that year. Who was, who, who? I guess it was Hank Greenberg.

Probably. Yeah, Hank Greenberg, yes. But Wes Farrell was worth way more than Hank Greenberg was that year. It's a 10-11 win season. Jeez. Yeah, and Wes Farrell was like one of the lucky ones, really, because there are so many pitchers who you dig back through the annals of baseball history and there were phenoms who were great for a year or two and then they just broke

and you never heard from them again. And so you don't really remember their names. And Wes Farrell at least held up until he was 30 or so to some extent and put together a great career. But there are so many what ifs if you think, well, if they had been smarter about pitcher injuries or if they had had today's medical technology not to put down the bee sting cure because I'm sure that helped many people. What is even the rationale behind the bee sting thing i mean i guess it could be i'm trying to imagine like maybe if you uh have your arm swelled to twice its normal size i guess you're probably like bringing a lot of blood and white blood cells to the area and maybe they could heal you like i guess it's not so different from like bloodletting or leeches or something right i don't know but uh i think there's like internal leeches at that point you're like okay well i guess i'm not pitching anymore we've gone to the

internal leech option also you've got a baseball reference you try to go to leaders and seasons and they have the 2020 season all prepped and ready. I know. I know. All right. Well, that's Wes Farrell. That's the honeybee cure. Another thing before we wrap up. So we're going to talk about the minor league pay issue.

before we wrap up. So we're going to talk about the minor league pay issue. MLB did step up and offer a solution to the seasonal ballpark employees problem, which was nice to see. So each of the teams

kicked in a million dollars to cover the salaries that would have been going to seasonal workers early in the season or in spring training. I don't know if that entirely covers it,

but it's nice to see the league do something and not leave it up to people giving things on their own or players coming forward. So that's good. There is still the question of service time, which, you know, we haven't really talked about much yet because we just don't know. We've gotten a lot of emails from people asking what will happen to service time. And I wish I could tell you, but that's something that MLB and the union are just hashing out right now. And to extremely simplify it, I guess MLB's position would be, well, no season, no service time. And the union's position would be, no, We should be getting credit for this. And so I don't know whether we'll end up on one extreme or whether they will come up with some kind of compromise. It seems like there's been some discussion of maybe like for players who played a certain number of games last season, they would get like a proportional amount of service time or a percentage or something and so players who would have been eligible for free agency mostly still would be probably because it would be really disruptive obviously and would have huge huge financial ramifications for players who were slated to hit free agency and and didn't because

of this and would have to be a year older and coming back from who knows what sort of season. So one would think that the union would really draw a line in the sand and refuse to budge on that because that's a really important issue. Yeah. I imagine there's going to be some uncertainty that persists around this question because whether they play games this year or not is probably going to determine the exact form that the answer takes. But I can't imagine that the union is going to remotely consider something that keeps Mookie Betts off the market an additional year. And yeah, they have to recognize all of these guys are just going to keep getting older. Time only moves in the one direction. And so especially with teams as afraid of guys over 30 as they seem to be, I can't imagine that this is going to be one that the union gives much ground on.

So, yeah. All right. Last note for me, we've had some people email us to say, well, what if local networks just reran last baseball season, for instance, Local networks just reran last baseball season, for instance, and just pretended it was 2019 again and ran a game each day on the day it was played last year, for instance. Would you watch that? Would it be nice to have that? And I don't know that I could actually commit to watching reruns of an entire baseball season. Some seasons more entertaining than others. Like if the Nationals wanted to show

their season, obviously, you know how it ends and that removes some of the suspense, but maybe it would be pleasant to watch again. But here's this week's one of many signs of the apocalypse is that Fox Sports Detroit is re-airing 2019 Tigers games, which like, could you think of any scenario short of a global pandemic that would cause 2019 Tigers games to be aired again so soon? Like maybe as a historical document in a hundred years or something, but otherwise like bury those things as far underground as you can. They're not rerunning all the Tigers games just a few of them i think over the weekend so it's like the season opener which was a good game for the tigers first of all like how hard is it even to select the three or so 2019 tigers games that you're going to re-air because not many

keepers in the bunch especially if they have to be games that the Tigers won. You're already limiting yourself. You have 47 options. Can we just take a moment to remember that the Tigers only won 47 games last year? You're doing gravy. Yeah, yeah. I don't envy the people who had to handpick the good 2019 Tigers games. And then I wonder what the ratings will be if people are so in withdrawal that they are willing to watch one of the worst teams of all time just for background noise. I mean, if that's something that brings you solace, then go ahead. But there are other options. You could watch any 2019 game on MLB TV, and we'll see. It'd be nice if MLB would make that available for free, which they have not done yet which some other leagues have i think the nfl and nba have done that but you could watch those there are mlb games dating back a decade or so and you in a fan graphs post have had some of the staff uh highlight some

good choices that you can all go back and watch so that's an option that's an option and we'll post the link to the sort of search logic for this when this episode goes live. But not only do you have the MLB TV option, MLB, like official MLB, real MLB, won't get in trouble MLB, can tell your Fangraph staff to post links to it. MLB has games on YouTube going back to 2009. Yes. As games on YouTube going back to 2009, and the search for them is a little bit labor-intensive, but you really can watch anything other than the 2019 Tigers. You can pick any other thing to watch, and it doesn't have to be a bad Netflix show. It could be baseball that is fun.

You could pick fun baseball. You can start with the games that the Fangraphs staff suggested, and then you can branch out to other games. And I promise that none of them involve the 2019 Tigers. Just zero of those games. Absolutely zero. Yeah.

And there is some light at the end of the tunnel in a baseball sense, conceivably, because the Asian leagues are kind of approaching their own comebacks. So that's something to take heart in. The NPB has started some team practices without fans in attendance, and it looks like they're heading for an April opening day, possibly April 14th, maybe later in April. And the Korea Baseball Organization is also getting closer to playing real baseball games again. And there's an article Susan Slessor wrote for

The Chronicle where she talked to Dan Straley, the former A's pitcher who is in South Korea now. And he said, I think we're about five weeks ahead of where they are right now in the U.S. And I don't know, maybe that's optimistic because obviously South Korea responded very aggressively to the coronavirus in ways that we did not. And so our recovery and baseball's recovery may linger longer, but at least there will be very high level professional baseball being played somewhere in the world seemingly as soon as next month. And so that's something that may offer some reassurance. Yeah. You know how sometimes just one single hair follicle will lie the wrong direction and then your head hurts. So now we've transitioned to that in terms of my hair problems. Yeah. All right. We can take a quick break you can rearrange your itchy and or painful hair and we will be right back it's tickling it was tickling that's why i was laughing

and now it hurts all right we'll be back in just a moment with garrett brush house to talk about minor league pay. We're all the same in the eyes of God But in the eyes of rich white men We're more than made to be owned like a doll Second class citizen Pay gas, pay gas Why don't you do the math? Okay, we're back and we are joined by Garrett Brushhouse, who is a former minor league pitcher in the Giants organization,

who became an attorney and has been an advocate for minor leaguers and their quest for higher pay. And Garrett, we had you on the podcast many years ago now, more than five years ago on episode 590, when you were just launching a class action lawsuit. And a lot has happened, obviously, surrounding this issue. There's been increasing visibility on the matter of minor league pay, but also slower progress in a lot of ways than a lot of people would like. And you've just co-founded this organization, Advocates for Minor Leaguers, to try to help address that. So before we get into that and the impact of the pandemic, can you give us a lay of the land for anyone who hasn't really been following the evolution of this issue over the past several years?

Everything from the so-called Save America's Pastime Act to some modest pay hikes that have been announced. Where did things stand before this current coronavirus crisis? Sure. So I'd be happy to do that. And yeah, it's incredible that it's been that long. You know, when we first brought our lawsuit back in 2014, I guess one way to put it in perspective is at that time, I had just, you know, somewhat recently retired from law school, and I had one kid then. And now I have three kids, and two of them are in school. So it's been incredible. And yeah, it's been a journey. And it's been slow going. But as you said, there has been some progress. But it's been some ups

and downs. Just to give you an update on our lawsuit, for instance, we have spent a number of years battling in the courts about the scope of the lawsuit and what can go forward and what can't go forward. And we eventually got derailed by the appellate process, which in the world of complex litigation, when you're doing something new that's never been done before with lots of people involved and with well-resourced people involved, things take a while to play out. And so the appeal itself has taken over two years at this point. But luckily, we were successful in that appeal. We had a win in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals back in August

that said that we could go forward with class actions under state law, under the laws of Arizona and Florida for all the work that's taking place in Arizona and Florida, specifically at the spring training sites and under the law of California for the entire California League. So following that win, though, we've had more delays because there's a process after an appellate decision that allows a party to ask an entire court of appeals to rehear a case because originally it's just a panel of three judges instead of the entire court of appeals that takes a look at an appeal. That appeal, after four months of delay, that request was denied. And now Major League Baseball has indicated that they desire to try to request that the U.S. Supreme Court take the case. That process plays out first by what's called a petition, which is the formal request.

And the Supreme Court gets thousands of those petitions each year, and they only take a small number of them. So, you know, we're quite hopeful that we can get that that petition will be denied and that we can get back to the trial court soon. But in the meantime, we just have to wait for that process to play out. So that's just sort of one leg of things. That's on the lawsuit front. But then there's also been the lobbying front that MLB has been working on. And that resulted in 2018 in the passage of the Save America's Pastime Act. That was a long week for me personally. So the Save America's Pastime Act was originally introduced in, I believe, 2016. And it didn't go anywhere when it was initially introduced. It supposedly had bipartisan support. And because it was introduced by a Republican

member of the House from Kentucky and a Republican member of the House from Kentucky and a Democratic member of the House from Illinois. But after two days, after Representative Sherry Bustos, the representative from Illinois, after she heard from constituents and heard from many other people about how deceiving the Save America's Pastime Act was. She withdrew her support, and then it went to a committee, never even got a hearing, was never even really talked about again. And for good reason. You know, there's no reason that what it sought to do was it sought to give an exemption from

our basic minimum wage law to Major League Baseball when it came to paying their minor league baseball players. But then it resurfaced in early 2018. In March of 2018, I was having dinner with my family, and all of a sudden I get a call from somebody at the Washington Post asking me for a comment on what I thought of the chances of this bill being put into the omnibus spending bill that had to be passed. We were in one of those situations that our country seems to be frequently in nowadays where Congress had to pass a spending bill in order to keep the government running. And that's a time period when industries are just able to sneak things in

because it's a bill that just has to pass to keep the government running. And so that's what MLB succeeded in doing. And of course, about 48 hours, they managed to get that snuck into the omnibus spending bill. And it was passed, I think, late on a Wednesday night in the House and then passed by the Senate on a Thursday and then signed into law on a Friday by the president then. And so now, at least at the federal level, there is an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act when it comes to minor league baseball players. But luckily, we are still proceeding under state laws. And so that's why our lawsuit is still alive is, you know, just because you have an exemption under federal law doesn't necessarily mean that you have an exemption under state law. And so that's how we are pushing on with our lawsuit using state laws. I'm curious, and this is something that folks at

home probably just don't have a great sense of, what is the sort of size of your organization as it's constituted now? We're going to talk about the new advocacy organization you put together, but I think it might be interesting for our listeners to hear how big is your team? How many lawyers are you working with? Obviously, you have a multi-pronged and sort of multi-theater approach that you're having to take here to try to improve pay for minor leaguers. So what is a normal day? We'll get to COVID days in a second, but what does a normal day look like for you and what is your team like? Yeah. So first and foremost, I'm an attorney at a law firm that does complex litigation called Corine Tillery. And we're a firm of about 30 attorneys with offices in St. Louis and in Chicago. But our reach is really throughout the country. A lot of our

cases are in New York or in California. And so these are the types of actions that that law firm really does, new complex things that have never really been done before. And so depending on the stage of the case, we may have three attorneys working on it, or we might have 12 attorneys working on it. You know, when we were really busy, which for about two, three years, we were really busy, we had a solid 12 attorneys working on this case, because, you know, there was just that much work to be done on an everyday basis. Now, you know, since then, since the appellate process has come down, you don't need that many people working on it. And so there's a much smaller number at that point. So can you tell us a little bit about what the last couple weeks have been like for many minor leaguers who have been living and working under uncertainty,

not knowing what would happen to them in the short term when baseball would be back, how they would make ends meet in the meantime, because there were some measures that were announced by MLB just in the past couple days that we can mention. But before that, there was really no clarity at all on what support there would be. And even as we speak, there's nothing definite long-term in place. So how have minor leaguers coped and what sort of side jobs have they picked up and what's the mental state of the minor league player base right now? Oh, gosh. You know, it's been tough.

And I say this and I will preface it by recognizing that there are lots of people out there that have it tough right now. We're talking about minor league baseball players right now. But, you know, they are a small part of an entire workforce that is really hurting right now. And there are people all across the country who are scrambling right now trying to figure out what they're going to be doing in the next couple months, where they're going to be working, how they're going to be paying their bills. But that's true also of minor league baseball players who are part of the workforce and perform a job. And it's a job that has value, just like every other job in our economy. And they were at spring training, which is already an incredibly tough and incredibly stressful time period for minor league players to begin with.

Because spring training is a time period where financially they aren't earning a paycheck. They're working 30 straight days without a paycheck. And then at the same time, they're competing with each other and working 10, 12 hour days every day of the month in order to get ready for that season and see what team they're going to be on. And so it's already a stressful time period. And then you have this on top of it and it just quickly just became chaotic. You know, a lot of players reported to the spring training one day and a week or so ago, just as if it was a normal spring training day. And then all of a sudden, they were just told on a moment's notice

that they had to go home. And so a few hours later, they found their way to the airport. It happened so quickly that it just, for a lot of them, it seemed like it wasn't even that organized where they didn't even know how they were supposed to get to the airport. And they had to, several of them I heard from had to pay their own way to the airport and then pay for their own bags to be shipped as well, which, I mean, I hate shipping bags. I try to never do that because it's so expensive. So if you're a catcher and you have several bags, that added up to several hundred dollars. And so now they're waiting to be reimbursed for that. And then they get home and most of them, obviously, they're planning for the season to take place. And so most of them didn't have a place to go to.

You know, they just they did whatever offseason arrangements they had. Well, they were over when it came to where they were living you know what type of part-time job they were doing all that had ended and so they didn't know where to go so some of them moved back in and went into the basement of their parents house some of them are crashing with girlfriends some of them are they're married they might be sleeping at their in-laws house you know staying on the their buddy's couch at the same time they've been told they have to stay in shape, but gyms are closed.

Baseball facilities across the country are closed. And so, you know, they might just be finding a brick wall to throw a ball against. Yes, I've seen videos of minor leaguers squatting livestock or doing handstands. Right, there was the player down in Texas saying, this is my Texas workout now, where he has a pig on his back. Others are doing what I'm doing, which is going into my little home workout room

with 25-pound weights and just getting in whatever we can get in at this point. So everybody's scrambling, and then there's the paycheck issue. Players weren't getting paid to begin with during spring training. And now it's unclear whether once the season was supposed to begin, at the time the season was supposed to begin, it's unclear whether they are going to receive that paycheck then. And if they don't, it's going to be really tough for players because obviously it's going to be a tough economy right now to try to find part-time work, especially when you're a minor league player that might have to leave on a

moment's notice and go back to your team. So it has been a very stressful, very chaotic last week for minor league baseball players. And what has communication from the teams been like? Because you look at guys who are on the 40 man, and not only are they sort of more clear on what money they're going to be receiving, when they should leave, and when they should stay, they're also getting communication from the union, which obviously minor league players aren't. So what has the state of communications been for them and how sort of up to date are these guys in a proactive way? Are they learning about updates to changes in their pay and sort of the state of facilities on Twitter like the rest of us? Yes. So there has been a real contrast.

So at the major league level, since the major league players are represented by the Players Association, Major League level, since the Major League players are represented by the Players Association, they've been getting almost daily debriefings from the Players Association, letting them know the status of things. You know, is there going to be a freeze on Major League transactions? You know, what's the status of their pay? What's going to happen to the service time issues once the season's delayed? You know, they get briefings on that almost every day on the status of those negotiations you know minor league players not so much because obviously they don't have a union looking out for them so first of all there are no

negotiations taking place instead they're just subject to the whims of major league baseball and so it seems like MLB teams are trying to figure out what they're going to do with Major League players first. And so the minor league players for a lot of teams weren't getting much communication at all. And so they were just sent home. And, you know, I think panic is a strong word, but some of them did seem like they were in panic mode because they didn't know what was going to happen. You know, players across the country have just been scrambling at this point. And, you know, every day from what I hear, it seems like the story is changing where they'll hear something from one coach and then another thing the next day from another coach. And,

you know, there's a lot of uncertainty out there right now. So can you talk a little bit about the grassroots efforts that have sprung up in the past few weeks that maybe have culminated in your group, Advocates for Minor Leaguers? But in the meantime, there have been just some sort of informal fundraising campaigns going on in social media. Jeremy Wolf and More Than Baseball, he's been on the show to talk about his organization. And they have been active and they've also partnered with the Adopt-A-Player initiative. So it seems as if even though there are, of course, a lot of people who need money right now and a lot of people who don't have money to spare, there has been at least some public response that has not been coming from the

baseball teams themselves. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's been so amazing to see how generous baseball fans have been. You mentioned a few of those efforts that are exactly that. They're grassroots efforts where a fan of the Twins just starts his own thing on Twitter where he is asking if people could adopt a minor league player. And then all of a sudden, a few weeks later, he's helped over 200 guys. It's just been amazing where he's linking people, just fans up with a ballplayer where they can sponsor a ballplayer and provide them with gift cards and treats and other things that are really needed right now and are even needed during

the season because the salaries are so low even during the season. And then you mentioned Jeremy Wolfe and his organization. You know, they have really found their stride and are helping a lot of guys. They're working with the Adopt-a-Minor-Leaguer program, and they also have their own crowdfunding efforts as well. Emily Walden has been doing fundraising. Eric Sim has been doing fundraising. And all these efforts have sort of come together in this time of crisis to help a lot of guys. But what we're trying to do, we're trying to be complimentary of that and also

in a way bring some of those efforts in a centralized place. Because a lot of those efforts in a centralized place because, you know, a lot of those efforts are somewhat disjointed where, yeah, it's grassroots effort, but, you know, it's just circulating around Twitter without any type of real central leadership. And so, you know, I'm hoping the initiative that we started can take things a step further and can provide a platform to really allow players to come together and provide a common voice and common messaging to put out there. Have you found, I don't know the extent of the conversations you've had around this in the last couple of weeks, but have you found that the mentality of guys who are already major leaguers, who are already union members, is starting to shift in terms of the sort of sense

of obligation they have to guys who are coming up behind them who don't have the same protections. Obviously, I don't want to make light of the struggles that they might be having, but they're in a very different set of circumstances right now than minor leaguers are. Have you seen them being a little more responsive to those concerns and trying to help themselves? Yeah, you know, I hope so. You know, every major league player at some point was a minor league player, and I would hope that they remember what it was like to go through the minors. And, you know, the old adage that you hear time and time again in baseball is, if you don't like it, play better. Well, I've never liked that saying,

and we need to stop saying that because that is not, it's not an appropriate attitude towards this situation. It is not okay to treat your employees as if it was still the 1920s. We have these minimum wage laws for a reason, and companies should abide by them, including Major League Baseball. In baseball, we have these seven-year contracts that if you're 22 whenever you sign one of these contracts and you play in the minor leagues for seven years, you're 29 then by the time that contract ends and most of your value is already gone at that point. Why do we still have these long contracts? The length of those contracts not only hurts minor league players, but it also hurts major league players because you combine that seven years on the minor league contract with the status of contracts at the major league level.

And you see guys at the major leagues then who aren't reaching free agency until they're in their 30s. And we've all seen what has happened to the free agent market for guys who are over 30 years old in the last couple of years. So, you know, we're all in this together. We're all professional ballplayers. And, you know, we're all in this together. And I think, and I hope you are seeing more major league guys realize that. And the guys I've talked to, it does seem like it is shifting now. You know, one of our co-founders of Advocates for Minor Leaguers is a veteran major league player who has been a player rep for the Players Association for several years. And he has always cared deeply about this issue. And he's a big reason that we started this

initiative. You know, he has pushed this along and pushed us to do something and has brought together other voices to our group as well. I'm hopeful that we're going to have many other major league players support us as well because we're all brothers in this game and we need to help each other out. Yeah, I'm curious. I don't know what the motivations of that player are for remaining anonymous, but is there sort of a pressure not to speak out? Are players concerned that their team might be upset if they became an advocate for minor leaguers while they're in the majors? Is that why players have largely been pretty silent or is it just sort of the apathy of, well,

it's not my problem anymore, or even feeling like it's part of the process and you have to earn major league benefits? Yeah. So, you know, I won't, I won't speak to the motivations of this individual player, but, you know, he, he cares deeply about the situation, but he thinks it's best that he stays anonymous at this point. And, um, I respect that. And if there are other, any other major league players who want to support us in some way and stay anonymous, I completely support that as well. You know, not everybody has to be a vocal and, and stay anonymous, I completely support that as well. Not everybody has to be vocal in their support. Some people can help behind the scenes. They can be connectors to other people.

Of course, there are ways to contribute financially as well. As a nonprofit, we are going to be seeking contributions from fans and from major league players and from foundations. going to be seeking contributions from fans and from major league players and from foundations. You know, we aren't going to, we're going to allow the minor league players, current players can join our platform for free. It's going to be a confidential platform for players and it's going to be a free platform for players. You know, we can't be, you know, when guys can't even afford Chipotle for lunch, we can't be expecting to fund our organization off of their backs. Instead, we have to find another way to fight, them and fight with them, and that's by getting contributions from other sources. give us a sense of how you and Ty Kelly and the other co-founders came together to found this and

what you'll be doing day to day and how players are interacting with your group and how fans can if they choose to. Yeah, so it's all it's a bunch of like minded guys that are passionate about this topic. And I should say like minded people because one of our co-founders is Lisa Raphael, who is the founder of a creative agency and has previously worked on baseball-related documentaries. But we all came together as like-minded individuals who saw this problem and saw this void and wanted to do something about it. And probably the galvanizing moment was this winter, whenever there's this plan to shutter 42 minor league teams without any input from the minor league players. And so there was just this overwhelming feeling that, you know,

we got to get out there and do something. And all of us just started talking to each other about how we could, what we could do, how we could best help. And we eventually settled on this platform. And so this has been playing for a couple months now. And with all of the pandemic going on right now, we were somewhat sensitive to launching right now. But then we realized that with all the players were going through, this was the time that we needed to launch because we needed to get out there

and we needed to start advocating on their behalf. We needed to start providing a voice for these players and to get out there and to begin our work. So, you know, we recognize that this is a particularly sensitive time to be beginning our mission, but we think it's the appropriate time and we can't get to work. And we all bring unique talents. So one of the first things that we're going to be doing is just a lot of networking, for instance, because that's step one is just getting players to realize that this is something that they can join for free and confidentially and building that network of players and also building that network of fans, too, because advocates for minor leaguers, as the name implies,

means that anybody can be an advocate. And so if a fan wants to contribute financially, you know, that's great. If a fan wants to volunteer, we'll have a place for that too. Once the season starts, we're going to have some leafleting probably before games where people can go out and maybe hold up a sign and pass out some information cards just to increase the public's awareness. We have an online petition drive on our website right now, which is advocatesforminerleaguers.com. And people can sign a petition that's asking for players' salaries to be a minimum of $15,000.

Why $15,000? Because that's what a full-time minimum wage worker earns in this country. And we think that minor league baseball players should be earning at least as much as a full-time minimum wage worker earns in this country. And we think that minor league baseball players should be earning at least as much as a full-time minimum wage worker. So there are a number of different ways that people can get involved and people can help. And so, you know, over the next month, a lot of it is just going to be building that network of individuals. And practically, how do you plan on going about that in this moment of social distancing? I'm curious what your organizing efforts are going to look like, at least until, you know,

the season resumes and folks are able to get together in person. A lot of phone calls right now. I bet. Phone calls and, you know, social media. And, you know, there are a lot of baseball fans who I think are looking for something right now, too. They don't have baseball games to watch. And, you know, this is an opportunity for some of them to do something baseball related while also doing some some good in this world and you know and hopefully it's a it can be a bit of a

distraction from all this the terrible news we're hearing about the the pandemic and you know it's so it's it's going to be a challenge and it won't be easy. But luckily, we have these modern tools of communication that allow us to do things that we wouldn't have been able to do in the not so distant past. And how much do you think the public pressure has helped in the past few years? We have seen MLB announced very modest pay raises that were supposed to and may still go into effect in 2021. And we've seen some teams elect to give their own minor leaguers raises, again, very small, maybe not as a percentage, but as just kind of a relative thing because the pay was so low to begin with. But do you think the increasing attention to this issue has put pressure on teams in a way that has actually made them act or made MLB act? I think it has certainly helped.

The more people talking about this, the better. Back when I was playing, there was nobody talking about the issue of minor league salaries or minor league working conditions. Again, the prevailing mood at the time was, if you don't like it, play better. You know, I was writing a blog for the Sporting News, and then also for, then later on for Baseball America, where I tried talking about life in the minors. And, you know, initially I wasn't out as outspoken the first year as I was in years three and four when I was doing that writing, partly because in year one, I had to email every piece into the Giants and get their approval before it was published. But, and then year two, I just sort of stopped doing that, which was, you know, it was somewhat of a bold move for a second, third year player in the minor leagues.

But, you know, as I became more outspoken and voiced my concerns, a lot of people were wondering why I was doing it because nobody else was talking about that. And some players would even say to me, you know, nobody else really cares about that, about us. You know, people don't care that I'm making less than the bat boy. They just, I'm playing baseball and I don't think they really want to hear that. I would hear that from some writers then too, when I would try to voice my concerns that, well, you know, that's just sort of the way it's always been and that's not what people really want to read about. But I never really accepted that. And so I, you know, kept focusing on the issue. And then finally, you know, after law school and we brought

our lawsuit and it seemed like people started talking a little more about it. Now there's a whole baseball Twitter, you could say, that's talking about the issue a lot more. For good reason, because it's just been going on for so long. If you want some numbers, 1976 was the year that Major League Baseball players achieved free agency. Since that time, Major League Baseball salaries have increased by several thousand percent. I'm going to say it's over 5,000 percent now. And for good reason. I'm not, you know, saying that those salaries shouldn't rise. You know, they should be in a free market and they should be rising because they're the best in the world

at what they do. And there's an incredible amount of revenue in our game. And in fact, revenue has increased at a higher rate than what the player salaries have. People point to the exorbitant major league salaries, but revenue is rising at a higher rate than player salaries. On the minor league level, though, since 1976, salaries have increased around 75 percent.. Now inflation during, and I talked to a coach who played in that era once and he's like, yeah, you guys don't realize how good you have it. You guys make way more money than I did. And I had to explain the concept of inflation to him. Because, you know, his apartment, I don't know, from a relative standpoint, he had more purchasing power with his money than what guys do today because inflation during that time period has been over 400%. So, you know, that's

how little salaries have increased, you know, since the 1970s. It's just been a crazy 40 years where salaries have remained completely stagnant. And the reason why is because there has been no pressure at all for Major League Baseball to raise those salaries. You know they have an antitrust exemption that allows them to set a floor on salaries across the board that is far below what the market value is. In the economic world we call it a labor monopsony is what you call it, where you're setting the floor, setting an artificial limit on the salaries of a group of workers. And they're able to legally do that because they have this antitrust exemption.

You know, if all the attorneys and if all the major law firms and the industry that I work in decided that they're going to pay all of the first year law students that come out $20,000, well, that would be an antitrust violation if they decided to do that. But because Major League Baseball has this antitrust exemption, they can get together and set those minimum salaries like that. Now, you might ask, well, they do the same thing for the Major League players. They also have a minimum set for the major league players, but the difference is that they went through collective bargaining to do that. And so, you know, even the law recognizes that if you go through collective bargaining for something like

that, then it's completely fine because the discrepancy in bargaining power is more equalized at that point. But for the minor league guys that don't have a union, there's this huge discrepancy in bargaining power, where on one side, you have these young 18 and 19 year old kids who are desperate to enter this industry. And on the other side, you have this group of billionaire owners who are sophisticated businessmen who own an antitrust exemption and control the only entryway into the industry. And so it is about the widest discrepancy in bargaining power you could have. Right. And I do wonder whether this crisis right now will kind of be a motivating force or will be a galvanizing incident. Not that you would wish for this to happen, but it has been so visible because it wasn't just trying to tell people, oh, you know,

minor leaguers have to live with three other roommates or whatever, or get a second job in the off season. It's, you know, they don't know where they're going to be tomorrow or today or how they're going to, you know, pay for anything at the moment. And so there have been a lot of articles and a groundswell of support, and it has kind of come to the fore in a way that it probably wouldn't have with the same intensity. So perhaps long-term, the attention that it's generating right now and organizations like yours will actually be a benefit eventually. But I do wonder, I guess in the short term, MLB has announced that per diems will be paid what would have been the per diems during spring training. And there's some discussion of a longer term solution.

I don't know what that'll end up looking like, but because you were just talking about the advantages of collective bargaining and unionization, is that something that you can foresee coming in the medium or short term future? And if so, how might that happen? Yeah, you know, it's not the express goal of our organization. You know, we're an advocacy nonprofit group. And so, you know, our goal is to provide that common platform and allow guys to speak with a collective voice and also educate the broader public and provide a means of means for fans to volunteer and contribute whatever talents they have financial or otherwise to these ballplayers and to efforts to support these ballplayers but yeah i mean would i like to see a union begin yeah it would be a great solution you know you see what has happened in minor league hockey and they're unionized

and the starting salary in the ahl, which is the equivalent of AAA hockey, is around $47,000. On average, those guys are making $80,000, $90,000 on average. So, you know, it's far different in AAA hockey compared to AAA baseball. You know, as far as this is a galvanizing moment, I don't know. You know, I hope that guys realize that this is a means for them to come together, that our group is set up so that they can do so confidentially. And if they want to be part of a networking group, they can do so. You know, there are guys that are still scared out there. And I get that. I'm a former player myself. But at some point, we got to start standing up

for each other and standing up for ourselves. You know, there should not be any shame in asking to be treated as workers across the country are treated. There should not be any shame in asking for just basic human rights like a minimum wage. You should not have to sleep six guys in a two-bedroom apartment. There is no reason for professional baseball players to do that. bedroom apartment. There is no reason for professional baseball players to do that. You should not, as a professional baseball player, be expected to sleep on the futon in some host family's basement. Host families are terrific. And I had several host families I stay in touch with that are amazing people. But we shouldn't just be relying on the charity of strangers to provide a bed for ballplayers. And they're playing in front of thousands of people each night and are among the best

in the world at what they do. So, you know, hopefully this is a platform to allow players to come together. And, you know, if it takes this moment to help make that happen, maybe there is a silver lining in this. I don't want to in any way portray this as a good thing because this is an awful thing that is going on in our country. And it is an awful thing that ballplayers around the country are having to deal with. But, you know, at the same time, there are a lot of players who are angry about how this has been handled.

And they should be angry about how this has been handled. And, you know, we are there to help them voice their concerns, even if it is in a confidential manner. All right. Well, you can find out more information about Advocates for Minor Leaguers at its website, advocatesforminorleaguers.com, or on Twitter at MILBadvocates. You can also find Garrett on Twitter at his last name, Brush House, B-R-O-S-H-U-I-S. And we will link on our show page to all of the relevant efforts and articles right now. So thank you very much, Garrett. And your phone's been blowing up as we've been talking about you probably with minor leaguers who are looking for your help. So we will let you go and help them.

All right. Well, thank you very much for having me. And to everybody else out there, stay safe. And thank you for your support. All right. Thanks again to Garrett for coming on. I have a little levity for you in a week without a lot of levity. Some of our listeners and Patreon supporters have written in in response to my discussion with Sam earlier this week about

same-named players and teammates. So Patreon supporter Jeff writes in to say, along the lines of players with the same name, Mike Ramsey and Mike Ramsey never played for the same team at the same time, but they both played for the Dodgers two years apart and both were number 37. In addition, they both went to Roswell High School in Roswell, Georgia. They're clearly not related, as a quick glance at their photos will confirm. That's a weird one. Same name, same high school, same uniform number, and same team two years apart. Then there is the story of the Mike Smiths, which was submitted to us by Patreon supporters Chris and Jody. I will read you Jody's message. I enjoyed the stat blast in episode 1516 about players with the same name

and as Sam was going through the list, I was expecting to hear about a couple of former Orioles I remember from my youth, Texas Mike Smith and Mississippi Mike Smith. This was, I believe, back in spring training of 1989 when I was a teenager recovering from the misery of the Orioles 1988 season. It felt

to me like the team was so bad that it couldn't even come up with players with original names. It was like they weren't even trying anymore. We had two right-handed pitchers named Mike Smith, and neither was any good. As it turns out, Mississippi Mike Smith never made the team, and they never played on the same major league team at the same time, so that's why they didn't appear in the research and Sam didn't mention them. But what's amazing is that these guys weren't both just named Mike Smith, they were both named Michael Anthony Smith. So the team decided the best way to refer to them was just to add their home state to their name. While looking for documentation of this earlier,

I found this article, which I will link to, which had another interesting nugget that I had never heard. When they played together in Rochester, the O's AAA affiliate, they were roommates, so that their phone calls, remember, this was before cell phones, could simply go to the same room. Wow. In looking at their pages on Baseball Reference, the O's traded for Mississippi Mike Smith on November 14th, 88, and then, because you can never have enough Michael Anthony Smiths, I guess, they took Texas Mike in the Rule 5 draft just a couple weeks later, on December 5th, 1988. Anyway, sorry for the long message here, but I just thought you might appreciate the story of the two Michael Anthony Smiths on the same team in spring training of 89 and then at

AAA later that year. And I do appreciate it. Thank you very much, Jody and Chris. That will do it for today. While you are supporting yourselves and minor leaguers, you can also support this podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount

to help keep the podcast going. Daniel Hurst, Gene Bernardo, Matt Slingsby, James O'Brien, and Michael DiPrima. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group, which is busy at all times, despite or perhaps because of self-isolation at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

You can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on itunes and other podcast platforms keep your questions and comments coming for me and meg and sam via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for his editing assistance if you're in the market for some reading material during all of this home time, my book, The MVP Machine, How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players comes out in paperback on April 7th with a new afterword. We hope you have, if not a wonderful weekend, as I usually say, at least a livable weekend. Stay safe, practice social distancing, wash your hands, and we will be back to talk to you early next week not tell me when it's got to

end sometimes i'm asking when does it end and you know the shape i'm in please tell me Nobody knows Nobody knows, baby Nobody knows You know you make me so crazy Nobody knows Nobody knows