Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1552: Confidence Interval

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss Rob Manfred’s rapid flip-flop from expressing 100 percent confidence about an MLB season starting to expressing a lack of confidence in an MLB season starting, his ultimatum to the union, how Manfred has floundered at a pivotal time and how that failure effects his future, how some owners’ reluctance […]

And your desperation stinks I can smell it on your breath A certain absolute anosmic Got yourself to blame for this Tell me how you really feel I don't know, I don't know anything I don't know, I don't know anything I don't know, I don't know anything I don't know, I don't know anything

I don't know, I don't know anything Hello and welcome to episode 1552 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. Midweek Meg today. We're going to do some emails, and Sam is absent today, and we will just say up top that Sam is dealing with a little bit until he can return. So we hope to have him back soon. But in the meantime, I am pleased to talk to you, although not particularly pleased about at least some of what we're about to talk about because things have gotten worse since we last spoke and they weren't great then. So to recap, when we last podcasted on Friday, I guess it was, at that point,

Rob Manfred had guaranteed that there would be a Major League Baseball season. He said it was 100% likely that there would be, and subsequently he has backtracked on that. So on Monday, he said that he is not 100% confident that there will be a season. And essentially, we left it last time we talked that the players should just say, OK, when are we showing up? MLB has the right to impose a season of a certain length. And MLBPA, they can put it to an arbitrator. They can file a grievance and play the season, but later get a judgment on whether MLB actually made a good faith effort to play the most number of games possible.

And we said, all right, well, let's settle this. Let's stop this fruitless back and forth and just start the season. And that's essentially what the Players Association said on Saturday, except it turned out that Rob Manfred's response to that was not, OK, we're starting. Here's when and where. But actually, maybe we're not starting. Maybe there won't be baseball at all. How about that? How about that, Ben? Don't like it.

I don't care for it either. I am struck. So the response to him saying that was fairly swift and dramatic, I don't know about the conversations that you had with folks who work in baseball, like work for teams and also other people in our industry. But yesterday was the most discouraged that I have heard people be. And I don't know what happened here. know i don't know what happened here i wonder if part of what has has gone on is that perhaps the commissioner did a poor job articulating to ownership exactly what they were signing up for in the march agreement some of this feels like he is desperately trying to arrive at sort of an additional reduction in salary because that is what ownership

prefers. And they perhaps did not understand that exactly what it is they had signed up for. You know, we've heard subsequent to the commissioner's comments yesterday, we've heard from other people in the game, I think all of whom could be considered in the know including randy levine that under the march agreement the commissioner has the right to schedule the games as long as the players are paid pro rata like we this is a settled this is sort of a subtle question so i don't know if maybe the owners did not realize entirely that that was what they were signing up for and the inevitability that there would not be fans. I don't know if Manfred perhaps thought that the players would just cave much earlier than this

and was underestimating the solidarity that they would show. I don't know. But I don't think that we are exaggerating or being hyperbolic when we say, if baseball doesn't return this year, it's disastrous. If this is the reason that baseball doesn't return this year, it's disastrous. I think so too. And generally, I'm not an alarmist. I'm not a doom pronouncer.

And when people say baseball is dying, I say, well, people have been saying that since almost the beginning of baseball, and it hasn't died yet. pronouncer. And when people say baseball is dying, I say, well, people have been saying that since almost the beginning of baseball and it hasn't died yet. But this does feel like an existential threat in a way that most of them typically don't. I mean, this is a really, really bad situation. And disaster may still be averted here, but even the damage that's been done already, because even if there is an agreement, even if the season starts, I think these people have shown their true colors, right? And it's been reported that something like six or eight or possibly more owners just don't want there to be a season because evidently they feel that it would not be worth their while financially. would not be worth their while financially. And that's a depressing thought, perhaps not a surprising thought if you've been following baseball closely, but the idea that a significant percentage of the people who own baseball teams don't want there to be baseball played,

and not because they're worried about their players' well-being or something like that, but just because they don't think it would be worth the return on investment, that's a sad state of affairs. And for people who blame Rob Manfred for all of this, to an extent, he is just a mouthpiece for the owners. He works for them. He represents their interests. Now, maybe he has not represented their interests well in this case, but it's not as if if you replaced Rob Manfred with someone else that the owners hired, it would be someone that everyone would love and would always have the fan-friendly positions on everything because it's just the nature of the job. I think people who think of

the commissioner as some sort of impartial arbiter or figure who's just looking out for fans or the best interests of baseball or has the unilateral power to just set things right. I think that hasn't been true for a long time. And even when commissioners did have power, A, they were still pretty terrible in other ways. But also that was a different game, different sport, no players union reserve clause. You could just kind of do whatever you wanted. And it's a much different situation now. So Rob Manfred, I kind of doubt he is actually in danger just because under his tenure, teams have done well and made money

and because he's looked on as a good negotiator who's been a hardliner in the past. And I doubt they would want to replace him heading into the CPA negotiations. But you're right. Like if his position is weak weak it's probably because he did not do a good job of communicating to or corralling the owners like if he told them after the march agreement okay all set we did not agree to pay the players their prorated salaries if

there's a season without fans and then it turns out that at the very least, the language was vague enough that the players could convincingly claim that they have that right. And possibly they actually do have that right. That probably makes Rob Manfred look because there's an owner's revolt going on here and you need, what, at least 23 or more of the owners to agree on anything for there to be a season. It has to be 75%. And so if he fails to wrangle the holdouts, that's to some extent a reflection on him because bad as Bud Selig was in some ways, he was at least good at schmoozing and getting everyone on his side, which may not have been the right side always, but he could at

least strong arm people or cajole people into agreeing on things, which doesn't seem to be Rob Manfred's strong suit as a commissioner. Yeah, I think that in the past, you know, and we've, I think, been maybe more sympathetic to some of the lower stakes tinkering that manfred has attempted over the years than a lot of people are because you know i think you gotta try stuff but i don't think that it would be controversial to say that he has never been especially good at the public facing part of being a commissioner, right? He's never been a particularly convincing cheerleader for the sport. I don't think that most fans, I mean, most fans don't really probably have a super developed opinion on sports commissioners apart from a reflexive dislike of them.

There aren't really a lot of popular sports commissioners. No, I mean, I think that like Adam Silver is probably the closest that we have come lately. No, I mean, I think that like Adam Silver is probably the closest that we have come lately. Everyone seems to despise Roger Goodell. You know, he's done some work to earn that perspective. But I don't think that Manfred has ever been especially charismatic or winning. I don't know that he has convinced close observers of the game that he is particularly passionate about baseball as a sport. But I think that you're absolutely right to say that he has been a very effective champion of the owner's

interests in ways big and small. And this is a very public, very high stakes seeming breakdown of that competence. And I think that if he is not able to as you say corral whatever voices of dissent are emerging among the owners which you know i think it's important to remember that there are disparate interests among the owners in much the same way that there are disparate uh interests among the players yes and you know the the calculus for how worth it uh i'm doing scare quotes a season is i could hear them uh yeah might be might be really different for the marlins than it is for the yankees now i continue to contend that that that range of interest is really not the players problems and it really shouldn't be the fans problems but here we are so they are not you know entirely unified

in what they want either but he has to bring enough of a consensus together to further the interests of the sport and if he's unable to do that in a year like this i just don't see how he can remain the public facing voice of the league i just don don't. So that's, that's the thing I'll say. The other thing I will say is I think that fans have a right to know which of the owners don't want to play baseball this year. I think that we should know that. And I think that it's important that fans have access to that information because, and I don't say this knowing that Cleveland is one of those teams, so I want to be very clear about that. But like 14 days ago, Cleveland asserted itself as, that baseball team asserted itself as a civic institution. And that is a role that teams like

to go to bob in and out of, right? They like to be a center of community, a place of togetherness, and also a business that's purely motivated by profit and we keep telling them to pick a lane and they keep saying no i can't hear you but i think that uh this is a very clear and definitive answer to that question of which thing they are and so i think fans have a right to know that especially if you know i don't know what maybe one of those teams needs um needs a new ball, maybe one of those teams needs a new ballpark. Maybe one of those teams wants stadium improvements. Maybe one of those teams wants a concession from a local government over a minor league ballpark. So I think the fans have a right to know that because

I think it colors in a way that is very reasonable, our understanding of just how in it those owners are. And I think that if they are going to say, no, we don't want a season because we either misunderstood what we agreed to in March or knew what we had agreed to, but assume that we could break the unions back and having failed in doing so we just don't want to play the pay them right and we don't want to have the commissioner impose a shortened season because it makes the argument for grievance really clear considering that just last week baseball was saying it could play at least 76 games if that's the reason they don't want to play i don't think that they should get to own a baseball team.

Yeah, I mean, I think just the way that MLB and the owners have claimed that the sport is a partnership now between them and the players, where it was never really a partnership when times were good and when the league was raking in money, it wasn't, hey, it's a partnership, we'll give you more than we agreed to because we're partners and that's what partners do. No, it's only a partnership when times are bad and now they want them to share in the pain. and yet you don't want to play if it's going to cost you any money. That does seem like information that it would be fair for fans to know. I don't know if there's a legal right for us to know that, and I doubt we will know that. They certainly won't want that to become public knowledge. Perhaps it will leak somehow.

But yes, if you are going to tell us that you deserve some portion of your ballpark publicly funded, let's say, then yeah, maybe you should also disclose whether you were willing to play baseball when times were tough and it was supposed to be some solace to the public. But really, it would be better if everyone just wanted to play baseball, but I guess that's too much to ask for. So all of this might just be posturing. I kind of questioned why Manfred even said that he was 100% confident in the first place. I mean, I resist saying that almost all the time just because I'm never 100% confident of anything. I don't want to make guarantees because I don't. It takes hubris to guarantee something. We're all at the mercy of the world but the fact that he did guarantee that maybe was kind of a negotiating tactic he was trying to cow the players into saying okay he's really going to impose the season if we don't agree to additional salary cuts so i guess we'll go along with it except that didn't

happen and maybe the owners were not prepared for that to happen maybe they're not used to the players having such a unified front and maybe they're a bit peeved about it. Maybe they're unnerved by it. I don't know. But now that they're saying, or Rob Manfred is saying for them, that they're not sure if there will be a season, it is possible that that is a further negotiating tactic, that he's hoping that that will scare the players and that they will cave and say, well, if we don't agree to less salary, we will get no salary. And I don't think that will work. I think the players have been very unified and have shown a lot of resolve to this point.

So it doesn't seem like the owners are going to break the union over this prorated pay issue. It's also possible, as others have pointed out, that this is a stalling tactic, that this is a way for Manfred to run another week or two off the clock to the point that he can impose a 50-ish game season, and that would actually be the most that you could conceivably play at this point. Because the problem with the 48 or 50-something game season that the owners were said to be considering was that even now, if you were to start the season today, you could play a 60-something game season, maybe even a 70-game season, and not

have it go beyond when the regular season was scheduled to end. So that leaves them open to the arbitrator saying, well, they didn't make a good faith effort to play as many games as possible because they could have played 70 and instead they said we'll play 50. And therefore, Rob Manfred has said that they will not agree to start the season unless the union waives its right to file a grievance and go before an arbitrator, which is a right that they legally have. And further, seems like a right that you would not want to compel people to give up unless you were somewhat worried that you would be found to be in the wrong. Like if you think that you have operated above board all the way and that no one could find fault with what you've done, then you might say, sure, file your grievance, bring it on. No arbitrator would side against us. So the fact that they are trying to get players to waive that right for no particular reason seems to suggest that maybe they're a little bit worried

that the way they've operated to this point could cost them hundreds of millions of dollars or more in the future. Yeah, it has some very sibling squabbling uh don't tell mom and dad kind of vibe to it um yeah i i when i have not made any mistakes i famously ask the other person to waive the right to seek remedy against the mistakes that i've made it's just like a famous tactic of mine yeah it's it seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that they they goofed they have aired and uh they haven't aired baseball it's a little wordplay joke from me to you ben gotta keep it light because everything is terrible yeah but but yeah i don't know i don't really have much to add there except that i think it would be good for them to try to play some baseball games if they can do so safely.

that this year will prove to be universally unprofitable, which I think even a cursory glance at the numbers and all the analysis that has been done of them has proven to not be true. But even if we wanted to concede that, you're not guaranteed to be endlessly profitable as a business. That's not how business works. And I appreciate that people are going to say, well, Meg, other businesses are laying people off their cut and pay.

And that's true. But most mom and pop businesses don't have access to the credit that baseball teams do. And they don't operate under an antitrust exemption. And they don't have us pay for their pizzeria with our tax dollars generally. So I'm not sympathetic to that argument. You're going to make plenty of money. They literally signed a billion dollar plus postseason TV deal extension with TBS, which broke over the weekend. They signed that deal. They were like, hey, you know what?

We get more money, which would suggest that someone somewhere thinks that broadcasting baseball is good business because they're willing to pay a billion dollars for the privilege yeah great timing on that do you think manfred was like hey could we hold off on the announcement about us getting a giant new contract until after we're done claiming that we have no money to pay people? I hope that he had no idea and he opened Twitter and then his face was like a slow motion sneeze. The other wild card here is COVID, which that's in some ways the most frustrating aspect of this whole thing, is that if you wanted to cancel the season for any reason, you had the perfect scapegoat, which was a pandemic that has brought the country to a halt in a lot of ways. So you could have said, hey, we can't play. There's concern about a second wave. The first wave is still cresting. Certain states in

which we would be playing baseball still have rising case rates. We can't actually conceivably safely play the season. We have to put our players' health and safety first. No one would have held that against baseball. No one would have abandoned baseball. No one would have said, I'm never watching baseball again. We would have been bummed out, but that would have been that. And I think we would have all moved on and come back and been excited for whenever they are able to play. And now that route is still a possible way that this all ends, but they've kind of poisoned the well already to the point that if they do end up saying, well, turns out that we can't play because of COVID, I don't know if anyone will really believe that that's the real reason, even if it's a legitimate reason. And that's why the timing of the leak yesterday was somewhat suspicious. As some people pointed out, the AP reported that there had been a letter from Dan Halem on MLB's side that noted that several players or team personnel have tested positive

for COVID and didn't disclose their identities, of course. And it's not shocking that someone in baseball, one of the thousands of people connected to baseball, would have contracted this disease that so many other hundreds of thousands of people have had. But the timing of that news suggested, well, maybe MLB is putting this out there just to kind of cover their bases just to, so that they can convincingly claim later, well, we just, we had to bang the season because of COVID. But at this point, even if that's the reason they give, I don't know that I'll be able to believe that because we know that some owners don't want to play regardless of the

pandemic, regardless of the health and safety. So they've really ruined that route too, which would have been a good face-saving way to get out of this, even if the economic issues were the real reason. You could have used that as a good cover story. And now I don't know that it would be convincing, even if you tried. I think that this is what happens when people have not heard no for a really long time there's just there's a hubris to believing that you're going to just always get what you want and be able to strong-arm people into conceding money and time and risk for for nothing and you know i think ownership has succeeded in getting by and large getting what it wants for a very long time and this time they were met with some pretty profound solidarity and they don't

seem terribly sure like sure-footed about how to proceed in the face of that um and i think you're right that now we're all gonna say like oh yeah sure it was covid uh-huh right as an aside can you imagine if the baseball biodome thing in arizona had happened while we're watching maricopa county have terrifyingly high new case rates that could have been very bad we would have felt very uneasy about diverting resources to a baseball experiment in a moment like this but yeah yeah, it has revealed some very longstanding but unsavory aspects of the game. And I think it's going to be really hard for anyone who's affiliated with ownership or the league central office to sort of try to cheerlead and say the thing they want is more baseball because right now you have the best player in baseball asking to be able to play baseball

and having to ask to be able to play baseball. My child's like, hey, can we play baseball? Fernando Tatis Jr. really wants to play baseball. I know because it's on his Twitter account. Fernando Tatis Jr. really wants to play baseball. I know because it's on his Twitter account. I find that I think that where in prior instances of protracted conflict between ownership and players, fans have been inclined to side with ownership because they're siding with teams and they don't necessarily appreciate that they are by proxy sort of siding with ownership.

I think that baseball's in for a much more mixed bag this time because I think the argument, we want to play baseball and they don't want us to, is a pretty compelling one. Yeah. And of course, that's a somewhat simplified argument and it sounds good. And if you want to dig into it, of course, they're not saying they want to play baseball at any cost, nor should they. So if someone were inclined to hold this against the players, they could still say, well, yeah, they say they want to play baseball, but they don't want to play if they have to take an additional pay cut or something, which is true. But it certainly does seem like the sentiment is more on the player's side this time, at least in our bubble, to the extent that we can tell. It's hard to tell whether the media and Twitter sentiment reflects real life. And I know there

is a poll in the field right now. Morning Consult is doing some polling about this, and I will be curious to see whether it differs from, say, 94 or 2002, when public sentiment was pretty squarely on the owner's side. I wonder whether they've screwed up enough finally to actually send people into the players camp, but I guess we'll see. So anyway, it's a depressing time to be talking and thinking about baseball, really. We had a Patreon supporter write us the other day and say, you know, your episodes about the labor issues lately have been kind of a downer, and I haven't enjoyed them all that much. And I get that. It's not what we would like to be talking about in an ideal world. It's hard to be totally upbeat about baseball right now, and it's also hard to totally ignore these issues and pretend that everything is fine.

So I don't know that there's a way around talking about it, and I don't know that there's a way around talking about it. And I don't know that there's a way to talk about it that makes you feel better about the sport. So I'm sorry about that. And I think that talking about labor issues and economic issues and whether the owners want baseball to be played was not what initially drew us to the sport as fans or as writers or podcasters but it's what we have to talk about right now because there are no games being played and this is what decides whether there will be games played and you really do have to worry about the long-term future of the sport more so than usual if this actually ends things and i'm still sort of hopeful. I mean, to say I'm hopeful, like the best option remaining right now, it seems like realistically is than not having any baseball played and driving people away from the sport for years to come.

There's no way that they end up making more money by not playing any baseball and by ensuring that people care less about baseball in the future. come to that realization, even if they do have to sort of suck it up and crawl back to the table and swallow their pride a little bit and say, we made the last offer that you rejected, but we are now going to negotiate against ourselves and offer you something or agree to start the season with prorated pay or whatever it is. I hope that they do that, that they have enough of a survival instinct to realize how disastrous the alternative would be. But frankly, they don't have a great track record of long-term thinking or of putting the best interests of the sport ahead of short-term interests or petty concerns or just being mad about getting their way. So not as confident as I was, but still somewhat hopeful that there

will be baseball. And then we'll just have to decide can we wholeheartedly even enjoy this given the way it happened and the health concerns and everything else but that's a bridge we can cross if and when there is a season i guess i just don't understand what what positive effect or even neutral effect they think that this could have on say their franchise values right you know that part of it I think that there's a very clear and convincing argument about the long-term health of the sport and what course of action is better or worse for that. But even if you wanted to boil it down to self-interest, like, it's clear that the really big money, the biggest money for these clubs comes to ownership in the event of a sale.

And they have experienced just sort of runaway franchise values. And I know we don't know them exactly and the Forbes numbers are estimates, but we have some recent sales to point to. Yeah. So we have a good sort of market-based number for our understanding of that. And if you end up in, you know, in violation of your post-season television contracts, if you say to your television partners, you know, this is the approach, we are clearly prioritizing extracting as much money as we possibly can from the players. And that is a higher priority to us than living up to broadcasting, you know, which like this is not the point, but it can hurt teams in any number of ways, not the least, which is that they also going to continue to see anything resembling the kind of appreciation and asset value that they've had over the last couple of years. If this is the way that they are treating the sport, you know, they had an opportunity to really, we've talked about this, to recenter baseball in sort of the American experience of sport, and they just decided not to. in sort of the American experience of sport, and they just decided not to. So that feels very short-sighted in a totally self-destructive sort of way.

It's all destructive. It's all very bad, to be clear. It's devastating no matter what. But that one I find especially strange, given that there are going to be other forces in the media landscape that might start to put some downward pressure on those asset values. Those TV deals are not going to be endlessly growing. We are probably going to reach some sort of bubble when it comes to broadcast stuff. So this seems both petty and exacting of concessions that they expected to try to fight over in the next CBA and just so idiotic and irrational and it's in in terms of their own understanding of their interests so I I don't

know it seems it seems bad Ben it seems like it seems pretty bad and it seems like a strong commissioner to help steer them in a better and more productive direction would be useful here and Rob Manfred has sort of revealed himself to just really not be that guy. Yeah, the amount of money that they're holding the line over and threatening to blow up Major League Baseball over just isn't that much in the grand scheme of things and probably pales in comparison to what they would be losing by giving up this season. So it really just does not make much sense. And let's hope that they come to their senses before it's too late. And let's hope that COVID even allows a season to happen if they should agree on something before whatever that deadline is.

So let's answer some emails, some of which will be about this and some of which will not. By the way, Mike Trout Has been worth almost 5 fictional War in baseball references Out of the park baseball simulation Fake Mike Trout is hitting 312, 463, 628 In 72 games And 325 plate appearances

That's 4.7 war that's pretty good But it's not real But it probably would be real if they were just Playing which I know is not entirely major league baseball's fault they would not have been playing to this point anyway but it's still sort of sad to look at that and think about what might have been it is a very strange thing i realize that this is you know uh not a universally relatable experience so i'll preface what i'm about to say with an acknowledgement of

that. But I really want to be so out of my mind stressed about positional power rankings right now. I'm bummed I'm not stressed about that. That's where we are. It's where we've come. We've arrived at that. Make her more stressed, or at least make her more stressed about other things. I feel very stressed. That's the other thing that I hope people kind of remember is, you know, I don't need to be the face of this because like on a relative basis, I am doing just fine. But they're just playing so fast and loose with so many people's livelihoods.

You know, the players are the most prominent example of that and their careers are short and they're not going to get this time back. And that might prove to be devastating for some of them. an example of that and their careers are short and they're not going to get this time back and that might prove to be devastating for some of them so i you know like that's the most obvious example but there are just so many people in the game and in its orbit whose futures and livelihoods are uncertain right now because of the decisions of the owners and the commissioner. And I feel furious about that because it's so unfeeling in a moment when there is so much in the world that is stressful and uncertain and terrifying. And then they're doing this and it's just unforgivable.

So, yeah. All right. Well, here's a question on that topic from Ryan Nelson, Patreon supporter, who says, I am pro player. I believe players to be criminally underpaid for the first decade of their career may be figuratively for major leaguers under team control, but quite literally for minor leaguers making less than minimum wage. I think the most generous way to describe service time manipulation is scummy.

And not surprisingly, I view the current MLB to describe service time manipulation is scummy, and not surprisingly I view the current MLB sandstill through my biased lens and blame the owners for trying to take advantage of the players and a national crisis to socialize their losses and mitigate their risk, all while manipulating public perception against those players. But teams seem to be gambling that no matter how egregious their behavior, fans will come back, and anecdotally I believe that to be true. Even given all I said before, I am a fan of a team, I will watch that team's games, and given the opportunity, I would still buy tickets to go see, quote-unquote, my team. So given that in my heart of hearts, I do have an allegiance to Laundrie, what can I do to still support players and try to improve their situation?

What leverage do I as a fan have over teams to change in ways I see as crucial? This is a really great question, and it's a hard one to answer, given how automatic some of the... How do I want to say this? Given how automatic some of the mechanisms of change we as consumers have when it comes to baseball. So like if you subscribe to cable, for instance, you may or may not be able to specifically cancel your regional sports network that carries your local baseball team, right? It's probably bundled with the rest of your sports stuff. That's why my mom has the golf channel. She's like, I don't want this. And they're like that.

Well, sorry, you have golf. No one wants it. That's not true. Golfers, I don't know. It's an ecological disaster, but that is a separate podcast. Anyway, golf, right? She's like, I don't want this. And they're like, it that is a separate podcast. Anyway, golf, right? She's like, I don't want this. And they're like, it's part of the package.

So that part's hard. If you are a season ticket holder, one way to affect this kind of change, or at least to make your position understood to the team, is to cancel your season tickets and tell them why. is to cancel your season tickets and tell them why. But it's really hard to vote with your money in a way that is meaningful. I think that to the extent that you can try to communicate with teams, whether it's on social media,

and yelling at the Twitter account, it's just some social media manager is doing their best. But you know what I mean? Like you can write letters, but the fact of the matter is it's really hard to make an impression because part of why we're in the situation we find ourselves in is because there has been as much decoupling from sort of the team itself and its revenue streams. You don't have to be a good baseball team to make money. Teams have a lot of alternate sources of revenue at their disposal that are completely divorced from the product on the field.

And some of them are divorced from gate receipts, right? And so it's very tricky to do this. And so it's very tricky to do this. I think that the way to send a signal is a coordinated effort to not watch the game. I feel weird recommending that as the managing editor of Fangraphs. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough to say, well, just don't pay attention to baseball. If you love baseball, that's quite a sacrifice that you are making personally. And your turning away from the sport and depriving yourself of something that brings you joy and not actually changing anything. Also, if you are depriving teams of revenue, you may indirectly deprive players of revenue, too, because it does, to some extent, trickle down a little bit.

At least if revenues decline, then teams would use that as an additional reason not to spend on players. So it's a tough thing, I think, for any one individual person to do something about. Now, if you're talking about minor leaguers, of course, there are ways to donate directly if you are so inclined or to contribute to organizations that help minor leaguers or just to advocate for minor leaguers in general. And I think the public pressure there has helped to an extent, not as much of an extent as I think we would like, but there is at least more pressure being put on teams now to pay their minor leaguers than there used to be. So I think that's something where if you're vocal about that, you could possibly help. And I don't know what you can do at the major league level because, you know, we have people every now and then say, like, I don't like my team anymore because of the way my team operates. And I want to be a fan of some different new moral team. And so which team should I choose? And I know I remember Sam

answering one of those emails and just saying like, they're all bad or, you know, like it's pretty hard to find one that has never done anything or won't do anything. And even if you could make yourself a fan and divorce yourself from whatever lifelong attachment you have to your team and transfer that to a new team it's quite likely that whatever team you think of as the virtuous team is also doing something that's not so virtuous or will do something that's not so virtuous and it all really depends on the ownership team and the regime that's in place currently which can change at any time either positively or negatively so seems like maybe kind of a fool's errand to

switch to some different major league team that, you know, like there are teams that do service time manipulation and other teams that don't or don't do it as egregiously, let's say. And there are teams that pay their minor leaguers a little more than other teams do, but we're talking variations on a theme here. They all kind of do it to a certain extent, and the whole system is set up that way. So it's pretty hard to cut yourself off without in some way enriching this entity whose practices you may disagree with. I think that, you know, when it comes to minor leaguers or perhaps more direct form of action, like you said, there are a number of organizations that are advocating on their behalf. I think that this is a place where, you know, you might feel a little goofy doing it, but you can really, you can write your representatives. Part of why minor league players find themselves in the position they do is because

of federal legislation that specifically exempts them from some federal labor laws that would otherwise require them to be paid more so like sit down and write your congressperson so that's the thing that you can do you know to the extent that you're comfortable express support publicly for the players the players association have conversations with like your friends who are less engaged with baseball when they say those greedy players it's like well right be like point of information and you don't you know they don't have to read lords of the realm although they should read more to the own but like they don't have to do that to have a better understanding of how the dynamic that's playing out right now between the players and the owners is you know the same as the one that plays out between workers and management

all over the place just with a lot more zeros at the end of it so you can have those conversations to kind of help other more casual fans understand what's what because the league is fairly opinion-proof. Things have to be really bad. They have to be real, real bad for the league to be like, oh, God, we've got to respond to public opinion. But this is a place where it could get real bad. It's trending in that direction. So help your fellow fans sort of understand what's what

because the Players Association is the organization that's really best positioned to do this kind of advocacy. And, you know, they're a union. They don't, they're going to do what they're going to do. But I think that helping your fellow fans

sort of understand what the real dynamic is. And just remember, just remember, the thing that gets you excited is it's the players. You're not watching a Cardinals game because of DeWitt. Right. So one solution to this, as proposed by our listener John, also a Patreon supporter, is if the players just start their own league.

That is John's question here. Can they just bypass the owners? He says, is there any way the players and the agents could bypass the owners and stage a season or perhaps a tournament on their own? I suspect there is some sort of legal impediment to that in the CBA, but would there be a creative way around it? What if Congress got involved around the antitrust exemption? I'm thinking about the way that stars and their agents began to bypass the Hollywood studios in the 1950s. Could something similar happen? I'm a knee-jerk labor guy, so I'd love to see the owners get their comeuppance. So this is tough also. And yes, there is a legal impediment to that. So

all the players are under contract currently and there is a uniform players contract and the language in there is pretty clear it says the player agrees that while under contract and prior to expiration of the club's right to renew this contract he will not play baseball otherwise than for the club so that's pretty clear i suppose there could be some situation where maybe the owners didn't hold up their end of the bargain and they just didn't allow baseball to be played and maybe players could just collectively get out of their contracts somehow. I don't know if that's subject to arbitration, but that's a pretty tough hill to climb. tough hill to climb. So that's the immediate obstacle. And of course, some players are under contract for years and years. Even if you could get around that, that would be one of the biggest impediments. But there are still obstacles, of course. There is, A, the fact that people root for laundry and are loyal to teams. And so there'd be some resistance, I think, to following a brand new upstart league. If it included all the players that we know and love, I think people could get over that. But

then the question is, well, where do they play? And there are only so many places that are suitable for well-attended baseball games to be played. So of course, you could play in any number of baseball diamonds across the country, but how many of those are capable of hosting thousands of people on a major league quality surface? There are not a whole lot of those, suppose that's more feasible now because you could stream them if you wanted to, or maybe if there are no MLB games, the TV broadcasters could void those contracts and make new contracts with the new Players League. I don't know. I mean, this has been tried before. There was a Players League, a short-lived Players League in the 19th century, and there was talk of a third major league, the Continental League, that was supposed to start in the 19th century and there was talk of a third major league the continental league that was supposed to start in the early 60s and that didn't happen so it's tough to get around

just the hierarchy and the facilities that mlp has and the tradition associated with it but the legal language seems like the immediate obstacle yeah i think it would be i think it would be tricky both from a legal perspective and as like a true substitute i think that faced with that set of circumstances much more likely course of action for the union is just to pursue a grievance against against baseball to get get things rolling get them played but it would be kind of cool yeah i do think that we would quickly learn how important quality broadcasting is to our experience of baseball you know our brains are trained to anticipate certain angles being available to us in super slow-mo.

When you're at the park, you understand that you are engaging with the sport in a different way. It is not mediated through television. I watched Trevor Bauer live stream a batting practice, whatever that was, back in June, Decembercember whenever the hell he did that in the desert and uh you know it was um it was illuminating for a couple of reasons you're like wow i miss baseball and then you're like wow this is not very watchable yeah because you know you couldn't hear them and the angles were bad and that's fine like I don't think that they went in being like, this is going to be like a Fox Sports broadcast,

but it would be great fun in person. But of course, we're not going to be able to go to games in person. So in order to see them and know anything about a Barnstorm League like this, it would have to be broadcast because you can't go. You can't go right now. Yeah, right. There'd be no revenue so right yeah yeah that's uh not feasible in the short term i would say all right william in toronto says with the nba set to return at the end of july we'll see about that there's some question about that too now but the 2020 to 2021 season seems very likely to run from December to

August. It seems likely based on reporting within NBA circles that this change will be permanent. It would limit how much the NBA competes with the NFL at the start of its season and would move its playoffs so they are not competing with the NHL, which as a Canadian would be a big boost to NBA popularity here. As a basketball fan, this change seems obviously beneficial. I cannot see a downside. As a baseball fan, however, this terrifies me. U.S. national media outlets barely cover baseball when it overlaps with the NBA and NFL seasons as is. If baseball is forced to compete with the NBA for almost its entire season, it no longer has a comparative advantage of having no major sport competition.

I don't want to sound fatalistic and the world is depressing enough as is, but how bad would this move be for MLB, particularly if the season is canceled this year and there is labor strife next year? I have a hard time being even remotely optimistic about the future growth of the sport in North America, at least. Is there an upside to this move for baseball that I am not seeing? in North America at least, is there an upside to this move for baseball that I am not seeing? Is it naive of me to think that it wouldn't be as bad as all that? Because the season now can extend depending on how long the playoffs go, because the NBA playoffs can just go on for an age. Their season can run to the end of June. And so, I mean, it's not great to have protracted overlap i suppose but i think as long as you have october to yourself it's probably fine because that's the national looking audience

anyway and most of the i think the the interest in baseball is sort of inherently local and more regional with a couple of exceptions, right? Like you do have national games broadcast, but you also have the option of shifting stuff around. So you're broadcasting day games. So I don't know. I mean, I think that competition is probably not great for baseball, especially in a moment like this where baseball doesn't think that baseball is good for baseball, seemingly. But I think it would be survivable. Yeah. I don't know if I see an upside. No.

I don't think I see an upside, but I don't know if it would be disastrous. You do have the NFL, of course, in October and starting in September. So that's a problem. So you'd have less of a window of exclusivity because you'd have hockey during the first part of the season and, well, you'd have NBA going on until August and overlapping with the entire MLB season up to that point. Then hockey would be over and then football would start

like, you know, weeks after NBA ended, I guess, right? Or maybe the NBA playoffs. I don't know exactly when they would end, but maybe that's August. So there'd be almost no time, I guess, when the hockey and basketball playoffs end and before football starts when baseball does have the calendar to itself and does get more coverage presumably during that time. So I don't think it would be good. It can't be good to have less exclusivity and more competition. I don't know if that in and of itself would be the nail in the coffin or anything, but if you couple that with the way this season has gone and if we do get the disaster scenario of this season not happening because of money and the other major sports happening and then the NBA season starts in December and goes until August, that's not great. No, it's definitely not great. And if you look at 95 and you say, okay, well, in 1995, the attendance drop-off was roughly 20%, and then eventually those fans came back and the revenues came back again, and it's possible that baseball would recover from this too.

But if you do have more competition from other sports and just the kind of fracturing of the monoculture and more entertainment options and all of the other factors that were not present in 95 that are present now plus the possibility of the pandemic lingering and the possibility that the economy will not recover it's really a pretty dire confluence of circumstances, I think. So if it were a normal world and the only change were that the NBA moved by a couple months, I don't think that would be utterly disastrous, but it's not good in the best of circumstances. And as we are currently in the worst of circumstances, it would probably be extra bad for baseball.

I need to remember about hockey, Ben. I need to keep remembering about hockey. You're right, obviously, about football in October. I know that because sometimes the season ticket package that I share with my family, they're like, do you want to go to games in October? And I'm like, yes, but I will be stressed the whole time. So no. But I need to remember about hockey, Ben. Keep forgetting about hockey. in October and I'm like yes but I will be stressed the whole time so no but I need to remember about hockey Ben keep forgetting about hockey gonna have a hockey

team here you know I like hockey good sport fun super fun live remember when we could go to sports live yeah yeah so no I would not be happy about this if I were Major League Baseball if I were a a single sport fan or even a multi-sport fan of both of those sports.

No, doesn't seem ideal. But that is something that I know the NBA has been thinking about for a while anyway, and it seems to make sense from their perspective. Yeah, it's just, you know, the key, friends, will be to be a Mariners fan because then you have no conflict. Yeah, sure. Because our NBA team, our men's basketball team, first of all, just go watch the Storm play during the summer because they're fantastic and super fun. Those games are rad and they're very good at basketball.

But for the folks who still miss the Sonics, just spirit it away in the dead of night. Yeah. Like a thing you spirit away in the dead of night. Yeah. Like a thing you spirit away in the dead of night. Yeah. Anyhow, just be Mariners fans. You'll be so happy. Uh-huh.

And you get Octopers off anyway. Right, exactly. All right. Good on you, Tunk. Kyle from Chicago says, I have always been frustrated by the first round of the playoffs being only five games, but now that length of the postseason has become such a sticking point with owners wanting more games, isn't this an obvious time to expand all playoff rounds to seven games? Instead, I'm reading that owners are proposing the opposite, more teams but shorter series. Would players be against expanding all series to seven games? who are the ones in favor of these five game series and i guess in theory if you're tinkering with the playoffs already it might make sense to do this tinkering too but seems like time is at a premium now yeah we need to get these games in

before this possible worsening of the pandemic and And I know there's a lot of resistance to extending the season into November, deep into November. So adding more games into a round that has been best of five probably would not be well-received just from that perspective. Time is a pretty pressing issue

and precious resource here. So even if you're adding more teams to the mix, I don't know if this would be the time to add more games. Yeah, I think that, you know, we need to be mindful of kind of getting done. Yeah. Gosh, what a... It's a bummer. Just keep coming back to being a bummer, Ben. Yeah, I'd be happy to have baseball go on all off season to

make up for this but you can't really do that because of the way baseball is played and because of the pandemic so yeah yeah you know could you push it into november maybe covid permitting but i if anything i would probably rather have a slightly longer regular season than change the division series i In general, I am in favor of best of seven instead of best of five, except that I guess it's kind of intellectually inconsistent because I kind of like the wild card game. So if I'm okay with a best of one, then really, why should I even care about best of five versus best of seven? Like if you're going to have both of those things and you accept that

playoffs are a crap shoot and whatever, it's not really reflective of the best team at all times, then kind of who cares, I guess, but still something to me likes wild card, but also likes best of seven. You can be a man of diverse interests, Ben. You can appreciate playoffs that accommodates multiple aesthetics i don't think that that's logically consistent you just like a bunch of stuff it's so it's you know it's so good to like things it's very easy to just be cynical and be bummed out

especially right now it's good to like stuff so i i think that you're doing just fine, Ben. I'm inviting you to consider it a matter of well-considered and diverse taste. You are a gentleman and a scholar. I will continue to hold those possibly conflicting positions. There you go. I'm okay with that. Maybe it's like with the wild card. I'm just like, okay, we all acknowledge this is a coin flip. Fine.

It's 50-50. It's like with the wild card, I'm just like, okay, we all acknowledge this is a coin flip. Fine. It's 50-50. It's fun. It's not fun if you're the losing team, but it's fun for neutral spectators at least. Whereas when we have real rounds, it's like, well, if we are going to play more than one game, then we are actually trying to figure out who's the best here. So we might as well give that more of a go. I guess that's my rationale for having both of these positions. than one of the wildcard teams just by virtue of how talent can be concentrated in division. So setting that aside for a moment, I think that there's something about saying, hey,

these two teams, they were on the fringe. They were on the edge of contention. And when we look at them, they might be kind of similar to one another in terms of their quality. And so it is okay for the game that determines which of them faces off against an actual division winner to be kind of coin flippy because they're kind of coin flippy they're being true to themselves right and then we get into the division series and it's like okay now we're down to business now we are trying to learn a thing about about baseball and these teams we're trying to decide which is the best and we need one to round out

this round of the playoffs and so here we are so i i'm fine with it yeah okay yeah all right this question comes from patreon supporter ian he says what are the incentives to actually try to win in 2020 assuming there is some kind of short season this year so many of the normal benefits to winning a world series financial otherwise, will be greatly reduced or entirely moot. If I recall, the player bonus pool consists entirely of gate receipts, then there's future gate surge from winning, who knows how eager the masses are to get back out there in the coming seasons, and the psychological aspect of winning isn't the same. Sure, everyone would remember the team that won it in the pandemic season, but would they ever be regarded as a great team regardless of how they did it or more likely would it be just seen as a

fluke neat but heavily asterisked so even those maverick owners that own their teams to win world series may be less inclined to strike during a short season with league-wide apathy by strike i think he means to try to win not literally strike which could also happen so i think that's true the rewards are reduced in a season like this but also what would not trying to win even look like at this point because the rosters are set the spending is done if there is a season i assume there wouldn't be a trade deadline or i don't know how that would work really but like the trying to win is mostly about constructing your roster and signing free agents and making trades and at this point the rosters are pretty

set and those teams are in place and it's just a question of will they play or not so i don't know that there's any incentive to like tank i mean i guess if you tank you you might still get some draft pick penalty but if you're a good team and the question is do we go for it all the way and put the pedal to the metal or do we just kind of coast like why not try to win because you've already made the investment that you're going to make, right? I think that teams that, assuming we play teams that are remotely savvy about PR, will try very hard to win because the owners as a group just spent months telling us they wanted to play less baseball. And so I think a way to counteract that would be to say, no, we really want to win. We're trying very hard to win.

We would like very much to win so we should all acknowledge that this is going to be the year mariners make the postseason right like that is the that's there's a year this would be this is it this is going to be the year because what we really need coming out of 2020 is an endless debate over whether or not this actually means that the playoff drought is over. Yeah. So we should just prepare yourselves. Just be ready now that that's going to happen, and it's going to be hilarious. Yeah. The other thing is that everyone has a more realistic shot of winning this year

because if you really do get a 50-game there'd be so much randomness there could be such flukiness that if you are a team that normally wouldn't really have a great chance to win you might this year or you might as well go for it whatever going for it means like you know there would be fewer off days and everything so you would probably not rest your starters regardless like i i wouldn't say like you shouldn't go for it if if you're like endangering your pitchers or something like trying to ride all your pitchers really hard and never give them a day off even though they'll be coming off this long layoff and a short spring training or whatever so i wouldn't say do anything unsafe but yeah try to win especially if you're a team that in a real

regular season or do you say well that was fun and fluky but we were rebuilding or we aren't really ready to invest or whatever that's a decision that you would have to make after the season but during the season yeah go for it yeah yeah all right go win some baseball games play play them yes please And then win them. Last regular question, and maybe we'll close with a stat blast. This is from Daniel in Virginia. I hope that all is well. Well, Daniel.

It's not, but thank you. I was watching Barry Bond's highlights when I saw him hit a monstrous homer to center field. Off the bat, it didn't seem as though it was hit all that far, even though it was in coarse field, and it didn't seem very aesthetically pleasing. The majority of the other homers were pulled, and to me, they seemed more impressive and pleasing to the eye. I'm wondering if you all feel the same way about homers to a hitter's pull side being more pleasing than to center or to the opposite field. If so, why do you think that is? pleasing than to center or to the opposite field? If so, why do you think that is? Is it possible that it has something to do with being able to see the trajectory of the ball as it travels to the side of the screen as opposed to coming right at you when it's hit to center? I hope you enjoy

the thought experiment. In terms of direction, I think what I think is that I prefer that home runs be hit to center field. I think I think that because it just feels like it's going farther. So there is something about it going out to dead center feels like, wow, look how far it went. So I think that's true. I think that's the only directional preference I have. And then I think in terms of aesthetically pleasing home runs, my preferences beyond that have very little to do with direction and much more to do with elevation. So like I really, there's nothing better than an upper deck home run.

Yes, agreed. And I don't much care if it's polar oppo. I don't think I care about that. So Daniel, I appreciate your question. I don't know that I grant the premise, but I also am curious what you think, Ben. because it's just gone really far and it's impressive to hit it out there. And there are certain parks where almost no one hits it out to a certain place out there. And so if you actually reach that, it's something to talk about. I think off the bat, though, I tend to agree with Daniel. I think that a pulled homer looks most aesthetically pleasing. And maybe if you're talking about the full trajectory i don't

know if the answer would be different there but i yeah i agree generally that when i'm seeing a home run that's just yanked there's something that's just viscerally more pleasing about that and maybe it could be that you have more no doubters that way yes because like the the fence is shallower obviously if you pull the ball down the line. And so if you really crush it, then there's no doubt that it's gone. Whereas it's pretty hard to hit a no doubt homer to dead center, let's say, or even to the opposite field. I think there's a lower percentage of homers that are no doubters to those fields. So if you like just kind of reveling in the display of power and saying, yeah, that's gone right off the bat. I knew it. That's something you get with pulled homers. Now, I was just hypothesizing in my own head that maybe pulled homers are hit the hardest

and that's why they're aesthetically pleasing to me. But that turns out to be not the case. So if you look at the average exit velocity of pulled homers last year, it's 103.5. And straightaway homers, that's your favorite maybe 104.9 and opposite field homers 101.7. So it's actually the straightaway hit homers that are hit the hardest. So that's not a good reason in favor of the pulled homers. Now, Sam answered this one via email, and he concurred that he thinks a pulled homer is the most authoritative looking. But that doesn't really answer the question. The question is kind of why does it look that way?

And his theory was that it just goes the farthest over the fence. So I think you're saying that a straightaway homer is most impressive because the fence is deepest and it's clearing the fence. But Sam is saying he thinks a pulled homer is good because it clears the fence by the most. And so it goes so far out of the field of play that that is more impressive than just, say, scraping over a much deeper part of the fence. So that's his position well and i think that you raise a good point about the sort of no doubtness of it because i have not done a study but i would guess that players are the most likely to react in a way that is fun and engaging and

excited for pull homers true like you're not going to get bat flips on many for pole homers. True. Like you're not going to get bat flips on many opposite field homers, right? No, and I would imagine you're very unlikely to get them to straightaway center because you're right, there is more ambiguity about whether or not it's really going to clear. And so I think when we sort of expand the understanding of what we're including in the aesthetic we get a lot more interesting stuff for pulled homers because because a guy can be like oh i i i got it yeah it's gone you know so yeah just here's my other possibility and maybe i'm full of it here but this is somewhat persuasive to me i think the pulled homer is good because the ball and the bat are traveling in the same direction. So if you're hitting a pulled homer, your follow through is kind of going in the same way,

at least visually when you're watching on the screen. So if you hit an opposite field homer, like the bat and the ball are kind of going in different directions, right? It's like the bat's going one way and the ball's going the other way. Whereas when you hit a pulled homer, it's like the bat is carrying the ball with it, right? It's like wrapping it around the ball and just propelling it, yanking it along with the bat, which I think to me makes it more visually pleasing. with the bat, which I think to me makes it more visually pleasing. And maybe that's similar to why people say, why does a lefty swing look sweeter than a righty swing? Or why when you hear someone has a sweet swing, is it so often a lefty? And that's one of those baseball mysteries that people debate. But I think the most compelling reason is that the lefty swinger is swinging and

running to first in the same motion. Like he's not finishing his swing, finishing the follow through, and then having to change directions to run up the first baseline like the righty swinger is. Lefty swinger is swinging and falling through and starting toward first base in the same smooth motion, which I think is responsible for a lot of that idea about the lefty swing being sweeter. I think is responsible for a lot of that idea about the lefty swing being sweeter. So maybe the same principle applies to the pulled Homer where they're just kind of pulling in the same direction.

I like that as a, as an explanation that. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. I mean,

I'm Ben. I like, I want to think more about this. It's going to result in me watching like 10,000 home runs Go watch Long Gone Summer A lot of homers in that Yeah there you go All right so maybe we can close with a stat blast here

And today's stat blast song cover Comes courtesy of two friends of the show John Chenier who is the official statistician And record keeper of Effectively Wild In addition to his other more Important jobs but also Lucas Apostolaris who works For Baseball Prospectus and has been

A StatBlast assistant himself And is great with looking up Numbers so this is A full length StatBlast Song this is the longest cover we've had And it's John on vocals Guitar and bass and Lucas on drums. or hope, yes, bless you. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it in length,

and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to days that last. Thank you. All right. So thanks to John and Lucas. And if you want to hear more from Lucas, he just released his debut album. It's called Chronicle and it's on Bandcamp. So go check it out. I will link to it.

And congrats to Lucas. So thanks to those guys, and thanks to everyone who keeps submitting these StatBlast song covers because they're all very impressive. All right, so today's StatBlast question comes from Aaron, who says, I was looking at Alex Reyes' Fangraphs page, and he has 2.065 years of service time With only 53 innings pitched If there's no baseball this year He would have over three seasons of service time I guess depending Who knows what will happen exactly

But the March Agreement did say That you're supposed to have Pro-rated service time or whatever And still no more innings pitched He accrued all that service time Because when he's gotten injured He's always been on the active roster. That seems like it would have to be close to the lowest total ever

for someone who has exceeded three seasons. Who are the current leaders for fewest innings pitched for each number of service years leading up to free agency? And just out of curiosity, fewest games or plate appearances for position players. So this is in the Fangraphs database. You can go to Alex Reyes' Fangraphs page and see his service time on there. So I asked Fangraphs data guru Sean Dolinar to help me out with this one, and he sent me a big spreadsheet,

which I will share of the guys with the least playing time for each service year increment. So Alex Reyes is not actually the pitcher with two or more years of service time who has pitched the fewest innings. In fact, he has the seventh fewest innings. However, he is the starter with the fewest innings. So everyone ahead of him is a reliever we've got Bobby Wall Ben Heller Josh Ravin Yandel Gustave Ryan O'Rourke and then Alex Reyes who has his innings and he's made six starts actually he's sixth Jeff Beliveau who's been mentioned on the podcast before is seventh so the guys ahead of Reyes are with fewer innings pitched with two or more years of service time.

They're all dedicated relievers, I think. So he is certainly somewhat unusual in not having accrued more playing time despite having that service time. So if we want to look at each increment, if we look at batters with two or more years of service time, At each increment, if we look at batters with two or more years of service time, guys with the least playing time, Francisco Pena, Brandon Snyder, Mason Williams, Franchi Cordero, Charles Tilson. And if we want to go back and look at one year of service time, pitchers with the least are Austin Williams, Trevor Oaks, Michael Kopech, who just barely got in there, Brady Rodgers, Jose de Leon, and for the hitters with one year of service time, Chad Wallach, Juan Graterol, Michael Perez, Carlos Tachi, and David Fretas. I should note this is limited to active major leaguers, which we tried to identify by filtering out anyone who didn't play in 2018 or 2019, so this isn't pinpointing the players with the least

ever playing time for this amount of service time. That would be a tougher question to answer. Now, among the three years of service or more guys for the pitchers, we've got Grant Dayton, Mike Zagurski, Daniel Stumpf, Sam Tuivailola, Sammy Solis, and Eric Goodell. For the batters, three or more years of service time, Eric Gonzalez, Tim Federovich, Ryan Levarnway, Alex Dickerson, Max Stassi. So, you know, it's a lot of relievers. It's a lot of backup catchers. It's a lot of guys who have been injured like Reyes while they were still accruing service time. And I'll go up to four years and five years here, all the pre-free agent intervals.

So for four-year pitchers, we've got Carson Smith, Dan Winkler, Bruce Rondon, Yemi Garcia, Neil Ramirez. And for the batters, four years or more, Craig Bird. Oh, boy. See, there are a lot of sad stories in here. Yeah, like Carson Smith's a sad story, too. Yeah, Carson Smith. Yeah, it's just guys who can't stay on the field and, in some cases, have had a lot of sad stories in here. Yeah, like Carson Smith's a sad story too. Yeah, Carson Smith. Yeah, it's just guys who can't stay on the field and in some cases have had a lot of promise but can't stay healthy.

So Greg Bird, Jesus Sucre, Charlie Culberson, Manny Pina, Abraham Almonte. And then for the five years or more for pitchers here, Jake Petrica. So Jake Petrica has five years of service time. He's only faced 875 batters in his career. And then Tyler Thornburg, another oft-injured pitcher. Andrew Chafin, Kirby Yates, and Chris Hatcher. And then for the hitters, we've got Brian Holliday, Shane Robinson, Chris Herman, Ahire Adrianza, and Josh Fegley.

So yeah, you've got some types in here who've actually been around for quite a while and have been on rosters for a long time, but have not actually faced many pitchers or faced many batters if they're pitchers. So that happens, but mostly it's just guys who had injuries that were well-timed in the sense that they kept getting service time, but not well-timed in the sense that they weren't able to play. That's a real bummer.

It's good, but bad. Yeah, it is. Good, but bad. Yeah. All right. I'll end with a more positive note. I will put this spreadsheet online for anyone else who wants to look at guys who have got a lot of service time without a lot of

playing time. Here's a happier end to this. This is a question from Matthew who says, one of my favorite random stats relates to Mark Burley, who three times pitched complete games by facing the minimum 27 batters. So July 21st 2004, he gave up two hits, but

both ended up in double plays. April July 21st, 2004, he gave up two hits, but both ended up in double plays. April 18th, 2007, he threw his no-hitter, so he walked Sosa, but later picked him off and no other batters reached base. And then, July 23rd, 2009, he threw his perfect game. And Matthew wants to know, has there ever been

anyone else who has faced the minimum 27 batters more times than Mark Burley and the Answer is no at least Not anyone on record which Is awesome yeah that's a Really fun fun fact I think so I went to the baseball reference

Play index or stat head as It's called now and I looked for Guys who have had games with Nine innings and 27 Batters faced and Burley has had three and no one else has had three and there are only four other guys who've even had two of these games and this is going back to 1904 and it's cy young sandy kofax walter johnson and frank hiller there are two interesting things there the first is that Cy Young actually made the majors in 1890

so most of his career is not covered by this so it's possible that Cy Young did have more of these games and it's just not included in play index but the other interesting thing is that you've got Cy Young, Sandy Koufax, Walter Johnson who are all like all time greats

Mark Burley who is not but was very good. And then you've got Frank Hiller, who, Frank Hiller did this twice. He did it once in 1950 and once in 1951. And even in those years, he had a combined 100 ERA plus. He had a career 92 ERA plus. He had a career losing win-loss record. He only pitched seven seasons in the majors

he was just not a great pitcher i mean he was fine but he was not great not an all-star or anything and yet he's on this list with walter johnson and cy young and sandy koufax and mark burley so good job frank killer you had two really great games which I guess goes to show you that on any given day, you don't have to be amazing to do this. But I love Mark Burley. I miss Mark Burley. He was such a fun player for a lot of reasons. Like he was just an outlier in a lot of respects. Like by the time he was done pitching, he was throwing, and he was somehow still good. And he was just unlike everyone else because he worked really fast. Of course, that was the thing everyone knew Mark Burley for because his pace was extraordinary. And we all appreciated that about him. But it was kind of mystifying why he was so good because he has 60 career war at baseball reference. That's like the same career war as Andy Pettit, for instance. And they were similar in some respects. And I know that I think the most interesting thing about Burley is that he was never on the injured list or what was then called the disabled list. So he had 15 consecutive seasons of at least 30 starts, which has only been done by three other guys, Cy Young again, Warren Spahnahn and Gaylord Perry and to do that in this era of pitcher injuries is unbelievable so no one was more consistent and durable than

Mark Burley which maybe was because he was throwing in the 80s but still pretty impressive and the other thing is that it's like tough to see exactly why he was so effective because like it wasn't like no one hit him hard. His BABIP was not anything strange if you look at the teams he was on and the years he was on them. And I think Rennie had some stats in his Grantland article in 2014 that said, well, he was hit pretty hard. It wasn't like he was great at suppressing contact or getting weak contact and he didn't strike anyone out. So it's like how is he doing this and ranny's conclusion was that he was a great fielder himself he did

win four gold gloves and also that he was really great at restricting the running game so he was one of the best ever at picking players off but also really great at getting them not to steal so he just totally shut down the running game and had good control, of course, and was a great fielder and never got hurt. And that made him, you know, Hall of very good, almost a borderline Hall of Fame candidate. So I love Mark Burley. Good for him.

Do you think he is aware of this piece of trivia about himself and his career? Probably not. Probably not. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure he knows he threw a no-hitter in a perfect game. That stands out. Yeah. He probably remembers the other game when he faced the minimum, but he probably doesn't

know that he is the only one on record to have done that three times, which is pretty impressive, really. So yeah, if you're listening, Mark, you did that. And if anyone knows Mark Burley, let them know. He's the record holder. Yeah, we tip our metaphorical caps to him. That's very cool. All right.

So we will end there and hope that the next time we speak, things are a little less depressing. Yeah, let's hope for that. That will do it for today. Thanks for listening. Even though this is not the most uplifting time to talk about baseball or listen to people talk about baseball, I am 100% confident that you can support the podcast by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep us going and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners.

Nirvan West, Justin Behan, Bob Bryan, Thomas Bennett, and Patrick Morgan. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Yeah, I've given large targets for their grievance

And then mocking those who bear the pain they cause It takes to serve a special kind of summit To catch the chicken rings and sleep at all the demonizing of the trouble-minded with all the usual suspects on the scene merchants selling young men reclamation merchants selling old men back their dreams