Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2019: Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Sportswriters

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani leading MLB in WAR and the number of times his hitting has leapfrogged his pitching or vice versa, the EW audience’s verdict on who won the pod’s recent 26-under-25 draft, the suddenly-quite-competitive A’s-Royals race for the worst record in baseball, a painful ending to a college […]

How can you not be pedantic? A stab blast will keep you distracted It's a long slog to death But the short will make you smile This is Effectively Wild This is Effectively Wild This is Effectively Wild This is Effectively Wild Hello and welcome to episode 2019 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? I'm doing better, as you can probably hear. A little bit better. Not 100%, but a little less congested than I have been for most of the past week. So that's good. You've exited your Bette Davis phase. I hope so. Yeah, good for me and also good for our listeners, probably, is that I don't have to inflict that voice on them anymore. But thank you all for bearing with me. I don't have to inflict that voice on them anymore, but thank you all for bearing with me. You should have sung songs from the Muppet Show and been like Kermit. You could have entered a Kermit register, maybe.

I still am largely on vocal rest, except when I'm doing podcasts, which is basically every day on one podcast or another, but it's just a lot of protracted silences and then speaking very animatedly, like I'm on a podcast and I'm entertaining people, and then I go back to being quiet for hours on end. Ben, you know what Kermit would say? I gotta make time for me. Perfect. So last time, or recently, we talked about whether we need to retire our bit about Mike Trout being at the top

of the war leaderboard and thus stats count and the season is real and it's no longer a small sample. And we may yet need to do that. But Shohei Otani, Mike Trout's teammate, is at the top of the war leaderboard now, alone in first place at Fangraphs and also at Baseball Reference. place at Fangraphs and also at Baseball Reference. So if we can hand that crown from Trout to anyone, it would be Shohei Otani. And now he is, in fact, at the top. It's taken a little longer than I would have liked. I think he's probably been there at times, but he was consistently in the top 10, top 20. But he has been quite hot as of late in terms of his performance. I mean, as opposed to just his general appearance. He's been hitting very well. So I've been happy to see that.

And he has ascended to the top of the leaderboard. But it's largely because he's been hitting so well. And I was thinking that my evaluation of whether he's a better hitter or pitcher has flip-flopped at least a few times since he came to MLB. When he first came over, I think I thought he'd probably be better as a pitcher. And then, of course, he got hurt as a pitcher. And he hit so well that he was clearly a better hitter for a while. And then it was looking like he was a better pitcher again. If you had asked me at the start of this season, I think I would have said better pitcher than

hitter. And yet he has scuffled a bit on the mound as of late, and he's been tearing it up at the plate. So I don't know if that has been enough to change my mind yet again and say, no, he's a better hitter than he is a pitcher. I guess the point is he's really great at both and I can't make up my mind. He just keeps topping himself on one end or the other and therefore I changed my mind. So that was not any, I'm not trying to, I heard you snickering and I'm not. It was quiet enough that no one would have noticed. And then I was talking about his ends or others, but I wasn't trying to... Anyway.

Anyway. That one was my fault. You know what, Ben? That one's on me. I've never attempted to do any innuendo or double entendres when it comes to Shohei Otani. I don't know whether you're getting this. But it's not like I've ever doubted his ability to do both at a high level, but he keeps making me think, oh no, he's actually better at that. No, wait, he's better at that. So right now

he's been better as a hitter. I don't know whether I think he is a better hitter than he is a pitcher, but he has been thus far. Well, you know, when you watch a game where a guy hits a two run shot and then you're like, oh, surely that's all he has. And then he's like, no, I have more. I have more to give. Opposite fields, 459 feet, just to left of straightaway center and on an inside pitch.

So he just sort of stayed inside outed a ball, 459. Yeah, it's not normal. Not normal. It's not normal. Not normal. It's not normal, Ben, you know? And then, like, it's extras, you know? It's a good time to hit home runs. It's a good time to bop them. And he did.

Bopped it. Bopped it right out. Beat the Rangers. A better team. And he didn't do it all by himself, but he sure helped. He helped a lot. I haven't looked, but I sure helped. He helped a lot. I haven't looked, but I feel confident saying that in terms of like when probability added, he was the leader by a long shot.

Almost as long as his two shots. Yeah. He was involved in all the Angels rallies in one way or another. And yeah, he has a 158 WRC plus now, which is higher than his WRC plus in 2021, which was his best offensive season to date. So he's looked great. And he actually came out and admitted to feeling some fatigue on the mound, which is what he attributed some of his recent struggles to. I think, again, maybe some of it could be pitch selection. Too many sweepers. Too many sweepers to left-handed hitters, I told him last time.

And then he threw a couple back-to-back to Jared Kelnick in his most recent start, and Kelnick hit one of them out. That one also went far. Yeah, it did. It went very far. as opposed to once a week. It's been more like every six days. And they've been giving him a little more time lately, as he said that maybe he has struggled a little bit to handle that workload. He said he's still feeling fine and healthy. And Phil Nevin said his understanding is that he's not fatigued in a bone-tired, he wakes up dragging kind of way.

But just while he's on the mound he maybe has gotten tired in some starts and he hasn't had his pinpoint control he's been walking a lot of guys he's been hitting a lot of guys he's been throwing a lot of wild pitches so is that related to the fatigue or something else i don't know but he was just so lights out especially in the second half last year as a pitcher and i was sort of expecting that this would be the year when he paired the excellent offense with that incredible pitching. And the incredible pitching hasn't quite been there in his last several starts, at least.

But I'm hopeful that the rest of the way, he'll go back to making me question whether he is better at one or the other again. It's just, it's too close to call, I think, which is part of what makes him special because if he were merely passable at one and a superstar at the other, then there would continue to be calls probably for him to specialize. Like if he were just an okay pitcher, then I think people would say,

well, he'd be better off playing the field every day and not DHing, and he'd offer a lot of defensive value. And maybe he could come in and relief sometimes. Or if he were just an ace pitcher, but he was just a marginal hitter, an average hitter, then it would be, is this really worth it? And maybe it'd be better if he took some days off and got some rest and was at his best on the mound and minimized his injury risk. But because he is so great at both and because he's kind of alternated

which one he's best at from year to year and month to month, you can't really make a case. I hope no one would want to make a case anymore that he should specialize. But for a while there, that was a thing. So I think he has silenced that line of discussion, fortunately. Yeah, I don't see many people being like, I don't know, maybe just stick him in right fields and let him cook. I mean, if it happened every now and again, wouldn't have any issues with that, Ben. I'd like to see it.

Yeah, that'd be fun every now and again. But I think that he's being asked to do so many things. He's supposed to be the best pitcher on the Angels. He's supposed to be tied for first in terms of their hitters. He's supposed to be an icon, you know, a brand ambassador, a very tall person, a strapping guy. It's just a lot of things to expect someone to be. And I'm glad that we aren't calling for him to specialize, but maybe I should be realistic about how often he would really want to play the field at this point. It's like, imagine doing that too.

So many things. Yeah. Well, we have established Shohei Otani remains good at baseball. Remains good. Still good. Yeah. So, here's a follow-up to something we talked about last week. We did a draft of the best players under 25 years old.

And I did put a form up where people could vote on which of us had the better draft. I didn't really promote that very much. I mentioned it as we were drafting and then forgot to mention it in the outro and didn't really plug it a whole lot elsewhere. So we didn't get a huge response, but of the response we did get, it was overwhelmingly in your favor. The listeners agree that you won that draft. By a margin of, let's see, I'm going to close the voting now, I suppose. To this point, I'm going to close the voting now, I suppose. To this point, you have received 68.5% of the votes. And I've gotten a mere 31.5%. Wow.

I'm humbled, Ben, you know. I'm humbled. I'm the one who's humbled because you made me look bad here, I guess. Again, remains to be seen, right? Like 10 years. Yeah, this is not decided yet. I think that might be the most optimistic thing we've ever done. You know, as I think about it, I think it's pretty, and not because we have any designs on like dissolving the podcast or anything like that.

I think, you know, the broader world has designs on dissolving any number of things. So pretty optimistic on our part. I am satisfied with my draft, although I still do have regret about not taking Jimenez earlier. But I'll let go of that regret. I got a nice consolation prize, which is smoking you, you know? Yeah, apparently. Yeah, no, I don't disagree with the wisdom of crowds here, just looking at the drafts. I feel like you did better. You got good players.

Yeah, it would be weird if we didn't get good players, both of us, but I think maybe you got better players. I think I'm with the crowd here. You definitely got bigger stars, I think, which doesn't necessarily mean that they will be more productive over the next decade. that they will be more productive over the next decade. But, and look, you had the advantage of the first pick. It is true. But your first four picks were Wanda Franco, Fernando Tatis Jr., Julio Rodriguez, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Yeah. That's some star power. That's some serious, those are marquee names there. Whereas I had Juan Soto, who's a star, and then some more recent arrivals, guys who are well-known in baseball circles, certainly, but not marquee household names to the same degree, like Corbin Carroll and Ellie Dale Cruz and Gunnar Henderson. Although I was encouraged that since we drafted, Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll were named Players of the Week. So it's one of these nice things where guys on my team, every time I see them do well, which is pretty often because they're really good players, I'm like, oh, yeah, hey, I got that guy on myorman Carroll and Wander Franco are tied for position player war. And with the usual, the difference between those two guys and, say, Freddie Freeman and Ronald Acuna Jr.

It's basically the same war, right? It's the same war. 3-3, 3-2. Friends, it's the same. But it's not literally the same, but it's effectively the same. Yep. It's not literally the same, but it's like effectively the same. So, you know, I think that people are going to wake up to the reality of how good a player, you know, future Hall of Famer Corbin Carroll is. Yeah, I think so, too.

Now that the Diamondbacks have the best record in the National League, is that still true? They do. I think they do, yeah. Yeah, six-game win streak, I believe. No, just like the Oakland A's. So weird. Same number of wins as the Kansas City Royals. Kansas City.

Yeah, we should talk about that in a minute because that's close. But yes, I'm going to say I side with the voters here. I think you had the better draft. But my confidence, obviously, when we're talking about a 10-year draft and many players who have just embarked upon their big league careers, my confidence about which of us had the better draft is quite low. So I would not be surprised if I won, but I think I would probably pick you two at this point. I would say, I think the thing that made me happiest is that I don't think we ignored anyone super obvious, which was one of my fears, that we would just miss someone somehow. But the only name who's been mentioned by someone who's contacted us after the draft and said, oh, hey, you sort of snubbed this guy as Ezekiel Tovar of the Rockies, which, you know, I guess we could have mentioned him as an also-ran, but I don't feel bad about not having drafted him, I don't think.

And it did occur to me that Zack Netto maybe should have or could have been drafted. Didn't I say him? You may have mentioned him. I don't know. I don't know that I did, actually. I might be, you know, don't get greedy, Mike. I don't think I did, but neither of us drafted him. I don't think I did, but neither of us drafted him.

And just looking at some of my latter round picks there, I was thinking, maybe I'd rather have Zach Netto than that guy. Just because, you know, he came up with very little minor league time and was just sort of thrown into the fire. And he's very much held his own. And I've seen a lot of him. Good shortstop. He's held his own at the plate. He's young. So, yeah, maybe should have given more consideration to him. But no glaring, egregious omission on our part, which is, I think, the most important thing.

We avoided embarrassment. Yeah, other than the embarrassment of you getting so many more votes than me. But collectively, we avoided the embarrassment of not drafting someone obvious. I don't want to say that winning this draft isn't important to me. All of our drafts are important to me, Ben. But, like, I really want to win the minor league free agent draft. Yeah, that's the big one. That's the big one, you know.

I'm not going to embarrass myself this year, though, because Brent Honeywell, I mean, it was an inspired pick, really. If we're talking about actually good picks on my part, anyone could draft Wander Franco. That's child's play. Yeah, barely any bragging rights here. The bragging rights are really, can we find players no one's ever heard of

and forecast that they will be big leaguers? Not that we can draft the very best players under an age and say that they will be good. But yeah, hopefully we'll be here to talk about it in 10 years. And I think probably 10 years will pass regardless of whether we are still doing the podcast at that point. Well, yeah, time won't stop. No, hopefully MLB will still exist. So there will be results regardless of whether we're here to chronicle

them. But hey, we've already had 10-year drafts in the history of this podcast that have completed and the podcast abides. So we'll see. How about that? So we're speaking on Tuesday afternoon, the day of the reverse boycott at the Open A's game. And best of luck, best wishes to all the reverse boycotters out there. But suddenly, the A's are looking almost like a half-respectable baseball team. Over the last week or so, they beat some contending teams. They beat the Tampa Bay Rays, even. Yeah. And I guess it just goes to show that even a truly terrible team on any given day or even six given days can beat a better team, which is why when we talked about how many games are they going to win?

And we mentioned that all the projections said, oh, they'll get to 50 or something in that range. And we were having a hard time envisioning them even winning 50 games because they were on pace for 20 or 30 wins or whatever it was. And you always bet on regression, just evening things out to some extent. So who knows? They might go on a 20-game losing streak after this, or they might go on a miraculous Moneyball-style 20-game winning streak. I guess we'll see. But it's been sort of weird and fun to watch them actually beating some

decent teams here for a whole week. So, A's fans get to do their reverse boycott and also get to see their team win a few games. That's nice. Yeah, it is nice. I mean, I think that I don't want to move on from them so fast, but there's, there's like the, the nicety of them putting something resembling a competent big league product on the field. And then I was sitting here and I was looking at the standings, you know, looking at these records and I'm like, okay.

So again, as we record the, the A's have won 18 games. We're still in 24 and a half games. Yeah. It's still terrible to be clear oh boy 18 and 50 it's it's really really bad but they've already lost 50 games but you know you sit here we've already talked about how the royals have to feel very nervous and then like if you're the

if you're the rockies if you're the cardinals if you're theals, you're sitting there with the Cubs. The knowledge that it's like, we've only won, you know, 10-ish games more than the A's. Yeah. That has to feel bad. Yeah. That has to feel, you know, that has to feel bad. But as we've discussed before, like, this is a great year to be a bad baseball team. Because with the exception potentially of the Royals, the odds that we're going to talk about you nearly as much as this club in Oakland, very low, you know,

very low. And people have, I've noticed people, you know, I'm doing my favorite thing where I reference anonymous people on the internet, like, oh, the Royals, you know, we, we aren't talking enough about the Royals being bad. And it's like, we probably should talk about them being bad. But I do think that, like, the intent to be as bad as Oakland is, like, that's a special kind of thing. And I don't mean special in a happy way, you know, but I think it is remarkable in a way that requires pretty thorough looking over and analysis, which isn't to say that the Royals are good or that Royals fans aren't

disappointed or that the roster construction in Kansas city can't be described as kind of odd. Cause we could, we could describe it that way. You know, we could look at that rotation and be like, so, you know, what are we, what's our plan friends. And I think all of that is fair game. But I do think that they, even though they are not succeeding, I do think that Kansas City would like to win more than they are. And I remain unconvinced that, at least at the ownership level, certainly the guys on the field, I think,

would like to win a great deal more than they have. But at the ownership level, unmoved that Oakland isn't doing exactly what it set out to do. Or the A's are, not the city of Oakland. The city of Oakland is standing firm against a real estate deal. I applaud. I commend them for sticking to their plan. So the A's are 18 and 50. The Royals are 18 and 48.

So it's quite close. Quite close. It is historic to have two teams this terrible. Neil Payne at his Substack, Neil Substack, just wrote about this today. And he found that there have been only three seasons in the modern era of the AL and NL since 1901 to feature two teams with a winning percentage worse than 275 through 66 games. So it's this year with the A's and the Royals, and it's the 1911 Boston Rustlers and St. Louis Browns and the 1904 Washington Senators and Philadelphia Phillies.

So 1911, 1904, the only two previous NL seasons in the modern era to have two teams start out seasons so terribly. So that's not great. I think there is a pretty decent parity when it comes to the rest of the standings, as we've discussed. And there may be fewer super teams than we've seen recently. maybe fewer super teams than we've seen recently. And friend of the show, Rob Means, just wrote recently about how parity when it comes to teams getting better or getting worse, like mobility, basically.

Like, can you go from being bad to being good? It's roughly middle of the pack, historically speaking. It's not extremely bad or immobile these days, but truly two terrible teams. And I think you're right. They got here in different ways and they're different kinds of disappointing. I saw Randy Giselli some time ago, I think when the Royals probably had a better winning percentage than they do now, he called this Royal season the most disappointing he's ever seen. And he's seen a lot of disappointing

Royal seasons, but a lot of disappointing royal seasons. But a lot of those seasons maybe weren't so disappointing because no one got their hopes up because they weren't expecting to be good, right? And that's the case with the A's. No one thought the A's were going to be good. No one thought this was going to be a year that they took a step forward. They very obviously and intentionally took steps back, right? So they might have the beginnings of something coming years down the road, but obviously they're not trying to win right now. They're pretty actively trying to do the opposite of that. So the Royals were not new regime, new manager, some new age managers and coaches coming in. And maybe this was going to be a new way of operating for the Royals. And maybe they would make some strides when it came to player development at the major league level and some of those pitchers who had stalled.

Maybe they would take a step forward. And all those position players debuted last year. And really, maybe the core was coalescing and weak division and who knows. And instead, they have been horrendous. It's almost like the Tigers last year, I think, when people thought, OK, the Tigers, maybe they're kind of turning the corner here. And then they just went back around the corner and they were much worse in every way. So that's kind of what the Royals have been.

Circling the block. Yeah, they're slinking around the corner. They're just slouching around. I mean, that's what the Royals are right now. So it's obviously more embarrassing to do what the A's have done and just intentionally tank your team and alienate your fan base. And as we speak, still not have landed your alternative home in Las Vegas, which seems kind of ill-conceived to begin with. But it is also – It's so shocking that they're bad at politics, too.

I really would have bet on that being a strength of theirs. Yes, they've won over hearts and minds in Oakland so well. But really, it's embarrassing in a different way that the Royals are not intentionally trying to be terrible, and yet they have managed to be almost as terrible as the Oakland A's thus far. So, both really bad. They're both really bad. But how you get to the bad, it matters a great deal. It does matter. You know, it's like, it's important. So, couple things. You can help me with this, I think, probably, because you're more plugged into

college baseball than I am, but I'm peripherally aware of the goings on in college baseball these days because, you know, it's- Is it because we yell at you about it? No, actually. It's not, that hasn't had much of an effect, I'm sorry to say. But I am still aware because it's College World Series time, right? And there's some exciting happenings. And there was a weird, wild ending to a game and a dropped pop-up fly ball. Oh, Ben. Oh, no, I had forgotten until you brought it back up.

Oh, God. It was painful. Oh, my stars. Yeah. You'll have to help me with all the details here or I will have to look them up quickly. Because I just see highlights about college baseball teams and college baseball players. And the specific names mean very little to me, and the uniforms sort of just like, oh, that was very painful. That was unfortunate, but it doesn't really go beyond that.

I'm sorry. I'm just like, I'm reliving it. I'm reliving it, and I can't. My stars. living it i'm re i'm reliving it and i can't my stars so i have to say i have to say a couple of things about this inning so to set the scene this is super regional play between stanford and texas and the two teams were tied 1-1 and oh gosh i feel i'm like i feel like my fingers are tingling. So prior to the catastrophic error that allowed Stanford to walk this off, we almost saw what would have been one of the worst two plans in the history of baseball. Because earlier in this inning, Alberto Rios, who ended up being the winning run,

he thought he got all in one, Ben. He thought he hit a walk-off home run. He didn't. He hit what ended up being a double. And I think that what happened is that the ball hit the wall perfectly into the Pac-12 logo, which is white. And so he thought it was gone and it was not, it was off the wall. And he kind of was getting ready to do the home run trot and then realized he had to really motor into second base because he was to get thrown out at second. He did not clearly get thrown out at second. And then, you know, you got runners on first and second. You got two outs. Again, tie game. And Drew Bowser hits what should have been an easy fly ball out to the outfield.

But it was clear that in the twilight, like, four different Longhorns lost track of the ball. different Longhorns lost track of the ball. And rather than it being, you know, just a lazy fly out to send the game to extras, the ball lands, the Cardinal walk off the Longhorns. And it was awful, Ben. It was awful. And like, I don't have any, I don't have any investment in either of these teams. You know, I'm not rooting for Stanford. I'm not rooting for Texas. But it was just a really terrible way for a team to lose their season. It was such a strange inning because of the almost two plan earlier also. And I just, you know, afterward, you have just a land of contrast on the field because Stanford is clearly elated. They're so excited. They're going to the College World Series. You know, Drew Bowser is so excited,

but all of these guys are just from Texas are just like weeping, you know, and there was a shot from the outfield, you know, the center field camera in the replays captures the pitcher thinking he thought that, oh, I'm walking off the field. He starts walking off the field because, wow, I got that fly ball out that I needed. You know, and so you just see Lucas Gordon start to walk off the field and then realize what's happening and double over. The catcher has doubled over it was yeah ben i'm just yeah and like you know who's to say what would have happened if the game had gone to extras there's nothing that guarantees that stanford is gonna win they were they hosted a regional but the pac-12 field was just pretty weak in general in

my opinion even even stanford which, I think they were ranked like eighth in terms of the entire field going into the tournament. But like I saw, you know, the Pac-12 tournament, such as it is, takes place in the Valley now. They play it at Scottsdale Stadium. This is the second year that they've done that. And like I watched Stanford play a little bit in person in that tournament and making a face.

I was like, okay. The entire Pac-12 field was just kind of weak in general. It's not that Stanford doesn't have good players. They obviously do. But compared to the SEC in particular, it was just like, okay, these guys are going to get steamrolled. So who knows what would have happened, but we know what did happen. And I don't want to be overly dramatic about it.

People have long lives. They experience all kinds of disappointments and joys. I imagine many of these young men on the Longhorns will play good baseball in the future, and they'll have families. They'll witness the birth of children. But it's weird to know about a bunch of strangers that like of the things they might talk about in therapy later, if they do therapy, this might be on that list. It's a weird thing to potentially know about people you've never met and probably will never meet. So, you should watch more college baseball so you can be like emotionally devastated

by proxy like I was. I just yelled in my living room, no, oh no, oh no. No, I know it's not always like that, but that play. No, most of the time it's just like really bad, like catching, you know, like most of the time that's what you watch, but. Most of the time, it's just like really bad, like catching, you know, like most of the time, that's what you watch. But yeah, so that caught my eye because that was circulating everywhere. And also, speaking of lifelong pain and lifelong memories, what came to my attention about college baseball this week, as always happens at this time of year, there's a conversation about pitch counts, right? And about pitcher usage. there's a conversation about pitch counts, right?

And about pitcher usage. And I find that really interesting because you have, I think, well-intentioned people who are scrutinizing the workloads of these young pitchers and I think are sometimes appropriately pointing out this seems irresponsible, this is dangerous, but then also maybe being a little over-exuberant at times about that. Yes, I think that both of those things are true. Yeah, and it's hard for me as someone who doesn't pay close attention to college baseball to know which is which

and to know which times it's appropriate to say this is bad and this deserves condemnation and actually this time is OK because this pitcher is not planning to pitch professionally or probably doesn't have a professional future. And so he's leaving it all on the field, right? So, for instance, I was following some of Keith Law's tweets about this, and he was tweeting about this guy, Gabriel Romano, who had a 164 pitch game for Johns Hopkins to force a winner-take-all national championship game that I think they then lost, right? But this guy threw 164 pitches, so you see that and you think, oh my gosh, his arm is going to fall off. And who is this coach? This is malpractice, right? And then the pitcher Romano,

he himself quote tweeted Keith Luz tweet about that and said, last game of my baseball career as a fifth year grad student looking to send my team to a winner take all game. I don't think there's anything wrong with this. At the end of the day, it was my call and can confirm my arm is doing just fine. So in his case, if he knows, I'm never going to pitch again, not because of injury, but just because that's it. I'm calling it quits. I don't have a professional future. I don't aspire to be drafted or to pitch in the minors or the majors. And this is going to be my defining, lasting sporting memory, right?

This is the pinnacle of my athletic career. And so I'm going to throw a bunch of pitches. And you can usually throw one high pitch count outing without your arm literally falling off. You never know. But it's not like there's a perfect correlation between throwing a lot of pitches in a game and getting hurt or not throwing a lot of pitches in a game and not getting hurt. Because a lot of times you can handle someone very carefully and they will still get hurt. We just don't know that much about pitcher injuries or preventing them, right? So there was another case that came up involving Quinn Matthews, right?

up involving Quinn Matthews. Yeah. Right? And that one got a lot of attention because he threw, what was it, 156 pitches? 156 pitches, yeah. Okay. And some people were saying, this is irresponsible. Quinn Matthews was drafted, right, previously. Yes.

He was drafted, I think, in the 19th round? 19th round. Okay. I believe that's right. You're getting most of my details right. All right, go me. Yeah, you're doing really well. You didn't know the name of a single player who plays for either Stanford or Texas.

Or that those were the two teams involved. Oh, really? No. Oh, Ben, I was like prepared to like, you know, you don't know who Drew Bowser is. I needed your help with all of that. Okay. Well, I'm glad I could be here for you and do a dramatic reenactment from my couch 18 hours ago. So, Quid Matthews, I guess, is a tougher case.

Like, I saw that Jake Mintz, our friend from Suspense Family Barbecue, he defended that, you know, as a former college pitcher who's had an arm injury himself. And I was asking Eric Langenhagen what his outlook for Matthews is. And he said a 40, if you like him, on the 20 to 80 scale. So well below average. He said he's a lefty with a changeup, fifth starter, spot starter type, three velo, four breaking ball, flappable on mound presence in my looks. Not unflappable, but flappable. Flappable. So not a – Stanford has a couple of flappable pitchers in my looks, Ben.

Yeah. You know? Well, I wouldn't blame anyone for being flapped on a play like that play, but – Oh, gosh. Oh, I'm thinking about it again, gosh. Sorry to conjure it again in your mind. Anyway, Matthews is more of a prospect. Like, I guess he intends to have a career, right? He wasn't like, this is it. This was my last game. But he's also probably not a future big leaguer, I guess, from the sound of it. He's not going to be a top pick. So it's complicated because obviously there is this history and legacy of young pitchers being overused and college coaches, they want to win those games, right? They want to preserve

their jobs and burst their credentials and they're supposed to have their charges, best interests long-term at heart, but they may not always. And there may be cases where the pitcher has the choice to keep going or not, like Romano says he did. And there could be cases where the pitcher doesn't really have autonomy and doesn't really have a say. I mean, I guess he could refuse to go out there, but maybe he's under pressure to pitch a lot. So you don't really know from afar, certainly I don't, whether in any particular case the kid is done, whether he's made a considered decision. When you're that young, sometimes it's hard to look long term and think how this is going to affect your prospects for decades to come. So it's an interesting conversation because I think things have gotten better in that respect when it comes to workloads. Yeah, they definitely have.

Yeah, but there's still some outlier pitch counts, at least to our eyes, looking at the big leagues where no one ever really throws more than, what, 120 these days, and even that would raise some eyebrows. Okay, I think so many things at once. Let's see if I can sequence them in a way that is remotely coherent. So, first of all, you're right that at least for some, certainly not for all, because I think a lot of the people who raise objections to or concerns about pitch counts in college are really keen-eyed observers of college baseball. So, like, you know, I can be like, you know, Keith doesn't have a context for amateur baseball because, like, that's a ridiculous thing to say. But I do think that it can be particularly striking for folks whose primary context for baseball is not just professional baseball, but major league baseball to be like, oh my god,

Major League Baseball to be like, oh my God, like 130 pitches. Like, that's crazy. Because we so rarely see guys in the majors throw anything approaching that anymore, right? Yeah. 1997 was the last time anyone did that in the majors, and it was Tim Wakefield, the knuckleballer. And you think about the guys who, in the course of their more recent careers, routinely crest 115, 120 pitches, and it tends to be concentrated to a couple of guys who have demonstrated sort of capacity for that stamina regularly, right? Like, it's a lot of Justin Verlander when you're looking at those game locks, right? So, there's that lot of Justin Verlander when you're looking at those game locks, right? So there's that piece of it. I think philosophically, you know, if your stance is, hey, especially for draft prospects, right, guys who can look forward to something approaching a reasonable professional career, reasonable professional career. It's just better to be a little conservative with their usage so that they are able to have the professional career that they're hoping for. I think that's a defensible position. I do think that it's important to differentiate between guys with big pitch counts and the circumstances that surround those outings

because if for no other reason than it really does help to identify the cases where a guy is being overused and we should maybe sort of raise an eyebrow and be like, hey, your job as a coach, if we're going to buy into this whole project and pretend that this is in some way in service of these athletes and that there's pedagogic value in sports and all of that stuff, like your job is to protect these guys from themselves. And shockingly, sometimes young men are like, how are we going to do it? And their present them isn't really in conversation with future them. Right. So, like, it's important for there to be bumpers around this stuff. And I also think that it's really important for us to distinguish between these different cases, right?

J.J. Cooper wrote a thing for Baseball America today talking about Paul Skeen's. His outing in the regionals generated a lot of conversation with a lot of people quite concerned. Because not only is Skeen's a draft prospect, prospect like he's a first round draft prospect he might be a top five a top two draft prospect right so like it is understandable that people would be like what are you doing with this guy like it's so irresponsible but i think that like you know we should look at the fact that Skeens throws around 110, 120 pitches fairly often. He was on eight days of rest. He wasn't going to be used again for eight days, right? And this pitch count is pretty close to what the Pitch Smart guidelines say. Now, those aren't perfect. And obviously, any generalized guidelines like that

are going to be in tension with the fact that they are, you know, population-level guidelines, and Paul Skeens is an N of one, right? And so, we don't know. Like, you know, what a guy can do is going to vary guy to guy. But again, Skeens has demonstrated like he can normally throw 110, 120 pitches, right? I think that that's a very different set of circumstances, even with the heightened scrutiny you might expect for a guy who is anticipated to go so highly in the draft from someone throwing, you know, 120 pitches when they aren't regularly stretched out to that much or 120 pitches on short rest. You know, I obviously don't have like a more informed perspective on Quinn Matthews future career as a prospect than Eric does. I think like 150 pitches feels like a lot of pitches.

Yeah. Like that just feels like a lot. It feels like a lot of pitches. And if you want to say that feels like too many pitches, I think that lot of pitches. And if you want to say, that feels like too many pitches. I think that that's fine, but like that's different than, you know, Skeens is different than another guy throwing as many pitches as Skeens did on short rest, right? Like these are circumstances that should be taken and evaluated on a case-by-case basis, not because, you know, there isn't a history of college coaches being irresponsible with their arms and not because there isn't a history of, you know, guys feeling pressure, even as they publicly say, oh, it's fine to have pitched more than is comfortable. Like,

that stuff exists. We need to properly identify when that's still happening so that there can be some, you know, process of accountability for that and, you know, a rejiggering of priorities on certain teams if that's necessary. And it's tricky, right? Because, you know, I saw someone point out like big league pitchers have never thrown fewer pitches than they do right now and they still get hurt. So that doesn't mean that we should throw out pitch smart and say, well, it doesn't matter. Throw as many pitches as you want. 200, whatever. Like, you know, that's not the project. But I do think we want to acknowledge that there is more to injury likelihood and injury occurrence than just the pitch count. But also 156 pitches is so many. count, but also 156 pitches. That's so many.

And it was, and I think the other thing to note here is that like in that game where he threw 156 pitches, which they ended up winning, Stanford scored three runs in the top of the inning and were up by like five. And then he went back out there again. And it's like, come on, man. Like you're up by five. Like I know that a lot can happen in college ball. We just had the highest run scoring environment in college baseball ever, even though it's down a little bit in the regionals. I don't know what the super regional round has looked like in terms of its run scoring relative to the regular season environment. So that part, I don't know, but like, I get a lot can happen, but also, come on, man. At that point, I think the Stanford coach has to be like, look, I know you want a complete game, but we're up by five. It was funny.

They interviewed Quinn Matthews in the dugout yesterday during the game that Stanford ended up winning in such devastating fashion. I mean, not for Stanford, but again, for Texas. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh no. Oh no. And he was like, you know, it'll, it'll probably hit me more tomorrow. And I was like, yeah, when your arm falls off, but that's overly simplistic. I think that it is important to note in these moments that like,

even the stuff that it's coming from like a very scoldy perspective is I think being done in service of concern for these young people and an acknowledgement that the history around this stuff can be kind of gross yeah and let's do the work to like analyze each of these individual circumstances so that we know like that one seems fine actually that one seems bad that one's in the middle like i think having an understanding of where that stuff is is really important so that we can differentiate and say, like, yes, it's better. No, it's not. Here's where there still needs, you know, where work needs to be done.

Here are the kinds of programs that tend to use their guys too heavily. So we need to have, you know, more direct and sort of harder-hitting conversations with these coaches at these mid-major programs or whatever it is. Let's arm ourselves with real information here and then have the conversations that are necessary because some of them undoubtedly will be. Thank you. Yeah, because Matthew, he's not young, young. He's 22, and his eyes are open, I think. I read that he had recently done a paper, a presentation on Tommy John surgery. I think he's probably aware of the risks. And he said in a post-game interview, I knew I wanted the rock, and I wanted to let our bullpen do the work tomorrow.

Obviously, he was not reluctant to stay out there. He wanted to, but sometimes you have to rein that impulse in, right, when you're not the one on the mound and you're thinking, hopefully, about the player's long-term best interests and you're not the one with the adrenaline pumping and something at stake and wanting to pitch a complete game. So sometimes it's your job as a coach to intervene and say, nope, thanks, great work. Now I'm going to hand the rock off to someone else. But yeah, I think on the whole, it does come from mostly a good place when people bring

attention to this. And I think it probably does more good than bad, even if it's kind of overapplied, even if people will sometimes train the spotlight on someone who doesn't really deserve it. I guess it does a disservice to the coach and the program in that instance, if you're implying that they're doing something irresponsible and really, really they're not. But probably on the whole, these things have gotten better and they've gotten better in part because of the attention that's been paid to them and people singling out coaches who really have not been careful with their pitchers and saying, hey, stop doing that. but I think things are trending in the right direction and there are probably fewer of these instances to highlight than there used to be

which maybe makes the ones that still happen seem even more egregious and people are quicker to condemn that this is still happening and then you have to realize oh it's a fifth year grad student or something it's a little bit different but yeah I think it's just always a conversation that surfaces and sometimes it It's a little bit different. But yeah, I think it's just always a conversation

that surfaces and sometimes it's just a little too simplistic and the actual situation is a little more nuanced. And again, I'm not going to be out there tweeting about this because I don't know the specifics of the programs and the pictures. But if you are and you have a big platform, then I guess it is kind of incumbent on you to do that work, right? Just so that you make sure that you know the situation fully before you cause a whole lot of people to jump to conclusions about it. But teams, major league organizations are definitely tracking the way that pitchers are used in amateur ball, and it can affect your draft prospects even if you don't get hurt. Just the fact that pitchers are used in amateur ball and it can affect your draft prospects even

if you don't get hurt just the fact that you've been worked very heavily and maybe your injury risk is elevated that could lead to you slipping a little bit but then again guys get drafted having just had tommy john surgery or teams knowing that they will have to have it right so it's almost it's expected at this point almost that you're gonna have to have it, right? So it's almost, it's expected at this point, almost that you're going to have to have it at some point. So the whole situation is sort of messy. It's very messy. And it, I think is just made more complicated by the fact that it's, it's really hard to know, like, who's gonna get hurt, you know? And what's the tipping point for an individual guy? Like, that is hard to know. And I think a lot of work goes and they should be huge too. And I think that if you do that generally, when you make decisions to diverge from them,

I think you're, you're doing so with a better understanding of the potential risks involved. And yeah, you have to weigh a guy's long-term future against his present enjoyment of advancing to the college world series and i think there is nuance that goes into those decisions and we should allow for the possibility that for a guy who isn't a draft prospect like yeah if he wants to go throw a billion pitches because it's his final game like i think he gets to make that decision. I think that coaches still have an

obligation to those guys to kind of like help them understand the choice that they're making, right? Because even if he never wants to throw a pitch and affiliated ball, like it would still suck to have to get surgery, you know, it's not as if that is a costless decision, even for someone in that circumstance. So I do think it's important for these guys to be really aware of what they're potentially risking, but I suspect that they do a lot of the time. Some good news, I guess, or an absence of bad news on the pitcher injury front. Dan Simborski just wrote for Fangrass about whether the pitch clock has impaired performance or caused injuries, and it's too soon to say, but he at least did not find any obvious evidence that that's the case,

that pitchers who have had to trim their times or have trimmed their times between pitches the most this season, and Shohei Otani is one of them who has lopped off many seconds relative to his pace last year, which you could say might have something to do with the fatigue that he's experienced in some starts this year. But on the whole, collectively, Dan did not find any strong evidence that pitchers who have underperformed their projections tended to be the ones who have sped up their pace more than others, or that pitchers in terms of performance who have had to speed up the pace. So that's good, I guess, as just generally a fan of the pitch clock.

And I was thinking about that because I read that in Japan and NPB, they're talking about implementing the pitch clock perhaps as soon as next season, they held off on implementing it this year. But having seen it largely seem to be a success in MLB this year, often NPB follows MLB's lead when it comes to rules changes. Not always. For instance, I think the three batter minimum, they decided, no, not for us. We don't need that one. But often, major rules changes, they will follow suit. And so they're thinking about implementing the pitch clock soon.

But one consideration in Japan, which is interesting, is that, you know, in MLB, we say, oh, we weren't really missing anything with all those seconds. It was just dead air and nothing was really happening. anything with all those seconds. It was just dead air and nothing was really happening. But in Japan, they have coordinated cheers and chants and songs. And a lot of that would be curtailed by the pitch clock, which is an interesting consideration. The games there are long. They've gotten long the way that MLB games have gotten along. I read that the average game time last year was three hours and nine minutes for nine inning games only, which was roughly where MLB games were, too. So games there have gotten longer, and so they're similarly interested in shortening them. But there would be that cost because I have not had the pleasure of being at an NPB game, but just watching on TV,

watching the World Baseball Classic, right? And one of the justifications that the Rules Committee is citing here for why NPB might need to do that is that, well, in 2026, when the WBC comes back, maybe then there will be a pitch clock in the WBC. And if Japanese players haven't become accustomed to that, then they might be at a disadvantage in that tournament, which might just be a reason to justify this thing that they might want to do anyway. But that would be an actual cost, I guess, in terms of the spectator experience that wasn't really incurred by implementing the pitch clock in the majors, where sadly we don't have that same sort of atmosphere at games. Yeah, it's funny. We think of the implementation of the pitch clock as an aesthetic net positive, and this is an instance where it might be a net negative, you know,

because we're so dull over here. Yeah. Dull. It is dull, comparatively speaking. Dull? Yeah. I mean, I guess they could speed up some songs. They could find some other times to, you know, they could do it between innings or

something instead. But there would be a little bit of a cost there that there really hasn't been over here. So, I don't know if that's a reason not to do it, but it's... I mean, it is a reason. I don't know if it's one that ends up ultimately being persuasive, but it's a reason., it is a reason. I don't know if it's one that ends up ultimately being persuasive, but it's a reason.

It's a reason. Yeah, it's a consideration. So you wanted to make a case for a vest before we ended here, right? We talked about bad baseball teams. We mentioned that the Diamondbacks are not one, that they are, in fact, one of the best baseball teams by record,

and they have a home run celebration or a celebration of a sort, and you want to make a case for it. Yes, I do. And I want to, before I lay out my case for the victory vest, victory vest is going to be important. I have to acknowledge two things, you know, because you're more persuasive when you acknowledge the potential biases or flaws in your own argument, right? And the first of them is that I like ugly stuff. both in terms of the quality of the play on the field and some of the uniforms that they have flirted with, worn, you know, embraced and then rejected over the years. Their uniforms, no longer the ugliest version of themselves and the quality of the play on the field. Pristine, excellent. You know, the bullpen could still use some help as we saw last night.

But, you know, it's not that Castro's bad. He's just not a ninth inning guy. You know, they need a like I'm gonna come and get ya closer they don't they don't have that right now

yeah they won they beat the Braves despite a cycle by JT they beat the Phillies by a get with it

they beat the Phillies that's the team that JT Romero is on yeah yeah catcher cycles are pretty rare

actually they're very rare they're quite rare there have been 17 of them and yes that's fewer than the number of perfect games that there have been Catcher cycles are pretty rare, actually. They're very rare. They're quite rare. There have been 17 of them, and that's fewer than the number of perfect games that there have been. But I guess it makes sense because catchers tend not to be great hitters. And they tend not to be fast. Right, so triples a little less likely. Even harder for them, yeah.

But, you know, fast by catcher standards. Yeah, pretty athletic. Yeah. you know, fast by catcher standards. Yeah, pretty athletic. Yeah, I saw what he did described as a cyclone because it was like a cycle plus one, plus one other thing because he also walked in addition to the cycle.

So it's perhaps called in some circles a cyclone, which I kind of like. Anyway, didn't mean to distract from the victory vest, but they overcame the Phillies and they got that victory and someone wore the victory vest, I assume. Yeah, it was Corbin Carroll. Corbin Carroll, you're a guy now.

He wore the victory vest. And so, yeah, I tend to like ugly things. I'm not here to say that all of the new era hats that are so weird are good. A lot of them still terrible but i will say i have liked what i imagine are a um a greater percentage of them than the average um consumer of baseball things because i i tend to be like that's ugly i would wear it you know does that reflect a flaw in my personality i'll leave that to you to decide but i tend to like ugly things and as we've established i like these d-, you know? They are now my local team.

I obviously feel an excitement about watching a guy be not only, I think, the NL Rookie of the Year, but, like, Kermit Jones is making an MVP case, Ben, you know? He's making a case. Is he the leader in the, you know, clubhouse? I'm not here to say that, but I'm just saying that, like, when we're talking about the guys who are making, who could, you know, they might, they have, he's one of those guys, you know, with a case. Sure. Because he's quite good. So there's those two things that might bias me in favor of liking this because I like ugly things and I like it when the Diamondbacks win.

I'm here to make a case for the victory vest, which we will link to a picture of the victory vest. The victory vest, apparently there was some mystery around the origin of the victory vest. This is something that came to be because of Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who is having a nice little season for the Diamondbacks, you know, came over in that Varshow trade along with Moreno. And if one were to describe the victory vest to a person who hasn't seen it, you might say, you know, think about what a pop star or a young movie star from the 80s might wear to look cool and then make it worse, you know? And that might be the way you'd describe it.

It's red. I'm going to assume it's leather. It might be pleather, but I'm going to assume that it's leather. It's got a big A and a diamond back on one breast. It's got, you know, a bunch of different little emblems on it. It's got a big rattle on on the back with the diamond back. And Strapontes, it's like, you know, it's embracing all of their various bits and bobs.

It's a lot. There are definitely like rhinestones involved. There's a lot happening with this vest, Ben. And I'm on record as being a little fatigued by home run celebrations. Yeah. Because they feel, they sometimes feel, like, not authentic. They don't feel genuine. They feel like everyone, you know, we're succumbing to a collective peer pressure to have a weird thing that we do in the dugout.

Does everyone like this? How has no one lost an eye to the trident yet? Someone's going to get hurt by that trident. It looks sharp. Like, I don't know, man. Like, we really want to mess with that. We want to invite that energy into the Mariner's dugout. Anyway. You want to be safe, use a prop, fake plastic trident or something. It looks so sharp. It looks remarkably sharp. It looks like, you know, it is as sharp as like the steak knives that a guy selling steak knives door to door might try to sell you, you know, it looks like that kind of sharp. So this does not have any of that concern, right? The victory vest. One doesn't need to worry about that with a victory vest, in part because it's soft. Might it be

flammable? If it's pleather, it might be flammable, right? But it's also a thing that you don't see every day. You know? Because even in games that the Diamondbacks lose, they might hit a home run.

You know? And then if they had a home run thing, they'd see this, it's over. This, like, is the right amount of a kooky thing, you know? It is hilariously oversized, even for baseball players who are often quite big, you know? Yeah, it says, for the people of the neighborhood in spanish on the other breast pocket like it's just it's a weird object that is obviously been constructed with a great deal of intentionality on the part of of guria like he really he thought about all the things he wanted to go into this and now when the diamondbacks win which as we've established are doing a lot of lately the the kind of player of the game will wear the

victory vest when he's doing his post game like i was so great um i you know they don't sound like that but you know if one did they'd go yeah and they'd be wearing the vest while they say it so i think that we should embrace the victory vest and we should embrace the arizona diamondbacks and be very excited and maybe if i keep um talking up kind of ugly things related to them they will finally give me a snake mascot yes don. Don't be cowards. You got the little rattlers. It's not enough. Go big.

Nope. You're only part of the way there. Embrace the energy of the victory vest. Give me an actual snake mascot. Yeah. It's time. I'm with you on that. And also, yeah, I like this.

I endorse this. It feels very qualified, but I'm not going to lie. I feel like you're not doing it enthusiastically. I don't know if it's unique. I feel like there have been other things in baseball or in sports that are sort of similar in that, like, the player of the game gets some object is bestowed upon that player. Oh, sure. Right? So it's not unique to the Diamondbacks.

I'm not saying it's unprecedented. Right, yeah. This specific version of it is distinctive. And I like having sort of a stars of the game system. I've praised the three stars system in hockey. And Fangraphs has had sort of a similar thing that readers can vote on stars of a game at the fan graphs website. And so I like recognizing that with something more material than just a high win probability added,

right? Just a physical keepsake, but not one that you keep beyond that. You pass it around and there's like a sisterhood of a traveling pants sort of system set up where everyone gets to wear this thing, which is nice. And I think also, yeah, you never bestow the vest unless it's a happy occasion, which is the thing. With the home run celebrations, in addition to them just quickly becoming de rigueur and you almost have to have them and they become just sort of sanitized and just obligatory. And, you know, they're like workshopped and you just sit down and say, well, we need a celebration because everyone else has a celebration. It's kind of conformist, which is not to suggest that there's not some joy involved. But there are cases where, you know, you're being blown out and it's like the eighth inning and one of your guys hits a home run. And because you have the home run celebration, you've got to go through the motions. You know, you have to put on the helmet or get whatever prop it is. Right. But no one's really happy. The person who just hit the home run is probably pleased about that but isn't really in a position where they can fully celebrate because the team is not doing well.

And so they don't want to feel like they're totally joyous when the team as a whole has suffered some misfortune. I mean I don't want to police how happy you can be when your team is losing. I'm not someone who's like you can't have the stereo on in the clubhouse when the team lost or something like, you know, stay loose, take your moments of happiness where you can find them. But there are times where like the team's a dragon and you've lost a bunch of games and you're losing this game and you get what is to the team, at least a meaningless run at the end. And you still have to go through your home run celebration without the usual enthusiasm, that's not going to happen with the victory vest. Now, I guess you could lose a bunch of games in a row,

but even if you lost a bunch of games in a row, when you finally won one, you'd probably be pretty pleased about that. So I like the idea of the victory vest. It would never feel like you're just kind of going through the motions because you're always happy to win and that always deserves to be celebrated. Yeah, I think you really don't want to poke someone's eye out with a trident when you're losing. That would be even worse. But yeah, I think that it naturally limits the usage so that you don't tire of it. You are going to just enthusiastically

be pleased that you won a game and uh yeah i think it's um it's not perfect but it's close it's in the realm of perfect and it's so it's like it fits all of them it's so funny it's such a funny and like you know you put it on corbin carroll and it's like oh it fits all of them. It's so funny. It's such a funny. And like, you know, you put it on Corbin Carroll and it's like, oh, you're just, you know, you're a little wee guy. Yes. Right. You're a little wee guy. He got hit twice, you know, and it got very, it got contentious. The bench is cleared.

Troy Lovello yelled at JT RealMotu, who famously does play for the Phillies. Yes. And has never played for the Braves. Like, not even one time. I don't know why I said that. I thought of you when he hit the catcher cycle, and I was like, I think Ben will think this is an actual fun fact, but I assumed that you knew.

I'm just joshing. I assure you, I knew on most levels of my mind, just not the one that was speaking on a podcast. That's okay. That level doesn't always work for me either. So lastly, do you want to, for a few minutes, bemoan the state of sports media? I saw you send some tweets out about this conversation about sports media. It can always be a bit navel-gazy, as we are members of the media and sports media specifically.

But I think it's relevant to our listeners who are also readers and consumers of other sites and writers and media members. And there was quite some consternation caused on Monday by the news that The Athletic would be laying off some folks. It was not a massive scale layoff, but any layoff is a bad layoff from the perspective of the people being laid off and people who enjoy their work. So this was 4% of its journalistic staff, 20 reporters, and then 20, I think, also being reassigned to other beats. The five full-time baseball writers who were laid off are all former Effectively Wild guests, in some cases, multi-time guests, people we have quite enjoyed reading and talking to and podcasting with. And I think one of the things that people were dismayed to see in the Washington Post reports about this was maybe what it reflected

about the athletics larger strategy, right? Because the athletic, of course, began with the ambition and for a while, largely the reality of covering every team in every major sport and every team was going to have a beat writer and they were going to have quality coverage. And even if you were a fan of one of the smaller teams, you could count on getting good coverage of that team at the athletic. And now this is some years down the road. A lot has changed. Obviously, the athletic was acquired by The New York Times, right? And it initially started with the promise of this is going to be entirely subscription-based and we're not going to have any ads. No, there are ads on the now are in an accelerated way shifting away, it sounds like, from that original model of covering everyone everywhere to, I guess you could say, going where the readers are or where they have judged that most of their readers are but basically they have decided that they are going to be shifting away from some local beats in some sports that have more regional audiences like mlb like the nhl and going more toward nfl and premier league coverage and more national level coverage of other sports.

And of course, The Athletic still employs many national level baseball writers and many good ones. But this is a change in philosophy and direction, right? So I'll just quote from the statement here. The Athletic has generally viewed every league in a similar manner with similar beats and offerings, but our growing body of research and our own understanding of the sports we cover compel a more nuanced approach. There is no perfect formula for determining which teams to cover, but we are committing dedicated beat reporters to the ones that most consistently produce stories that appeal to both large and news-hungry fan bases as well as league-wide audiences. One more note, our data shows that the stories that are of greatest interest to our subscribers and draw in the most new readers and subscribers are often the ones that provide revelatory

– revelatory? I forget which one we're doing on this podcast – both information about players and teams that resonate with fans across an entire league. Right. So, I mean, there's the part of this that is just the human. I have friends who lost their jobs yesterday, as do you, who do really, really good work. And the layoffs were certainly not limited to the MLB side of things. the MLB side of things.

But to your point, like we, to the point of it being a cliche, talk about baseball as a local endeavor a lot of the time. And so to shift away from that kind of dedicated beat coverage feels like it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the sport. And even if you want to say, you know, I understand budgets aren't limitless, but even if you want to say, okay, there are going to be a couple of beats where it's just like the fan base is really small. People don't read this stuff, whatever.

on a team-by-team basis, including four of the six current division leaders, right? They don't have a dedicated Rangers beat. They don't have a dedicated Diamondbacks beat. They don't have a dedicated Rays beat. They don't have a dedicated Pirates beat. They just don't. And they, in fact, don't have dedicated beats for any of the teams in the state of Arizona. It's like the Suns have Kevin Durant and the Athletic does not have a beat writer on it. I just fundamentally don't know how you write those deep revelatory stories when your coverage is that scattered.

And as you said, they have national writers. You know, we have national writers. It's not as if you can't do really good reported work when you're parachuting in. You can. People do. really good reported work when you're parachuting in. You can, people do. But I think that, you know, I think about the, you know, the writing that say Corey Brock did on the Mariners last year as they were going through their post-season run. And you could tell that this was a person who was around and knew those players and interacted with them regularly and interacted with the team regularly.

What if the Mariners hadn't made it to the post-season last year and the years were just flipped. It was happening this year. Now the athletics isn't a beat, you know, like I think that it also suggests to me a belief of sports operating in stasis in a way that we know they don't, right? If your project and your coverage plan is we're going to commit resources to the teams that make news, well,

that changes, you know? And I think that when you look at someone like James Feagin, who lost his job, you know, I cared about what is arguably a bad and at times quite boring White Sox team because of the work that James did. And there are stories to be written and told about teams in the up and the down and in their movement, but around the competitive cycle, you know? And so I don't think that it's particularly surprising we've seen this playbook in sports media before. I unfortunately

think that we will see it again, but it is very discouraging that people who tell really good stories, do good reported work, are committed to, you know, rigor and are curious and ask interesting questions and then really find cool and creative ways to answer those questions. You know, Zach Buchanan gets taken off of the Diamondbacks beat and sort of put to work doing minor league coverage. And I think back on the baseball stories I've read in the last year, and he penned a lot of them, like the best ones I read about prospects who were suddenly breaking through, prospects who had had challenging life circumstances, how the league was going to contend with the

environmental impact of wildfires in the West. Like, he told those stories. And so, and, you know, Rob and Nick told great stories, too. Like, I don't mean to say that it was limited to those three guys. Like, everyone who got laid off yesterday did good work. So I just feel it's, it feels very discouraging. And when you think about the kinds of stories that it sets the rest of the industry up to tell, you know, when there's this much precarity for sports media, when jobs are that we have to hold onto them so tightly, it sets everyone else up to be taken advantage of. Cause it's like, what are you going to do? You want a raise? Well, there are 10 people who are going to take your spot.

You want better working conditions. You want management to listen to you. It just sets everybody up to have their circumstances be made worse. And I'm not saying that that's, you know, and today at The Athletic, that's what happened. But it provides an environment for that stuff to flourish if it wants to. And as we've seen in the last couple of years, like that is generally the environment that the capital behind media wants to flourish. So I just feel discouraged. I feel bummed out and worried for my friends. And I feel sad for readers because I don't think that this is

the path to better coverage than we have now. It might be the path to worse coverage. That won't be the fault of any of the people who remain at that publication. And I think that there are going to be important stories that help us advance our understanding of baseball as a sport and a social endeavor that aren't going to be told now. And that sucks for everyone involved. Yeah, there was already that bit about the memo that they were given when they joined the Times about steering away from certain types of stories, right? Social interests, social justice sort of stories.

types of stories, right? Social interests, social justice sort of stories. But I think a few things, I guess. One, I'm sure they have data that shows that certain teams don't drive subscriptions or revenue as much as others and that they make some economic calculation that probably makes some sort of sense. But the identity of the athletic was really about providing coverage everywhere. That was sort of the thing that set it apart, that that was its mission. So you do lose, I think, some essence of the athletic when it's just like, well, if we cover big teams and we have national writers, well, other places do that too. So it was the fact that they had beats for every team. That was the athletic signature. And it was really nice as a reader to know that I could get quality coverage of every team,

even if it wasn't a team that has a huge national media profile. And you're losing that, right? And I think also a lot of people have brought up that quote from several years ago from one of the athletics co-founders about how they were just going to pillage newspapers and they were going to bleed them dry and put them out of business and everything. And now here they are laying people off after they've kind of cashed in by getting the times to buy them. Right. It was, you know, lots of venture capital funding, try to inflate the valuation and then sell to the Times.

And, you know, founders get millions and millions. And then once that's done, you figured there were probably going to be some cuts at some point. And I think, yeah, I mean, that quote was regrettable at the time and regretted. I think a lot of those local newspapers obviously were struggling and have struggled even more since then. And a lot of people at those newspapers had lost their jobs and would have lost their jobs in the interim anyway and were all too happy to jump to the athletic, which seemed to promise a better experience in any number of ways. So that was taking advantage of exploiting a trend that was already ongoing, I think, and has only accelerated since then. And it is sort of just, I mean, it's a media-wide

problem, right? This is something that's happening across media, across sports media. I subscribe to this Axios newsletterto-date level of cuts on record, according to a new report. The level of cuts is worse than at the outset of the pandemic in 2020. The news industry is facing huge constraints due to a slowdown in the ad market, debt from consolidation, and subscription fatigue. consolidation and subscription fatigue. Broadcast digital and print news outlets have collectively announced 1972 cuts so far this year, surpassing all of the cuts announced in all of 2022. So, I mean, the athletic cuts here, it's a drop in the bucket there. I mean, the Washington Post, which reported this news, they had their own layoffs recently. So that's, I think, part of why this causes so much uproar and so much fear about the future of the industry and everything, because things aren't going great anywhere, really. And so this is just yet another sign of the apocalypse, basically. And obviously, there are all kinds of costs when it comes to sacrificing local news that might not just be that you're not getting great coverage on your baseball team, but there might be even more serious consequences to that. So, you know, I don't know that it's been like a great time for media for most of the time that I've been in media. And it seems like people are always wringing their hands over layoffs, and there are always going to be some number of layoffs, and then there are some number of hires.

But obviously, it's not equaling out these days for all sorts of trends and larger reasons. And The Athletic, from all the reporting, has never been profitable. It's been losing millions and millions of dollars a year despite having millions of subscribers now, which is sort of sad. I mean, obviously, people who made The Athletic came away from that with millions and millions and millions of dollars. So it's not as if there wasn't money created here. But that core business model, you know, I mean, it's the same old story about this thing is never profitable, and yet it is worth a fortune. How is that possible?

How does that math work exactly? But, you know, we see that repeated. And in sports media specifically or media in general, like it always seems like whenever something is good and promising and, hey, people are being paid fairly and there are no ads and there's good coverage, like those things never seem to last very long, which is sad. I mean, I was a part of Grantland. It didn't last all that long. There were many predecessors of Grantland-style outlets that were celebrated in their day and just didn't last that long because they weren't profitable or they weren't profitable enough.

That's always the distinction, right? Like when a VC person expects something to grow worth a trillion dollars, and that just may not be the case. That may never have been realistic, which is not to say that there's not merit in just operating something that provides quality coverage and gives a bunch of people employment. So it's just not a great time. I saw tons of Twitter threads from other writers just being like, what do I tell aspiring writers? Should I even tell them to get into this industry? I mean, there have been places like Fangrass, places like Baseball Prospectus, which has certainly had its struggles over the years. So, wait, right? Yeah, sure, right.

I mean, it's never, you know, like you can be totally secure. And these are smaller sites that maybe makes it more viable for them to operate without like massive overhead and huge budgets and everything. But it's still a struggle year after year. I don't know what to tell people about the question of like, should I get into it? I mean, I think that that's true to a certain extent, but like things aren't great anywhere. So, go for it, kid. But I think that, yeah, it just, it feels very precarious. I'll just use that word again. And, you know, even places that really want to try to do the right thing, you know, the instances of that sort of working in the long term are limited. You're right that the athletic didn't make money, but it is discouraging that it's like, can't we just be satisfied with like some profit? You know, you see these VCs come in and it's like, you know, why would this behave the way that like, you know, Target stock does?

That might be a bad example, but like it's media it's about stories it's a different it's just a fundamentally different thing that you're offering as a value proposition to the consumer than you know widgets so i just i i think that this might ultimately not be enough of a solution, but I do think that when you as a listener, as a reader, encounter work that you find valuable, if you're in a position to do it, you should try to support that work as directly as you can. Because ad rates are bad. And even when they're not bad, they fluctuate a lot and it can really turn quite quickly. The margins are small. And so if you're in a position to support media that matters to you, you should do that. If you're a subscriber to these places, if you're a subscriber to The Athletic and it bothers you that these folks were let go. And I think it should, like, you

should tell them that you should let the athletic know that, which I don't say like, go scream at whatever poor soul has to manage their Twitter. Like your subscriber, you give them money. You should write them a note about that. Like tell them. And you know, I don't want to overstate, like, the power in that, but there is some. And if part of what is driving the decision-making around where you dedicate coverage and, by extension, where you dedicate financial resources, having data points that say, no, like, this kind of coverage mattered, this kind of coverage inspires me to keep my subscription or not. Like, it's something. Yeah. And it's just sex. It's like, I sit here and I'm like, I wish that we had a limitless budget because then everyone would have a job. Sure, that'd be nice. Yeah.

I saw some people saying, you know, I'm going to cancel my subscription over this, which, like, that sends a message. But then it also might make this more likely to happen again. I mean, obviously if you're not getting your money's worth, then do whatever you want. But if it's like I'm canceling to send the message that this is not what I want the athletic to be, it might send that message. It might cause a course correction or it might cause them to double down and be like, well, now we've got to cut even more people because our revenue declined. And I still read something at The Athletic, I think, probably every single day. And there are a ton of great writers I respect and admire. They're doing really good work.

So you want to send a message while also still supporting the people who were there who, you know, weren't responsible for this decision. So thank you to our Patreon supporters, I guess, is the message. And FanCraft subscribers in general. Yes. Yeah, we like, you know, the interests of good storytellers and the interests of curious readers are aligned. interests of curious readers are aligned. We want to tell stories and we want to do analysis and we want to better understand the sport. And curious readers and listeners, they want that too. The misalignment isn't between the people doing the work and the people reading and listening to the work. It's between all of us and the people who make decisions about

who gets to keep their job and not, and how much profit is enough profit. That's where the misalignment is. So I think that there is a lot of, and this might sound Pollyanna-ish, but like there is power to be had in that like fundamental storyteller, writer, podcaster to reader and listener relationship. Because we want the same things, you know? It's a lot more satisfying to discover something cool about baseball when you can go tell someone about it. Like, that helps to really make it sing and feel worthwhile. And, you know, if you're hanging out with any of the folks who lost their jobs yesterday, And, you know, if you're hanging out with any of the folks who lost their jobs yesterday, you know, buy them a beer or whatever they want to drink. And like, I think we like when folks decide to discontinue their Patreon support, but we hope still listen to the show lately, have expressed that they're getting laid off and their budgets are tight and they're experiencing financial hardship and their circumstances have changed. to do it. Like, if you're one of those folks, I'm really sorry that that's what's going on. And we appreciate you listening and hope you feel like you're still part of this project because, you know, we know that stuff's getting real and has been real for a lot of people

for a long time. So, you know, I hope we think of it as all being in it together in some way. Yeah. The last thing I was going to say about the media aspect of this is that when the result is that everything splinters into a zillion different paywalled outlets, so sub stacks, whatever it is, like people should be paid for their work. So, you know, there's kind of an internet tradition of expecting things to be free. And so people sometimes balk at what I have to pay to read something. Well, yeah, you got to fund people's time and effort.

But beyond that, I mean, it's just it's tough as a reader and consumer to follow a zillion different places that you have to pay for. You can't pay for all of them. And if they're not all in one place, you know, you pay for the athletic and you get access to all the athletic writers or baseball perspectives or whatever it is that it's tough. You know, suddenly you have like a zillion different sub stacks and can you afford to do that and can you keep track of them all? And also if you didn't already have a big public platform somewhere, it's very hard to build a following from scratch on a sub stack in a newsletter, right? Often. Especially with Twitter falling apart before our very eyes. Right. People have to have some sort of following built up before they go private, basically. And

then when all that stuff is behind the paywall, it works out very well for some people, not everyone. And then, you know, people don't get as many eyeballs on that work, which is unfortunate if it's really good work. So it's, yeah, it's not great in any number of ways. And it curtails like the kinds of people who can pursue this work as real work. You know, if you have to be able to float yourself or cobble together freelance income, you know, we've talked about this before, so we don't have to like, you know, do the whole conversation again. But like, it limits the kinds of stories that get told because it limits the kind of people

who can afford to tell them. And that's not good either. So yeah, I hadn't really thought about it, but you're right. One of the things that was really great about The Athletic is that it was kind of like cable. It's like everything was just in one place. Yes. Yeah.

And I didn't read all of it in much the same way that when I had cable, I didn't watch every channel, but it was nice. Right. But now every writer is a separate streaming service. So with a monthly fee, it's tough. All right. On that note, we will wrap up with the past blast, which comes to us from the distant year of 2019. Oh, my God. And also from David Lewis, an architectural historian and baseball researcher based in Boston who writes, League Experiments with Robo-Umps. In 2019, the Independent Atlantic League became the first professional baseball league in America to use a robotic umpiring system. I guess it had been tested here and there. I know the Pacific Association tried it out. We tried it out with the Stompers one time.

The Pacifics did it. But to actually be implemented on a league-wide level all season, this was new and novel. So David writes, beginning with the league's all-star game in July, balls and strikes were called by a computer. A human umpire wearing an earpiece would remain at home plate and relay the correct call made using TrackMan technology. Brian DeBrowe, who was behind the plate for the all-star game, explained that his role was in part to serve as a safety net in case the system failed. He explained, until we can trust the system 100%, I still have to go back there with the intention of getting a pitch correct, because if the system fails, it doesn't pick a pitch up, or if it registers a pitch that's a foot and a half off the plate as a strike, I have to be prepared to correct that. The human umps had the authority to override the system if they saw fit and also gave judgment on

check swing calls, which the system was not set up to register, players disagreed with the umpire's ability to veto a call. Former major leaguer, Kirk Neuenheist said, if the umpire still has discretion, it defeats the purpose. Other than that, however, players and umpires alike reportedly had generally positive reactions to the

new technology. The future is crazy, but it's cool to see the direction of baseball, said Atlantic league infielder, LJ Mazzilli. After the all-star game, the Atlantic league planned to roll the system out across the league in forthcoming weeks. After that, we're relatively confident that it's going to spread through organized baseball, said league president Rick White. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred tempered expectations, however, suggesting that there was no timeline for when the technology would advance to the majors and that league officials would need

to see how it works before making any decisions. In the meantime, however, the Atlantic League made sure fans could still voice their displeasure about calls they took issue with. During the All-Star game, the stadium's PA announcer directed fans to look up at the black screen hanging off the face of the upper level behind the plate and joked that they could blame the computer for any disagreements over calls. And here we are a few years later, still trying to see how it works, still spreading through organized baseball. And of course, we have the wrinkle of the challenge system, which now seems to have become the preferred option and maybe the more likely to be implemented when this does come to the majors. That's right. Well, after we finished recording, the Nevada State Senate voted 13 to 8 in favor of the

A's proposal for about $380 million in public funding to build a stadium in Las Vegas. Now it's the state assembly's turn to vote on that proposal on Wednesday. If it gets past that hurdle, then it would go to the governor for ratification. Also, if you're keeping track of Albert Pujols' employment after his retirement as a player, he has added yet another new job to his collection. He's been hired as a global ambassador and executive advisor to the CEO of Baseball United, which is a professional baseball league that's supposed to start playing in Dubai later this year. So Albert Pujols is now employed by the Angels, MLB and MLB Network and Baseball United, just that we know of. He's not taking it easy in his retirement.

I know that despite our doom and gloom about the media and sports writing, unemployment in general in the U.S. is quite low. Could it be because Albert Pujols is employed three times over? Is that skewing the stats? No, I know that's not how it works. You can and we hope you will support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Matthias Mando, Craig Clemens, Andrew Johnston, Michael Hoffman, and Chewbacca. Thanks, Chewy. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only.

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