Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1659: Rotten Mather

Episode Date: February 24, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Fernando Tatis Jr. coining a term for his contract, a Bill James tweet about analytics, and Shin-Soo Choo leaving MLB to make his belated KBO debut, share Stat Blasts about all-over-30 lineups and players who’ve dominated one position in their franchise’s history, and then (32:39) bring on FanGraphs […]

No, we don't know if this will live, so we're gonna build. No, we don't know if this will live, our own legends. We're gonna build statues of ourselves. Whoa, we're gonna build statues of ourselves. Hello and welcome to episode 1659 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing pretty well. I saw on Twitter that Fernando Tatis Jr., in addition to his many other talents, has now invented some baseball lingo.

Did you see that Bill Shakin of the LA Times tweeted a comment that Tatis had made about his contract? So I'll read the tweet here. Fernando Tatis Jr. introduced a new term to contract lingo, quote, statue contract. Tatis was saying that the contract he signed, the extension, is a statue contract. Tatis was saying that the contract he signed, the extension, is a statue contract. So in the Padres context, Bill's tweet continues, it means playing long enough to earn a statue alongside Tony Gwynn

and Trevor Hoffman, who have statues. So I like this. This is like the opposite of the pillow contract. The pillow contract is just when you want a soft landing. That's a Scott Boris neologism where you take a one-year deal to rebuild your value and then you hope to get the long-term contract the next year. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the statue

contract where you sign up for the rest of your career or most of the rest of your career and you hope that at the end of it, you have statue status with that franchise. I love that. I think that's fantastic. Me too. Yeah. I mean, it betrays some self-confidence, which I think Tatis is entitled to. I think he has earned that. There are a lot of things that could go wrong between now and a statue for him. And although he has a no trade clause, it's not guaranteed that he will spend that entire time with the Padres. But if all goes well, if he plays as the Padres are expecting him to

and paying him to, then he would certainly have statue status at the end of it. And Padres, not a lot of statues in their history. You've got Gwyn, you've got Hoffman. I don't know. I guess Winfield didn't get a statue because he wasn't there his whole career. Not a lot of superstars who have spent

their whole careers with the Padres. So it's time for them to have another one. And Tatis would be a good statue, which I wonder if it would be the, have we already seen what the pose would be? Would it be his 3-0 swing? Would it be something else he has already done? Or I guess he's got 14 years to make another statuesque pose. Yeah, I think that the commitment to permanence on his part is admirable, but the exact contours of the monument to that permanence, let's not limit ourselves. Who knows what he might get up to in the next 14 years? I like this so much. Yeah, me too. This is really good. good so we're gonna talk a little later in this episode to rj mcdaniel who wrote for fan crafts about the kevin mather affair yes kevin mather the long time but now

former seattle mariners president and ceo who apparently thought that he was at a Friars Club roast instead of a Bellevue Rotary Club speech. And he managed to insult several parties associated with the Seattle Mariners during that talk. And that talk got out, surfaced earlier this week, although he gave the comments earlier this month. And he put out a damage control statement, which did not control the damage. And then shortly after that, he quote unquote resigned. So RJ wrote about that for Fangraphs and we will get into what the Mather affair says about the Mariners or about baseball as a whole. And we'll also talk to RJ about the Northwest League and baseball in Vancouver, the topic of another post at Fangraphs, as well as the active Blue Jays offseason. So all of that to come shortly. I guess the only other things I wanted to mention, I do have a stat blast for you here, but wanted to just salute Shinsu Chu for a second since it looks like his MLB career is over and he is heading back to play in the KBO or really heading to the KBO to play for the first time. He signed with the SK Wyverns, who I believe were just sold and are about to change their name.

And they actually had the rights to Chu because there was a draft in the KBO way back in 2007, where the teams drafted overseas-based players who had agreed to their first professional contracts outside South Korea after 1999 and had been playing overseas for at least five years. And so they drafted essentially the rights to those players. If they were ever to come to the KBO, then they would have to spend at least their first year in the league with the team that drafted them. So 14 years later, the Wyverns finally got their man. They signed him for 2.7 billion won, which is about $2.4 million, as I saw Dan Kurtz tweet. And he then promptly donated a billion of that to his charities of choice. his charities of choice. And I think that was a record, at least one year contract for the KBO. And I just thought this was cool because, you know, I assumed that Chu still harbored some ambitions of playing for an MLB team this year and was waiting it out to see if there would be interest and maybe there wasn't much. He did say he had offers from as many as eight MLB teams,

but not big offers and playing time wasn't assured he is uh what 38 years old now but he had a heck of a career he has a lifetime 123 wrc plus despite not doing much on defense he's a 30 plus war player it's a long productive excellent career that he has had in the states. But it must be a fun thing to have sort of a swan song in your home country when you've spent much of your adult life and almost all of your professional career playing elsewhere abroad. I'm sure that he has enjoyed that and it has been lucrative for him. And I'm sure he has been appreciated back in South Korea, but being able to go back there for a little victory tour, even if it wasn't his first choice to do it in 2021,

that's got to be a sweet way to wrap up your career, I would think. And I don't think he's played professionally in Korea. He was a high school star in the World Cup. I think he was a pitcher. He was like the MVP and best pitcher of that tournament before he converted to the outfield. And I think he played for the Korean WBC team. So he's had some opportunities like that. But he was signed by the Mariners very shortly after his high school heroics. and that was that so now to get to you know play professionally in front of home crowds that's got to be a cool way to go out he said his parents have never seen him play in person as a professional he tried to bring them over last year but couldn't because of the pandemic so now he's going to be playing in front of them all the

time i think they're going to be living with him and the rest of his family he said i want to play to play in Korea because I want to play in front of my parents and I of the pod sungmin kim clarified that you know if a player has played professionally elsewhere in the world he is disqualified from rookie of the year consideration so we will not be able to see him hoist that trophy i don't know if they give a trophy uh but you know they he won't be able to earn that particular accolade but it does have to be a neat thing to get to go home and uh play for a league that you know you you didn't play for before but that is obviously you know much loved there so yeah it's really neat I mean he always struck me as he was always a fun hitter to watch when he was right and he just seemed like one of the the good guys in the game you know his charity has been very active the news that he was

donating such a significant portion of his salary to his charity has been very active the news that he was donating such a significant portion of his salary to his foundation was unsurprising because of that i know that he paid minor league salaries when it wasn't clear if teams were going to do that during the pandemic so it just seems like an all-around good guy and i hope that this move reflects his desire to return home and not his inability to get a job i know that he's you know on the tail end of his career and is 38 but you know if he's on the tail end of his career and is 38, but if he wanted a big league opportunity, it would have been nice for him to get to say goodbye to MLB in person with fans in the stands at some point this year, but it seems pretty cool.

So good for him. Yeah. That was something I think we mentioned on the show last year where he donated $1,000 to each of the 190 players in the Rangers minor league system who weren't working because of the shutdown and then also donated money to Korea to help out with the pandemic. And he mentioned that he remembered making very little money in the minors and skipping meals and having to cut other costs and wanted to help out some other players during that time. So that was a very nice gesture. Not a spotless track record, I suppose. He has a DUI in his history. He's one of the players who has had that on his record, but he has certainly

endeared himself to a lot of people and players with his charitable work and enjoyed him as a hitter and also his adventures in centerfield at times where he was perhaps not a natural centerfielder, I think we can safely say about Shinsu Chu and was sometimes asked to play there, but he could always hit. So yeah, just thinking that if I had a long and productive career abroad, I would want to do that. And sometimes we've seen some players go back from MLB to NPB and wrap things up that way. But it's got to be a nice homecoming, especially if you've never actually had an opportunity to play in that league because you just went right to MLB. So nice for him. Hope he enjoys it. on Twitter on Tuesday. The former Red Sox player, Will Middlebrooks, tweeted something. There was a whole discourse on Twitter on Tuesday about analytics and what part they have played in

either the front office's favor or players' favor and spending and payrolls. And we've devoted conversations and interviews and episodes to that in the past. But that resurfaced because of some comments on the subject that Garrett Cole made. And so Will Middlebrooks tweeted, analytics were created to work in the front office's favor. Remember that. And I just happened to see that one of the replies to his tweet was from Bill James, who said, as the person who created analytics, I can tell you that this is 100 untrue i didn't care anything at all about helping the front office and for the first 10 years after people started to catch on i worked on behalf of players now there are aspects of that reply that we could quibble with the person as the person who created analytics i think i saw a subsequent tweet he expressed some remorse for having said that

because uh he was a very formative figure in saver metrics of course but saying that he created analytics was perhaps an overbid i think he's actually deleted the tweet now but i do enjoy uh starting a tweet that way if i were bill james maybe i would start tweets that way just preface every one of my tweets with as the the person who created analytics. But I enjoyed that Will Middlebrooks tweeted this, and then Bill James just pops up to tweet about it. It's very much like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, where he just pops out in the movie theater and says, I heard what you were saying. You know nothing of my work when the person is talking about it. So I just enjoyed that interaction. And we've talked

about the actual effect of analytics. I think there is something to what Bill is saying where that wasn't necessarily the intention, but it has been used by both sides to a certain extent, but has maybe played into ownership's favor, especially lately. Although I think he's right in saying that it wasn't really his goal to do that, and it can be applied by both. But I just like the idea that every now and then Twitter can be good, and Bill James's tweets are sometimes regrettable. But I enjoyed this one where he just magically appears in a thread about analytics to testify to creating it and what he was thinking at the time. I hope that the good-naturedness of this ribbing will be clear.

But when you say something that sounds an awful lot like you're saying, when I invented math, you have perhaps steered in the wrong direction. And so the later course correction is probably a good one. Yes, I think so too. Yes, many in our industry owe Bill James for having brought math to baseball in the way that he did. Yeah, sure. But yes. Oh, goodness.

All right. So I have a stat blast here. I guess it's sort of a double-barreled stat blast. It's really a twofer. There are not many stat blast opportunities when we're mired in the middle of the team preview podcast. So I'll just play the song here and then I'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to day step last. Okay, so both of these inquiries were prompted by tweets. See, sometimes tweets are good. They prompt stat less. I know, debatable. Occasionally, though.

So this one is from Rich Campbell, who tweets a lot about the business of sports. He is a marketing professor at Sonoma State. And he tweeted at me and also Dan Szymborski, and he quote tweeted someone else who had sent the Giants spring training roster. And Rich wrote, if I'm reading this right, the Giants could start an all over 30-year-old lineup this year. And he laid out what that would be. I guess Buster Posey at catcher, Brandon Belt at first,

Tommy LaStella at second base, Brandon Crawford at short, Evan Longoria at third, Mike Yastrzemski in the outfield, Alex Dickerson in the outfield, and Darren Ruff. And then he had Johnny Cueto at pitcher. And Rich said that would be amazing given the industry-wide trend towards youth. And I don't know that the Giants will actually run out this exact lineup or an over 30 lineup this year. They do have some not yet 30-somethings who could get in the way, might have something to say about this. I do like the idea that they could just have the all

anti-Logan's run lineup, just everyone who is over 30, especially, as Rich said, in this environment where players are productive at early ages and the average age of hitters is younger than it has been throughout much of baseball history. And there are still some guys, you know, Mauricio de Bon and Austin Slater and Wilmer Flores, who I think is 29 until August, who could get in the way of this. Or even Aaron Sanchez, if there's no DH and he's in the lineup. But if it happens, I was curious, how extraordinary would this be and when was the last time it happened? So I sent this request to our frequent StatBlast consultant, Adam Ott, who looked it up with his RetroSheet database and was able to look at not just the seasonal age of the players involved, but the actual age on the day of the game, just going above and beyond. And I will put the full results up in a Google spreadsheet linked from the show page, as

I usually do. But it turns out that it would be pretty unusual and something that we have not seen in a while. And actually, the last time a team ran out an all over 30 lineup was the Giants. The 2018 Giants did it one time. And that was actually the last time that it happened. And you do see some clustering. You know, it tends to be certain teams that just happen to have an old group of position players

at a certain time will pop up here for a period of multiple years sometimes. So like the 2018 Giants did it that one time, July 10th, and it was Gorky Hernandez and Brandon Belt and Andrew McCutcheon and Nick Hundley, Brandon Crawford, Hunter Pence, Chase Darnot, Pablo Sandoval, and Derek Holland. So some of the same players who were over 30 then and are even more over 30 now. But really before the 2018 Giants did it that one time, it was the 2015 Yankees did it three times. The 2014 Yankees did it 39 times. The 2013 Yankees did it eight times. You see what I mean about the clusters there. But that's it. So it did not happen in 2020. It didn't happen in 2019. It didn't happen in 2017. It didn't happen in 2016. It barely happened in 2015. trend historically speaking but it is definitely unusual for it to be the case now because the collective ages the average ages of lineups have gone down whether through you know lack of peds whether through improved player development whether through teams doing a better job of

evaluating which players are ready or just prioritizing players in their early service years etc we've seen younger, more productive players. And so it would be weird if the Giants actually pull this off, although it would not be really new for the franchise because the 2018 Giants did it. And of course, the Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent era Giants, they did it a lot too. Those were old teams. So the 2007 Giants did it 10 times, the 2006 Giants 15 times, 2005 Giants seven times, and 2002 Giants even three times. So maybe it's just something about the Giants. I think that you should have to play the oldest player in center field. It wouldn't be nice to make them play catcher because you get into your 30s and sometimes your knees, they bark at you.

And it wouldn't be kind to make someone sit back there for three hours. But I think that you should be required to have them play at least an inning of center. Yeah, stick Shin-Chu-Chu out there again. Although I suppose that that is penalizing the player when really, you know, you might want to make a point about the youth and vitality of a roster more generally. I don't know if I think old teams are bad. I mean, generally, they don't tend to be as good just because, you know, we decay as time passes. But I don't know, you should at least make it funny. Make it funny, Ben. Yeah, I remember looking at this at one time, and I know that having a very young team is actually bad in terms of that year's results.

I mean, it might bode well for your future, though not always. But generally, if a team is very young, it is also not very good because maybe you've got a bunch of rookies or people are still getting their feet wet and are not prime age players yet. I would guess it's also bad to be very old. There are certainly veteran teams that are quite successful, but probably you want a sweet spot there where people are peaking and not too early or too late. Yeah. You want to mix a blend of folks, a sous-sant of everything to really round out your roster. Yeah. The year with the most over 30 lineups was 1982, and it was actually all the same team. The team with also the most is the 1982 California Angels, who did this 102 times,

which is pretty impressive. I guess they had a fairly stable lineup or a lot of old people in it. So that's the record. And I think the other interesting tidbit here that Adam found for me is that the oldest minimum age for a lineup, so not just over 30, but over 31 or 32, the oldest minimum age is 33. And that was accomplished twice both times by the 1998 Baltimore Orioles so I will just read you one of those lineups Brady Anderson 34 Jeff Rebele 34 Raphael Palmeiro 33 Eric Davis 36 BJ Surhoff 33 Cal Ripken 37 Joe Carter 38ny Webster 33, and Mike Bordick 33. So not a youth movement in that clubhouse. A lot of veteran mentor types.

I don't know if they had anyone to mentor because they were all old. I'm sure there were some young people on that team too. But yeah, if you can run out an entire lineup of 33-year-olds or older, and granted, that was PED era. That was a time when older players were more productive. But still, that probably presages some difficult times ahead. Can I have a quick and completely tangential diversion to the Angels for a moment? May I indulge in something? So Ben, here are some things about the angels.

This is going to be great. You're going to be so happy I'm spending time on the podcast about this. So they were the Los Angeles Angels from 1961 to August of 1965. And then they became the California Angels from September of 65 to 1996. And then they were Anaheim from 97 to 2004. And then they have technically been the los angeles angels even though they played in anaheim and they had the whole los angeles angels of anaheim nonsense from 2005 until now and i'm here to ask you this question ben there were teams other major league teams in the state of california prior to september of 1965 they did not go away

and indeed they were present for the duration of their stay as the California Angels. So at no point did someone say, you're going too big now. You were specific. Now you're going too big because there are other teams. And sure, you're California's Angels, but there are other California teams. Ben, what was this about? What was that about? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I know it was probably about the ownership changes, but what I'm saying is someone should have said, we're going too big here. So anyway, that's my small diversion on the California Angels because I've always found that strange and now I've had an opportunity to voice my opinion

about its strangeness. Someone should just go bigger than that. Just call yourself the United States Angels. Just pull in as big an audience as you possibly can. Really go for the America's team thing. Just make it official. The North America Angels. Yes. Yeah. All right.

So my second stop last year was prompted by a tweet from friend of the show, Patrick Dubuque. a tweet from friend of the show, Patrick Dubuque. And Patrick pointed out that if you look at a certain Fangraphs leaderboard, it appears that Alex Rodriguez all by himself has been more productive than every other shortstop in Mariners history combined. Now, according to the leaderboard Patrick was looking at, that is true. And A-Rod barely edges out everyone else. But it turns out that that depends on sort of how the qualifications for certain positions are defined. So it is not actually true, although Patrick was reading that leaderboard correctly, if you actually add up all the war that Mariner shortstops have ever produced, and then you look at what A-Rod produced as a Mariner, it is not quite the majority of that total, but it's pretty close. But still, that got me thinking, okay, so A-Rod technically has not quite done this, but has anyone done it? And I asked friends and colleagues, Sean Dolinar and David Appelman, to look this up for me. And again, I won't bore you with the positional eligibility minutiae here, but basically Fangraphs does break down war by

position, which is something that other sites don't do. But if you look at the leaderboard and you look at, say, all Mariners shortstops or something, it depends on if you're looking at, like, okay, who qualifies as a shortstop for their entire time with the team or like the, the year span that you're looking for, or if you're just looking at a single season, like basically on the fan grass, you have to have spent, I think 25% of your games at a certain position to show up as at that position, which can kind of confuse people because it's not actually the war that you produced while you were at that position, which you can also look up from 2002 on.

And I believe David hopes to extend that back into earlier years in baseball, but it's not quite that precise. So there has to be some approximation. But basically, if you look at all players who have ever met that minimum 25% playing who maybe played a few games in a certain season at one position, but not 25% of them. And so therefore, the war he produced at that position would not really show up if you looked at it this way. But it's close enough. It's the best we can do. And I think it's close to what we would want. So there are 13 players who by this measure, and again, I will put this online, who have outproduced everyone else ever at that position in the history of the franchise.

And this is looking at current franchises. I'll put all the franchises up if you want to know what the 18 diggity seven Allegheny whatever's uh you know someone who qualified for for that team you can look but i looked at the current 30 franchises and this does skew toward expansion teams of course because uh if your franchise has been around since the beginning it's very difficult for one player to outproduce all the rest of that position. Like even Henry Aaron, depending on how you define the Braves franchise, if you extend that all the way back to the beginning, then I think even Henry Aaron has not outproduced all other Braves right fielders, let's say. So it has to be a fairly recent team for this to happen, but not necessarily just a most recent round of expansion.

So here we go. Here are the 13 who have dominated their respective franchises positions. George Brett, third base, Kansas City Royals. And he was there from 1973 to 1986. And so it's like he produced a 69.9 something war in those seasons when he spent a significant amount of time at third base and the team total is uh 139.4 at third base over that time so he's very close he's like at 69.9 and all other royals third baseman are at 69.5. So as long as Royals third baseman are, you know, above replacement level in 2021, George Brett may be pushed off the list, but still pretty impressive that he holds this after,

you know, the Royals having been around as long as they've been around. So that's the idea. All right. Next, Ken Griffey Jr., center field, Seattle Mariners. He's got 68.54. All other Mariners centerfielders, 67.4. So again, quite close. All right. Todd Helton, Colorado Rockies. He has 54.9. Everyone else has 10.6. So this is, you know, Helton has been the first face for the Rockies, I guess, for most of their history, right? I mean, from 97 to 2013, and they have not covered themselves in glory at that position in recent years, as we have discussed. So not totally shocking that he's at 53.8 everyone else 27.4 again he was there for a long time and the Expos were not around for all that long so I guess that makes sense Evan Longoria Tampa Bay Rays at third base he's at 48.6 everyone else 27.1 so it's going to take some time for Ray's third baseman to catch up with Longoria Larry

Walker also with the Rockies in right field 44.4 everyone else 39 that's a pretty close one too there is uh another Rockies representative actually a few more Rockies representative so I'll just I'll get them out of the way here. Troy Tulewitzki, shortstop. He's at 33.9. Everyone else at 14.2. Then we've got Nolan Ardato, third base for the Rockies. He's at 32.3. Everyone else 32.1.

Very close. And then this is a weird one, kind of quirky, maybe doesn't count, but worth mentioning. Both DJ LeMayhew and Eric Young qualify at second base for the Rockies, and you might wonder, well, how could they both qualify? The whole point here is that you have to have been better than everyone else ever to play that position for that team put together. I asked Appelman about this, and it turns out that the Rockies have had so much negative war from their second paceman, like negative 23 war by this method, cumulatively, that they both qualify, because LeMahieu on his own is better than Young plus everyone else,

because there's so much negative war dragging down the productive players, and then Young on his own is better than LeMahieu plus everyone else, again, because of the negative war. So that doesn't speak well of Rocky's second baseman i don't know who to blame primarily for this pat falika brent butler alexi amarista mike lansing there's a long list of rocky's second baseman with negative four so those are the rocky's ones and then we've got paul goldschmidt diamondbacks 36.2 at first base and everyone else 24.9. Luis Gonzalez also with the Diamondbacks, 33.8. Everyone else 28.0. And Frank White with the Royals at second base. He has 31.4. Everyone else 29.3. So it's kind of an elite exclusive group. I think that's a cool thing if you can be the titan at your team's position to the point that you have outproduced everyone else who has ever played there.

That's a pretty cool distinction. Yeah. I mean, there's some really bad teams on that list there. Yeah, and recent teams. And recent teams, but also some really good players. And so I'm going to draw a hopeful conclusion from that stat blast, which is to say that even if you are a fan of a very bad baseball team or a recent baseball team, a baseball team in its puberty, you can still end up watching some very good baseball players. And so it is not a completely fruitless exercise am i trying to give us a transition to the conversation about the mariners i mean i might be ben it's a pretty good one it works for me all right let's take a quick break and we'll be right back with rj mcdaniel to talk about the ke Kevin Mather mess. I'm trying to wrap things up now, but I'm out of punctuation.

At the end of the line. Well, it wouldn't be 2020 or 2021 baseball if we didn't have some disappointments to discuss. For folks who have not been paying attention in the last couple of days, the now former CEO and president of the Seattle Mariners, Kevin Mather, was the subject of controversy this week when comments he made to the Bellevue Rotary Club were made public. He managed to insult, I think, pretty much every prominent person associated with the Mariners, along with a number of foreign-born players, the fans, the union, other owners. Rob Manfred, I think we could go on and on. He missed a couple people. He probably ran out of time or something before he got to, you know, Felix or maybe Ken Griffey Jr., Ichiro. I mean, Ichiro and Felix may have been offended by some of the things he said. They just weren't mentioned by name. But yeah, he did a pretty good job, I would say, of a pervasive mentality when it comes to service time and unfortunately, a pretty widespread mentality when it comes to how foreign born players who do not speak English as their first language should be regarded or are regarded within major league organizations. So to join us to talk about that, and then a number of other topics. We have Fangrass writer RJ McDaniel. RJ, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. I wish the occasion could be a

little better, but we take what we can get. Yeah. And you know, we will you are a Blue Jays fan. So we will close this segment on some some Blue Jays talk. But to start off there, as we noted here, and a number of different facets to what Mather said. You wrote on a specific one when you tackled this soup of gross for fan graphs. And I think maybe we'll start there. So one of the things that I think stood out to folks as they were perusing the video or the transcript of Mather's remarks was his decision to single out Hisashi Okuma and Julio Rodriguez for their, at least from his

perspective, perceived deficiency when it comes to speaking English in a baseball setting in the U.S., which was something that really struck you as a particular low light within a sea of low lights. So maybe for the folks who haven't had a chance to read your piece yet, you could bring them up to speed on how how his comments struck you and what they unfortunately might illuminate about a problem that exists in baseball beyond the Mariners. So basically, for for anybody who didn't hasn't yet seen the video or read the transcript of what this guy said, first off, he was asked a question about Julio Rodriguez, the Mariners' top prospect, a rising star undoubtedly in the organization,

somebody who's been one of their really public-facing prospects for this new wave of Mariner prospects, who has his own YouTube show. He's a huge personality. He's really somebody who's making the effort to interact with fans and connect with fans and getting people really excited. So somebody asked about Julio Rodriguez, and literally within the first sentence that Mather

said about Julio Rodriguez, it was qualified as like, yeah, he's got a great personality, his English is quote unquote, not tremendous. So that was that of nowhere and an interesting way to introduce a rising star in your organization. And then subsequently later on in the interview, the question session, he was asked about what the Mariners are doing to support players who don't speak English as their first language. And it was a lengthy answer. And this is something I didn't actually get into in my piece. But in the first half of his very lengthy answer, he talked about how abject the conditions were before for players from the Dominican in particular, who didn't speak English as their first language and how absolutely like nothing

was done to support them. 20 years ago, he said, we would have just done this. Like, implicating himself in this, because he was still very high-ranking in the Mariners 20 years ago. He's like, oh, yeah, they wouldn't know how to make change on a dollar, like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now they've got all these programs. And then he drew a contrast between that and players who come from what he called the Far East,

presumably meaning Korea and Japan, primarily. And he singled out Hisashi Iwakuma, who, as everybody knows, played for the Mariners for quite a number of years, threw a no-hitter, was an all-star, like, great guy, everybody loved him. And what Mather chose to say about him was that he used an anecdote about how Iwakuma was quote-unquote terrible at English, but that when they wanted to rehire him as like a scout in Japan and an interpreter, he told him, allegedly, that he was sick of paying his interpreter $75,000 a year, and that his English magically got better after that. The implication being, of course, year um and that his english magically got better after that the implication being of course that iwakuma was just choosing not to speak english well uh out of laziness or something and and that

it could just uh it could just if he put his mind to it he could just get a little better which is super condescending and what was what was so bizarre to me about this was that like these, both of these answers were not really prompted by the questions. Right. Tell us about Julio Rodriguez. Like there are so many things you could say about Julio Rodriguez. Why is the second thing out of your mouth? Oh, his English is not great.

And with Iwakuma was not brought up whatsoever. They were talking more about about i think the question was referring more to younger players who would be coming more from like rodriguez's situation but out of nowhere here comes this iwakuma anecdote about how he would may there was sick of paying his interpreter 75 000 a year so i thought it was really it was really really telling that totally unprompted, like this is the first thing he uses to qualify any statement about the value of these players to the organization is that their English is not up to his standards.

The fact that he felt empowered to say this in like a semi-public setting is rather indicative and telling of what he feels empowered to say within like the setting of his employment and his the front office and being the president and CEO of the Mariners and the president and CEO of a major league baseball team. And so that element of it, especially as baseball as major league baseball, tries to kind of push forward with like diversity and inclusion campaigns and promoting players from around the world and the increasing like diversity of the clubhouse having that be an attitude that's clearly running somewhere close to the surface enough that it could arise in this setting is uh is quite concerning. But on the other hand, like some people, I've seen some people

saying like, it's been, it was really eye opening to have this recording, like out there in the public for for us to disseminate to see what's really like kind of being said behind the scenes. Yeah, I think one of the parts of the Julio of it all that I found so disconcerting and dehumanizing is, and to be clear, like if Julio Rodriguez wanted to speak through an interpreter for his entire career, that would be totally fine. I don't think that he's obligated to communicate in English, but it is clear that his ability to do that means a lot to him, right? It is a point of pride. Corey Brock at The Athletic had a piece on sort of his initial interactions with Julio when he was a very young

prospect and he gave his first interview entirely in English and said that he had to like go call his parents to share that he had done that. So this is a thing that clearly matters to him as a person. And I don't know the extent to which Kevin Mather and Julio Rodriguez interacted in, you know, in spring training or what have you. But it struck me that this was not the answer of a person who knew or valued Julio Rodriguez, but he was comfortable giving an answer that he maybe thought would belittle someone like Julio Rodriguez. And so I just, like you said, at a moment when we're really, I think, to varying degrees of sincerity in the industry, trying to grapple with diversity and inclusion and making baseball a place that truly is welcoming to all the people who play it and all the people who watch it, it is very dispiriting that he isn't taking the time to get to know someone who's going to be so important to his organization or that he would view Iwakuma's desire to

speak through a translator so that he is understood as he means as a burden rather than an opportunity to connect with a part of the fan base that the Mariners have worked really hard to cultivate a relationship with. And so it just is, you know, it's, I guess in some respects, it is valuable for the people who weren't clued into this dynamic to have such a stark example of it. But like you said, that he felt empowered to speak this way and presumably thought he would not either suffer consequences or didn't see anything wrong with what he was saying is just, I think, indicative of a much bigger problem within the game. And particularly since the question wherein he ended up belittling Rodriguez was about what are the Mariners doing? Right. Like, if if he was, if his answer had been, like, in touch with, like, presenting the organization in a specific way, or if he had been in touch with what his own organization was doing to promote Rodriguez as a future star, having him on the YouTube and on social media, like, all the time, that would not have been the answer like he he would have been out there using Rodriguez as an example of how great the Mariners were doing with their programs to support like players who want to learn English

and become better at English but that's like the the fact is that that is he that even as that is used to kind of like say oh we as the organization are doing so much better now, when it comes to Rodriguez personally, like all that he saw and all that he saw fit to tell this group of people, which I guess he viewed as a peer group, was that he was not great at English, which was like, regardless of its truth,

like he was trying to use that to tell them something he views as important about Rodriguez, which is terrible, but also really speaks to the dynamics for people who don't speak English as their first language in this country. Like, I linked to a study in my piece about employment specifically, and the likelihood of people with certain accents being hired via phone interviews. And it's really, I guess it's not it's not shocking if you have experience with it, but it is very telling and kind of reinforces the experience that people have as immigrants and as people who don't speak English as their first language, or as people who don't speak English that is considered like the standard, quote unquote, in North America. Yeah. And I mean, there's a long legacy of people getting

caught on mics or just saying things, you know, without worrying about the mics at private events often. And this was sort of private, semi-private, but presumably he knew he was being recorded and that it could come out. So he should have assumed that that would be the case. But regardless, maybe it's just one of those things where people do things on Zoom calls that they wouldn't say in person, or they just think there's a sympathetic audience and people who are going to nod and laugh along with what you're saying. And so they come out with things that they might not say at a press conference or when talking to some other reporter. And when those things surface, and sometimes this is in politics, but sometimes it's

in sports, then you kind of get a window into what the person thinks. And that's what you kind of have to conclude here. I mean, he talked about his terrible lapse in judgment, which from his perspective, he probably thinks the lapse of judgment is saying this instead of thinking it necessarily. But then when he went on to say, my comments were my own, they do not reflect the views and strategy of the Mariners baseball leadership, etc., etc., who are responsible for decisions about the development and status of the team, the top executive under the owner. It's hard to do the, this doesn't reflect the organization because you are essentially the organization's top decision makers. So now, even though he's gone, they're going to be living with that for a while. And I guess we should also mention that this was not the first incident for Mather, right? And Meg, you've been following

the team more closely than I have for years, so you might be more aware of the details than I am, but there were alleged incidents of sexual harassment in his past. There was the lawsuit by the team's former high performance director, Dr. Lorena Martin, that alleged some racist behavior by members of the organization. And that lawsuit was just sort of quietly settled, seemingly in the aftermath of this, or maybe before it, but that news came out in the aftermath of that. So it's not just this incident. And so you have to wonder whether this is something that persists or something that is just kind of common in baseball. You know, you don't want to tar everyone with the Kevin Mather brush, but you have to think that things like this are being said inside front offices that are not at the

Rotary Club breakfast Zoom. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to tar everyone, certainly with the Mariners or in baseball with that brush, but I think that we can do a little painting. What is the analogy that I'm looking for here? We can do some spot, I don't know. Anyway, I think that to, and I'm not suggesting this is what you think, but I think to assume that his comments reflect a worldview that is isolated, either his comments about the language that players should be speaking in the less around language and more around service time, was that this is indicative of the way that modern front offices view how they should sequence call-ups and how they should manipulate service time, and that that is a practice that is to the organization's benefit and that they should just do it. And so I think that, and RJ, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this too. It was interesting to watch the organization in the aftermath of his resignation, and I'm doing air quotes here, try to both take responsibility for needing to do better without saying at all what they actually need to do better in the future. Like there was this apology and an acknowledgement that what Mather said was inappropriate and offensive, but the move to sort of outline how they as an organization would do better was left very vague. And they did not really sort of elucidate which aspects of his remarks were sort of contrary to the way that the organization is going to conduct itself going forward.

So I don't quite know where that leaves us. I mean, it's not a bad thing to have to have this guy out of baseball. As you said, he has a history of inappropriate behavior that predates this incident and also predates his promotion to president and ceo as an aside but he is i don't think the the only guy either with seattle or within major league baseball that feels this way so i i struggle to know exactly how they plan to move forward since they can't seem to pin down exactly what it is that they're apologizing for right i know rj you had some thoughts on their their approach after his resignation was announced yeah uh what was it was interesting to me in stanton's statement that he started out kind of positioning himself in the same boat as the fans and everybody who

had been you know on twitter, like, the first line was like, like you, I was very disappointed to hear these statements, which was an interesting rhetorical move, because he then went on not to explain why he was disappointed or what was disappointing about them. Right. And I think I think what they would like us to believe in putting a statement out where it's like, like you, we are disappointed, is that wrapped up in that statement is anything that we as the fans or as people who are observing baseball might be disappointed about without actually addressing what was disappointing about what was said or why it was disappointing. what was disappointing about what was said or why it was disappointing.

Because that really didn't come up in either Mather's statement or Stanton's statement. And yeah, it is hard to envision actual change moving forward if there is no acknowledgement publicly of why people were offended. It's just like, oh, we were disappointed. That could mean that could mean anything. Like, I'm sure he was disappointed that his organization was now getting so much blowback. And like, it was a PR nightmare. Like, I'm sure that would be disappointing. But it's not disappointing for the reasons that people actually were offended by it. And that's kind of one of the the running themes of these sorts of public apologies especially when it's like when it's when it's somebody who's in a really high ranking powerful

position is that this was unacceptable like we will not condone this but what is this like we we're always talking about this and and this is so shifty and so, like, nebulous that you could apologize endlessly for doing this or for these statements without actually apologizing for what people might have found offensive about the statements themselves. Well, particularly when they span such a wide swath of both the organization and the fan base, right? It's like pick a thing all supposed to be able to take from this apology and this approach satisfaction that it will get better but it's not like you said it's it's this this what is this this yeah and the thing is that I guess we could just briefly talk about some of the salary and service time stuff before we move on. And he kind of, he included Kyle Seeger in his broadside somehow. Poor Kyle Seeger. He's just sitting there and he's catching some strays for some reason. And Mather said, I have to compliment Kyle Seeger. And then in the next sentence, he said, he's probably overpaid. Just toss in that. And also

just suggesting that this will probably be his final season with the Mariners so that his wife tweeted like well I guess we should start looking for housing or something maybe we should prepare to move but the stuff that he said about Kelnick and service time and how the Mariners were just you know not under any circumstances going to promote any players last year and start their service clocks. And like, obviously with Kelnick, you're talking about someone who is 21 and hasn't played much at all in the upper minors, you know, 21 games above Abel. And so it would not be unreasonable to suggest that he does still have some seasoning here. But now that Mather has come out and made it clear

that that's not why, that they were just clearly making the determination that certain players were not and are not going to get promoted purely because of service time stuff, that seems like that could potentially open them up to a grievance, which is notoriously tough to win, as Chris Bryant discovered. But just the fact that he's saying this before spring training even started so that they can't really argue, well, it was a baseball decision. We didn't think he was ready. I mean, he's saying now. I mean, it's the quiet part out loud kind of thing that you occasionally hear when Michael

Elias will come out and say the Orioles aren't trying in sort of plainer language than most GMs will say. Or when Joe Ricketts says on camera, you know, he doesn't care about baseball and only cares about the Cubs because they're a good business and they make money. That sort of thing was said here, too. that probably a lot of other executives in baseball who might not have agreed with some of Mather's other comments probably operate in the same way. Not every team, of course, there are notable examples of teams that will promote a player as soon as they're ready, and it's worked out for some of them. But in this case, Mather made it pretty clear that this is how the Mariners operate. And whether that is a DePoto decision or a Scott service decision or not it was clearly a Mariners policy under Mather and I suppose they could say that Mather's gone and

that now everything's different but if those players don't come up again then the Mather comments will kind of be hanging over them for a while yeah it was it was really astonishing almost how every time he brought up a player to compliment them he ended up insulting them like not only not only with the the stuff about people's ability to speak english but like he brought up marco gonzalez to talk about how great he was and then called him boring like he couldn't go a sentence. It's like you're representing the team. You're supposed to compliment these people. He couldn't even say Luis Torrence's name correctly for like one time. It was really shocking. Like that element of it, like the pervasiveness of how much he was just insulting everyone.

Like some elements, I guess, were just were not that surprising. Like people, it was stuff that you would suspect the president of a major league baseball team to say but going out of your way to just kind of insult every player was really yeah it was really something i don't want to like continue to fixate on this but tell us about julio rodriguez like that was literally the question what what a meatball down the middle of the plate tell us about Julio Rodriguez. Like that was literally the question. What a meatball down the middle of the plate. Tell us about Julio Rodriguez. That is the kind of question that when sports writers ask that question of front office folks, we give them grief

because it is just the laziest way to open a conversation and is almost certainly going to invite the most saccharine of response yeah talk about oh my gosh well where do i begin so many things i could possibly say about the possible future face of our franchise oh well he's loud and his english is not great which is not even true i'm sorry rj i cut you off but i just it just to this it the rest of my life i will spend thinking about how he swung over that well it uh i guess he's regretting it now yeah yeah and rj you mentioned how some people sort of were were pleased that he said these things so that people know that they're being said and another example

is when he talked about free agents and he said we have taken the position that there are 180 free agents still out there on February 5th unsigned and sooner or later these players are going to turn their hat over and come with hat in hand looking for a contract which is sort of what we were saying all offseason teams were waiting for players to get desperate and sign for less, and there were other teams operating this way, but they were not saying it so explicitly. One non-Mariners player who seemed to take umbrage at this was Josh Donaldson, who said, thank you, Kevin Mather. I sincerely mean it. You just said what everyone already knew, but now we at the MLB Players Association have official evidence that is going to help a lot of players. Again, thank you.

Bravo. And a few clapping emojis. So, yeah, you'd think that this would be the sort of thing that even if you suspect that a lot of teams are thinking this way or operating this way, when someone comes out and says it and it's on YouTube and it's transcribed, then maybe that becomes a rallying cry. transcribed, then maybe that becomes a rallying cry. And again, not that every executive is like Kevin Mather, but the fact that there are people like that in the game, if you're the leadership of the union, then you're probably sending that to all your members and saying, this is what we're up against. And that's why we have to stick together in the upcoming negotiations. And you can see that in the statements that MLB and

the Players Association put out. The MLB statement said, we condemn Kevin Mather's offensive and disrespectful comments about several players. It's clearly referencing his remarks about Rodriguez and Iwakuma and goes on to say, we're proud of the international players who've made baseball better, which is nice, but MLB does not bring up the service time stuff or the free agency stuff unsurprisingly. Whereas the MLB PA statement says the club's video presentation is a highly disturbing yet critically important window into how players are genuinely viewed by management, not just because of what was said, but also because it represents an unfiltered look into club thinking. It is offensive and it is not surprising that fans and others around the game

are offended as well. Players remain committed to confronting these issues at the bargaining table and elsewhere yeah and uh julio rodriguez it's tweeted his uh his jordan graphic not to that he was taking it personally and his little uh devil emoji and like rising graph emoji so i think even the people were insulted who were insulted like that can't have felt good but i think they they took something away from it for sure i do think that and craig goldstein kind of brought this up on twitter it's a really unfortunate place for folks who are who are not kevin mather to find themselves in because you want you know you want fans to be able to be sort of unequivocally excited about young, talented prospects who might advance the narrative for an organization like

the Mariners that has just been so inept from an on-field perspective for so long. And you find yourself in this really awkward spot of on the one hand, like you, you now want these guys to light the world on fire and then get the hell out of Seattle, because it's clear that senior leadership, even if it's not senior leadership, that's present with the team now did not really value them either as players or people. But that's a crummy place to end up in as someone who doesn't want Mariners fans to necessarily be the ones who have to bear the brunt of this. Any improvement that Julio makes in his approach at the plate, any wins that Kelnick helps the team accumulate when he gets

called up, on the one hand, that is to his benefit, but it's also to the organization. So we just find ourselves in this really strange spot where we don't really have a ton of satisfaction that things are going to change on a broader level, even if this one individual is gone. And I find myself not really knowing exactly what to root for because I'm not much of a fan anymore, for because you know i'm not much of a fan anymore but like you know my family is and my brother-in-law was bummed about this but i also don't want the the organization to necessarily reap the benefits of bad behavior either so i i guess what i'm asking is is there any like ethical consumption under capitalism but but you know make it baseball so yeah i don't know i don't know about that yeah i guess all we can do if if you want to support the players i guess is just

support the players uh it's it's hard to to think about like the family ties and like the deep history that people can have with a team and then being confronted with this kind of thing from like the leadership of said team but i think that's that's kind of like that's kind of like the devil's bargain that you make as as an adult like choosing to carry team fandom into adulthood like obviously as a kid when those bonds are formed you're're not thinking about, like, oh, is my team winning the World Series making tons of money for this guy I think is terrible? Because you're really not even aware of the existence of that guy. All they see is the team on the field that's making you so happy, and making everyone around

you happy and giving you all these wonderful experiences. And so just like trying to reconcile that feeling, which you can still absolutely connect to as an adult, with the knowledge that you have as an adult of like, what's going on behind the scenes, I think is difficult. And it's not really, it's not really a winning position for like an adult fan of a sports team to be in. Because no matter what you do, like even if you're going to the game, if you're watching the game, if you're talking about the game on Twitter without even interacting with it in any other way, you're still kind of doing PR for the people who own the team. So it's just, it's not really a situation that I think is is winnable for a fan. I guess you just have to kind of decide

what is worth it to you and what isn't and it's possible that if you if one if your relationship with one team is is like poisoned to the point of no return you can still like love baseball or go be a fan of another team it's just hard when so much of the root of fandom for so many people has to do with that deep history. And that's not something that you can really create again, especially if it goes back to when you were a kid, or when it if it goes back to your relationships with people who are now gone. So it just sucks that people are in like the system of baseball results in people kind of being in this weird position where it's like oh i i truly do love this this team and i love like watching baseball and i love thinking about the history that i have with this with this franchise and

all these memories but also like this kind of stuff comes to the forefront. Like, if you log on to search for, like, oh, what's new with the Mariners, this is what's going to come up. And yeah, it just, it's not, it's not fun for people. And it would be nice if we could move to a world where this would not be happening anymore, which I guess is what we're all kind of working toward, is like a world where we don't have to have these like ethical considerations where we're just able to like really feel wholeheartedly like feel wholehearted enjoyment of the baseball team that we're watching and that we have history with. Well, that is a unfortunately a perfect segue, I think, to our next topic to switch away from

Mather, because you just wrote a post called A Farewell to the Northwest League, and you wrote about the history of baseball in Vancouver and the roots and the fandom and how that may all be changing because of the minor league restructuring. And one of my great regrets is that I have not seen a baseball game in Vancouver, even though I love Vancouver. And as a half-Canadian person, I've been to Vancouver many times. It's probably the place I have visited the most in the world, at least outside of this country. And I love going there and hope to go back many more times, but I've just never been

there at the right time or I've been there to do something else or I was going skiing or fishing or the weather was bad, which is not uncommon in Vancouver. But I hope to get to a baseball game there sometime. And so you have been to many baseball games there and you wrote a little bit about the history of baseball in the city and how it's changing. So could you tell us a little bit about that? So with the minor league restructuring, the Northwest League, which the Canadians had played in since the year 2000, and which they also played in when their stadium was built in 1951, it is no more. Like, they are now part of High A West division, I believe. And it's great that, like, the Canadians are a super strong, healthy minor league franchise.

I didn't think there was any way that they were going to be wiped off the map. And it's great that there's still going to be baseball in Vancouver. Like we're still, they're still going to be playing in Nat Bailey Stadium, which has this long history that's tied up in like the entire history of baseball in Vancouver, which I kind of got into in my post. And they're still going to have their little museum, like, it's really, all of those connections are still going to be there. However, the naming of the Northwest League, like, I think there's something important about the way that we

contextualize our experiences, and the way that we name them, and the packages that we put around our memories. Like, the name of a major league baseball team, for example, like the Toronto Blue Jays is a way that I can contextualize my relationship with baseball. And so was the Northwest League, because through the history of that name and the history of that league, I could trace a direct line back to like my dad watching the Vancouver Capolanos at Capolano Stadium in 1951. And there's something that was so cool about that. And something that was so specific to minor league baseball, the way that all of these histories could be wrapped up in leagues whose names and like, technically, their structures still exist today, like half a century

or a century later. And that was one of my favorite things about baseball because it prompted this kind of historical inquiry. Like there's this certain looking toward the past that can bring us to look toward the future even more, I think. And the fact that the Northwest League, in inquiring about that name, could bring me to all these other histories of baseball in Vancouver, like histories that are not always positive, but that are important to learn about, was just an aspect of being somebody who's a fan of baseball in a minor league town is awesome. And even though it's great that the minor league players are getting paid more, hopefully, in this league, that there's going to be a little more baseball, the season's a little longer, and that there is still baseball here,

like professional baseball. All of that is great, but I do think that there is something being lost when we kind of discard those names and those packages we store our memories in. Well, and it's, it's striking that I think part of the conversation has to be about like, what are we discarding that stuff for? Because baseball changes, right? The minors change, there's been constant shifting, less for Vancouver, but constant shifting of, you know, shifting less for Vancouver, but constant shifting of, you know, parent club affiliation. And there have been times when clubs have gone, you know, between levels and what have you.

And so I don't think that anyone wants baseball to be stagnant or has the expectation that it will be given the amount of change that is sort of coursing through its history. But you do suspect that the rationale both behind the minor league restructuring and then what these leagues we presume will ultimately come to be known as, which is that these larger names are sort of placeholders for the camping world Northwest League or whatever it is. It's like that reason to start to fray those historical connections seems like such a bad one, right? It's not really in service of anything that improves folks' lives or their ability to connect with the game, but it's like for sponsorship dollars. It's like this is the worst possible way that we could start to rewrite this part of the history. It's like, why are we doing this? You couldn't just keep these, the Northwest League and the, I don't know, the Pacific Coast League. That would have been so hard.

You couldn't have put the Camping World sticker on the bottom of that. I'm picking on Camping World. We don't know that's going to be one of the sponsors, but it seems likely. You're playing right into their hands. They want you to keep saying Camping World. The Doosan International League. We're not buying into their hands. They want you to keep saying camping world. The Doosan International League.

We're not buying backhoes. That's not a thing normal people buy. What are we doing? Well, as I was saying before we started recording, the upside seems to be that there may at least be baseball for a longer part of the summer in Vancouver because it's going from a short-season league to a full-season league. So that's something, even if it's coinciding with other markets having no baseball at all or less

baseball. But for your purposes, at least there's maybe a greater chance of getting a sunny day to see baseball. Yeah, May is generally pretty good. Like probably not this May, unfortunately, due to pandemic circumstances. Right. That's a whole situation that Canadians are going to have to deal with. But I can look forward to some bright May day in 2023 when I can go watch the Canadians again. Yeah, I don't mean to downplay that part. That part is good, but you could have that part and still call it the northwest league i think well maybe we will we will end on a cheerier note lest we be accused of being

bummers you are a blue jays fan and the blue jays have had a good off season rj oh yes oh yes they have like it was uh it was such a week when Springer and Semien were signed. We have not had, like, a similar week in Blue Jays land for a while. So it was very exciting. And I think, like, more than the Springer signing, which it was like, it was pretty much known that the Jays and the Mets were like kind of the front runners for him in particular. But the Semi in signing was just like an awesome surprise to me. And I'm just so, I was already looking forward to watching the team because I think that the young

players have so much potential. Like even if the season ended up not going that well, I think I still would have, like, felt compelled to watch and enjoy. But now it's, it's really like, oh yeah, like, we're, we have something really to watch out for here. Like, obviously one would like a little more in, in the world of starting pitching, but the outfield, at least least is going to be just so much fun to watch. The continued growth of the young players in the infield now along with Semien, just like so much so much to look forward to. It's really a nice time to be a Blue Jays fan. If only we could watch their spring training games, though. Yeah, what's what's going on with that? I saw some scuttlebutt about that on Twitter. Are they just really not broadcasting them at all? blacked out in Toronto for quite a while. But starting last season, they blacked out the entire

nation of Canada, so that people would buy their new streaming service. Oh, boy, which is, you know, like, I hated to do it because I don't watch hockey or anything like that. So paying $22 a month just to watch a Blue Jays game seemed a little ridiculous, especially since there's no way that I could use that money to go watch a Blue Jays game in Toronto, because I'm thousands of kilometers away. So it just seems, it seems an odd choice. It seems like a continual making of odd choices in terms of the broadcasting, especially when they've invested all this money into signing great free agents and making people excited about the team.

And then we can't even watch these new players in spring training. It's annoying. It is quite annoying. And the sports broadcast landscape in Canada has already taken a huge hit this year with bell having mass layoffs like our one of our sports radio networks in vancouver was just taken completely off the air and that was the case in a lot of other places in canada too so it's just uh yeah it's it's one wishes that it seems like a problem that's so easily solved. Like, it seems like somebody down in Dunedin could be there holding a camcorder to hold and zoom in on George Springer's face, like for 15 for 15 minutes a day. But no, so I'm just gonna have to resort to other methods, which will remain nameless.

to other methods, which will remain nameless. I'll embark on a Pirate Blue Jays broadcast, or a Pirate Blue Jays broadcast, I should say. Articulating that is important. Well, we hope that you are able to find some means, hopefully legal, but some means of watching the Blue Jays both in spring training and in the regular season. And folks who want to read RJ's work about the Blue Jays and other stuff can find it at Fangraphs. You can find them on Twitter at Ram Hamlet. RJ, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, that will do it for today. You know, Meg mentioning that Shinsu Chu would be a 38-year-old rookie in the KBO earlier made me remember an email that we got a little while ago from a listener named Cliff, who sent us this. While bored at work, I came across a list of Japanese baseball records. Toreo Uka, or Torao Uka, that's T-O-R-A-O, last name O-O-K-A, currently holds the record for most runs batted in by a rookie with 111 in 1949 at age 37. His success continued the next year by hitting 34 homers and 109 RBI, but he retired the following year after just two full seasons at age 39. And initially, Cliff wanted to know how that had happened, why Uka had not played at that level before that age, given that he was clearly talented enough to do so. Obviously, World War II is one reason, but not the only reason, as he was potentially old enough to have played in the league before the war. Eventually, Cliff answered his own question, which is always nice, and he wrote back,

I was able to find a bit more information on Uka from the Effectively Wild Facebook group and some helpful baseball historians on Twitter. I've gathered that he worked as a steelworker and played on the company's semi-pro team for 20 years before retiring and debuting in the Japanese majors. He was scouted by the Tokyo Giants before the war but never signed. He was known for using a 42-ounce bat, 1.2 kilograms. I would think that working in a steel mill for two decades would make you stronger than a normal human. This would also explain his immediate power production as a 37-year-old rookie. We will never fully understand why he chose the life of a steel worker over a pro baseball player,

but my guess is that he had a comfortable life with better job security than the average Japanese professional ball player in the 1930s. Other than the three years he played in the Japanese Baseball League or the Japan Central League, the only other info I could find on him was his participation in the MLB All-Star Tour of Japan in 1931. At age 19, Uka's Industrial League team played against Lou Gehrig's team of American All-Stars. Uka hit two homers against Larry French. He was the only Japanese player to hit a home run in the 17-game series. Uka will be remembered for setting the Japanese professional baseball rookie record of 111 RBI, which has stood for over 70 years.

Although I prefer to remember him for an even more impressive stat. He played against Lou Gehrig, then 18 years later made his big league debut. I also asked Kazuto Yamazaki, friend of the show, about this. impressive stat. He played against Lou Gehrig, then 18 years later made his big league debut. I also asked Kazuto Yamazaki, friend of the show, about this, and Kazuto's best guess, he wrote, is that he preferred to stay with his industrial league club and play in the intercity tournament, as amateur ball was a bigger deal than pro ball before World War II. It wasn't uncommon for top players at the time to forego professional offers in favor of industrial league opportunities. For example, Shinji Hamazaki didn't play in NPP until he was 45. So thanks to Cliff and Kizuto for that info.

There is some precedent for a rookie in his late 30s being one of the best hitters in a high-level league. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Ryan Pavlicek, Peter Wiggin, Justin Bobco,

Christian Scarborough, and Paul Hendrickson. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcastwithfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with another season preview podcast, which I will be posting almost as soon as I post this one. That episode will feature the Opelais and the Philadelphia Phillies. Talk to you soon. Swimming up in the river to discover its source A source of strange and unrequited remorse And I've found the end of the world of course And it's not the end of the world of divorce

It's just a Vancouver divorce It's just a Vancouver divorce