Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1764: Decrying the Sliderization of Baseball

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

In a crossover event Marvel would envy, Meg Rowley and guest co-host Michael Baumann of The Ringer discuss Games 1 and 2 of the World Series, what the loss of Charlie Morton means for Atlanta, the narrative role of the starter, how to navigate the moral conundrum that is fandom, the ever-growing length of postseason […]

🎵 🎵 Slip sliding away, slip sliding away 🎵 🎵 You know the nearer your destination destination the more you slip sliding away i know a man he came from my hometown he wore his passion for his woman like a thorny crown Crashing for his woman like a thorny crown He said, Dolores, I live in fear My love for you is so overpowering I'm afraid that I will disappear Hello and welcome to episode 1764 of Effectively Wild,

a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined in a special crossover event by Michael Bauman of The Ringer. Michael, how are you? I can't imagine what this is like for your listeners who want to hear Ben and then get me instead. It's like the evil stepmother showing up. I don't think that that's true. Although I'm sure the people who listen to both the Ringer MLB show and Effectively Wild are like, wow, we're getting a good dose of Bauman. But that's good.

A dose of Bauman is good. It's good for everyone. I appreciate you joining me to talk more baseball as the host of your own baseball pod. We are going to check in on the World Series as it currently stands, take advantage of the travel day to record an episode that we know will probably not be outdated by the time it posts, which is super exciting and pretty rare this time of year. And we're also going to talk about some of the news to emerge from Houston that wasn't on the field. Rob Manfred gave a number of comments on a couple of different topics, as did Tony Clark. So we'll get to that because it wouldn't be playoff baseball if the

commissioner weren't making us feel kind of cringy about the game. But let's start with the World Series. As I mentioned, we're recording this on the travel day on Thursday. The series is currently knotted a game apiece to Houston and Atlanta. And we have not had a chance to record an episode since game one. So for our listeners, this is our first opportunity to react to any number of things, not the least of which is Charlie Morton breaking his leg in the midst of a game and, of course, being ruled out for the remainder of the series. So maybe we can kind of take these two together and think about the pitching. But before we do that, Bauman, what

has sort of struck you about the World Series thus far? What are your takes? Well, I think one of the things that was always going to define this series is these are two teams that have between them a total of about five starting pitchers who alternate between being unhittable in the playoffs and, you know, doing what Max Free did last night. And so whoever strung together the most of those, the most good starts out of those guys was going to end up winning. And Charlie Morton, in addition to being probably the most reliable out of these starting pitchers, the Braves also have less room to operate, I think, in terms of depth, in terms of bringing a guy up to fill up that rotation spot. Because now not only did they have to extend their bullpen more in game one, not only are they going to be without Morton in what is now certain to be game five, they've got to

string together two bullpen games in two days and then also possibly account for Ian Anderson maybe going only four innings as he has in his previous playoff start. So I don't know. I sort of missed the days of like the 2001 Diamondbacks. when you could count on starters to go seven or eight innings, not to sound like John Smoltz, but I think there's, you know, there's a romance of the great starting pitching matchup that, that I think we're, we're losing a little bit. And, you know, this is not just me being an old, old man. You mentioned my show, like Zach Cram and I have talked about this and Zach believes this and Zach's

11 years old. So, uh, this is, we're losing the one, the one pitcher who I think could really win this series on his own. And that, at the risk of stating the obvious, makes this just so difficult for Atlanta going forward. Yeah, I think that we can acknowledge sort of the wisdom of pulling starters when they're struggling and deploying your bullpen smartly to compensate for that and still bemoan sort of the narrative void that the starter not going deep gives us. I think that most people, even people like us

who look at the game from sort of a sabermetric perspective would prefer like a seven inning dominant outing from a starter just because they're really fun to watch, right? Like they make for more compelling baseball. They tend to make for baseball that proceeds at a pace that's a little bit more bearable. I know that a lot has been said about sort of the average length of game in this postseason creeping, you know, closer and closer to four hours.

And that isn't entirely the fault of having to make a bunch of pitching changes, but that certainly doesn't help matters, right? So I think that there's a lot to recommend the return of the starter i know a lot of people have joked about this but it's going to be like that that tech guy tweet where they like accidentally invent the city bus just by virtue of being like oh you know those guys usually go seven like there's a lot of efficiency to be had and those dudes going deep into games i think that if atlanta has one thing that might save it and this is perhaps a little strange to say given the fact that it ended up resulting in a loss, but the fact that Freed managed to gut this one, although when he was pulled, it was a bit closer. But it allowed him to deploy sort of the softer part of that bullpen and save, you know, Matzik and Minter from having to go back-to-back days and sort of save them for, as you said,

a weekend series that is going to feature at least two bullpen games and might end up featuring three, depending on how deep Anderson can go. So I don't know. I feel like he has done a pretty savvy job of deploying his guys and rather than doing the the dave roberts thing of like leaning on starters but then also only trusting a couple of relievers and not really seeing how those things might be at odds with one another he's been pretty good about how he's how he's deployed his guys but yeah it's it's a real... I can't imagine... Well, I can't imagine being a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball.

I can't imagine any of the small physical woes that these guys incur over the course of a season or a postseason, let alone continuing to pitch through a broken leg. It's just... They're not like us. I'd need to be carried around. Yeah, I found that less remarkable than I think some other people did.

Because just the amount of adrenaline that has to be going through you, not even like making a start in game one of the World Series, but also just immediately after suffering that kind of impact injury. You know, it doesn't surprise me that it took morton a few minutes to realize how badly he'd been hurt yes and so i mean these guys can pitch through anything it's i don't know whenever i talk to a pitcher nowadays i end up asking questions about like how the ball feels coming out of your hand just yeah the level of physical awareness to to have that level of control and grip and get information back from throwing a baseball like i'm a person like so i when i was in college forgot how to throw a frisbee like i got the yips and i like i chucked a frisbee into a grand while i was playing into the grand while i was playing ultimate it was the mid-2000s everybody played ultimate it wasn't weird and i

started overthinking like how the frisbee is supposed to come out of your hand and to this day can't throw a Frisbee. And I'm just imagining bringing that mindset to throwing a baseball. And it's amazing what these guys can do mentally. Yeah. And I think that the way that you put that is spot on because it's not just the ability to do any of the discrete physical acts that are required in order to be a major league pitcher or hitter or whatever you're doing at that level. But being able to think about them actively to some degree, I'm sure this varies guy to guy and that it's sort of more feel and intuition for some than it is for others. But like if I think too hard about braiding my hair, I have to start over. You know, it's like this muscle memory action can get undone just by having to attach some sort of degree of cognition to it. So yeah, the fact that they're able to do anything at all is really remarkable to me. I just can't believe he came back out after sitting through a half inning where like five, I think five Braves hitters, you know, came to the plate in that half inning. And so he was sitting there.

And I wonder how many hitters it took him to realize, wow, my leg really hurts. My leg hurts a lot. Wow. My leg keeps hurting. I wonder what's wrong with my leg. And then he went out and struck out Jose Altuve as he wanted to do. So it's pretty incredible stuff yeah shades of bob gibson after uh having his leg broken by roberto clemente i could imagine almost not occurring to him that he could have broken a bone sure because that's

not like you expect getting hit by a baseball to hurt but you don't expect to to get hit hard enough to to leave more than a bruise basically. Particularly if you get hit on the leg. It's different if you get hit on the toe or something like that. Right, or in your hand where you're like, there are all these tiny bones, we don't know what to do with them. Little bones, yeah, you got hit in the big bones. Yeah, gosh. What about, let's think about these hitters for a second

because I wonder if you suffered from the same sort of syndrome that I did where I knew that the Astros had the best offense in baseball, but I don't know if it's because I didn't end up watching them as often as you might expect a team that went on to win as many games as they did. But I sort of was able to forget until the playoffs just how potent this offense is. And then the postseason hit and I was like, oh yeah, these guys can really thump the ball. But last night's hero in some ways was like the least likely of them. Do you have do you offense thing. When I was prepping an article for my World Series preview, one thing I wanted to look at was this is a fairly right-handed heavy lineup.

I guess they've got three lefties in there with Alvarez and Tucker in the middle of the order now, so it's not as righty-heavy as it was in years past. And I was curious if there was going to be any kind of interaction with a very lefty heavy Atlanta bullpen. And so I went to fangraphs.com and sorted the team leaderboard by WRC Plus on the versus left-handed pitcher split. And I was like, oh, the Astros are the best offensive team in baseball against left-handed pitching. And just for fun, I switched it over to right-handed pitching and turns out they're the best offensive baseball against right-handed pitching too. So nothing matters. So what we saw last night, maybe I was a little harsh on Max Fried because what really did

him in was that second inning. And that wasn't a bunch of hard contact. It wasn't a string of four doubles and five batters. It was four singles in a row. And a couple of those, those were two of the the weakest singles that you're ever gonna see like he didn't get hit that hard but the problem is i don't know to your point about maybe not recognizing that this lineup was that good you know when i was living in houston going to a ton of astros games that was what stuck out to me about the 2015 to 17 or so astros was not the individual excellence of

of one or two hitters like obviously altuve won an mvp in there bregman came close to winning an mvp uh cray alvarez they've got great hitters but you're not going around the lineup and fearing one guy to come up it's just that they've got in this case seven guys with uh the holes of catcher in center field and they can just keep the line moving and that's the way they've got, in this case, seven guys with the holes of Ketcher in center field, and they can just keep the line moving. And that's the way they've been built really dating back to the start of this run in 2015. And so if they're going to put together a big inning, it's not, you know, with the Braves you're thinking about, okay, you got to keep Rosario off base, and then you got to keep

Freeman and Albies from driving him in. They're just going to string guys on base together. And so the second inning of last night's game wasn't the most spectacular version of that, but they're just going to keep working you. And it's like a modern version of that throwback sequential offense that John Smoltz wants to see all the time. And, you know, I think it's really fun to watch. And I've always really enjoyed watching this Astros team execute that kind of conga line

offense where there's just no place to take a break, and particularly if Jose Siri's going to beat out ground balls to second base. Right. Yeah. I think that we have become so accustomed to sort of the modern version of MLB offense that we forget how fun and just how, I imagine, discouraging and unrelenting this kind of an offense can feel because it's not like they don't have guys in their lineup who can like you know send the ball deep like and not just to the Crawford boxes right like they have those guys but like you said it's

just like one dude after another and they have pretty good base running acumen so they're able to sort of press their advantages there i think that's been one of my favorite things about the postseason even just zooming out from the world series is that like good base running and aggressive base running is back in a way that is quite enjoyable and i know that like the stolen base numbers have been up at least the success rate was up in the regular season i think that the number of attempts was was pretty on par with prior years but it just seems like they're trying to really press their advantage on the base pass too, which is super fun. Give us starters and then we would

have like the platonic ideal of baseball maybe. Yeah. The Astros are generally a pretty conservative base stealing team, but even they stole two bases last night's game. You know, like Kyle Tucker can run a little bit, so maybe that's not that surprising, but they've been good at picking their moments. And I think this was game two of the NLCS with the Ron Washington said, the idea of forcing players to make plays is something that maybe the pendulum swinging the other way, because it felt like defense was was impenetrable a couple years ago. And now you're getting, say, defensive alignments where Adam Duvall is playing center field. And like I said last night, he plays center field in such a way that makes me worry for his own safety. And so you get guys like that and you get Eddie Rosario

thrown to third base without recognizing that there's nobody there. Like maybe we shouldn't say throw to a certain base. Maybe we should say throw to a man, but teams are going to make mistakes. There's going to be throws offline. And so there's an advantage to maybe putting pressure on a defense in a way that there wasn't a few years ago. But I mean, that's something the Astros have always really done. I remember Gary Pettis with a couple just absolutely suicidal sentence in the ALCS against the Yankees in 2017. But it was a bet that Jose Altuve could run home faster than gary sanchez could catch a

ball and at the risk of provoking discourse he was vindicated yeah it's uh it ended up being a pretty smart bet for gary he's so often the guy you lead into a sentence with look i don't want to do discourse but i still like to this day love g Sanchez's game. I think you put him anywhere else and he's like a folk hero, but poor guy's just never going to get a chance in New York. Yeah, it's a rough market to be someone who's often on the wrong end of the pass ball. It's just like a rough place to have that happen. I have been thinking about this question just for myself a lot in the last couple of days. and I know it's been a subject of pretty frequent conversation in the Effectively Wild Facebook group. I wonder if you have a take on this. So like, obviously,

there are objections to be raised to both of these organizations, and I'm sure that there are particular players who aren't exactly endearing themselves to neutral fans. But how do you approach a series like this when you aren't necessarily keen on either of the teams, but are still perhaps finding yourself swayed by individual players? You're a sports writer, so you're not really looking for ways to root for anyone. But how do you navigate rooting interests in a World Series like this, Michael? But like, how do you how do you navigate rooting interest in a World Series like this, Michael? Yeah, I find myself not really pulling for a team in a way that, you know, even if I'm being neutral and objective, you still find yourself, you know, leaning towards certain outcomes.

And there isn't really that this year, which I think surprises me a little bit because, you know, being as close to this Astros team as I was when I lived down there, you know, I was obviously fond of them pre-sign-stealing scandal. Whereas the Braves, like, I grew up a Phillies fan in the 90s, and they remain my least favorite of the 30 franchises. But there are individual reasons that I can find to root for players, even if I'm, you know, I'm just sort of rooting for entertaining baseball and, you know, for my predictions to end up being right that's basically what uh you know what i'm in this for yeah but to the larger point about finding one or both of these teams detestable i think there's a lot to detest about both of them i would encourage your your facebook group people to uh your acolytes to read what I wrote before the ALCS that touches on this, that it sort of decries

an overly tribalistic and I think really simplistic view of fandom. The idea that if you're an Astros fan, your identity is so tied into everything that organization does that you have to defend everything or that it's not okay if somebody else doesn't like what they do. And I think whether it's the whole stink of Jeff Lunau and the sign stealing scandal or if you still don't like Yuli Gurriel versus the Braves with the chop, like that's not an easy thing to ignore. Like it's right there in your face and it's, you know, odious. And I can't believe that we're still doing this in 2021. What I would say is it's okay to like certain components

of certain things and dislike others and even reject or abhor others because these institutions are outside our control. And it just doesn't make sense to turn over your own sense of morality to an organization, to an amoral organization, first of all, as all capitalistic enterprises are, but something that doesn't really operate with your interests at heart. And the other thing I'd say is, you know, I think that goes for putting distance between between yourself and the bad things that the team might do, but also to recognize that just because your team's winning

doesn't mean that you're you know, this is not medieval trial by combat where. Yeah. Where the victor is whoever God favors the most. Right. The other thing is, like, if you're just rooting for sports is, you know, watching sports as a way to, like, pick whatever side you think is most morally righteous, I guess that's, you know, I'm not going to say don't do that. But it just it doesn't make sense to me as a way to either consume an entertainment product or have a sense of right and wrong. And I think everything is just so flattened. It's we need to be okay with with recognizing the good and bad, particularly in something as trivial as baseball. Right. It seems like it's funny, because I understand why we sort of freight it with

the, the moral import that we do. And, you know, all of these individual, sort of bad acts impact real people in a in a really tangible way. And so, you know, and I'm not saying you're denying that, but it's like, you know, it is hard to, I don't know that it's scaffolding that can really hold the weight that we tend to put on it, right? Yeah, it's not something that's going to be revealed in the World Series. Right, right. And so I think that as long as we are willing to sort of grapple with the parts of it that are unsavory and harmful like i think that patching together an understanding of a particular franchise as fun and something you want to root for is fine and we don't have to like weaponize the bad acts of these franchises

against one another as we're like navigating fandom we can like the stuff we like and say this other stuff we don't like should be different it's important that it be different right without i don't know getting whacked over the head with it on twitter it's just such a it just seems like a fool's errand apart from anything else like none of these none of these teams are upstanding we're dealing with like gradations of bad yeah and it's it's simplistic and i think it's a morally cheap outlook. Yeah. That if all you're interested in is scoring internet points, then of what use is your framework of ethics? Right, yeah. other people because you want to like you want to point out the things that are bad and unsavory

but weaponizing them in the interest of like my team is better than your team seems to treat like very serious issues rather cheaply so you know it's i i understand the instinct to be like well well my guys didn't do this but it's like it's just bad acts all the way down. So then where do we end up at the end of that conversation except like pissed off? Yeah. I mean, this is a very people who live on the internet conversation, but you and I do live on the internet. So I imagine do many of your listeners. And I've just found it useful to be selective about who you argue with.

Always seek out, try to learn and try to take in perspectives that you think might broaden your horizons. But also, some people are just out there to waste your time and you don't owe them anything. So block and mute liberally and move on. This is what you tell me in Gchat all the time. And I listen sometimes. Well, I mean, at least you're not out there living out the Goldstein doctrine of arguing with everybody all the time. Craig is a fighter.

It is true. He does not shy away from the threat. I'm too tired. Yeah, that's the other thing. I'm like, I can't spend half a day doing this. I don't know where he finds the energy. And he is a kid. It's really remarkable.

Well, as I said, we're two games down, as we all know. And we are guaranteed a game five. So what are your expectations in terms of how this plays out from here? I don't remember who you predicted to win the World Series. So you could change your prediction. And I wouldn't know. You could lie to me. And I'd be like, that Bowman, he's so smart. But what are your kind of expectations for the series the rest of the way here? I mean, I think it hinges entirely on what the Braves get out of Anderson and what they get out of their bullpen in games four and five. Because I mean,

if they can basically just hold serve i think a win for for atlanta is just getting this back to houston and getting max reed back on the mound and in game six presumably but it's going to be tough with that i mean i almost feel stupid saying this to a baseball savvy audience but if you lose your best starting pitcher in game one of the world series then you know it makes it a lot a lot harder to win i'm interested to see what they do in game five you know i might have just given you know given it makes it a lot harder to win. I'm interested to see what they do in game five. You know, I might have just given it a whirl and call up somebody like Spencer Strider and say, just go. And if you get twice through the order, great.

We'll pull you whenever you look like you're in trouble. And, you know, I think that kind of high risk, high reward play would have been the way that I would have gone. But, you know, obviously the Braves and Brian Snicker have guys that they trust more. And he's been pushing all the right buttons so far be it for me to second guess him, but it's more difficult. I think my gut feeling was Braves and seven before the series started, but that's gonna be a lot harder to accomplish now that they basically have to steal another game. Right, they're better served to wrap it up quickly than to sort of allow things to linger. Anderson, I agree, is going to be really important to this process, but I think we'd be sort

of remiss if we didn't mention the other starter that he will face up against, which is Luis Garcia. I love his pre-pitch motion in a way that is profound. We've been without Cueto for long stretches now, so I'm ready to pass this mantle of the guy who teens on the backfield are going to imitate because there's a long stretch where there are a lot of guys trying to do the shimmy when you looked at prospects because I think they had grown up

watching Cueto and were like, this dude is great and cool and this is weird. Garcia was obviously spectacular in his last start, has had other stretches where he has been less effective. His first two postseason starts, he gave up five earned in each. What version of Luis Garcia do you anticipate we see? Well, I like the astros pushing him back giving him two extra days of rest instead of keeping them on rotation because it seemed like you know going on five days rest after only throwing however many pitches it was in game two uh really did him well and if he can come out with that kind of energy that's going to be huge at the same time he's had one good i mean good barely does it justice how good he was in game six of the lcs at the same time, he's had one good, I mean, good barely does it justice how good he was in game six of the ALCS.

At the same time, bad barely does justice to how he pitched in his first two postseason starts. So, yeah, I'm with you on the windup. I think it's, I'm all for like biokinetic diversity. Yeah. Different ways of throwing the ball. And I think it's getting sort of standardized and this is why like personally i hate the slider i think the slider is just a cheap caveman pitch for cheap caveman pitchers and i want there's so much more artistry to a change up or a big curveball and you

know i decry the sliderization of pitching. So I like anything weird. Yeah. At the same time, I get why people are annoyed. There's I don't know if you remember a Dodgers reliever named Paco Rodriguez. Yeah. Yeah. So when he was at Florida, this was when Florida was up against. Oh, I mean, you would remember this well, because this is the same series where the Mike Zanino picture comes from. But when he was in college, he would come set, lift his leg up vertically and drop it back down and then go into his windup. And it drove me nuts as someone who was rooting against his team. So I can understand, like, why isn't this a balk every time?

I can understand that visceral reaction and don't begrudge anybody being put off by that. But as a, you know, somebody who's pretty neutral in this series and likes weird stuff. Yeah, I'm all for it. I think that we as as fans underutilize the balk accusation. I am shocked that more fans do not cry out that a that a given moment in a game is a balk, that a move is a balk, because no one understands that rule particularly well. And that is irritating from a viewing perspective, but I invite us to consider it liberating because the confusion allows us room to just yell about stuff, and we love to yell about stuff at the ballpark. I can't believe that fans don't yell back like every almost every time a guy pitches. Like I think that we're we're leaving we're leaving money on the table from a jeering perspective. And it's like it's a nice neutral jeer because, you know, you're not invoking anything personal about the guy. You're not getting into anything nasty. You are just exploiting a confusing rule to yell about stuff.

And we should do that more often rather than yelling about stuff that is mean. I think that we're leaving money on the table, as I said. You want to do this for game three? Just tweet balk every 15 pitches? Oh, man. It's just like such a commitment to being on Twitter, though. And we are we are terminally online, but I'm trying to to carve out moments where I am in the world and not on. I will be curious to see what we get out of Garcia. I think that he, between the, you know, the ceiling is so tantalizing, the floor is like having to leave after, I don't know, two and two thirds. I'm not going to count the first Boston start against him

really because he was injured while he was doing that. I hope that we have an opportunity to just enjoy him and not think that you can cheat your way to higher velocity which seems like we've lost the thread a little bit on that one seemed odd people thought that was a real thing yeah i don't know if the asters could do that don't you think they you know yes would be throwing 102 miles an hour oh yeah yeah i i don't mean to suggest that if the option were available that it wouldn't be taken advantage of. But it does seem like the last frontier where we can perhaps feel confident that things are on the up and up. I mean, like, I guess that all of these guys could be on steroids.

I'm imagining Zach Granke throwing his 87 mile an hour fastball against his 85 mile an hour change up and going, wait, you can do that? Where was this? You know, Where was this when I needed it? Yeah, where was that before? Well, obviously, we will wait with bated breath to see what we get. It's so nice to record on an off day. There's so much pressure to record when there are games in the evening. You're like, people aren't going to listen to this until the next day, and then we're going to sound even stupider maybe

potentially because they'll know what's happened whereas tomorrow it's like they'll listen to this episode and then they'll probably forget everything that we've said and then they'll watch the games and it's like it's like getting away with one it's kind of nice yeah i think that's a really good point i would encourage everybody to listen to this week's episode of the ringer mlb show on the ringer baseball feed exclusive to spotify which we're recording at 11 o'clock eastern on friday morning sorry dude what are you gonna do obviously when we get together for these world series games all of all of the game's brightest stars come out to issue statements including the commissioner and we would be remiss if we did not address some of some of these comments that came out

of Rob Manfred. And for our listeners who are sort of blissfully ignorant of this, this is before game one on Tuesday night. Commissioner Manfred was asked about the chop and Atlanta's team nickname and whether he thought that anything should be done to sort of rectify either of those situations. And he offered this choice quote, it's important to understand that we have 30 markets around the country.

They're not all the same. The Braves have done a phenomenal job with the Native American community. The Native American community in the region is wholly supportive of the Braves program, including the job. For me, that's kind of the end of the story. In that market, taking into account the Native American community, it works. He also talked about how they do not market the game nationally. It is a series of local markets and different stuff plays in different places. And it feels like he just gets served up a lot of opportunities to at

least fake it and he never takes advantage of them and i can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing right like on the one hand it's very frustrating to be confronted with sort of the myopic perspectives that the commissioner has on the other hand like if he were a better operator he might get away with more i don't know man this is a this was a bummer of a quote i think it's probably surprising for a lot of people to hear that like they're not trying to market the game nationally i'm sure their advertisers were we can we can put a pin in the national marketing thing because yeah let's that's the least important part of this well i was gonna say i could actually sort of see where he's coming from but this being

rob manford who's not a great extemporaneous speaker sure sort of mangled what could be a defensible point but as far as the chop my favorite part of this is insinuating that there are 30 markets which first of all there aren't um right but anyway but insinuating that the greater atlanta area is uniquely racist like this would appeal to to them in particular which i don't think is true that it's the most racist market in in mlb and also even if it were that that's the sort of thing that matters like it the big problem is it never occurs to rob manford and people who think like him like what's the morally right thing to do or failing that what's the morally right thing to do or failing that? What's the tasteful thing to do? It's just the raw, unadulterated avarice of capital.

And in some respects, Rob Manfred got this job because he was the guy who negotiated the CBA for, what, 15 years before Bud Selig retired. And in that strict role, he's the best to ever do it in any sport on either side. He's an absolute killer in labor negotiations. And that's apparently what's most valuable to the league. And so we get all this rhetoric from him that makes it sound like he doesn't really care that much about baseball. And, you know, I don't know what's going on in his mind, what he thinks about the health of the sport, or whether it's distinct from the short-term economic health of its ownership. Right.

But that's, you know, that's why you get quotes like this. And it's, you know, I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that as far as like the ceremonial steward of the game thing, that was a conceit that existed around the commissioner's position at least until partway through bud selig's tenure and even like that was something that bud selig took seriously but that veneer is completely gone i think it's it's somewhat refreshing to be frank about that about what the commissioner's job is but yeah having a guy in that position of power who thinks like that leads to somewhat awkward and

self-defeating circumstances where you know this could be like this is if you just want to be as cynical as possible say this is an easy pr win put pressure on the braves to end the chop and or change the name and it's such an easy thing to do you know there are obvious replacements yeah people who are gonna like actually turn off the the sport are so few in number even the people who'd get angry at a name change would get over it for the most part right just i don't see what the downside is to to cracking down on this but instead we're just gonna you know have this embarrassing racist spectacle on national tv for the next three days yeah and i I think you're right that like it is not at all subtly insulting to to the fan base. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of Braves fans who are quite content to do the chop.

So I don't want to let the folks that are perpetuating this, as you said, racist spectacle off the hook. But to sort of insinuate that, look, unless we make it racist, they're not going to show up is, I think, probably both unrealistic and inaccurate and, as you said, pretty insulting to that market. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the sort of vocalized objections of a particular employee of baseball writ large are not important to him. employee of baseball writ large are not important to him. But it is very strange when you have had an active player come out and say, this is insulting to me. This is a dehumanizing thing. This trivializes my people. It does not represent the things that we do as a part of our culture. This is terrible and racist, and they should stop doing it and for atlanta to

be sort of temporarily sympathetic to that and then for manfred to like kind of sidestep that part it's like you have an employee who has said publicly this sucks and you know is creating he didn't use these words but like when hells he talked about it like it is creating sort of a hostile work environment for him yeah that is completely immaterial to the commissioner of the sport it's just like they there's precedent for them doing something about this right like they started a sort of series of of steps when it came to cleveland to say look you're gonna have consequences if you don't change your name and we can debate i guess like the relative severity of these acts relative to one another. But I don't know how useful that is.

Like there is precedent for them saying, look, this is not consistent with the way that we conceptualize baseball today. We need to make changes. And if you don't do that, you're going to lose the all-star game. So I don't know. So I don't know. I don't understand quite what the hang up for him is here, other than it's hard to change it because of the sort of impassioned viewpoint of some fans. And it's easier for him to just hand wave it and say, well, every market's different, you know. individual owner who's really invested in that iconography that goes back 100 years. The Braves are owned by as faceless a multinational conglomerate as exists in sports. And they only started doing this in 1991. And I just don't know what the constituency is for this. And I mean, a healthy business, I would say, you know, if you're not going to come to baseball,

if there's less racism, then tough. We've got 100 million other paying customers. Right. You know, go watch Italian soccer if that's the only thing that's going to motivate you. The other thing is the Braves continued use of one Native American group as a fig leaf to say, oh, they're all okay with this. When even that group is saying, we enjoy our economic partnership with the Braves, but we'd really prefer they stop doing the Tomahawk chop thing. And when Manfred came out and said this,

I found the response by the National Congress of American Indians that came out a day later to be quite incisive. It basically like, hey man, stop lying about us. Yeah, well, and that's the part of it that I think is, that's one of the things about his approach to these questions that is always so perplexing, because as soon as he talks about it, you can almost anticipate the follow up from the relevant group being like, hey, man, no, that's not you're not accurately portraying this situation and so i think you're right that he's bad it's sort of the extemporaneous part of this but this

was an easy question to anticipate right and all it takes is saying you know we don't think this is reflective of the game as we want to see it and we're gonna work with the braves to make sure that it's phased out in short order like it doesn't take more than that to sort of at least put the question to bed for the duration of this series. Of course, you then have to actually make good on that. I don't think you do actually have to make good in order to get away with that.

How long did Cleveland lie about not having Chief Wahoo as its primary logo? You can get away with lying about that for a long time if like, like again actually doing the right thing is not priority i was going to say priority number one it's not priority number six right it's not on it's not really it's not cracking the top 10 i don't think yeah i mean i thought that like the the piece that clinton yates wrote about this today was really good and he points out sort of the the logical conclusion to this line of thinking is that any

name is really on sort of the list of acceptable names if it's in keeping with some of the most vocal i won't even say the in keeping with the local markets sort of sense of propriety and morality but like with the most vocal parts of that markets um stated desires And obviously there is an end to what baseball would be willing to tolerate when it comes to this stuff. It's just that, I don't know, for me, the easy test is like if you're starting a franchise today, when we get expansion, which we will certainly get in large part because we don't have 30 healthy markets and so we've got to explore new places.

If you were coming up with the list of names for the new team in Portland and you proposed any of the names that invoke Native American iconography, none of those would pass muster in 2021 or 22 or 23. Right. We just would know that we can't put that stuff forward because it's dehumanizing to make real people into mascots. to make real people into mascots. And so it's like if that's the reality that we're operating in and the reason that's true is because it doesn't hold muster with our sort of understanding of how to treat one another, then like what are we doing here? Yeah. It's frustrating, frankly, that we just continue to humor and give air to a very small reactionary segment of yeah of the population just

because it's loud and just because it comes from a traditionally intense entrenched position of ethnic power right like we could leave all these people behind yeah and and we'd all be better off yeah you just i mean this goes back to this is a very macro high stakes level i guess at the point i was making earlier about arguing with people some people are just out there to waste your time like we all know the right thing to do right major league baseball could do it tomorrow if they wanted to yeah well and i don't say what i'm about to say to in any way minimize the harm that this stuff is doing so i i don't mean it that way but like on the on the list of sort of moral grievances that we have with baseball, this one is relative to minor league pay or reworking free agency or finally

tackling the abuses in the international market. Like this is relatively easy to rectify, at least from the institution's perspective. And you have to do work in order to make that a reality, right? But, you know, like the fact that we're failing on these ones where we can alleviate a harm just by rebranding the franchise and not having the ballpark play, you know, the visual cues to do the chop and that we aren't doing that is tremendously disappointing. It's so easy. It's so easy.

And so much of this is hard. Like you're saying, reforming like entrenched moral abominations within the sport and society. It's a very difficult, first of all, conversation to have. And second, like series of policies to agree upon and enact. This is, you could do this with a phone call. Right. And I just can't imagine having that kind of power and not using it.

Right, yeah. It's disappointing, to say the least. Well, Atlanta's racist iconography was not the only thing. Yeah, I love being two white people talking about racism. Yeah, I mean, like, clearly, like, there are limitations to us being the ones who are conducting this conversation, to be sure. Manfred and Tony Clark also spoke, not at great length, but at some length, about the current state of the CBA negotiations. Obviously, the CBA is set to expire on December 1st. There was an Associated Press report this week that a lockout seems increasingly likely.

this week that a lockout seems increasingly likely. I wonder, like, if you were going to ballpark the odds that we, I'm going to give you a couple of scenarios, and then you should tell me what you think is sort of rank them in descending order of probability, that we reach an agreement by December 1st and not you and I, because like if we had a hand in this, it would be a lot different, right? We would expropriate every team in the majors and turn them all into public utilities. I don't know how bloodthirsty you are anymore, but there would be discussion of stockades and public scaffoldings and so on. All that would at least be mooted. Maybe that would be the thing we would disagree on. Right. It would depend on the day, but we might part ways on that one. Maybe.

All billionaires have a nice day. I wouldn't go that far, but I am often reminded of the five years I spent in finance. There might be a self-interested desire to stay off the wall on that one. So the parties reach an agreement by December 1st. The parties don't reach an agreement by December 1st, but say grant themselves an extension that doesn't result in a walkout. Right. So this would be them coming together and saying, look, we're close, but we're not quite there. We're extending the deadline for negotiation to December 15th or 30th or what have you. But we're we're on our way to some sort of agreement here. Or the

parties do not reach an agreement and we end up with a lockout on December 1st. So let's answer that question first and then I have follow-ups. So which of those three do you find the most likely? Scenario three. And what is the second most likely scenario? Scenario two. Okay okay and so we end up with a lockout on december 1st and we should say that like lockout can kind of take a couple different manifestations it doesn't necessarily mean that all work stops from a free agent perspective although it likely means that and the league can decide to make it mean that but do you expect that that lockout leads to a delay to the start of the 2022 season? No. Yeah.

This is where I'm at right now. The Associated Press story doesn't match with the tone that I think Clark and Manfred both had, where they said they were fairly optimistic about reaching a deal. What I think about the December 1st deadline is that you could have a lockout of really up to two months, maybe even longer, and not really threaten the start of the season. I think what we've learned in the past couple of years is that you can reduce spring training and at least reduce the number of exhibition games without any major impact on the start of the season. And from conversations I had with a few pitching coaches during the ramp up to the 2020 season, some of the teams or the coaching staffs might even prefer to have a shorter exhibition schedule and be able to do more simulated games in a way that they can control their players' preparation in a way you can't in a Grapefruit League game.

Anyway, the point is December 2nd deadline is meaningless in my mind. I'm sure that both parties are taking it seriously, but it's not going to cost anybody money and it's not going to alter the schedule if they miss it. So that's where push comes to shove, where you find out if this is really something worth having a work stoppage over,

whether it's a strike or a lockout is is when it's actually going to going to impact, you know, impact production. And so you because there's so much buffer time over the over the season, I think, I don't know, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it seems like that actually might weaken the the players leverage a little bit because if there was a cba stopping in the middle of the season then they could go on strike and actually actually force the league's hand right in a way that they couldn't like oh no we're gonna not have any trades the the winter meetings like nobody really cares about that so i think there is such a deadline but it's not for a couple months after after the deadline of the CBA expiration on paper. So whether that means an actual lockout or whether that means, like you said, oh, we'll extend the CBA for 30 days while we continue negotiating, that's not crunch time yet.

I mean, this is, I'm, I think, a lot less excited about the potential for a work stoppage after having been on my own union's bargaining committee for a year and a half. But I'll just say from personal experience, we got a contract because we had a deadline we couldn't violate. Our negotiator was going to have a baby. And if our negotiator was gone, it was going to take another several months to get a deal done. It was going to completely reset the process. So that put a lot of pressure on us and management to find compromise. And I think absent that kind of time pressure, it's very easy to dig your heels in on philosophical points that maybe you bend

on later, or even if it's just dollar figures that you eventually bend on later. At the same time, that's where you find out, okay okay can we live with this or do we have to go on strike or lock out the players and like i said if there's no if it doesn't mean canceling games that pressure i think is not high enough to make particularly ownership move yeah i tend to think that the i don't want to like ascribe too much rationality to a process that is sort of fraught for reasons that aren't just that. There are sort of profound philosophical disagreements between players and ownership when it comes to what baseball should look like going forward, both from, deeply compromised 2020, like the appetite for having a protracted real work stoppage, right, and delay to the season and a shortened campaign as a result

of that and all of the bad feeling that comes with that just has to be in the basement for both sides, right? Like I would imagine that it might take until the last possible minute to maintain a workable spring training and then the scheduled opening day. But at a certain point, like don't you just say like we haven't had and we haven't really had a normal year in two years

because even this year from a attendance perspective was not remotely normal even though they played a full schedule. So I imagine if I had to guess, it will be the sort of thing where it ends up going for a long time and it sounds like there's no movement. And then we have a lot of movement all at once. And, you know, by the time March 1st rolls around, guys are on the complexes playing ball, getting ready for opening day. Right. I think that's what's going to that's exactly what's going to happen is it's going to look like we're going to lose the season. And then in about 36 hours, everything's going to get resolved and we're

going to make opening day. But to your point, I actually think there's a financial impact for both players and ownership to settle, or financial incentive i should say to settle because we've had lower revenues yeah particularly in 2020 but as far as like an emotional you know taking the fight out of either side i think at least from the player's perspective that had to be even more radicalizing i think oh yeah well one thing that i'm interested in is we haven't seen a player i think the the union has its messaging together, both internally and externally, in a way it hasn't since at least 2002, maybe the 94 strike. And they know how to articulate this to the public now, and they know how to articulate it to the players in terms of building up solidarity. And so, you know, you're seeing service time manipulation.

You're seeing bad conditions in the minor leagues all these players have lived through it now and they had a dry run to go through it as the league was trying to nickel and dime them to play for pennies on the dollar during a pandemic and yeah you know that's not going to engender goodwill that's going to make people want to fight more so whether that outweighs the we we already lost two thirds of a season's worth of paycheck, maybe we can't afford to go into an extended work stoppage. Right. I think those things are pulling on pulling in opposite directions. Yeah, I think I think that that's right. I will be very on the management side of things. I will be very curious to see how expanded playoffs factors sort of in the same way. Like I think they, they want that stuff so bad. They want expanded playoffs factors sort of in the same way. Like I think they want that stuff so bad.

They want expanded playoffs so bad. And, you know, I know that some of the initial proposals that have been leaked have involved like lowering the CBT thresholds, which in an era of revenue expansion makes absolutely no sense. Well, it makes sense for ownership. Sure. But like in terms of like trying to smooth the way to getting a deal done, like that's the kind of thing that you put in an initial proposal, I guess, to be like, no, we're serious.

We're not going to just roll over on this stuff. But I do think that the players have, you know, that that trump card is a not small one being able to say, no, we're just we're not getting a deal done with expanded playoffs unless you meet some of these other demands. I wonder if that ends up being an important balance in the scales on this one. I don't know. So I want to say two things about that. One, this is where we miss the commissioner, the illusion of commissioner as neutral arbiter.

Yeah. There's nobody out there saying what's good for the sport. I think that there's because Manfred is so unpopular, I think particularly in our like sort of lefty adjacent sphere of baseball Twitter, there's been, we saw this with the, with the sticky ball stuff that, you know, people were saying, why isn't the union doing something about this? And like, this is not just ownership is bad. Manfred is unpopular. The union is good. It's the union's job to fix everything. Like that's a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of a labor union. And I mean, that drove

me up the wall. Like if I were a union member and I'm worried about free agency, if I'm worried about arbitration, I'm worried about lowered, you know, lowered CBT threshold. I'm worried about pension. I'm worried about 55 other things. And the union was spending political capital on policing the sticky balls. Like, I'd light the building on fire yeah i'd be curious like so the expanded playoffs being bad for the sport that's only useful to the union insofar as it's something that they know management wants and management needs them to to get it right and so that's like there's going to be no pushback in terms of on the merits it's just useful it. It's something to horse trade. Right. So I'll say it this way, even though it's not a popular way to put it in like baseball labor circles, like continuously selling out amateurs and minor leaguers like, yeah, it's not the union's job to take care of them. You know, whether they should be part of the union in the first place is something, you know, I don't really understand the, why they wouldn't want to welcome minor leaguers into the union. But, but that's a, the union as currently constituted, like has to look out for its own.

And sometimes that comes at the, at the expense of the best interest of the, of the sport. And it's just, you know, that's a narrow remit of a labor guilt. That's not, there is nobody looking out for the fans. There's nobody looking out for the fans. There's nobody looking out for the interest of the product or the long-term health or entertainment value. So all that said, I do want to talk about Pitch Clock because they also talked about Pitch Clock and after crapping on Rob Manfred,

like if he gets a Pitch Clock in, like I don't know that I'll stop criticizing him, but I'll kiss him on the face if he can get that in. Because game length being out of hand, it's not that the games are four hours long it's there's so much dead space between yeah and so so many of these grip it and rip it fastball slider relievers are taking 30 seconds between pitches with the bases empty to catch their breath between the max effort pitches like stop screwing around and throw the ball like and as a purist as a baseball history guy like i hate the idea of a clock but there's just no better alternative if the god you know if the divine watchmaker who had handed down the rules to

abner double day on on stone tablets had realized that this was going to happen there would be a pitch clock right and it's just such an easy way to keep the tension up, to keep the action moving. So you're not like, you know, watching entire YouTube videos between pitches in the playoffs. So yeah, please, please, Big Rob, make this happen for us. Yeah, I think that this is one where the his instinct to tinker is actually in service of a better on field product. And I know that, you know, there have been at various points concerns about, you know, does a pitch clock lead to more injury?

I think we have enough data to comfortably say like this is not, does not enhance anyone's injury risk in a really meaningful way. If you go to a minor league game with a clock, it, it does move. Now I know that maintaining those gains is something that has to be sort of actively managed right like when jj cooper looked at this for baseball america he found that it did reduce time of game and then stuff started to creep up as pitchers found loopholes to basically exploit the clock but some of the new experimentation they've done this year where they've tightened that stuff up and you stepping off doesn't reset the clock and all that stuff like has really helped so i'm with you pitch clock is good and there are so few guys left who haven't played with a pitch

clock at some point in their careers although garrett crochet not having one remains one of my favorite weirdnesses about baseball just because of what happened in 2020 and not having a minor league season and then him going right to the majors it's like a fantastic bit of business but there's just so few guys who have like not had to deal with this before and uh you know i think we should embrace the future i'm with you pitch clock for all yeah i mean the instinct to tinker i i don't think it's a bad thing i think baseball can be a little set in its ways. The game evolves. The players evolve.

The needs of the fan or the television market evolves. And so it's appropriate to make subtle changes to keep up with that. As far as the minor league thing goes, I think we should have a dedicated lab league where you can try all this stuff and move the mound around and put the softball style first base in and test all that where the players know that's what they're signing up for in the first place. I think that's an important thing

that don't really have right now. But I just think that would be such a low cost worthwhile investment in figuring out small ways to make the game a little bit better. Unfortunately, there's nobody looking out for the health of the game at large. Maybe this should be my thing.

Maybe I should run for czar of baseball. We need an ombudsperson. That's hard to say. We need an ombudsperson. Leave it in, Dylan. It's hard. It's a hard word for me to say. I struggle with it.

We need that and we need Lab League. Effectively Wild is pro Lab League. This is a stated position and it's not just me. Make me the ombudsperson and I'll give you the Lab League. That's my campaign promise. I think we just solved baseball, Michael. We just fixed it. You and me.

This is what I've been saying all along. Just put me in charge and I'll take care of everything. Absolute power. Absolute power. I need a year and complete discretion. And then we're going to come out on the other end with a better baseball. I mean, both figuratively and literally, I suspect. Well, Bauman, this has been a delight. I think this is a successful crossover event. The people will clamor for more. What do you have to plug that our listeners should check out? Well, I've got some stuff coming out in the next couple of days. I'm going to have a non-baseball column on the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault case as that story has been

developing, which I was writing this afternoon and, has not been a fun experience, but I think, you know, that's a huge story in sports that if you're a baseball specific fan, I think there's, it's important to pay attention to. And on the baseball front, uh,

sometime later in the world series, I'm going to have a retrospective on, on Carlos Correa's career with the Astros is that seems like it's coming to an end, which continues to baffle me. You know, I have a hard time imagining Correa without the Astros or the Astros is that seems like it's coming to an end, which continues to baffle me. You know, I have a hard time imagining Correa without the Astros or the Astros without Correa. So, you know, try to put some of my feelings about that in words. Also, as I mentioned,

tomorrow, we will have tomorrow as in Friday, we will have a new episode of the Ringer MLB show, which is on Spotify exclusive, but it's free to listen to. You just have to go through the app. Zach Kram and I will talk. We'll probably make a lot of the same points that were made in the first 30 minutes of this show. Also, the two of us were on baseball barbecue with the Cespedes family barbecue guys on Tuesday, which is on the same feed. We drafted World Series MVPs in auction draft form. You can go listen to to jordan schusterman can i say screw the pooch yeah on this show because that's what he did he and this was obvious before he spent his first pick on charlie morton so no poor man oh so yeah that's that's all on on the ringer baseball feed on Spotify. Be sure to check that out.

And as soon as Ben is done raising his child, Ben will be back with us next season. So and you can find Michael on Twitter giving me a hard time about Mike Zanito at Michael Bauman. Michael, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. I feel like I should have brought my accordion along and played a little tune played yeah depoto diddy oh speaking of tune it's always good to hear the the og uh ben gibbard pen ringer mlb tune on the back half of the credits for this show well we'll have to bring you back for a musical crossover next time

okay all right that'll do it for today a bit of sad news arnold hano Okay. All right. That'll do it for today. A bit of sad news. Arnold Hano, author of A Day in the Bleachers, who you might remember from episode 1536 when we spoke to him, Dan Okrent, and Rob Neier about the books they had each written about going to a single baseball game, passed away last Sunday at age 99.

Here I am quoting from Daniel Langhorne's obituary in the Lubin Beach Independent. Hano started his news career as a copy boy for the New York Daily News, attending sporting events with photographers to write caption information. With the United States' entry into World War II, Hano served in an artillery battalion of the 7th Infantry Division. After returning from war, he freelanced for numerous publications including the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Sports Illustrated. Haino was named Magazine Sportswriter of the Year for 1963 by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He was also an active member of his community. His writing

career encompassed 26 books as well as hundreds of magazine articles and over 200 newspaper columns. A Day in the Bleachers provided an eyewitness account of the events of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, during which Willie Mays made his famous catch. Arnold is survived by his wife bonnie son stephen and daughter laurel our thoughts are with them you can support effectively wild on patreon by going to patreon.com effectively wild following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going keep us ad free and get access to a few special perks ben langanger adam wood john paul radecki, and Kathy Harden. Thanks so much. Speaking of perks, we'll be hosting another playoff live

stream for Patreon supporters who have pledged at least $10 a month during Game 4 of the World Series this coming Saturday, October 30th at 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern. I'll share the details on how to access the stream via the Patreon messaging system as we get closer. Ben has once again agreed to make an appearance provided Sloan cooperates. If you'd like to join the stream but aren't yet a Patreon supporter or are supporting the pod but for a smaller monthly amount, don't worry, there's still time to sign up or increase your support. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild and you can rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and

comments for us coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. I'll be back later this week with a new guest co-host and a new episode. Until then, enjoy the World Series. for the memory of how they were answered by you but there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them you