Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1640: Ethically Speaking

Episode Date: January 9, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the six-player blockbuster trade headlined by Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco, touching on Cleveland’s decision to cut costs by dealing two fan favorites and the face of the franchise, how much better Lindor makes the Mets, and more, then banter about NPB ace Tomoyuki Sugano re-signing with the […]

🎵 Do right by me Do right by me Do right by me Hello and welcome to episode 1640 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So, we've got a bunch to talk about today. Hello, Meg. Hello.

So we've got a bunch to talk about today. We have a Hall of Fame-related interview, so hardly the most pressing moral or ethical quandary of this week in America, but in the baseball world, at least for a while, there was much more moral hand-wringing about the Hall of Fame. We talked about it last week. We talked about it with Jay Jaffe as well. But Ken Rosenthal released his ballot this week, and he wrote, So many of my choices were people of questionable character. I called it my hold my nose ballot, but the more I think about it, the sick to my stomach ballot would be a more accurate description.

I voted out of obligation and ended up feeling like I did the wrong thing, not knowing what the right thing was. And he went on to say, I'm just frustrated, frustrated with the inconsistencies we cannot avoid, the false equivalencies we create, the rationalizations that require leaps in logic. Maybe I'm overthinking things as I sit at home cooped up like so many others during the pandemic. Maybe the vote simply is like life, full of contradictions. But I wonder if I no longer can feel satisfied with my choices. What's the point of voting at all? And that led to some additional discussion on Twitter. It seems like more and more people are at least having these misgivings and coming around to that line of thinking. There was also a blank ballot that was sent in by someone at the AP, Dave Scretta,

which caused a lot of conversation and condemnation. I think we all agreed that Scott Rowland at least should have been on there. What did Scott Rowland do to anyone? Seems like a great guy, or at least we don't know that he's not. So everyone vote for Scott Rowland. But I mentioned on the Jay Jaffe interview, I think that these days, Hall of Fame voters are increasingly making these ethical calls that baseball writers may not be the best equipped to make. So we figured, why not talk to a couple of people who are equipped to make those calls and think about those things as their day job? So we're going to talk to two philosophy professors later in the episode who happen to be effectively wild listeners and baseball fans as well.

So they will give us the skinny on what various philosophers would have said about this and how they think about these issues. And maybe that can be a guide for all of us non-philosophy professors out there. But before we get to that, there's a bunch of news in baseball this week as well. So we should talk about that too. Yeah, I keep laughing. there's a bunch of news in baseball this week as well so we should talk about that too yeah i i keep laughing because what a ridiculous week ben i know so many ways i owed david appleman a little bit of site business and i was supposed to get it to

him yesterday and this was the thing i sent him. I was like, you know, between the attempted coup and the Lindor trade, I didn't have time. So can I get it to you this weekend? Yeah. And David, very graciously, as a human being, also experiencing the world and its horror and strangeness. So yeah, that's fine. Blockbuster trades, attempted coup coup attempts just having a normal week out there i guess it's better than i guess dealing your franchise player the day after an attempted coup is better than dealing him while there's an attempted coup yeah i don't know for publicity

purposes cleveland probably should have done this a day earlier. It would have kind of flown under the radar, I think. Yeah, I guess. But yes, this week, the move that we thought was coming, if for no other reason than Cleveland told us that it likely would several times and not so many words actually came to fruition. And the Mets, who had promised under new ownership to make big splashes made a big splash. Yeah, one of the biggest they could have made. Yeah, and acquired Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco in trade in exchange for Ahmed Rosario and Andres Jimenez, and then two prospects, Josh Wolfe and Isaiah Green.

And I don't know that there would have necessarily been a return, any return in trade for one of the best players and one of the most marketable players in the game where we all would have looked around and been like, well done, Cleveland. Good show. So I want to acknowledge that our expectations were already tempered, but this felt rather underwhelming to me, Ben. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot like the Mookie Betts trade, obviously, and probably a lot of the things we'll say will be parallels to what we said last year, roughly around this time. It is kind of one of these cases where you have a young, great player, personable player, charismatic player in his prime or just entering it even who gets traded by a team that did it really purely because it it chose or decided not to extend him or thought it couldn't or or however you want to phrase that and it's almost like to a certain extent you don't even need to hear who they got back it It's like, oh, bad trade.

They shouldn't have traded that guy because when you have Mookie Betts or Francisco Lindor, you almost can't have a return that would make anyone feel good about it. You can add up the wins above replacements and the projections, and there is a way in which it can make sense. And there is a way in which it can make sense. But when you're losing one of the, I don't know, 10 best players in baseball and one of the certainly 10 most likable players in baseball and a player who has been part of your franchise since the start of his career and has been incredibly important to your fan base and had years and years ahead of him of continuing to be a great player and maybe be a legendary player for that franchise and go into the hall of fame and be around the ballpark forever as an ambassador for your team and all of that goodwill and all of the memories and just the bond between that player and the fans if you trade that guy you're really going to come in for some criticism and you should and there's just no way around that so we can talk about what they got back but with a very small number of elite really joyous players it's just kind of like there's nothing you can get back that will make

anyone feel good about that yeah i think that we talked about this a lot when Betts was traded to the Dodgers, and it seems apt here. Organizations work for years to try to home-grow players like Francisco Lindor. You draft and sign players in large numbers in the hopes that one of them comes out to a fraction of that kind of player.

And so to be in possession of one and then to give them away, even when you're bringing other players into your organization in return, it's always going to feel underwhelming, particularly when, you know, some of the considerations that Cleveland was dealing with, both with Lindor's proximity to free agency and then the state of their 40-man, which is pretty packed and is likely to experience additional crunch next year as they have guys they have to add to protect them from the Rule 5. It limited what they were going to be able to receive by way of sort of marquee prospects because you need guys who are, at least on the prospect side, a ways away from sort of hitting those prospects because you need guys who are at least on the prospect side you know a ways away from sort of hitting those 40 man deadlines and you know they got some interesting

major leaguers in return like it's not as if there was you know nothing to this and i always feel bad i think we talked about this when bets was dealt too i always feel bad for the the players who get sent back in exchange for marquee stars like it's not it's not ahmed rosario's fault yeah especially if you play the same position how are you supposed to build those shoes yeah exactly it's not his fault that like cleveland now has the 30th ranked payroll in baseball and as an aside like you know there are a lot of ways to build a team and we have expressed our frustrations with say the Rays while also admiring some of the good things they do but I just think a general rule of thumb is that if you are spending less money than the Pittsburgh Pirates something has gone

horribly wrong for you and you need to reconsider your choices that I feel comfortable sort of putting down as a line in the sand you don't sand. You don't want to dip below Pittsburgh numbers. You're in bad space there. That's bad. Yep, yep. Like the Rays, the Cleveland front office has shown a lot of skill in developing players and has managed to compete and contend over a long period. But yeah, the opening day payroll now is projected to be somewhere in the range of, what, $40 million. And it's lower than any other team out there, lower than the Florida teams as of right now, lower than Pittsburgh.

Trevor Bauer, Corey Kluber, Mike Clevenger, now Carrasco and Lindor, and also let Michael Brantley go, didn't even extend a qualifying offer to him, waived Brad Hand earlier this offseason. So it's obviously part of a pattern here. And they've continued to remain a contender, which in some ways you say, well, they keep dismantling this roster and they're still putting a pretty good team out there. So maybe they know what they're doing. On the other hand, what if they added to that team? They had this championship caliber core and they came close to a championship.

And I don't know that a championship means less to certain franchises than others. But if it means more to anyone, it would mean more to Cleveland, which hasn't won one since 1948. And they came as close as you can come without winning one. They won three straight division titles. They didn't supplement those great players they had. They didn't add to them. They've continued to not really have an outfield optional in Cleveland. And they've done a great job of replacing those players. And we've done an episode about how great they are at pitcher development and how they keep churning out all these great pitchers. And maybe they can replace Carrasco that way too. But at a certain point, you just want a team that is gifted with or puts together this incredible core to say let's seize this chance you know

let's let's not take away from our strengths and and think about the future only and think about the payroll only but let's make a real push here let's make the most of this collection of players we have and instead they just keep sending them away. Yeah, and I think that, I think it was Mike Petriello who commented on this on Twitter, that somehow amidst all of this, they still fail to secure an outfielder. I know. Which is just remarkable considering what the state of that outfield has been since they've refused to extend a qualifying offer to Brantley. I think that, you know, we can acknowledge the reality that the

financial landscape of teams is likely different after the pandemic and that even before the pandemic, smaller market teams had a different sort of financial scale they were operating on than large market clubs. We can acknowledge that while still saying that, you know, if you can't find $20 million for Francisco Lindor, like you might not want to be in the business of baseball. And I know that there are a lot of very sort of cynical aspects to baseball ownership these days. And for some owners, it's as much a real estate play as it is anything else. And so there are a lot of teams that we could say this about but it's just very disappointing to have such a an obvious case of what you can do when you're willing to spend and the kind of players you can employ and the kind of play you can put on the field and then what you can't do

when you're not willing to clear that hurdle and i just i don't want the game to be one in which the you know we have a couple of teams at the top that are willing to have something resembling a payroll commensurate with what their market really should bear and then a bunch of a bunch of these clubs that we keep having to try to find a way to be excited about when you know just when you get you get amped up about a guy he's on his way out of town and you know we interact with the game in a really different way than your average fan does but i just can't imagine what it feels like to be a fan in cleveland and have this you know drip drip drip of talent out of town. And, you know, they're, again, they're not the only team that does this to their fan base, but it is just a really, it's really disappointing.

I think that there are a lot of business reasons that stuff like this happens. And that's, you know, I think something that we need to address sort of head on with very clear eyes, but I think it's fine for fans to expect more fans should be able to expect more out of their franchises and i think that one of the things that they should expect is that if your team is blessed with a player like francisco lindor they're going to do everything in their power to make sure that that guy never wears another team's uniform. It's been two and two years, right? Like, you know, Betts has won a World Series with another team already. He's going to be in LA for the rest of my natural life.

And I would imagine, I know that they did the thing that teams do where they give themselves a little bit of wiggle and a little bit of out, but I can't imagine that, you know, Steve Cohen and the Mets aren't going to do everything they can to get Lindor to sign an extension that keeps him in Queens for the rest of his sort of prime yes that guy's probably gonna win a world series or an MVP or something and you know when the time comes for you and I to make our hall of fame votes he's probably not going in wearing a

Cleveland hat yeah we just had that conversation about bets and the red socks and the dodgers so yeah and and so i i just find it very disappointing not only that that ownership's ownership groups do this but that they have sort of the audacity to to look at their fans and like expect that they're gonna just take it yeah and we're not saying that teams should operate solely based on sentiment and that you could never trade a popular player i mean that's a a recipe maybe for making some investments that hurt your competitiveness in the long run but this isn't a case of well well, this is a player who's, you know, 33 and just reaching free agency and he's looking for a 12-year deal or something like that, where if someone comes along and outbids you, you say, well, okay, you know, recently turned 27 year old player you're talking about two players i don't want to discount what carasco meant to fans and teammates in that franchise i

mean he was the longest tenured player in that organization also a career cleveland player everyone loved him he signed a couple of pretty team-friendly deals to stick with cleveland and of course he came back from leukemia, and that was inspirational for everyone. In fact, he pulled off the feat of being Comeback Player of the Year in two consecutive seasons, which has got to be tough. He won the MLB Comeback Player of the Year award in 2019 just for getting back on the field after undergoing leukemia treatment. And then he won the Sporting News Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2020 for basically being back to his old self and being really good.

And in both of these cases, it's not like these players were on some deal that they signed years ago that seemed wise at the time, but then they declined or they got old, and suddenly they're not worth what they're being paid anymore. They're both worth way more than they're being paid or at least as much. I mean, you know, Lindor is in line for a raise of some sort, but maybe to, you know, in the $20 million range. And he's one of the best players in baseball. Carrasco is signed at a very reasonable rate for A really top of the rotation

Pitcher so between the Fact that these players meant So much to their teams And their fan bases and the fact that they're Still so good and the fact that they're Being paid quite appropriately If less than Commensurately with their talent

There's just really no pressing Reason to do this unless you believe Cleveland ownership's line on this. And that's really what it comes down to, I guess. If you buy what Cleveland says that they had to do this, that this was a necessity, then you say, well, I guess they got a decent return if this was something that had to be done. But you don't necessarily have to accept that just because they say it's the case or because some media members may report it that way. There's just a lot of profit in baseball. There's been a lot of lucrative return on the Dolan's investment in this franchise over the past 20 years. Yes, it's been a bad year, but it's one bad year in a long line of really good years and profitable years. And yes, there are certain disadvantages that this team faces that others don't, which they have exacerbated to a certain extent by driving their fans away

with this kind of behavior, which leads to less attendance and that's sort of a vicious cycle. leads to less attendance and that's sort of a vicious cycle but you know you can afford to keep francisco lindor in this economic environment i think any team can and antonetti the team's president he said something like well yeah you can keep any one player but maybe you can't surround that player with a championship caliber team but you, they've done that and I think they could do that. And a championship caliber team in baseball really is just a team that can make the playoffs because any playoff team can be a championship caliber team. And so I don't think you have to accept that this was an absolute necessity. It was clearly an inevitability. We knew this was coming because of how Cleveland operates and because of, you because of Dolan saying enjoy him two years ago.

At this point, it was just a matter of where and when, really, but it didn't have to be. And when Doar never really seemed to accept the line that it couldn't happen, he did say that he wasn't going to take a discount to stay, nor should he really be obligated to, but I think he kind of questioned the idea that they couldn't afford to keep him if they really wanted to. And really, when you factor in all the money that gets shared from national broadcast deals and the BAMTEC deal and licensing and merchandise

and just all of the sources of income that owners have these days before a game gets played. It really, you know, Rob Maines at Baseball Prospectus ran through this with Cleveland and Lindor earlier this winter, and I'll link to that article. But he concluded, as someone with a financial background, that yes, it was doable. It was just a matter of putting competitiveness and what Lindor meant to this franchise and its fans over short-term profits. And the Dolans just have a history of not doing that.

They made the playoffs this year. Yes, they did. They made the playoffs this year. I think I am correct if I remember the seeding correctly. They made the playoffs this year and would have even if the playoffs had not been expanded. Yeah, they've been a good team. playoffs this year and would have even if the playoffs had not been expanded yeah they've been a good team so i i get and this is where i i want to continue to refine the way i talk about this stuff because i think that there's good value for us understanding what's going on and differentiating

between what is like the front office behaving in a way that they think optimizes their ability to win and what is the mandate of ownership. And those things are sometimes in conflict with one another. And I would be naive to say that the folks who are chosen to run baseball operations departments are not chosen in part because of their willingness to execute that vision from ownership. So I don't want to let everyone off the hook on the baseball ops side and say it's all the owners, right? There's a collaboration that's going on here. But the idea that this team was not in a position to continue to be good is really very silly. And I don't think is borne out by the way that Cleveland has sort of drafted

and signed and developed players. And they clearly think that the way that they do that is good enough to overcome their payroll as evidenced by what they've done the last 10 years. Right. They think that is sufficient. And if they didn't, they wouldn't behave this way organizationally.

So I just think it's a real it's a real bummer i'm gonna i'm gonna watch mets games i don't know why i'm reticent to do that there's there are things to like about the mets a lot of reasons to watch mets games these days i just don't know how many fatalistic fan bases i can let into my heart at any one time so maybe that's what it is you You're all wonderful Mets fans. Don't be mad about stuff, you guys. Yeah, they have a chance to stop being a fatalistic franchise. Maybe they can shed that label, shed that mindset.

I know it's tough to do after having it for so long, but things are looking up. At some point, you're a person who listens to Phoebe Bridgers or you're not, right? And you just have to accept who you are. So I also think and i don't want to continue to pile on cleveland but i i am gonna do it for a second i think an underratedly yucky part of this is that carlos carrasco was 25 service time days away from

having 10 and 5 rights yeah and now he doesn't have them and so I find that icky when Ben Clemens wrote about the deal for us at Fangraphs. You know, he made a parallel between that and the decision to not extend a qualifying offer to Brantley, which is that there's just so little faith on the part of the organization that they could cope with the financial reality if the player asserts their right to a thing right if Brantley says yes to the qualifying offer they're on the hook for whatever it was that year 18 million dollars or whatever if Carrasco gets his 10 and 5 rights then they have to pay his very reasonable deal to fruition because he could say no to a trade if he wanted to so it's just it's just very disappointing that this is the way that, you know, an organization that does have exciting aspects to it, that has this great record with pitchers, that seems to help these guys really blossom

and was able to, you know, sign a guy like Lindor, get a guy like Lindor is just opting to not enjoy his services anymore. I think it's a really, it's a bad thing for baseball. There's not a lot of wiggle room around that. But I'm happy for Mets fans. Yeah, no, we can talk about the Mets aspect of this in a second. I think it's not good for baseball if teams either have to or choose to trade players like this in their prime. That's just not great. I mean,

I mentioned this in my article for The Ringer, but we talk about teams trying to win. And I think maybe that label gets thrown around a little too loosely where someone says that this team isn't trying to win. And trying to win doesn't always look like acquiring as much talent as you can in the present season. I mean, there has to be some balance between competing today and positioning yourself to compete tomorrow. The goal is to get good, but it's also to stay good. You want to win every year. So I don't think it's like you have to be all in every single season, and that's the only way to try to win. And baseball's always been a business and

there's always been some contingent of owners that looked at this more as you know trying to make money than win games so it's not necessarily different but I think that this kind of thing even though you can say that yeah look Rosario and Jimenez, I mean, these are legitimate major league players. They're young. You can just slot them in. Maybe that's Cleveland's double play combination for the next few years. And they don't look like potential superstars, although they've both been highly ranked prospects. And Rosario sort of took a step back in this past season. But it's not out of the question that they could both be average or better players for the next few years. And that's good. You're getting something of real value back. And also

you're getting back-to-back second round picks of the Mets and they're a ways away, but maybe they pan out. So it's not like they just purely dumped these guys for salary reasons, but it clearly was motivated mostly by salary reasons because you have to really look for reasons to trade Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco. There's nothing knocking you on the head and say, yeah, trade these guys. These are like the guys that you hold on to and build around. hold on to and build around. And again, like the Betts trade, which really is just so similar because Betts and Lindor were almost exactly the same age when they were traded and a year away from free agency. And they were packaged with a veteran pitcher who was a couple of years away from free agency. And it's just so similar in so many ways and different in some ways in that

you had, you know, in that case, Betts was even better than Lindor and maybe Carrasco was better than Price. And you have a disparity in those teams' payrolls historically where, of course, the Red Sox had spent a lot in the years leading up to that, but they're also this big market behemoth, whereas Cleveland has not spent a lot, but hasn't historically spent a lot. So there's sort of different expectations for them, perhaps. So it's not exactly the same, but a lot of the parameters are sort of the same, and the returns are sort of the same. And so you can look at Boston and say, hey, look, Alex Verdugo is just 24, and he just had a really good year, which no one noticed because the Red Sox were terrible. But on the other hand, the Dodgers said, yeah, you're giving away Mookie Betts.

We'll take Mookie Betts. And he had an MVP runner-up season, and they won a World Series. And I was looking at the Fangraph's projections for team war for 2021. And right now, the teams with the most projected war are the dodgers the padres and the mets actually and not a complete coincidence because those are the teams on the other ends of these deals those are the teams that took mookie bets the teams that took you darvish and blake snell and the team that took francisco and door and carlos Carrasco and hey it turns out when all these other teams are putting profit first and you are trying to win by spending more you can get good fast and you can suddenly turn yourself into one of the best teams in baseball and it's a lot more fun

to root for that type of team than the team on the other end like it's just it's not great that this winter which has been so slow from a free agent perspective at least there's been some intrigue and some trade activity but in each of those cases you're taking a playoff team from 2020 that is trading a really good player whether it's Nell or Darvish or Nell Windor and Carrasco and all those teams were coming off good years and projected to be contenders again in tight races. And yeah, each of those situations is a little different, and maybe all of those teams can still at least make a run at things in 2021,

but you're unquestionably hurting your chances if you're dealing players like this. And Lindor is even a little different from Darvish or Snell in that, you know, Lindor is even a little different from Darvish or Snell in that, you know, there are just very, very few players in his kind of class and that mean as much to their organizations. And looking at the projected team war totals for 2021 right now on Fangraphs, Cleveland is trailing Chicago and Minnesota by about four and a half to five wins. And that right there could very well be the difference between a good Lindor. And so maybe they're going to, you know, have a new period of being sort of less competitive within the central. Francisco Lindor is only 27. Why wouldn't the move be to extend him and say, okay, we're going to have a couple of years where we are a little less good while we i don't know they don't really need to

restock their farm system but have you know more of the guys be closer to the majors and then you'll be here and you'll still be pretty good because you're still pretty young and then we'll be ready to go again it turns out that when you you emerge from those periods of step back or rebuild and i know that isn't exactly what he was saying but when you come out of those periods it's really helpful to have a francis golden door on your roster it makes the jump up the wind curve a lot easier when you have a guy like that so it's just it's just there's no way to look at it and say this is necessary unless we take a lot of things sort of at face value when it comes to cleveland's finances and i don't know i don't think that any sports fan whether they're in baseball or basketball should be listening to dolans no no not a pretty good policy across the board if there's

a dolan be skeptical yeah yeah and not like all Dolans everywhere. You know, there are plenty of really good Dolans, but these specific Dolans, you want to be a little on your guard. Yeah. I mean, it's not the best economic time in baseball or the world, but the payroll is about $100 million lower than it was a few years ago,

and it just doesn't seem like it should be necessary so we're focusing on the cleveland aspect of this but the nice thing is you know these players don't fall off the face of the earth when they do get traded at least they're still part of baseball and we still get to enjoy them even if their original teams don't and there are ways in which i mean look you know bets a Red Sox fans were deprived of him and that stinks. And I think that reflects poorly on the sport. On the other hand, Dodgers fans get to enjoy them and we all got to enjoy them in October.

And it's sort of the same thing where, yeah, it sort of stinks for Cubs fans. If Darvish gets traded to the Padres, but now suddenly we've got this really riveting race shaping up in the NL West, which we talked about last time. And now riveting race shaping up in the NL West which we talked about last time and now you can say the same for the NL East because the Mets have really turned themselves into something of a powerhouse here and as I mentioned they do have the the best

projection in the division at least war wise and it's close it's it's going to be close we'll see what else the Mets do and and whether they will make another move because they are still in the George Springer and Trevor Bauer markets seemingly. And maybe there's something else coming here. Maybe they will pick up Brad Hand, another product of Cleveland's cheapness. adding Trevor May after adding James McCann and now Lindor and Carrasco they took a team that was already pretty decent and had a lot of developed talent and have supplemented it with some some superstars here at least one superstar so from a Mets perspective there's just really nothing not to love here I don't know how you can not be ecstatic as a Mets fan. And this is the sort of move that Mets fans were hoping for when Steve Cohen took over and made certain promises and looked at his net worth. And we've talked about how maybe he's perhaps not as cuddly in real life as he seems to

be on Twitter. And in fact, just this week before the Lindor trade, there was another report about improprieties from his business life and allegations and a lawsuit, et cetera, which he very quickly removed from the headlines by acquiring Francisco Lindor. But this is what you had to be hoping for. And I think the Mets are maybe in line for a record payroll for them coming up and maybe they will do more but even if they don't do more this is just you have to be really excited about this team because they've had a lot of issues at shortstop they have the sixth worst production from their shortstops over the past few seasons. It's been a while, really, since Jose Reyes was in his prime that they had a very good shortstop, I would say,

and they've had all sorts of defensive issues in the infield. They've allowed the highest batting average on grounders over the past few years, and you're getting Lindor, who just has a great glove, and he's coming off a down year by his standards where he was like a league average hitter but i think there's every reason to expect him to bounce back and he was productive even when he wasn't hitting as well as he usually does because he's so good on defense so really there

wasn't much that they could have done to make themselves better in one move than this and and the starting rotation too because cinder guard won't be back until mid-season and so to add carasco to this rotation along with de grom and stroman i mean when cinder guard comes back that is a really imposing group and yeah they didn't have a ton of depth so carasco is a really important pitcher for them. Yeah, I think that from New York's perspective, this is a phenomenal deal. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's a little hard for me to judge trading for Lindor absent an extension, but I feel pretty confident that that will end up materializing. And so the idea that he is going to just help to anchor that team for such a long time, he addresses, in addition to just being phenomenal on his own, like you said,

really does address sort of a glaring need and shore up their infield defense. They've been rumored to be linked to a couple of third basemen, so it doesn't sound like they're necessarily done on the trade market. They still sound like they're in the mix for George Springer. So I had been sitting on a take then. i had been sitting on a take ben i've been sitting on a take which is and i have expressed on this podcast a fervent desire for people to not be overly impressed with steve cohen just because like it's just better for your own mental health to not like tie tether yourself to the tweets of a billionaire and i was wondering

in the way that i do when i'm feeling sassy like when we were going to start to be able to remark on how the Mets, you know, they signed McCann, but hadn't really done very much. And he's out here tweeting and everyone's like, Steve Cohen's going to be the best. And it's like, well, got to do stuff to be the best. And then he traded for Francisco Lindor and I had to shut up about my take. I had to shut up about it, Ben.

It made me really happy I hadn't tweeted it. And you sat on it. Yeah, I just sat on it because I was like like this feels soon and a lot goes into free agency and other teams are being slow and you never know where guys want to live and they have their own set of needs and so i might be premature with this but sometimes i wonder why he's not just getting out that mx black card and bringing up the payroll and then maybe he felt a disturbance in the force why he's not just getting out that Amex black card and bringing up the payroll. And then maybe he felt a disturbance in the force and he's like, hey, Meg, shut up. Yeah.

And this is the sort of move that the Wilpons probably wouldn't make. No! The Mets, you know, for years, like, they would always take the budget route. I mean, it's not that they never signed anyone or extended anyone. it rude. I mean, it's not that they never signed anyone or extended anyone, but very often they would have what seemed to be a contending team that was maybe

like the one big move away and they just wouldn't make that move. They would make like the off-brand version of that move. They would sign like the two cheap players that they thought would add up to that one really good player maybe and then it

didn't work out that way and it's like if you just go for the superstar you know when they would trade someone there would be a money aspect to it and they would have to put someone else in that deal or they would you know they wouldn't accept all of the the payroll hit or whatever it was like money was always an issue and at least for right now, certainly with this move, money was not the issue for the Nets. It was about getting great players. Yeah, I think that we all derived some amount of satisfaction from the low Mets of it all over the years. And, you know, there's still an opportunity for that. So it's not as if they're out of the woods yet.

We are all of us capable of being buffoons, but this was the big move that they would often be rumored to be interested in but never pull off, and they did this time. It's going to be a very fun team and a fun division, and it's going to be wild to watch yankees fans reacting to the current state of the mets yeah i am interested in some long form reporting on this question friends so putting that thought out into the world but yeah i think that when you can you know every week that we can enliven division races in the off season is a good week.

And this was a terrible week, but this part of it, we can call good. Yeah. And only this part of this thing, right? The rest of this thing, part of the consistent with our theme,

but this part we, we say good work. Yeah. I'm excited to have him in my city to, to get to see him in person more often, maybe just to see what sort of star he becomes here. Not that he fell in love with him there, which why wouldn't they? So I'm really excited to just see his star power blossom, I guess. You know, I want to see Wendor on some billboards when I'm walking around. So that'll be a lot of fun, too.

Yeah, geez. Yeah. And Lindsay Adler, if you're listening, I guess you can start interviewing some Yankees fans about how they feel about that. Adler if you're listening I guess you can start interviewing some Yankees fans about how they feel about that I guess uh I guess Cleveland got an outfielder right thank god Isaiah Green they'll just have to wait right three four years the cavalry is coming yes I the the major league club did not secure the services of an outfielder but yes there there was one included in the deal yeah yeah it's like when when this broke i was like well i like this better than the dervish return but that's not saying much of anything at

all is it me or is news breaking differently than it used to be like this was not surprising and that we knew there was going to be a lor trade, but when it happened, it happened very suddenly where it was like there were a couple of tweets and suddenly the deal was done. I feel like that's happening more often than it used to with big deals. Like, I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering, but I feel like it used to be that you would know that two teams were talking

and you'd get like little bits of the package and it would stretch over like days at times. And now very often it's just the package, and it would stretch over days at times. And now very often, it's just like lightning strike, and it's not shocking that it happens. But when it does happen, it happens very quickly. And so I don't know if that is something with the CBA discouraging leaks or teams being more tight-lipped or what, but I've had that feeling more and more often where it just seems like big news could happen with very little warning at any time yeah that strikes me as right I can think of a couple of counter examples but like um you know I I felt like the time between

when we heard that Betts might be signing an extension with LA and when he actually the news officially broke was like 10 minutes or something. It wasn't quite that short of a time, but it was akin to that. I think that the Snell and Darvish deals, those started getting whispered about the week prior, but I think we

can attribute that delay to the holidays and someone being like, AJ, I gotta get off the phone. Yeah, right. Please let me go spend time with my family um i don't know him i'm sorry aj i don't know man and just i i don't know you but these are the things you've done so and i've heard stories so um so yeah it's a i think that you're right that it it strikes me that way. Although there are probably plenty of things that have been slow rolled and because they sort of evolved over a longer period of time, a non-signing, at least by MLB teams, in that Tomoyuki Sugano, probably the best pitcher in Japan, whom we've spoken about

recently, is returning to Japan and not signing with an MLB team, although he was posted and he was talking to some. And evidently, the Padres were the closest to getting him. So they're not done. AJ Preller is still on the phone apparently. But Sugano is returning to his team, the Omuriy Giants, on a four-year $40 million deal. And there are a bunch of opt-outs, three opt-outs in that deal. So he may yet pitch in the States at some point, but he's clearly capable of pitching very well here based on his track record. And so

I'm sort of surprised that someone didn't break the bank to do it. Now, apparently the pandemic was a factor for him, as I would imagine it would be. He said that he was assessing the trends in the majors due to the novel coronavirus. And maybe he had some misgivings about signing to play in the country where the coronavirus is still raging. And maybe he figured that he might not get a full season and he might actually get to play more baseball in Japan. That would be a rational decision if he made it that way. Or, you know, maybe he just liked staying with his team. But I do wonder what the best offer for him was because it would be sort of surprising to me if an MLB

team could not have matched or exceeded that amount. And that's sort of how Jeff Passan portrayed it. He said, no major league team stepped up. The second best pitcher on the market unsigned. How very 2020 to 2021 winter. And if you do think that he was the second best pitcher on the market, i i think there's a pretty strong case that that was true why would you not sign that guy for more than 4 and 40 and you know maybe it would have taken more to do that but generally when an elite talent in npb like that is posted they do sign not always i guess hisashi iwakuma did not when he was posted initially but i sort of expected him to to land somewhere here and he did not yeah it was it was somewhat

surprising although i can't fault anyone for looking at the u.s this week and being like oh no thank you no um and i i think that you know you said, the way that this deal is structured, he'll get another bite at the apple next offseason when hopefully any number of concerning trends are better in hand. So I imagine that we will see him pitching in the big leagues in fairly short order. But I think that it's always good when a player is like, I am not getting what I perceive my worth to be. And so I will try again later when i might do better so that's that thing's like not a bad thing although it is a bummer to not get to see him pitch so yeah and we were just talking about how much certain players can mean to certain franchises i'm sure sugano means a lot to yomiuri giants fans who've been watching him

for the past eight seasons so they're probably happy to have him back too so that's uh that's good too yeah i agree all right and i guess the the last little bit of news is that there was a report a development in the sticky substances case so uh we talked about this recently but some stuff is starting to come out from brian bubba harkins the former angels visiting clubhouse manager who was fired in march because he was supposedly providing foreign substances to pitchers both home and away and he was fired a few days after mlb sent out a memo saying that they were going to be cracking down on the use of foreign substances and so he has filed suit now and he's charging that he was made a public scapegoat

in baseball's efforts to crack down on these substances and so he is going public and he has receipts and he is naming names of pitchers whom he supplied with these substances and he named many angels players whom he gave this stuff to over the years but he also mentioned garrett cole and justin verlander and felix hernandez and max scherzer and cory kluber and adam wainwright so he is trying and succeeding to get some attention here. And it's not totally clear whether this case will be dismissed or will go forward. He's not disputing that he did this, which was against the rules in baseball. In fact, he is sort of defending himself by saying he did it so much and so obviously

that everyone knew about it and was fine with it and that the angels were well aware and did nothing to stop it or maybe even encouraged it and then suddenly when this memo came out they jettisoned him and made him look bad and unemployable and all of that so i think he's right to a certain extent in the sense that this was probably a reaction to that memo and that that memo itself was probably a reaction to the sign stealing scandal and wanting to avoid further cheating scandals and that he was made the face of it in a certain sense. did do all of this and you're not supposed to do this stuff so i don't know where things will come down there but it's an interesting case and you have to think in retrospect that maybe mlb could have handled dismissing him in some other way that would have looked less bad because uh when you fire a guy who has text messages from garrett cole asking him to mix up some sticky stuff for him well if he's aggrieved by how

he was treated then he's going to go to the papers and there will be a big LA Times report about that that will not reflect well on baseball so I don't know maybe they should have paid him off or found some quieter way to get rid of him so there's that part of that of

this story there's also the part of it where we've learned that Garrett Cole signs his text messages the way that I sign and that my grandmother signs her texts to me, which is love your grandmother. It's like his whole name's there. Yeah. His whole name. He was like, I got to do the whole deal here. do the whole the whole deal here i will admit ben that i have had a a good deal of trouble deciding how i ought to feel about this because as we discussed on our episode it's not clear

i mean they've sent their memo but it's not clear how much baseball really cares about this or at least how much some segments of baseball really care about this. I'm sure there, as Eno noted on that episode, a fair number of hitters who are aware of the relationship that Sticky Stuff can have to spin and would just as soon have it fully excised from the game. But I don't know how to feel about this, because apart from having specific names,

I don't know that we learned anything new here, which I don't say to let Garrett Cole, full name, off the hook, but rather just to say that I think we have suspected for a long time that there was an abundance of pitchers who were using foreign substances to try to doctor the ball and their grip of it, and that we may have suspected some of them pitched for Houston, given the success that the club has had with increasing spin rate, and I don't know how I feel about it. Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising to see that a lot of pitchers were using this stuff,

but to have it out there in headlines, I wonder whether this will prompt further action or make MLB pursue even more strenuously some of the solutions we talked about on that episode. That was episode 1616 from November when we talked to Eno and David Ardsma about all of this. Worth going back and listening to

if you missed it the first time. And of course, perhaps also relevant for Trevor Bauer, who is still a free agent and certainly seems as if he was using some stuff last season. So yeah, it'll be interesting. When I looked at some of this with Bill Petty, the analyst, some time ago, Felix and Scherzer were a couple of pitchers who did sort of stand out when we were trying to detect use of something by looking at the difference in spin rate between, say, the first fastball in an inning and the last fastball in an inning and seeing if the spin rate changed, which might suggest that someone loaded up on something and that it wore away as the inning went on. So a couple of those pitchers were sort of outliers there.

It looked like Scherzer and Felix and Steven Strasburg, and I think Cole and Verlander were maybe above average but not so extreme. And, of course, that method might pick up on potential use only if they're not loading up between pitches, which would disguise any decline anyway. But you wouldn't surprise me if you told me any pitcher in baseball was doing this because I think virtually all of them are, certainly most of them are. So it's not shocking in that sense. But I think also probably MLB wanted to avoid this sort of story because when it's like, yeah, we all know this is happening, wink, wink, Garrett Cole actually used a wink emoji in his text. Then as long as it less quiet which perhaps was

not what they were aiming to do but maybe they will look for a more permanent solution to this sort of scandal now so yesterday trevor bauer quote tweeted himself with a link to this times piece so the quote tweet is if only there were a really quick way to increase spin rate like what if you could trade for a player knowing that you could bump his spin rate a couple hundred rpm overnight imagine the steals you could get on the trade market if only that existed and then his tweet from 16 hours ago is it's almost like it did exist wow the more you know how crazy yan emoji yan emoji linked to the other times piece and and i think that we can say that his instinct is just to talk and so his uh public experiment and then constant needling of the astros in light of their

sign stealing scandal is actually not as incongruous as you might expect but we can look at your spin rates, dude. Right, yeah. Like we know them. Yes. Also. Yes. So I want scandals where I have to engage with this particular player's Twitter to go away, not only because they are bad for baseball, but because they forced me to engage with his Twitter. And I'd prefer not to, Ben.

I understand that. All right. Well, I guess we can take a quick break and this will be a lengthy episode, but we had a lot to cover today and we will talk to our two philosopher friends about

how to handle the Hall of Fame. Get on the right thing Yes, you'll do it all along Get on the right thing I believe in you so It's so big Because I'm happy Oh, no Can't go wrong Get on the right thing Get on the right thing Get on the right thing Well, almost five years ago, our friend Sam Miller tweeted,

the next big thing in sports analytics is going to be hiring philosophers. I don't know if it's actually the next big thing, but if it is, we will be well prepared because there seems to be a sizable contingent of philosophers who listen to this podcast. Maybe it's because of our tendency to turn banter about baseball into existential musings. I don't know. But we are joined today by two of those philosophers who are going to help us out with wrestling and reckoning with the Hall of Fame. One is Justin Coates. He is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Houston. Hello, Justin. Hi, Ben. Thanks for having me.

Happy to have you. And we are also joined by Ben Lennertz, who is an assistant professor of philosophy at Colgate University. Hello, Ben. Hi. Good to be here. So do you guys think that there is something in your expertise to add to this conversation here as you've been reading all of the hand-wringing about the Hall of Fame or listening to our discussions about it or our interview with Jay Jaffe? Have you been saying, ooh, ooh, call on me. I can help here. Or have you been struck by something from your reading and your knowledge and your teaching that would be helpful here? And I guess, how has your work related to that? Maybe, Justin, you can start. Yeah, thanks. So, you know, one thing that struck me as you guys have been thinking through these

issues, you know, really thoughtfully, is that you're getting to some really core tensions that really have to do with what we are doing when we honor people, what we're doing when we memorialize people. And so they're not just tensions that arise in the context of voting for Hall of Famers. They're tensions that arise when we're thinking about what we should do with this or that statue, how we should think about this or that president, right? And how we should honor people generally. So I think that one of the key things that a number of people, Ken Rosenthal was getting at this, this was something that came up in earlier conversations that you and Meg have been having, is that the kind of ambivalence that you feel, I think, is really reflecting some

deep moral truths, which are, we really should appreciate people's achievements, particularly the really impressive things that these guys have done. But we need to be wise and we need to be careful in who we honor and the conditions under which we honor them. And so I don't think we should run away from that ambivalence in the way that Rosenthal was worried about. I think that we need to appreciate it and let that sort of guide our interactions instead of being worried that maybe there's no right answer. Yeah. Deep moral truths. It's weighty stuff for us baseball writers and podcasters and Hall of Fame voters, which is why we need to call in the experts. And Ben, I mentioned to you earlier this week that you actually emailed us, oh, more than six years ago now, you sent us an email with

the subject line philosophers and Hall of Fame voting. So you've been thinking about this for quite some time. I guess we have just caught up to you finally. Yeah, I have. I mean, the answers aren't easy in the six years. I don't think I really figured much out, but I do agree with a lot of what Justin said. And I think, you know, one way sort of when you think about different ways philosophers think about morality, some are really concerned with the consequences of our actions. So what doing something results in and others are more concerned with when we act in certain ways toward people, whether they deserve to be treated in certain ways. And I think when I think about this, I sort of feel that tension when I think about Hall of Fame voting. So on the one hand,

we care about the consequences of our votes. You know, I think when you were talking to Jay the other day, he said something like, well, when I think about voting for Schilling, I ask, will the world be a better place if I vote for him? And that's a very, that's a, that's a sort of way of thinking about morality in terms of the consequences of your actions. But we also really care whether these people deserve in some sense to go in the Hall of Fame. Consequences be damned. And that tension is a sort of perennial one in thinking about ethics in the discipline of philosophy and ethical questions all over. But I think it's coming out really strongly here. And it's, you know, it's challenging, but it's fun to see people who don't think of themselves as doing

philosophy grappling with these issues. I think one of the things that is tricky for folks, and I don't want to suggest when I ask this question that baseball is a closed system that doesn't exist within a broader society and moral context. But I think that one of the things that folks really struggle with is that there is, I guess we can debate how clearly defined these parameters are, but there is sort of a defined rubric that voters are supposed to use when they're evaluating Hall of Fame cases, right? They're supposed to look at their own field accomplishments. There's this like frustratingly ambiguous for many people character clause. And I think that part of the tension here also comes

from trying to reconcile that set of parameters that they have for determining whether a player had a hall of fame worthy career and thus should be inducted with some bigger moral questions that we face not just as baseball fans or as baseball players or writers, but as people who live in a world and have to deal with how we honor people who were great on the field, but were terrible to their intimate partners, or who cheated in a way that had large consequences for the game. So I guess if I can try to make this a question, how do you guys think about situations like that where a sort of narrow set of ethical concerns or scriptures end up butting up against a much broader and I would dare say more relatable set of questions? Because I think that a lot of voters would perhaps, if they were being honest, prefer that we only talk about the baseball because it lets them off the hook for

having to contemplate this other stuff. But we can't do that because we're not just baseball writers, we're people, right? So how do you, is there anything in your research or thinking as active philosophers that could give us some guidance on how we might reconcile at times conflicting systems of ethics or virtue? Have I just described an entire spring curricula for you? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. It's something I think about in the context of friendship in particular, right? So someone can be a really excellent friend. They can be there for you when you need them and not be a particularly great person. And there are just really difficult questions that arise there with, okay, what perspective should I take when I interact with them? They've been there for me. They've helped me within the context of friendship. They're, you know, A plus, but they have these real problems, these real moral failings and other aspects of their lives. And how can I interact with them? I mean, I think that's a deep, deep question that,

you know, doesn't have an easy answer. And it looks very similar to the question you're asking about baseball, right? So somebody has unfilled accomplishments and yet sort of fails in other domains. And I guess one thing that I think is important is that there are thoughtful baseball writers, right? So one thing that I was a little bit worried about reading Rosenthal and some of the other sort of discussions of this that have come up recently is that people are sort of wondering whether or not they should vote. think that if the people who are thoughtfully engaging with these issues and are contextualizing the person's sort of great on-field accomplishments in this wider, you know, narrative, I think that we don't really honor someone unless we do justice to them, their full person. And so, you know, I think it's important that we have baseball writers writing to give us more information, right? More about Barry Bonds, more about Andrew Jones,

more about these guys so that we can both appreciate what they did on the field, but also sort of see them fully for who they are. So do you think that it's a good thing to have a character clause? You know, if there were no character clause, then in some sense that would simplify things because you could say, well, the rules tell me that I should just only consider their baseball career and that's the only relevant thing. So I will put everything else out of my mind. But then you are still glorifying people who maybe have done bad things and set bad examples. And of course, there's a whole history to the character clause where it was largely

ignored for a long time. And then really, it was sort of dredged up as a reason to keep PD people out of the hall. And then now that it was used for that, it's being applied more broadly. And so you end up with all sorts of sticky questions. So I guess, Ben, if you could give us some thoughts on that, or, you know, feel free to do the cheaty from the good place and tell us what various other ethicists and philosophers of history would have said about this question, or feel free to express your own personal opinion. opinion. Yeah. So, I mean, the character clause, as you said, has a fraught history, but I like it. I like the character clause and I like the role it can play in Hall of Fame voting. So think about, so here's an analogy sort of that I might face in my sort of job. I might think like, look, I got this student who really, they're a good philosophy student, but they kind of gloat,

they make fun of other students when they ask basic questions. They're just kind of, they're a good philosophy student, but they kind of gloat. They make fun of other students when they ask basic questions. They're just kind of an asshole, I guess, is maybe the way to say it. And they turn in a paper. It's a really good philosophy paper. It seems inappropriate for me to like, when I'm grading that paper, say, hey, you know, I know this is a really good paper, but this person's kind of, kind of a jerk. Maybe I shouldn't give him an A, maybe I should give him a C or something like that. That seems totally inappropriate to me. But what does seem appropriate is if at the end of the year, we have to give an award for like the philosophy student of the year, it seems like we can take these things into account, how they act toward their fellow students.

And maybe we don't want to give them that award, even though we think it's appropriate to just judge, say, what they did on the page when we're thinking about giving them a grade on any individual assignment. I think I feel the same way about Hall of Fame voting. I mean, I don't think it would be appropriate to, you know, say, oh, we don't want to give uh such and such person the era title this year because they were they were kind of a jerk um or they did some in these cases i guess really bad things but it seems completely appropriate to think about those things when we're thinking of honoring these people in ways that seem to go beyond just mere accomplishments and i think we're when you think about putting somebody in a museum,

giving them a platform for speaking, it's about more than just their accomplishments. I think we're always going to think that whether it's written in the rules for voting or not. And so I kind of appreciate the clause that it's honest about what voters are going to be thinking about when they're making these decisions. I wonder then if part of the issue that we face when we're contemplating this is that the Hall of Fame isn't just a museum, right? It's the combination of the speech. I know that when Jay was wrestling with what to do with Schilling, this ended up being a really important part of his decision to not vote for him, which is that, you know, it's one thing to sort of tell baseball's story. And it's another thing to give Curt Schilling an opportunity to speak to a crowd of people on TV for 30 minutes, right? Like we know what happens when when he's given that kind of platform and what he might do in the future, facilitated by the exposure of such a speech and the honorific of being a Hall of Famer. And so I wonder if we would be better off simply looking to the Hall of Fame not as some kind of great honor, but rather just a place that tells baseball story because

I'm nervous to exclude, say, Barry Bonds because I watched baseball as a kid. And so for him to not be there feels really weird because that was part of baseball when I was a kid. Right. But at the same time, I can understand how there are people whose off field conduct was either so odious at the time or has the potential to be so odious in the moment they're giving a speech that we would we would be sort of irresponsible to, um, center them that way. And so I am curious if you guys think that there is an opportunity to sort of reimagine the ethics of that decision, not from an individual voter perspective, but from an institutional perspective, this is where I betray myself as a political theorist. So like sort of a bastardized

philosopher of my own, um, and, and try to use some sort of institutional means and reimagining to say, you can vote them in because they were part of baseball and we want to tell baseball story, but they don't get a plaque and they don't get a speech. Would that help? Or are we turning our backs on ambiguity and ambivalence in a bad way, in an easy way? You know, I think something like that is pretty plausible. I mean, one thing that I kept butting up against when I was thinking was, is there some way that Schilling can get in but just not be allowed to talk? Can there just be like a tier two, right?

You know, like he's a Hall of Famer but doesn't get to speak. So I mean, the thing that I was thinking about so much was like, well, what is the institution? What is the institution for? What is it trying to preserve? What is it trying to memorialize? And you guys know that, you know, a lot better than I do. But I think, Meg, you're on to something important here. You know, Adam Smith, who most people know sort of through economics or a misunderstanding of his economic theory, wrote a lot about the moral emotions. And he was really worried about admiration and the way in which our disposition, our

natural tendency to sort of admire people who do great things can distort our ability to sort of accurately judge them. And so an institution that tells the story but doesn't do so in a way that tries to invoke those feelings of admiration or of honoring, I think, maybe is a way of fairly appreciating the really good things they did, but without falling prey to, you know, ignoring the bad things. I used to think that the reason people didn't read The Theory of Moral Sentiments was because it's seven parts long, but then I realized they don't actually read

any of his economic work in full either before they spout off about it, so. Yeah, that's right. So I always like to ask to have you run through sort of various schools of thought, Ben, when I've emailed you in the past for articles, non-baseball related articles I've been working on that had some sort of philosophical angle, I've kind of asked for, you know, what would this thinker think of this? Or what would

this famous philosopher say about this? Did anything occur to you along those lines where, you know, you could apply what someone else might have said about this and how they would have voted? What would your favorite Philosopher's Hall of Fame ballot have looked like? Oh, God. I mean, philosophers, we're really good at sort of being like, here's some considerations to think about. We're maybe less good at saying like, saying like, here's the answer to this question. And so I'm going to give you maybe some of those considerations that you might have thought about. So like, you have these people who are like, and you used the word, I think,

just a few days ago on the show, like utilitarian style moral thinkers. And, you know, in their most extreme, these thinkers are going to say what matters when we're thinking about any action is, you know, what the results are, how much pleasure and pain it causes going forward. And so people like Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill or Peter Singer today have something like this kind of view. I'm caricaturing a bit here. kind of view. I'm caricaturing a bit here. And for people like that, the sole question when you're thinking about how to vote on your ballot or whether to vote or not is like, what's it going to cause to happen? What role does it play in causing future events to come about? And if it's better to, if it makes the world better, as you said, to vote for Schilling, then you ought to vote for him. If it makes the world worse, you ought to not vote for him. One really interesting thing about that way of thinking,

I think, which I think is that deeply implausible in this case, is that like, their baseball, like talents, their baseball accomplishments have no special place in such a theory. So like, on this on this view, you might be like, no, we should vote in it like Latroy Hawkins and Dan Heron and these people who maybe like will use that platform for some kind of good. And even though they don't, we tend to think they don't deserve, they don't deserve it on their baseball merits, good players that they were. And so I think like that sort of utilitarian way of thinking, it strikes us as very compelling when we're thinking about extreme cases, like Schilling maybe is going to cause such harm with his speech

that maybe we shouldn't let him in. But in the run of the mill cases, we think, well, it can't just be consequences that matter. It can't just be pleasure and pain caused in the future. It's got to be something else. It's got to be something about what these players have earned, what they deserve. So I think a lot of people are going to think of, I think a lot of us think about it in that sort of way, that non-consequentialist, non-utilitarian way. But I was struck by another thing when I was reading Rosenthal's, what Rosenthal wrote, that he sort of called it a sick to his stomach ballot. And I don't know, I mean, Justin, you can chime in here if you think I'm really reaching here. But that made me think of a sort of philosophical tradition we often call virtue ethics.

And so it seemed to me that Rosenthal was thinking like he didn't feel like a good person. He didn't feel like a virtuous person when he was voting in the way he was. He maybe felt he had some obligation to vote. The rules told him to vote a certain way. But like, it's not what a good person would do. It's not what somebody, what a moral exemplar would do. They wouldn't, they wouldn't approve of these people. And so people, you know, philosophers like Aristotle, going back to Aristotle, but more recently, people like Elizabeth Anscombe have been really interested in less in what we should do in any individual action, but more like, what would a good person do here? And that can sometimes feel circular, but I think Rosenthal's really feeling that like, oh, man, I really feel like a shitty person when I vote this way. way. And I think there's something important. And philosophers who work in that tradition would think it's important what kind of person you are, what kind of person you make yourself

by voting in this way. Yeah. So I just want to follow up on that point. I was struck by the same part of Rosenthal, too. And I'm not sure I drew this quite the same conclusion, although it's pretty similar. So there's a tradition in virtue ethics, but more broadly, and someone like Martha Nussbaum is a good exemplar of this, who worry about cases in which, given the way the world is, nothing you do is really that good. No matter what you do, you're going to act badly. What they say in those cases is that if you don't feel bad, if you don't feel sick at your stomach, if you don't feel some kind of remorse, then you're failing as a moral agent, right? So there it looks less like the sick at the stomach is indicating that you've done something wrong and more indicating a kind of responsiveness on your part that unfortunately there are people that are really good at baseball

and that are also really bad at being people. And so how should we respond to that in the context of voting for the Hall of Fame? So I agree with Ben that the virtue ethics, the tradition of virtue ethics probably has the most to say here. But I think that there are sort of within that tradition, multiple lessons we can draw from these sorts of cases. As we were getting ready to record, I was looking through Twitter and was reminded that I don't know that it'll ever rise to quite the same level as the PED scandals did, but we're going to get another round of press on sticky substances and their use in improving pitcher grip and spin rate. And I think that if we want

to set aside some of the interpersonal behavior, which I don't say as if it is unimportant, but just to focus on the PED part of this, I wonder how you guys think about individuals whose transgressions are notable and have had a significant impact on sort of the quality of competition and may have harmed other players' careers, but were also not aberrant in their application, right? So even if we lump the guys who never failed a test and were never suspended, but were just suspected of PED use, and with those who we know for a fact use performance-enhancing drugs, how ought we to judge their behavior given the moral situation that they were operating in? Because there was pretty widespread PED use, and the

institutions that might have hemmed in that use largely abdicated their responsibility to do that, right? This is the distinction that Jay has made in his ballot between those who have actually failed a test and those who were part of the Wild West era. But given sort of the broader moral context within baseball in which they found themselves, how do you guys think about the guys who are on the Hall of Fame ballot who are tainted by PED usage? Yeah, so I think that it's I think it's challenging for the reasons you say, Meg. I mean, before I before I comment on that specifically, I do think it's it's easy to draw a line between the PED users and the I think what Ben called in an email, the bad dudes. We're not just PED users and the, I think what Ben called in an email, the bad dudes, or not just PED users, but cheaters. So PED users, spitballers, banging schemers, like whatever you want to call these

people, and domestic abusers and conspiracy theorists and things like this, where the latter seem like worse people in general, they're doing worse things for the world. But it doesn't seem to undermine the institution of the game. But it doesn't seem to undermine the institution of the game. It's hard for me to say that without sounding excessively traditionalist. But it seems to me that those are very different concerns. PEDs, cheating at the very, trying to undermine whether we can judge the very activity we think is central to playing baseball seems particularly relevant. And I'm always surprised when people think that the only way to think about

not voting for these people is in terms of the character clause. Like the only bad thing they did was show that they were cheaters. I think it's hard to judge their actual accomplishments, the actual batting averages, the actual OBPs. And so I think there is a clear distinction there. Now, the question of like, given that everybody was doing it, or given that it wasn't enforced or wasn't forced with a wink and a nod, what should we think about them? I think it becomes much more difficult then. I don't want to say that, or I want to think about the way Jay makes a separation and I think I don't see personally a moral difference between the there being a rule against uh PED use and it not being

enforced and there being a rule against PED use and it is enforced it's hard for me to find a moral difference on that basis alone but maybe maybe you think, and I think this might be the actual history of things, like not only was there a rule and it wasn't enforced, you sort of had a wink and a nod that, you know, sure, it's against the rules. But by the very non-enforcement, you might be saying, well, really, it's not, you know, really, it's not against the rules in any important way. And I think that is probably the way things were. And it makes it very difficult to grapple with this. And I think just to add on one more thing, if you're a if you're the sort of 24th or 25th man

on the roster, it's completely understandable why you do this. And especially if those who are maybe naturally more talented are doing it. And so I think there's a sort of extra dimension of, do we want to blame these kind of people for trying to make a living? And I'm not sure. I think it's a hard question. I agree with a lot of what Ben said. I mean, I think I'm more or not more, I'm less worried about it in general. Or maybe it's just because in the cases that are at hand right now, I'm not particularly worried about whether Barry Bonds would have been a Hall of Famer independently of PEDs or Roger Clemens or something like that. And maybe there are harder cases that that dimension would get me more worried about. But I guess what I would say is it's not clear

to me that independently of there being a rule, there's anything moral at stake about someone's decision to use performance-enhancing drugs. I'm not a libertarian, but I'm libertarian enough, I guess, that I'm not sure that the character clause really is the right way to think about that. And so I guess I do agree with Ben on that point. And so when it comes to Schilling versus the other off-the-field offenders, Schilling's latest this week was to tweet his support for and misinformation about the insurrectionists in D.C. But I think there's a lot of discomfort with saying that this person who is tweeting

these terrible things or putting them elsewhere on social media is worse in some way than someone who's been implicated in domestic violence incidents. I don't think anyone feels comfortable trying to say that one is worse or less terrible than the other. So is there a way to navigate that? Is it what we mentioned before about just trying to forecast the effects of letting this person in? I mean, there are negative effects perhaps of letting someone in who's been involved in domestic violence and sending a message that that is acceptable or what does that say to the victims, etc. So is there a way to handle that very thorny issue there? Or do you feel like if you are going to consider things that aren't directly related to baseball, it has to be almost a blanket policy?

So this is one of those things where I think moral philosophy kind of presents itself as being, you know, this very highfalutin thing where you've got to give careful arguments for your position and, you know, have to adduce complicated principles in support of your claims. But here, I guess I would just suggest that, you know, we listen to people that are affected and have been affected by the kinds of things in question, right? There are lots of baseball fans. There are millions of baseball fans that have been affected by domestic violence. And, you know, I would want to know what they had to say, right? Are they able to separate these things? And, you know, by my lights, their opinion should count, you know, a whole heck of a lot more than mine does. And there are lots of people that love baseball and their own, the receiving end of Curt Chilling's really objectionable rhetoric. Are they of a mind

that we can separate these two things or do they think that they bleed in together? And so, you know, I think part of what is at stake when we're trying to think about what we should do and how we should live is, you know, we need to pay attention to what people who have different experiences than us, and in particular people maybe who have suffered injustices of the kind in question, what they have to say. And so that's just about listening. It's not about sort of adducing, you know, principles that from which we can, you know, general principles from which we can reach a conclusion. Yeah, I think I agree with that. I mean, what Justin said, I think, I mean, partly, and I think this relates to his listening position for someone in the position I'm in,

it's sort of shilling, spewing what he spews is sort of much more immediate to me. I hear it, I, you know, it's right in my face. And the question of what one, what effect one, it might have to put this or that domestic abuser in there is is something that for me, because of the kind of person I am, it doesn't feel as immediate. And I do think maybe the reason those of us, especially white dudes who are who are thinking about this question, tend to want to separate the shilling case in the domestic abuse cases is because sort of one hits us much more easily and it's harder for us to relate to another. And I do think listening in this sort of way is effective to see if not just if we can separate them, if we should be trying to separate them at all, or if they really are in similar moral, or we should think of them in similar ways, morally speaking. Yeah, that made me think of one of the sort of phenomena that we

have seen on recent ballots. And there have been a couple of instances of this with Schilling in the past where he has been just obviously offensive and hurtful in the way that he has characterized various marginalized communities and people. And the bright line for a lot of members of the BBWA seemed to be when he endorsed a T-shirt that advocated lynching journalists. about the thing that sort of is a step too far that pushes him from being a person that many voters sort of begrudgingly included on their ballots to one who had to be excluded entirely being a harm that isn't out there affecting other people, but is one that is threatening to them, right? It's striking that the thing that seemed to push people, a lot of people over the line was an attack on journalists. And then journalists said,

well, this is a bridge too far. And I don't think that's necessarily an inherently indefensible position, but it is an interesting one that the local close harm and threat was felt so much more keenly by some folks. So I'm curious, what would the philosophers say on that score? Ben, do you want to go first this time? Sure, sure. I can say something. I mean, I don't think there's anything deeply philosophical to say about that. I mean, it sounds like it strikes me that, Meg, what you're getting at is something about our psychologies and maybe some sort of moral blinders to sorts of offenses that don't affect us directly or seem to threaten us directly. And so, you know, it's not surprising that threats to journalists would be the thing that really affected journalists quite a bit,

that really affected the way they thought about it. It's not clear that threats affected journalists quite a bit, that really affected the way they thought about it. It's not clear that threats to journalists are morally worse than the other sorts of things he's been doing. And I mean, if you're going to think character or something like that is important, it's not obvious to me that we have a moral difference here. But I do think that shouldn't be taken

as any deep slight to journalism in general. It's hard. It's hard to occupy, to try to occupy or empathize or think about how one with different experiences would feel when Schilling or whoever acts in certain ways or is honored in certain ways. And maybe they do need to read Adam Smith or something like this, but the theory of moral sentiments. But yeah, I think it's understandable, but I don't see a real moral bright line. But for us philosophers, it's kind of disappointing. Often there isn't a moral bright line in these sorts of things, though, as much as we would like them, as Justin was saying earlier. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question because, I mean, especially given how politically

polarized things are right now, you know, I think that people that disagree with me politically are often wrong, or of course I think they're wrong, but I think they're often morally misguided. And so there's a sort of narrow construal of the character clause or of judgments of character, according to which I think they are missing something that's important. But I wouldn't want the character clause to be something such that a person has to get it all right. You know, they have to perfectly align. So what is it about Schilling in particular, right? Because I'm under no illusion that many very good ballplayers probably hold very different political and moral views than I do about lots of things. So what is it about him in particular? I think the exterminationist rhetoric, right, seems significant. And while it's true that the calls to hurt and maybe to even kill journalists are particularly salient for baseball writers, this sort of rhetoric is not limited to journalists. way that, say, mere adherence to, you know, they're principles I reject, but mere adherence to, you

know, certain kinds of conservative principles wouldn't be grounds or shouldn't be grounds, I think, for objecting to his enshrinement. So it's not quite bright, maybe a dull gleam in the neighborhood or something like that. A glowing line. Yeah, that's right. So I wanted to ask what you think about the idea that, well, there are already lots of bad people in the Hall of Fame, and therefore it's okay to continue to let bad people in the Hall of Fame, or at least this hasn't been an issue before, it hasn't been prohibited before, therefore it shouldn't be now.

It hasn't been an issue before. It hasn't been prohibited before. Therefore, it shouldn't be now. If we are changing the way that we evaluate Hall of Fame candidates now, does that mean that if we look at those players a certain way now that we are in some sense morally obligated to well, that was the past, but this is now and we can just break from the past? Or are you then obligated to go back and say, well, maybe we should change some of these decisions? And I was thinking about this just on Friday as people were responding to the news that Tommy Lasorda, the oldest Hall of Famer, had died on Thursday. And of course, people were celebrating his baseball accomplishments and longevity and everything he did for the Dodgers. And then other people were objecting to just sort of painting him as this character who was entirely lovable and a great ambassador for baseball because of the less savory aspects of his past and because of how he denied that his son was gay or he defended Donald Sterling and other incidents. So not that I'm suggesting that anyone saying Lozardo should be thrown out of the

Hall of Fame or even that these offenses would rise to the level of keeping him out now if you were up for induction, but that's just an example of how if you revisit all sorts of baseball people who have been celebrated in the past, you're going to turn up some dirt that maybe was bothersome at the time or maybe was sort of swept under the rug and would be more bothersome today. So because this is an institution that dates back decades and has hundreds of people in the Hall of Fame already, what do you think is the moral or ethical way to approach that precedent? I mean, great question.

I mean, this gets back to some stuff Justin said at the beginning. I think it's a question we're grappling with in our society more generally when we think about statues that have been built or the names of military bases and things like that. You know, I don't know about the Lasorda case in particular, but you all were talking maybe last month about the renaming. Was it the MVP award? What was named after? Yes.

Landis, right? And that seems totally reasonable to me. And I tend to think probably the same thing about the Hall of Fame. Now, it does bring up a couple of questions. One is that when we think about figures from the past, we don't want to be anachronistic and expect them to live up to everything, get everything right about what we think about morality today. It is related to what Justin was just saying. So it brings up that question. And I also think it brings up this other question, which is other things have changed about how we induct people in the Hall of Fame. And so now we have Jaws scores and we have all these things that have nothing to do with the character clause. And in those cases, we don't we don't go back and say, you know, this this dude from long ago, he didn't really deserve it on the baseball merits. Maybe we should reevaluate that case. And so it really does help highlight a distinction in how we think about how a lot of voters today think about the baseball case for certain players being in the Hall of Fame and the other considerations

case that we might even consider removing people based on other considerations. But we don't consider such things in the case of their baseball performance. I'm not really sure what to say that we might even consider removing people based on other considerations, but we don't consider such things in the case of their baseball performance. I'm not really sure what to say about that, but it's interesting given that the directions for voting for the Hall of Fame sort of all lumped into one sentence. There really isn't a character clause. They just mention the word character as something that's important, along with record and playing ability. mention the word character as something that's important, along with record and playing ability. I think it says something about how we evaluate people in general, that we're willing to maybe go back and change our overall evaluation with regard to Hall of Fame, their membership in the

Hall of Fame, based on something about their moral character. But we're not based on our re-evaluation of their talents on the field. I was just going to speak to something you said at the beginning of the question, which was just that it would be a lot easier if we did this the way that football did. Right. Yeah. And just said, you know what? Are you good enough? Do you deserve it? And then whatever we think factors into that. I deeply love football, but I think there's something really attractive about the way baseball does it, right? Like, if I just want to know the people with the most war, I can just go on Fangraphs and look and

write it. But there's something about the Hall of Fame that it's not just a mere list of the people that hit these marks, but they're people that we think are significant in certain ways, in addition to hitting those marks. And so I think it's a really, really hard question. But insofar as we think that's a valuable kind of institution to have, it seems important to think through it more carefully. So last question, I guess, would either of you be interested in volunteering how you would handle this decision? We've talked through all the issues and raised the questions, and you won't have to necessarily mark off any names next to anyone the way that I am perhaps going to be doing next year and that Meg will be doing sometime after that but if you have come to any conclusions about this or if you're a member of the sort of uh craig calcaterra joshian school of i don't have

to pay attention to this or i don't have to weigh in on this i don't accept the primacy of this institution we can just evaluate players on their merits and demerits without having to pass judgment one way or the other, that's fine too. And if you just haven't made up your mind because you're not obligated to, that's all right also. But because you have been thinking about this, I wonder whether you have come to any conclusions about how you would handle it if given the chance. I think I agreed with, I like Jay's ballot a lot. It's funny, when I listened to that episode, I found myself confidently agreeing or maybe disagreeing in a couple cases, and maybe I was a little more sympathetic. But geez, just remember 2004. I mean, Curt Schilling's a real jerk, more than a jerk, but like, that was amazing. And maybe we should let him in. So I was sort of sympathetic to that in a way that I'm less sympathetic in the wake of what happened this week. But even just thinking about this to talk to you guys, I realized it's very hard. It's one thing to be at the bar and confidently assert who should be in and out. But when you really start thinking about it,

it's very hard. And so I definitely would say Bonds and Clemens and Andrew Jones, I guess. Vizcayel is a little trickier, mainly because that case is more salient. And so it's just a lot harder. And so I don't know that I have a perfectly principled story there. And I guess as of right now, I think what Jay was saying about Schilling is exactly right. But I don't envy you guys having to make these choices and be prepared to defend them. But I hope you do, because I follow enough baseball writers on Twitter to know that there are some real, real jokers. And I want some reasonable people to be voting. I want some reasonable people to be voting.

I promise to send everyone a three-volume set of the theory of moral sentiments before the next round of Hall of Fame voting. Excellent. Yeah, I don't envy you either. Yeah, it's totally different when I thought I was going to be asked this question on the podcast. I was like, dude, it's totally different than thinking that. And I sort of was ah, let all the PD people in things like that. And that was always my view. And I'm not I'm I'm finding myself to be a to be more of a stickler than I thought I would be on on that issue, actually. When I just think about I mean, I think I sympathize with what Justin said, which is the evidence for Bonds and Clemens being great players independent of their cheating is so great.

I think they probably deserve to be in on that count. But even people that aren't that borderline, I struggle with them doing things that make me wonder about whether, you know, make me wonder about what their numbers would have been, make me wonder about these, these counterfactual situations, as we might call them in philosophy. In my case, I think I certainly wouldn't vote for Schilling at this point. And, and I think the moral, you know, the moral distinction I would draw is less about what harm I think he would do on the podium, which I think is,. But I think in a place that just honors people, I don't think he deserves to be honored, given the kind of things he said in the past. And then, you know, the other, the issue of domestic violence, the issue of DUIs and things

like this, I don't know. I struggle for the reasons Justin said. People aren't perfect and you want to recognize that, but it really does seem I would really be sick to my stomach, I think, in the way Rosenthal says, having to make that decision about some of these cases. All right. Well, I don't want to oversell it. There are harder things in the world than having to vote for Hall of Fame candidates. We'll survive yeah we'll manage but but it's true it's uh it's definitely less free of reservations than i might have anticipated it being years ago so thanks for coming on both of you and helping us uh reckon with all of this and maybe I'll get back in touch with you next year when I'm wrestling with it for real.

So we've been talking to Ben Lennertz and Justin Coates guys. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you. Thanks Ben. Thanks Mike. It's been great. All right. That will do it for today.

I wanted to read the short response we got from Patreon supporter, Mike in Alexandria, Virginia. This was in reference to our discussion of ballpark naming rights in episode 1639 about the origins of Bush Stadium, the name. This is from the Lincoln, Nebraska Journal Star. While renovating the aging edifice, Bush planned to rename the ballpark Budweiser Stadium. But Major League Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick did not appreciate the concept of naming a ballpark after a beer, and the idea was quashed. No matter, Bush used the back door.

He renamed the old yard Bush Stadium, and a short time later, the brewery introduced Bush Beer. Sounds sort of quaint now. Obviously, no such qualms among current commissioners. Meant to mention this earlier, by the way. According to the Fangraph's depth charts, the Mets now have the highest projected war from their starting rotation in 2021. Behind them, the Padres, and then the Dodgers, those three teams again.

It's a lot of fun to be a fan of those franchises right now. These blockbusters are just sort of exposing the difference between the haves and the have-nots, and I don't mean the teams that have money and don't have money. I mean the teams that have a willingness to spend their money and those that don't. If you are willing to spend some money on supporting this podcast, you can go to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up to support us on Patreon by pledging some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks.

Nick Strangis, Sid Polk, Dustin, Scott Kramer, and Daniel Watkins. Thanks to all Higgins for his editing assistance. and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon nesting system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with another episode early next week. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will talk to you then. and minoring in history of Psy. I had to retake ethics from my Mennonite professor for whom my skepticism didn't fly. The first time I made mincemeat of the standard propositions, establishing the so-called moral science. And I declared morality an offshoot of aesthetics,

and got a failing C for my defiance.