Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2161: The State of Stadium Funding

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Riley Greene’s latest pants-related wardrobe malfunction, the Padres-Marlins Luis Arraez trade, the continued scuffling of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a C.B. Bucknor bit, and more. Then (52:30) they’re joined by Neil deMause, author of Field of Schemes, and J.C. Bradbury, author, stadium-funding researcher, and professor of economics, finance, and […]

With Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley, come for the ball, banter's free. Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big conversation. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2161 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. How are you? I'm doing well.

Good. Well, our pants and clothes are intact as far as I know, at least mine are. You cannot say the same- Speak for yourself. far as I know, at least mine are. You cannot say the same for Riley Green, whose pants tore again in the same way on the seams. Again? Again. It happened again to him. Now, I don't want to belabor the pants point, and we know that the universal concern is

the pants, but he had the same seam tear, and I can't figure out, I haven't seen this happen to anyone else, this precise tear. It very well may have, but both times I've seen it, it's been Riley Green. And he slid the same way both times. And I don't know if he has an unusual way of sliding. He sort of puts his leg under him and slides on it. And I see why some force was imparted to the pants, but they're supposed to be able to stand up to that strain. Sure. That seems the stitches are supposed to be strong enough and they're not.

Yeah. I just wonder why he specifically is being victimized by the pants. Because after the first time he tore the pants, which was when he was sliding into home, and that kind of went viral. And it was reported by The Athletic that after his pants ripped, his mother called him and said, I've washed thousands of your pants and I've never seen your pants rip that way. Yeah. And yet now it's happened again.

So, okay, we know it's the fault in our pants and they are the famous YA series. And they're fixing it now. We got a press release from MLB acknowledging what had previously – We did a whole segment on it. Yeah, right. That was in response to the MLB PA leaked memo. Yes. But we actually got right in our inboxes.

Yeah, they're addressing these things. I don't know if they specifically mentioned that type of pants tear, but I'm just trying to figure out why Riley Greene, like, is this some kind of prank? I mean, it's not like he has thunder thighs or something. Like, he's not Spencer Strider. Like, he's bursting out of his pants or anything. So I can't figure out why he's the one. But imagine if this whole thing were like a Truman Show style just experiment set up to see how Riley Green specifically would react to his pants personally tearing it away that no one else's have.

I love the idea that of all of the, and I don't say this as a knock on Riley Green, but like of all the guys in major league baseball that they'd be like our truman show it must be about riley green you know because the tigers are such a vibrant franchise right now i will say if there is something particular about it if he is the subject of um some sort of psychological warfare by like a tiger is clubby which to be clear i i am not alleging and find unlikely to be true it sure isn't bothering him because that guy has a 166 wrc plus like we are we are in the the season of riley green you know he's having a great year so far um yeah maybe this is what he needed to

just let his his legs breathe a bit he should get like uh the parachute pants or the or the terrorways yeah yeah yeah he is prepared i mean he's wearing a layer of leggings under there so He should get like the parachute pants or the or the tearaways. Tearaways. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is prepared. I mean, he's wearing a layer of leggings under there. So he was not caught out or anything. But but still, especially the second time after it happened the first time, I imagine he was well prepared. The press release we got from MLB and Nike announced uniform adjustments. Nike is working on a solution to address the slight color differences between the, their

words, not ours, between the jerseys and pants of some clubs' gray road uniforms, as well as the discoloration that can occur due to perspiration in certain instances, as well as larger lettering on the back of jerseys with individual pant customization made available to all players. What's with the singular pant? I think if they just said the universal concern is the pants, that wouldn't have registered quite as much as it's the pant. The pant.

The pant. The pant. I just never say pant singular when I'm talking about pants. We're very close to getting to the point where pant doesn't have any meaning at all because we just said it out loud so many times. The pant, Ben. The pant. Be careful out there, Riley Green. The pant.

Maybe try to not slide. Just try to go in standing up. That way you won't have any more wardrobe malfunctions. But hopefully no one will when Nike rectifies this situation. Let's hope, presumably. I had a revelation yesterday. It's pant related, Ben. When we discussed the leaked MLBPA memo, I posited that if I were a player, that I would select colorful and potentially risque drawers to call the bluff of Nike and the league about the transparency of the pants. The obvious pant transparency problem. I was sitting and watching the Phillies yesterday, and I think that if there's going to be a player that does it,

it would probably be a guy on the Phillies. I think I've identified the Phillies as the club most likely to be game for this challenge to where, you know, like flowered, brightly colored drawers or drawers with like a pattern on them that might offend the league. And to be clear, I don't want them to do anything like, you know, yucky. I'm not asking for a controversy beyond the mere visibility of the drawers. I don't need any problems for those guys. But yeah, I was thinking about it. And I think that it's probably a guy on the Phillies that would be game. Because they have a very free relationship with their buttons.

As we've established, they are very comfortable being really down to the navel almost with their buttons. As we've established, they are very comfortable being really down to the navel almost with their buttons. They seem to perform better the less buttoned they are. I'm saying button weird. Why am I saying button like that? Leave it in, but I don't know. Button. There's like

a precision there that I've never had before. Button. Pant. Pant. Anyhow, what i'm saying is that i don't think that brandon marsh listens to our podcast and based on how much we've talked about his beard and how wet it is i kind of hope he doesn't but if anyone in the philly's orbit uh wants to have a little fun i don't know why but i feel like like Marsha's our dude, you know? So, Brandon, wear some, like, a floral would be so nice, like a vibrant floral. Or, like, they could put, you could put the fanatic's face on your butt and be like, what? And, you know, or, like, it could just be a fanatic print, you know?

It could be, like, a lot of fanatic faces. Because he's very bright, you know? This is another reason that blooper sucks. Cause you know, if you put blooper on your drawers, it wouldn't get noticed at all. Cause it was weird, fleshy color, you know, it's just like a weird flesh, but with the fanatic, you're like, Oh, a fanatic sliding out under there. That sounded dirty in a way. I really didn't mean it to, but I heard it out loud after I said it and I was like, that wasn't what Meg meant. But anyway, Brandon Marsh, call us. We want

to do a little experiment. I want to do some science. Some pant. Pant? Pant? Pant science. And in the meantime, just until they fix this situation, just no one slide like Riley Green. Look at how he does it. I really don't think it's a weird.

It's not a wacky slide. It's not really. It's a normal. No, there's significant force that is transferred to the seams. But yeah, I don't think it's abnormal. I think it's a pretty normal slide. I just wonder why he's getting picked up. I don't know.

Why Riley Green? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. Wearing potentially a different pair of pants, although potentially still a faulty one, is Louisa Rice, who traded his Marlins pants for his Padres pants. Wow. And this happened on Friday evening because it's an AJ Preller move, so of course it did.

I thought, oh, the week's over. All the major news happened. We recorded a podcast. We covered it all. All right. We're all set. And then AJ Preller struck, as he is wont to do. And look, he never ceases to entertain me. As I've said many times, I will miss him when he's no longer pulling the trigger on these trades. I don't know whether they will work out for him or the Padres, but I love that it happens, however inopportune it is with our podcast timing. So Luis Arise to the Padres for Wusak Go, a reliever that AJ Preller signed mere months ago, as well as three prospects, including a pick in the first round that AJ Peller drafted less than a year ago. So nothing's nailed down over there. Unless you're a shortstop. Well, no. And of course, Luisa Risa is a former shortstop, at least a little bit, you know, enough to qualify for the Padres. And look, I think the strangest thing about this is that it happened on May 3rd.

Yes. There are a lot of things that you could say, wait, weren't the Padres like selling for a little while there? Weren't they trimming payroll? Yes, they were, although it turns out that they didn't really take on much payroll to make this move, at least not this year. Because the Marlins actually paid down most of Ariza's 10 point something million dollar salary. paid down most of Arise's 10 point something million dollar salary. Basically, the Padres are just paying the league minimum for him and the Marlins are picking up the tab for the rest of this season. He's under contract for next season as well. So that raised eyebrows. I've seen maybe more divergent takes on this trade. Really? Like, yeah, usually analysts are largely

in lockstep about these things. All over the place. Yeah, which makes sense. It's not even necessarily a groupthinker or herding or anything. It's just most trades are kind of obvious, you know? It's just like there's one team that's getting better in the short term and there's one team that's theoretically at least getting better in the long term and the prospects go one way and the veterans go the other way. Not always. Sometimes you get entertaining trades like a previous Luisa Rice trade for Pablo Lopez with the twins, right? But mostly it's pretty obvious and it's, yeah, this makes sense for both sides. And one side will probably get the better of it in the end, but it's tough to predict which. It's nothing lopsided. It's nothing like you can't even understand where one side is coming

from. Not that that's happening here, but I've seen rave reviews for the Marlins return here, and I've also seen the opposite. I've also seen, well, they got a bunch of guys, but not a bunch of guys, right? And was this worth it for them to make this move so early? Not that they're going anywhere. It certainly seems this season with or without a rise, but yeah, it's, it's atypical, I think, for a trade reaction to really range as widely as this one has. So I don't know if you have a particular take, but clearly you've noted that same difference of opinions.

Yes. I'm always curious how much clustering around a particular view there is going to be on a trade, in part because I, you know, like, I think that the folks I work with at Fangraphs are smart and they think about baseball in a way that is smart. But I think it's useful for us to kind of get a sense of where we sit relative to other publications, both so that we can, you know, anticipate questions that readers might have, and also, you know, to get a sense if we've, did we miss something, you know, are we off base? And you were right that, like, people's reaction to this is all over the map, you know, it's been really variable. And I think a lot of it comes down to people having different views of how valuable arises because like if he's you know if you think that he is a superstar then you might look at what the marlins the the players the marlins received in return here and think that the uh return was kind of light right like i can't believe you would only get that for this guy and um why wouldn't you wait until closer to the deadline? That was not my reaction. I think you can

kind of, you know, maybe this is sort of splitting the difference in a way, but I think that the Marlins system is just completely devoid of depth right now. There not a lot there and i think that you are right to say that like none of these guys is like a capital d dude but they needed depth i think they you know particularly needed position player depth um and they're gonna get it i think that the padres did well here because some of the guys they traded particularly particularly given, you know, the composition of the roster and some of their prior conversions from shortstop to the outfield were sort of redundant on the big league roster as it's as it's constituted now. Like, you know, a couple of months ago, I might not have thought it was a good idea to do what they're doing. But like Jackson Merrill seems like he's actually a big league center fielder. So it kind of changes the calculus of who you're willing to move on from, from a prospect perspective, the idea that you are going to be

able to exact greater leverage in the coming months with a guy who is now to be clear, the coming months with a guy who is now to be clear incredibly good at his one skill right his or as his tool his good tool is like an incredibly good tool but he really does only have the one you know he's i know that there's some disagreement across um a couple of the defensive metrics about how good a fielder he is but like he to my mind and i think a lot of the defensive metrics are sort of directionally aligned on this not really a reasonably good middle infielder but he can hit and he's gonna be a great dh he already has some hits for the padres that was an area of their roster where they really could stand to upgrade and they're kind of set otherwise at least from

a position player perspective so i get it from their side they are you know in this space now where they don't really have much in the way of depth in the minors aj keeps doing that's right where he's doing like consolidation trades where he trades like three or four guys for one dude does he do this how does he always have just an inexhaustible well of – it never seems like he trades their top prospect at any time. He does a good job of not doing that, yeah. Yeah. It's always like somewhere down the list and yet where do they keep coming from?

Like he trades – he's traded like an entire farm system's worth of prospects and just totally turned it over. And I think you've complimented him in the past for just continuing to find them, right? Not necessarily develop them always or establish them in the majors. In some cases, yes. You mentioned Merrill, for instance. But often he's shipping them out to satiate his need to do deals. And yet it seems like the cupboard is never quite bare.

Well, you know, it helps when you trade your first rounder from literally last year, right? Yes, that is true. You know, they have a restocking every July now. Yeah, they also traded Juan Soto. Yeah, I was going to say he got guys back for Soto. I mean, like, San Diego has done a good job, I think, with their position players. I think they've been pretty adept at developing those guys. They still, I think, struggle on the pitching side of things. prospect dudes to bring back another position player a thing that they are better at you know developing than pitching but they're not gonna get pitching from miami all of miami's pitching is hurt so and and again i think they had a real need at dh so it's a good upgrade there i like

when teams are aggressive in terms of when they trade in the calendar. Me too. I think that San Diego is right that they are exceeding expectation. I think people were pretty down on them coming into the year after last season. You know, they're a 500 team. They have the misfortune of looking up at the Dodgers, which they're going to have to continue to do presumably for a while. But if you think that that gap in the West is close, why not give yourself as long to close it as you possibly can? And if you think Horizon, his ability to make contact is going to be the thing that sort of pushes you closer and closer to L.A., like, do it now in the early part of May so that you can reap those rewards for as long as possible.

I think on Miami's side, like, again, they need a depth. Their system is not good. Like I said, I think that Oriza's standout tool is like a real standout. Like, you know, his contactability is probably an 80, but like he can't do much else.

And if you were looking at it and saying, we're not going anywhere this year, all of our pitching has hurt. We're getting ready to tear it down. And you like the depth that you're able to get back from San Diego for this

because you think that these guys are going to be like reasonable contributors later I don't know that you're exacting much more from another team for a for a guy like Arise closer to the deadline you know as Ben Clemens noted when he wrote up the transaction for us like there are guys like him maybe not quite like Arise in terms of the actual quality of their contact ability, but, like, guys who are two to three win guys over the course of a season, they move at the deadline. This isn't Trey Turner, right? This isn't Max Scherzer. This isn't that kind of guy.

I don't think he's that kind of guy. So, if you think that you can get what you want now, like, go get it. Fine. Fine. Sure. Why not? They're not going to get a playoff spot this year. So, why not just do it? They're not.

And I know it's whiplash because they made the playoffs last year. But they were, if not the worst playoff team ever, maybe one of them, right? I mean, they were handily outscored. And yeah, obviously, they've had turnover in the front office and the way that Kim Ang exited and they sort of encouraged her to leave, seemingly not great. But also, yeah, it wasn't really a team that was super set up to win. And then they didn't invest in that team over the offseason at all. Ownership didn't try to bolster the weaknesses of that team that improbably made it to the playoffs. So the fact that they've started this slowly, that was maybe not easy to anticipate, but it's not a shock that

they wouldn't be there. It's maybe a shock that they'd be far enough out in early May that they would consider doing this and then ultimately do it despite the fact that you're throwing in the towel that early and that can have cost to morale, attendance, etc. And I feel bad for Marwan's fans, long-suffering, if they're still out there because Peter Bendix, their new po-po, just didn't really sugarcoat it when it comes to what this move prefigures. There are going to be more. This is the first domino, really. I mean, whatever makes sense for them to move, I think they're going to. He said there was no definitive timeline for a return to competitiveness. He refused to label this a rebuild.

We know that front office people, they hate to call it a rebuild even when it is clearly a rebuild. There's always some synonym or they duck the question or something. But this is the first of potentially many moves. And that stinks because how many times have the Marlins been through that cycle in their relatively short history. Obviously, they've had some successes, they've had some highs, but they're always followed quite quickly by lows and preceded also by lows. And they just can't hang on to anyone, whether it's a homegrown player that most franchises would try to build around, or it's someone like Arise who you know they liked and was good there and was a good fit there

they just don't keep anyone and it's just constantly like oh we're buying oh we're selling and that didn't work out and we didn't spend the necessary money to surround the players that we have with talent or we're just going to do a fire sale or whatever it is right so that's just

the boom and bust history of that franchise, and it stinks to see it happening again. But, man, Ryze is such a fun player. I really like him a lot, and I don't disagree with your evaluation of him. But the Padres just must have the most star power per war of any team, right? star power per war of any team, right? Because they're not a great team, but they have so many prominent players and fun players and players, I mean,

interested to see how their season proceeds and arises close to the top of that list because he is such an outlier and he's such a fun player and personable and seems to be a good guy, certainly well-liked by his teammates and fans because he does it in such a fun player and personable and seems to be a good guy, certainly well-liked by his teammates and fans. And because he does it in such a different way and he's so adept at what he does, even though there are many things he's not so adept at, he's one of the stars of the game,

I would say. You know, a moderate star at least, but his star power probably outstrips his production holistically, but he's just super fun. And so now you get to add him to the top of that lineup. And most teams might not have made the move for him because people are like, well, where is he going to play? Well, there's uncertainty with Machado and his elbow. And so he can play some third and he can play some second and he can probably mostly DH. And even though they've acquired so many guys, they just always find room for more, somehow just more infielders or nominal infielders. So I get it.

And I do kind of applaud the two teams involved for if they were going to make a move like this, just do it, you know, don't procrastinate. You always have to wait to the day before the deadline or the deadline itself. You need the time pressure. It's like seconds or maybe you have months. Explore the studio space.

Explore the calendar a little. Try to get one of these players when he can help you for a couple extra months or in theory at least you can reap more rewards on the prospect side. So I like that because you just rarely see a deal of this magnitude, not that it's like, you know, the biggest blockbuster afternoon, so I'm not going to go overboard by praising his timing. But at some point, AJ, I'm just going to stop covering them. You know, I don't want to reward attention seeking behavior. No, you won't. I'm kidding. I mean, like, I'm clearly not going to.

Bring it on, AJ. I say make more of these moves while you can, while you still have the authority to, because I don't know how long that'll last. You are so worried about his job. I am. I don't want to lose him, you know, from an entertainment perspective. We don't have gunslingers like this anymore, you know? Everyone's so measured and they speak the same way and they kind of make the same moves and they go after the same players. And AJ's just out there on an island just doing his thing. Like, we used to group Preller and DePoto together. And I think AJ, he's on his own island.

I mean, it's like an archipelago. I mean, DePoto's island is somewhere between Preller's island and the mainland. But it's definitely his own territory that he occupies now when it comes to just the aggressiveness and the going from one approach to another and the times that he will. Jerry, he'll still make those moves on major holidays. Like, I don't want to sell him short. He signed Mitch Garver on Christmas Eve, Ben. Yes.

But at least that was like a predictable signing or a, you know, sensible, not surprising when it happened was unusual. Sure. But the fit made sense the time, you timing, other than the fact that it was literally a holiday of like, okay, sure, Mariners, Mitch Garver makes sense. With Preller, there's like the additional chaos element, not just of when it happens, but how it happens and what happens. It just – it entertains me to no end. And the timing for one prospect in particular was especially strange because one prospect was on the field when he was dealt Nathan Martorella, the double-A player this was being discussed, that this was going down and he had to be pulled out of the game from second base. And he was clearly confused.

There's video where he's like looking around and pointing to himself like, me? Why am I being removed? Like, this is not a pinch running situation. What is happening here? We got an email from listener Richard who thought that that was eyewash or something to pull him while he was standing on second. He wrote, is it really necessary to remove someone from a game immediately upon being traded? Or maybe it was even before the trade was official. A minor leaguer

was pulled off second base and had to get his stuff and walk off the field. That seems like eyewash. Couldn't you tell him at the end of the inning and he could sit on the bench until the game was over? I don't know. I am kind of okay with it. I think you don't want to jeopardize the deal. I mean, yeah, the odds are remote that he's going to hurt himself before the end of the inning, that he's going to, who knows, pull something or collide with someone on his way home from second base. But it could happen. It happens every now and then.

You wouldn't want to scuttle a deal because you left him out there. And I don't think it's like cruel or anything. I mean, you're going to spring this on the guy one way or another, whether you tell him when he's standing on second base or you tell him when he gets back to the dugout. I guess there's a little less confusion

if you wait for the inning to end, but you're still going to drop a bomb on them and say, hey, we just traded you. So whether that happens when it's still the middle of the inning or the end of the inning, I don't know that it would matter that much to me. I think that, I mean, you definitely have to get him off the field as soon as the deal is done. Because, like, what if he, you you know tears his knee while he's running the basis or something right i mean it's again it's unlikely but it the risk is there and you can't jeopardize the deal so you you gotta pull him but like you can probably let him hang out in the dugout it'll just like be like hey by the way you got traded but like you can like i don't know

maybe there's an arcane rule that we're not appreciating. I wouldn't be totally shocked if that were true, right? Like, there are rules about guys who are on the injured list not being able to enter the field of play, like, during a fracas, right? Like, you get suspended for that. You get dinged for it. So there might be some, you know, particular rule buried somewhere that I'm not thinking of that says that you have to, once you've been pulled and are effectively a member of another organization, that you have to vacate the dugout or something. But I would probably pull him and be like, hey, bud, like, you got traded, but like sit and hang out and chat with people. Like, I feel like that would be fine. I don't know if they banished him from the premises i don't know if they get your stuff put it in a cardboard box security will escort you out you can

no longer log into your computer or something no i i imagine not but there's always a lot of logistical stuff to work out when a trade happens it's like wait where am i going and where how do i get there and when do i play and where am I going to live and all that. So you probably – you might not want to just sit and kind of take in the moment because you're like, well, my life is completely different than it was a minute ago. But yeah, I wouldn't usher him out any faster than I had to. Yeah, I mean like they – you got to get guys on the move. Like Arise just played for the padres later that weekend right so you know sometimes there's those logistical considerations and i'm sure they have to

submit to um physical examinations so it might be you know timing around that stuff but you know who i felt kind of bad for in in this transaction And I don't know how he feels about it. So this is me making an assumption, which might be incorrect. But, like, you know, the Padres signed Wusako. And he thinks he's going to play for a West Coast team. And he is about as far away as he possibly could be and still be in the continental United States, which I don't know if he cares about that. I don't want to make an assumption just because he's, you know, coming from Asia. But you will often hear players coming from either the KBO or NPB having a slight preference sometimes for West Coast teams, right?

This was a big question when we were trying to figure out where Otani was going to go. Like, does he want to be that much closer to a return flight to Japan? And I don't know if being closer to a return flight to Korea matters to go, but I was like, oh, buddy, you're really far away. Although I guess he's in AA, so might bounce around a little bit. All right, so a couple other observations. One, we haven't talked about Vlad Jr. this season. Yeah.

And I guess we haven't had a whole lot of reason to talk about him. Yeah. He's just been his same sort of mediocre self that he was last season. And it's really kind of confounding the longer that lasts. Yeah. And it looked like he might be back, like there was a lot of buzz and optimism. And now he made some swing changes and mechanical differences. And maybe he underperformed last year.

His ex-WOBA was higher than his WOBA. That is still true. His ex-WOBA is like 40 points higher than his WOBA as it was last year. So, again, maybe he's still hitting the ball hard. Maybe there's some element of bad luck here or maybe it's something else. There was a lot of confusion about why that happened last year.

And so he's just been continued to be a slightly above average bat, which is just not enough for him to be a very valuable player given the other skills or lack thereof. And that's just been weird. If you had asked me in 2021, and maybe you did, I'm sure we talked about it plenty then, I thought at the time, yeah, maybe he will have a better career than his dad did. I mean, I know he's maybe not as well-rounded a player, but look at the bat, look at the offensive force he is, look at how young he was. And then the next year was a decline, and then the year after that was a further decline, and it's just been sort of a stagnation.

And he really has to rake to be a good player, let alone a great one, let alone an MVP candidate. a good player let alone a great one let alone an mvp candidate so i hope he gets back to that point because he was fun to have as one of the faces of baseball i know he's like on the mlb the show cover now this year but he's not really playing up to that sort of prominence right now yeah it's a it's one of those things where you know it really depends what part of his player page you're looking at because you know you're like oh my gosh like he has a basically a 55 hard hit rate like he's he's practically meeting his career best and then you look at his ground ball rate you're like oh yeah literally half of the contact is coming on the ground. And so it's just – it's going to be a problem if you're just constantly pounding the ball right into the ground in front of home plate.

If you look at the savant percentiles, as everyone constantly does, he's at 96th percentile average exit velocity, 84th percentile barrel rate, 95th percentile hard hit rate, 13th percentile sweet spot percentage. Yeah, it's not good. So hitting it hard. Oh, yeah. But not on the right part of the bat or in the right direction exactly. No, definitely not. So it's kind of a bummer. Yeah.

And 71st percentile chase rate as well. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, the raw offensive skills were so impressive a few years ago when he was even younger that I kind of keep feeling like it's in there somewhere. It's got to be in there. It's just, it's going to be a tweak. It's going to be a change. And then suddenly that will unlock the Vlad Jr. of old and he will be overpowering again. It just hasn't happened. But I'm trying to put that out there in the universe because, you know, we talked about Trout and how well he was doing. And then he got hurt.

And then we talked about how well Stephen Kwan was doing and how much we were enjoying. Now he's on the IL for some time. Can't blame us for Trey Turner. I don't think we talked about Trey Turner's strong start to the season. So we can't lay that one at our feet. But maybe this will be the opposite kind of regression. You know, when is Vlad Jr.

going to start hitting? And then it'll be one of these cases we've had in the past where the day we talk about that and look at the splits from that point forward, oh, he's one of the best hitters in baseball, let's hope.

I mean, he did hit a grand slam on Sunday, so maybe? Maybe? Maybe? Let's hope. Yeah. I feel bad we broke Stephen Kwan, though. We didn't mean to do that. Sorry, Stephen. No, we definitely didn't. We're saying how much we were enjoying

this season, so this is the last thing we wanted. Although, at least we get to see Kyle Manzardo. Manzardo. Silver lining maybe. But did you see the other day when C.B. Buckner bucknered? This is a different kind of bucknering, a different spelling of buckner. But umpire, home plate umpire in that game, C.B. Buckner. He had a bad call that came in circumstances that were maximally frustrating, but also maximally funny.

If you were not the team whose call this came at the expense of. I did not see this. So the White Sox were playing the Cardinals, and the Sox were ahead of the Cardinals 6-5, bottom of the 10th, two outs, bases loaded, 0-1 count. And then the rain came. Okay. Or the rain really came harder, and they had a three-hour rain delay. Three hours? Three hours.

Wow, that's longer than the B delay. Yeah. They stuck it out all this time. Wow, that's longer than the B delay. Yeah, they stuck it out all this time. They didn't get like a cloud guy to come and do an anti-rain dance or anything. But the clouds eventually cleared, I guess. The rain went away. Everyone's waiting three hours.

I mean, realistically, I don't know how many people were waiting. But the teams were waiting. The players were waiting to resume this game that's almost over. It's an 0-1 count, two outs. to resume this game that's almost over. It's an 0-1 count, two outs, and then like a minute after they finally resumed play, CB Buckner had a strike three call on a pitch that certainly appeared to be well outside,

like a low outside changeup that was well outside of the strike zone box and I think well outside of the strike zone. And the hitter just kind of crouched. was well outside of the strike zone box and I think well outside of the strike zone. Oh, no. And the hitter just kind of crouched. It was Ivan Herrera. And I think actually the pitcher and hitter were both replaced after the ruin. So it was like John Brebbia versus Nolan Gorman pre-reign and then Tanner Banks versus Ivan Herrera post-reign.

And so the 1-2 pitch to Herrera certainly seemed to be outside, but it was called a strike. And Buckner, he has that emphatic strikeout call, right, that you don't see so much anymore. Yeah, he looks like he's trying to punch you. Yeah, it's, you know, just the ch-ch, you can't see what I, like, cocking a shotgun kind of. Yeah, but you doing it, like, I can picture it, you know? Yeah, I can. Cock and a shotgun kind of. Yeah, but you doing it like. I made the sounds. Yeah, I can like, I can picture it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And all of that waiting, it was just. That's so funny. It was almost like a bit like if this had been like a sketch, like a comedy routine or something, I would almost have to hand it to him as opposed to just not a good call from one of those umpires whose name people know, which is usually not great. So C.B. Bucknor, I almost have to hand it to him here just for the circumstances. I'm sure Cardinals fans are not having to hand it to him. I'm sure they're extremely frustrated, but that's, I think, the funniest way that you can make a bad call. Oh, yeah. 100%. Make everyone wait. I'm sure a lot of people, you know, if they weren't already robot umps now, are robot umps now after watching that, if they were waiting around for three hours just to see CB Buckner blow a call. But I don't know, you almost have to admit it's kind of funny. At least I think it's kind of funny in sort of a groan-worthy way for one team involved.

I think that's very funny. And it is undermining a thought of mine, which is I was going to ask you, what are the odds, Ben? I can't believe I'm about to ask you this question as like, what are the odds? Because you're going to go 0% make. The odds are 0% that this is what's happening what are the odds that you know like um a picture in your mind's eye the guy you think of as like the worst umpire in baseball like worst home plate umpire in baseball and you don't have to say his name because we're not trying to be mean let's call him let's call him gary that's a neutral i don't even know if there is a gary who's an umpire it doesn't sound italian

so probably not we need to investigate this i ask as an italian american what's going on why are so many of you italian um anyway that's not the point let's call him gary you picture the work. What are the odds that Gary is a robot from the future trying to sway baseball toward his robot brethren so that the home plate umpire balls and strikes will be called by a robot? And the answer is zero. That's not that's not real. What it like a a baseball obsessed terminator is that what i'm envisioning from the future yeah and and you know you're thinking to yourself that's not realistic and i say well maybe it's a little bit possible but i don't think they could do bits you know like the terminator was like unintentionally funny because he's a robot and he couldn't really do you know he tried to do like a movie stuff but he wasn't he wasn't trying to be funny, really, you know, not not really, Ben. So I don't think it's actually that plausible.

No, probably not. I wonder if having a very pronounced strikeout call that you have to really wind up for correlates to inaccuracy. wind up for correlates to inaccuracy. And this, I think, was kind of par for the course for Buckner, not just in the inaccuracy, but our friend Mark Simon tweeted, CB Buckner has a history of being among the most pitcher friendly on outside pitches to right-handed hitters. And that certainly was one of those pitches. So consistent, I guess. Yeah.

Consistently inaccurate in that area. Does that make it better? Well, you know, some players will sometimes say that it does. Like if you're consistent throughout the game, at least. And Herrera, neither the pitcher nor the hitter in this situation had like known the zone from the rest of the game, at least from personal experience. So I don't know how much that would have made a difference for them or certainly for the fans. But I wonder just like if you have one of those calls where you really have to, because you got to get it going sooner, you know? Because

if you're not just saying it or giving like a little, you know, half-hearted sort of pump or something, if you're putting your whole body into it, you want to get that call started earlier. You know, it's almost like John Sterling said about his home run call. It's like, you know, he had to start. He couldn't wait for the ball to go over the wall. Like it was a long involved call. So sometimes he was going to miss one. Otherwise, he'd have to be super late on every call, right?

And he deemed it worthwhile to be wrong every now and then in order to improve his timing when it was right. I wonder whether something similar goes on when you have one of these big, like, mechanically involved strikeout calls. The older school of umpires who tend to have less accurate judging by the rule book zone zones, right? Because previous generation of umpires, you know, typically the younger umps and it's not necessarily an age thing so much as it's a recent arrival thing kind of came up under this system. It could be partly an age thing, but it's also just like you were schooled with this system where you were graded constantly and you kind of knew what was supposed to be a strike and what wasn't. And so the holdovers from an earlier generation, pre-PitchFX, pre-StackCast, et cetera, maybe even pre-QuestTech in some cases, they kind of call their own zone and they've been corralled somewhat. Everyone, even the outliers, the extremes have come back toward the pack and on the whole umpires have gotten more accurate. But they're probably also more likely to have the more demonstrative calls that the younger guys don't seem to have so much anymore. I think that's right, yeah. Yeah, so it's kind of a confounding variable there.

It'd be hard to tell whether it was merely the fact that umpires who were less likely to be accurate are more likely to have the big involved wind-up strikeout call punch-out, or whether it is actually the fact that they do have the big wind-up strikeout call punch-out that is contributing to that inaccuracy. Yeah, it's a good question. I would feel very torn as an umpire because, and we've maybe discussed this before, like on the one hand, you're right. Like there's like this category of this group of umpires where we are familiar with their names. And some of that is longevity. You know, there are umpires whose names we know and they're good umps and they've been good umps for a long time. But, you know, a lot of the time when

you know a guy's name, it suggests an ump show or two in their tenure, right? But it would feel very, I don't know, it's a weird job. It's a very odd job because you have to be so comfortable with anonymity, take pride in it really,, right? Because ideally, they just, you know, you don't know who those folks are at all. They're just like an anonymous person calling a good zone or making correct, fair, foul calls or what have you. And I wonder if some of them maybe secretly like the fact that the crew chief has to announce uh the results of replay review because you have a a neutral circumstance under which you can be recognized right now sometimes your call is getting overturned so maybe you don't want to be recognized in that circumstance but it it's at

least less fraught i would imagine uh than being a guy where it's like, yeah, I know what his windup looks like. Like, that's not good that I can visualize CB Buckner calling, you know, a guy out that arguably that's a pretty, that's not a good thing to be able to say. Again, some of it is their longevity because these guys tend to be around for a really long time once they break in, but it's not all that. And that's not the best. And then I have a question. I have another question, which I think is more grounded in reality than my baseball-obsessed Terminators would be, which arguably not the most realistic question I've ever posed to you. Do you think that there are pitchers or hitters who secretly have

great affection for particular umpires because they tend to call zones that are favorable either to pitchers or hitters but feel compelled to lie about it in the clubhouse because they know that they're pitching and or hitting teammates are like, I hate that guy.

That guy's on his own. Yeah, and you grumble, grumble because you want to commiserate. Yeah. Because especially if, yeah, if they're good for you as a pitcher, they're maybe not so good for hitters and vice versa. Yeah. Maybe so. Because these traits are exploitable.

If you know, if you're looking at the data that Mark Simon has and that teams certainly have and you know, okay, he's pitcher friendly. I can throw a change up out there. For all we know, that was why that pitch was thrown there because they knew, oh, well, we could get away with that one, right? And that is an aspect that I kind of appreciate. Hey, it's, you know, yes, it's kind of a non-player injecting himself into the game and having some effect on the outcome. Then again, it's something that pitchers and catchers, they could take advantage of.

They could manipulate. They can do their homework and study and say, yeah, these are the traits. This is the way that this guy's zone works. And so we can maybe go a little farther out there. Maybe we could throw that pitch, right? So I kind of enjoy that aspect of it. So there probably are some players who benefit from that and pitchers who know, oh, when that guy's behind in the plate, I can get an extra inch or

two. And that suits me because that's the type of pitcher I am. I'm not just a blow it right by him. I'm a kind of command and control and throw it over the edge, sort of like a Marcus Stroman. I'm just going to keep expanding the zone almost in an old school Maddox-esque way. I'm not saying Eric Gregg level, but just, you know, the modern equivalent of that. So, yeah, there probably are some players who feel fondness in that sense. I would argue that three hours, that's too long. Maybe it was a protest on Buckner's part. You made us wait this long. I'm just going to make a travesty of the resumption of the game. possibly can and i understand why there is some amount of urgency about that even early in the

calendar because you know if you just let every game get postponed or resumed later you're gonna make a real mess of the schedule at some point but you know you talked about how age isn't necessarily something that is the the reason that younger umpires tend to grade out a bit better but umpiring like takes a tremendous amount of concentration like you have to kind of get you know there's a reason they creft down there and watch the warm-up pitches coming in like you you have to sort of get acclimated to the game every time you do it and like three hours that's a long time to be kind of waiting around and then be like oh yeah i can call a perfectly good zone and who knows he might have made that mistake if the pitch had come in 20 seconds after the last one who could say but

it seems like that's a you're asking a lot of your ups to be able to like get back into game mode after three hours has anyone looked ben at sort of umpire accuracy in well i guess it's a different guy behind home plate so it doesn't matter i I was about to ask, is there anything to the idea that there might be decreased umpire accuracy in game two of a doubleheader because those guys have just worked a full game? It's a different dude behind the plate, but the umpire was still doing something. Yeah, that makes some sense. We had an interview once about umpire decision fatigue and if there's a long inning and they have to make a bunch of decisions, that could take some toll. So yeah, you'd think maybe long day, especially if it's hot out, for instance. Proclivity for shows or even if they reduce accuracy somewhat. I kind of like it. I kind of like hearing that just enthusiastic, that boisterous call back there. Just seeing the big punch out, you know, Leslie Nielsen style.

Kind of like that. Kind of adds some character. Did I ever tell you about the time that I asked my mom just out of the clear blue nowhere like what her strikeout call would be? And she had it. She had that locked and loaded in a way that I was floored by. And it was very elaborate. And my mom likes going to baseball games with me.

She doesn't like seek out baseball when we're not watching it together. And so for her to be just like ready to go, I was like, wow, ma, you've been thinking about that. Was there an audio component to it? There was a little bit of a grunt, yeah. There was a little like, uh, at the end of it. Wow.

All right. So we've got two guests for you. We do. We have had a lot of news lately about public funding for ballparks, not just in baseball, but lots in baseball too. Some of those efforts have been thwarted. Some have been more successful. And this is something, a theme that we've returned to over the years. And often when we have, we've probably cited the work of our two guests today, Neil DeMoss and Professor JC Bradbury.

And we will have them both on to talk about what has changed and what hasn't changed when it comes to teams' efforts to extract public funding for Stadia and also locality's willingness to hand over those payouts to the teams, to the billionaires. And this is newsy, even more newsy than it was when we booked this interview because Rob Manfred commented on this theme this week, as he often does. And I'll just read his statement to segue into our interview. He said, there has been a long history of public financing of not just baseball, but sports venues in general, expenditure, public funds that people have seen as justified as part

of the quality of life and entertainment opportunities available to residents in particular cities, as well as an economic driver. Certainly on the latter point, I recognize this is something that some will debate, including our two guests that we're about to bring on. But whatever the merits of it across the board, who could say if there are merits? Nevertheless. Investment in baseball facilities is the best of these sports investments because of the number of games.

It just drives more people into the market for entertainment than any other sport just based on sheer volume. I do think that in today's world, almost all projects, whether they be new stadiums, major renovations, all of those types of projects, almost without exception, and this is different than it was a couple decades ago, are public-private partnerships with owners of teams making really substantial, hundreds of millions of dollars investments. I think the Las Vegas project is a great example of that.

Yes, I always think the Las Vegas project is a great example of that. Yes, I always use the Las Vegas project as an example of what you're trying to sell here. It's a billion and a half dollar project where the public financing, I think the number is 380 million, and the rest of that investment is going to be made by the owner. We will see. As I think Neil deGrasse has documented, that number could inflate and probably will if there even ends up being a Las Vegas project when it's all said and done. But that's kind of the predicate for this interview. We will touch on Manfred's comments

after we return with Neil deGrasse and J.C. Bradbury. All right, well, we are joined now by two of the longest time watchers on the wall when it comes to public funding for ballparks. One is Neil DeMoss, who is the author of the book and also the blog, Field of Schemes, among many other journalistic endeavors. Hello, Neil. Hey, how's it going? Good. We are also joined by J.C. Bradbury, who is another eminent figure when it comes to this subject. He is a professor of economics, finance, and quantitative analysis at Kennesaw State University.

He's also the author of The Baseball Economist and Hot Stove Economics. Welcome, Professor Bradbury. Hey, thanks for having me on. Good to talk with y'all. Well, Neil, you have been on this podcast before to talk about this very issue, but the first time that happened was more than a decade ago. It was episode 327, which was November 2013, and we had you on to talk about public financing for sports stadiums. And we're still talking about public financing for sports stadiums. In what ways has that conversation changed? And in what ways has it not? Are we just going over the same ground

that we were back then? I thought for sure that we had taken care of it then. Yeah. I mean, you know, this has been going on the very first articles that Joanna Kagan and I wrote that eventually turned into the book Field of Schemes were in late 1995. So even in 2013, this had been going on an awfully long time. I was surprised at then. And it's just kind of remarkable now that the year 2024 and we're still talking about, you know, the exact same kinds of gambits by team owners, right? You know, they are continuing to say, we're going to move the team. If we don't get a new stadium, you know, there will be tremendous economic booms. If you build a new one, You know, there will be tremendous economic booms if you build a new one.

All the exact same arguments, the 30 years of economic impact studies showing that there's nothing to this are now 40 years of studies, but they're still getting away with it. So, I mean, there's certainly changes in what's going on. You know, part of it is just that the dollar figures are much higher, right? We're talking about over a billion dollars now, whereas last time I was on, I'm sure, you know, that record had not been approached. But, you know, it's the same scam, really, just much, much larger. Well, if the arguments from ownership are the same, I think one of the things that we might say has changed, or at least my perception of it has changed, is that the receptiveness to those arguments from local communities seems to have shifted. It used to be much easier, it seems, for owners to get the stadium funding they want. So are you also noticing a shift in sort of the public receptiveness to public funding of stadiums,

or am I being optimistic? I'm not so sure that there's a big change in that. I mean, there's always been a lot of public resistance to giving overtaxed money to sports team owners. I think you're seeing maybe a little bit more attention to that. Part of that is that recently there have been a few cases where the public's actually gotten to vote and has voted it down. But I predicted, you know, that the tide was going to turn so many times in the past that I'm hesitant to say it now. I think there's somewhat of a groundswell and somewhat of more organization across,

you know, the country and not just, you know, individual cities being like, oh, you know, this is something we have to deal with. Certainly, there is high profile stuff like the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals deal getting voted down, like Tempe voting down money for the Coyotes, like all the organizing going on in both Oakland and Las Vegas around the A's. But at the same time, Oklahoma City just overwhelmingly passed a referendum to put money into a new hockey arena. And there are teams out there, the Bills and the Titans and the Ravens and the Orioles and the Brewers who are still out there getting half a billion dollars to a billion dollars and more.

So I guess we'll kind of see what happens in the next year or two. JC, I know you have thoughts on this. You know, I sort of am skeptical like Neil, but I will say that if you asked me this question a year or two ago, I would have said nothing has changed. this question a year or two ago, I would have said nothing has changed. And I do think that there have been some groundswells that have really happened. And I think it has to do with the public stadium votes where the public has had a chance to review these deals. And so you've had an opportunity for grassroots groups to go out and kind of make a difference and get the word out. And because social media has evolved, it's very easy for people to get the word out. And because social media has evolved, it's very easy for people to get the word out. And so, you know, it is disheartening when you see some of these deals

happening, like the one in Oklahoma City was just so awful. But, you know, the fact that the deal that almost happened in Alexandria, Virginia for the Washington Capitals and Wizards, I think two years ago, that was a done deal. It just would have gotten pushed through. And I think there's been enough sort of discussion going on about that, that these deals may get stopped. Now, I will say this, that the reason we have these deals is because politicians really want them. And they're the real problem here is that they're just sort of very acquiescent to whatever owners ask them. And so I think it used to be we could just get whatever we wanted. So we're just going to put this up for a vote and we'll win. And now when that's not happening, I think you're going to see some regrouping.

So, I mean, there's been some battles that have been fought, but the war's not over. The Alexandria case is really key there, right? Because that was defeated because a state senator just basically said, no, I'm not going to do this. So I agree with JC. The question isn't whether the general populace stands up and says, we don't accept this. The question is whether elected officials start seeing, oh, this is something that's really unpopular. Maybe we should be siding with the voters and not with the team owners. And we're sort of making a presumption. The premise of this segment is that, yeah, these typically are not good deals. But for anyone who is listening and is unconvinced of that, if you've somehow made it this far into Effectively Wild after

we've talked about this many times and you're still skeptical that this is actually something we should look askance at, JC, can you sort of sum up? I'm sure you have your elevator pitch down after the decades, just the state of the research, you and other economists, why you've come to the conclusion that these things generally do not redound to the benefit of the community. You know, this is sort of the mainstream economic opinion among researchers that stadiums and arenas don't tend to have large economic benefits and certainly don't justify the amount of subsidies we see going to fund these venues. And the reason for that is that when you see a lot of spending that's happening in and around the stadium,

you might say, oh, isn't that new spending? The reality is that most of the people spending that money are locals. That is, if they weren't spending it at the stadium, they would have spent it at the store or a restaurant or the movies. And so you don't tend to see this huge swell of spending that occurs because of stadiums. You might be able to see it, but it's not a general increase in economic well-being for the community. And so when you see $500 million to a billion dollars of public money going into this, it's really not generating any new economic impact. And so that's why economists are in large agreement that these are not good public investments. And I know that the commissioner of Major League Baseball has sort of rejected

that academic evidence, despite it being overwhelming and has, you know, gestured at baseball somehow presenting a different value proposition than other sports, or the frequency with which we see ballparks with adjacent entertainment districts somehow changing the economic calculus when we're assessing these projects. Is there any validity to that at all? Is there anything about particular sports or particular configurations of businesses proximate to sports stadiums that changes the calculus for you at all? No. And in fact, I think what Manfred is trying to do is he's taking a page out of the Merchants of Doubt playbook that tobacco companies used when they determined that, hey, cigarettes are causing cancer. This is our life blood. They didn't come out and say, oh, cigarettes are safe. They go, well, the science isn't settled.

And so if you hear Manfred speak, I'll say, well, there's some debate over this. There's not any debate. And so the idea here is that if you want to support a stadium and someone tells you, well, the economics isn't settled, you might say, well, I'd really like the stadium. Maybe I'll vote for it. Kind of like if you were a smoker and you go, well, the science isn't settled. You might say, well, I'd really like the stadium. Maybe I'll vote for it. Kind of like if you were a smoker and you go, well, the science isn't settled. I'll just light up one more time. And so the idea behind this sort of mixed use development, this is sort of the latest trend in saying,

oh, this stadium is going to be different. They're always going to be different. So in the 1990s, when you had stadiums coming along, like, you know, Camden Yards, Jacobs Field in Cleveland, Jacobsfield and Cleveland, you can't look at the old stadiums that were built in the 60s and 70s. Those concrete donuts, those sterile ashtrays, cookie cutter stadiums with moats of parking. Oh, no, no, no. This one's going to be different because we're going to integrate it into the urban community. But then what do you have now that, you know, you have these urban stadiums like Camden Yards that didn't generate large economic development around them. And so you've got the governor of Maryland coming to Cobb County, Georgia, going, well, we're going to try to mimic what they did here in the suburbs. Like, wait a second.

The last one didn't work. Why is this one going to work? And the reality is that these so-called mixed-use development, this is the new pitch. The idea is that, well, you have additional spending 365 days a year, live, work, play, and it's even extended beyond stadiums. But the reality is that, again, even if you have that adjacent ancillary development, that's still mostly local people spending there. And so you're not getting a huge change in spending. You might have local restaurants who are losing business to locals eating at restaurants in the new entertainment district. So in general, we don't see this changing the economics of stadiums at all. And Neil, you've chronicled some of these efforts that have stalled or been stymied lately,

even though there's this proven playbook. And you'd think that you could just keep running this back if you're an owner. And presumably there's some communication among owners and among leagues as to what's worked before. And yet it seems like some of these teams and owners have just fumbled the bag because they can't get out of their own way, right? So is part of this just not necessarily the public wising up, but also just a run of teams doing a pretty terrible job of gouging the populace for these funds? I mean, I think it would be hard to argue that there's ever been anyone quite as inept at this as John Fisher, the owner of the A's,

quite as inept at anything, really. But, you know, I mean, again, it hasn't been uncommon, right? We forget, you know, we think about all the successful stadiums of the past and we forget that there was like 10 years of the Minnesota Twins trying to get a new stadium before they actually got one. And the Marlins trying to get a new stadium before they already got one. And there are lots of cities that, you know, were poster children for saying no over and over again to stadium subsidies that ended up actually building them. So again, I don't want to be overly pessimistic, and I do think that there are some positive signs, but the teams know and the leagues know that losing once is not losing forever, right? That you can keep coming back and you can hope for a different governor or a different mayor or like the Twins did, right? They couldn't get the city or the state,

so they got the county to approve it. And like the situation in Virginia, I mean, that's great that it was shot down. And it's great that Virginia isn't going to be spending over a billion dollars on a new arena in Alexandria, but the owner of the caps and the wizards still use that as leverage to get about half a billion dollars out of DC. So I definitely think that there's a little bit of hubris that kind of built up, right? Where there are some owners who are just like, oh, this is just our birthright, right? We own a team. One of the things we get to do is every once in a while, every 30 or 20 or 15 or 10 years, say to our city, hey, you know, we want either a new place or upgrades and it's your job to pay for it and have learned that it's a little bit more difficult than that.

Again, whether that's going to mean that they never get what they want, let's talk again in another five years and sort of see where things have shaken out. We've obviously brought up the A's. You mentioned the Coyotes. I'm actually a Tempe voter, right, and voted against an arena. And now the Tempe Coyotes, the Arizona Coyotes, are going to be the Salt Lake City Coyotes or the Salt Lake City somethings, right? And the A's are going to Vegas. I wonder, you know, we've had sort of prominent examples over the past couple of decades of teams not getting what they want from a funding perspective and then actually

relocating. I'm curious if you see that having any effects on the success rate of other owners who can point to that relocation as a real threat? And are they more likely to get public funding in other locations after that? Because they can say, well, it's a nice NBA team you have there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it. Yeah, I don't know of any studies, but like anecdotally, certainly teams don't move that often because I think there are good reasons why teams are in the cities that they're in. And, you know, owners and leagues don't like to just pick up and move to something that could be a complete disaster.

But it definitely was a benefit, say, in the NBA when the Supersonics moved out of Seattle, right? Then NBA officials could all say, you know, you don't want to be the next Seattle. And I think there are certainly, you know certainly baseball cities that are going to be saying, you don't want to be the next Oakland, and hockey cities saying you don't want to be the next Phoenix or Arizona. How successful it will be, I don't know, but it certainly helps up the ante for leverage. And as Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner of the White Sox, famously told us

when asked why he flew down to Florida in the 80s to check out St. Petersburg. He didn't have a team at the time. At the same time, Illinois was voting on a new stadium for him. When asked if he was serious about it, he said, a savvy negotiator creates leverage. So that's what all of this is about, right? It's not about having a viable threat. It's about having a threat that nobody wants to call your bluff on. Yeah, and you could say that some of these threats, there just wasn't a whole lot of

leverage. I mean, maybe Reinsdorf's recent attempt. If you're talking about the bears who are asking for a truly exorbitant sum, even by these standards, or say the Cardinals, right, who made some noises about this recently. And I think a lot of the reaction was kind of, where are you going to go? You know, you're the St. Louis Cardinals. I can't imagine that not being the case, right? So, JC, do you see some prerequisites, some conditions that almost have to be met for this to be a success? Like, do you have to have a credible threat that you are going to go somewhere and have a public that actually cares and believes that you might leave and would miss you if you did? My thought on threats, I mean, teams do move, and I think

there is some discussion of threats of moving. But you see how messy it can be. I mean, I don't know that the A's deal or move to Las Vegas is actually going to happen. I mean, they're not actually that easy. And one of the things that I think is sort of interesting is that most of the threats you see are sort of not aimed so much at really threatening fans or cities themselves, but creating this sort of impression that you might be able to move that justifies some of the strong local civic support. So you looked at what happened when the Buffalo Bills were trying to get their new state, even they ended up getting it. And you would see these newspaper stories like, well, they could move to San Diego. And it's like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. San Diego just refused to give money to the chargers. They're not moving to San Diego. And there was even one

story that mentioned Birmingham, Alabama. I mean, they're not even trying. And if you look at the cities that when they get subsidies to take, for example, you know, the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta Falcons got Mercedes-Benz Stadium. They didn't say we're thinking of moving. They just went and asked for a new stadium. And then you want to look at the baseball team. The Atlanta Braves didn't say we're upset with our stadium deal in Atlanta. We're going to go shop our team around to Charlotte or Nashville or even to the other Atlanta suburbs. They negotiated everything in secret with non-disclosure agreements and then announced we're moving. So I think that sort of this idea of leverage is it's there, but I think it's more to sort of give politicians an excuse to say, oh, the team was going to leave when there was never really, really anything.

So like Neil was telling the great story about Reinsdorf saying, I create leverage. He recently, when he was at the owners meeting in Nashville, had a meeting with the Nashville mayor who basically got elected after being the chief opponent of the stadium deal for the Titans. I saw it reported all over the place. Oh, they're thinking of moving to Nashville. It's like if you were remotely paying attention to what happened in Nashville, there's no funding available for an MLB team in Nashville. No appetite for it. But it gets reported all the time, and so people in the town can say,

oh, look, we're going to lose our team to Nashville if we don't pony up the money for it. And it just makes people feel good, I think, inside. And that's false leverage, I would say it is. JC, I know that you've studied a lot your neck of the woods, Gwinnett County and the Braves, and you've found that that didn't work out well financially. But are there usually instances of buyer's remorse? I mean, if a community doesn't have money to pay its teachers, let's say, after funding one of these deals, do they kick themselves and say, oh, yeah, we got taken to the cleaners here? Or do they say, oh, the Braves won a World Series. This is great. You know, do they recognize that it was a raw deal for them if it was?

And if they don't, if they never understand it to be a bad deal, is it? I guess it still can be, right? But is being conscious of the fact that it was a bad deal kind of part of the parcel, part of the package? Not at all. No one ever likes to take an honest look back. Or even when they do look back, like you mentioned Gwinnett County. So Gwinnett got a minor league team, I'm going to say 2009, 2008, 2009, and they started playing there. And it was a total disaster. And no one would admit it was a disaster. They go, oh, there was a recession that caused this. You know, no one wants to take an honest look. In Cobb County, the financial numbers that the county puts out show it's losing about $15 million a year.

I mean, it's not – it's inarguable. And they still say, oh, no, it's paying for itself. And I think it's sort of this – no one wants to have this honest assessment. I think a lot of this I do think has to do with the people involved in this are competitive people, and they don't like losing. So they don't like to admit it. They don't want to have a serious policy discussion because it never was about the actual was this good policy. And it's hard because people may not understand the demographics of some of the places we're discussing. So Cobb County is a huge county. It's got nearly a million people in it. It can afford a $15 million deficit.

But take another team that or another city that took on a team that is the Braves AA affiliate in Pearl, Mississippi. It was costing that community so much, its bonds got devalued to junk status. And now after 20 years, the team's leaving. Low attended team was very bad to the community. So small minor league cities can't really handle the physical damage that can be done. And I think that's where it becomes a really big problem. Financially, most big cities can handle a boom dongle. I mean, it doesn't make it a good decision, but it's not, hey, we can't pave the roads because it's just a small part of the budget. But in a small community, it can actually make a very big negative difference. And I think that that's something

that I worry about, that people take the ideas that are used in big metropolitan markets and apply them to smaller markets and can really get communities into big trouble. And in instances like that, do you guys see there being any electoral consequences for the officials who are approving these deals? I know that in some instances, the voters themselves might be signing off on allocating money that way, but does anyone ever suffer a consequence in these situations? You know, I mean, there are definitely instances of officials who have been even recalled, right? You know, going back to the guy who casted a siding vote for the brewers new stadium who was had the first recall vote in

anybody's recorded memory in wisconsin the mayor of miami-dade i think was recalled after the marlins deal well the cap county commission uh president right was was uh defeated the next time around you know there's there's definitely cases where it does happen. But, you know, I mean, there's a million different ways that people, different issues that people are being elected on, right? And people are seldom voting just based on one deal. And then they're based on really what they hear about the deal in the media. The one thing I will say is that it's definitely more risky to put money into these deals if you're an elected official than to refuse, right? The number of mayors who have been booted out of

office because they lost a team in history is one, and that was the mayor of Seattle after the Sonics left. And the general opinion is that it was more about the fact that it snowed in Seattle. He didn't shovel the streets and less about the Sonic deal. As someone who grew up in Seattle, I can confirm that was my impression of that electoral loss also. And since you said people know what they hear in the media and you're a member of the media, Neil, I wonder if you would engage in some media criticism. Do you think the coverage of this has gotten any better, where outlets are more likely to counter the press release that's put out by the team that says this will bring such great boons to the state by contacting a J.C. Bradbury or someone of his ilk to kind of get the opposite stance? I think yes and no. I think that the fact that people like JC have been talking about this for decades now, right, and there is the ability for, you know, economists to be on Twitter and responding to this stuff and, you know, journalists to be seeing it makes a big difference, right? That wasn't the case 30 years ago. And I think journalists are probably, yes, more willing and more interested in picking

up the phone and calling economists, which is great. The problem, of course, is that, as listeners may have noticed, journalism has collapsed in the last 10 or 15 years, right? So the number of articles that actually call anyone and don't just reprint the press release is getting slimmer and slimmer and slimmer. So I think, yes, there are more good articles, but I think there are also more articles that are just repeating what the talking points are of the teams and the elected officials. and the elected officials. So I don't know where this ends up. It's going to take somewhat of a revival of investigative journalism, or at least journalism that will pick up the phone before you are going to start seeing better coverage of a lot of these deals. And, you know, I still spend so much of my time every week at Fields Games, you know, just taking bad coverage and saying, okay, here is what had happened, you know, what they bad coverage and saying, OK, here is what had

happened, you know, what they would have found out if they had called J.C. And sometimes it'll just be me emailing J.C. and saying, hey, if they emailed you, what would you have said? And well, J.C., from your perspective, do you feel like people are picking up the phone and calling you more when articles come out that you're mentioned in? Do you feel like they're better balanced? Not that they necessarily should be balanced exactly, but do you feel like they're providing the proper perspective? Or do you see many articles where you think, why didn't they

talk to me? And I guess second part of that question also, if they are just printing the press release, where do the numbers in the press release come from? Are there people who are going to the dark side to sort of supply these somewhat suspect phony numbers to prop up these efforts? My perspective here is actually it's very pro-journalism. My father was a reporter and my first job was in a newsroom. So I've worked in a newsroom and I understand that most journalists and reporters are well-meaning and they want to get the story right. But the reality is that stadium stories are quick, short stories. And most of the journalists covering these stories, they might be covering on the sports beat. They might have a

local government beat. They don't want to be covering this. They're not equipped to cover it. And in fact, when they're covering a story, they may just call their buddy at the Chamber of Commerce says, hey, I guess I got the study that will show you this is going to generate a billion dollars of economic impact here. Great. You put it in the story. You can go back and covering the lunch money scandal at the local school board. The problem with that is that, you know, journalism has changed more short, quick bites, headlines. Hey, this could have an economic impact. And then you come in with a little bit of a both sides balance. But economists are skeptical. You pitch it as a tie, a debate. And so it's very hard to get that across. Now, in terms of one of the things that I've learned from sort of tracking this is sort of, you know, I have this background in public finance and studying stadiums was something I didn't do until much more recently in my career.

But I found that, you know, the fact that social media makes it easier for me to speak directly to people has been quite helpful. And so it's not just me. A lot of other economists like Brad Humphreys, Dennis Coates, Victor Matheson have been out there speaking as well. And so I think getting that discussion out there in public is more important than it used to be. In the 1980s, the Cardinals, when they were in St. Louis, wanted to build a new stadium. And the St. Louis, I want to say it was Post. I can't remember which of the newspapers did, they actually hired James Quirk, a sports economist at the time, to write a 10,000-page study of whether it was a good idea or not, and they published it in the Sunday paper. I mean, that wouldn't happen now. You know, we don't have time to do this. People would sit around and read the paper on Sunday. That made sense. So I think trying to get these arguments out there and quick soundbites and making people understand these are generally

bad ideas and the people who study it think that they're bad. And, but there's a whole cottage industry of people out there doing these fake studies that aren't real studies that shouldn't be taken seriously. And I think trying to get that point across is one thing I try and do. Yeah. I was going to ask both of you maybe, but Neil also, what you have found to be the most effective approach when just talking to someone who says give the sports teams whatever they want, right? Especially, you know, people don't always respond to the numbers and the data-based arguments. You could cite figures, but when it comes down to this team might leave, though,

and I really like this team. And they might even say, well, sure, maybe it's not great on the balance sheet, but how can you quantify the value of having and keeping this team that you get to root for and take civic pride in, et cetera? So what have you found to be the most effective debate tactic, if there is one? Yeah, I mean, I think you acknowledge that, right? If someone is a sports fan, I mean, I'm a sports fan, right? If someone is afraid their team is going to leave, I'm not going to say, you know, that's ridiculous. Why do you care so much about sports, right?

But it's important to say, look, there are lots of teams that have not left. There are lots of teams that have threatened to move several times, and we're just using it as leverage, right? And in terms of what the value is, like the intangible value, you know, there are economists who have studied that and found, you know, what would people spend in order just to have a team, just to keep the team aside, even if it had no economic benefits? And that is still a tiny, tiny fraction of what cities are actually spending. You know, I think it's important to kind of acknowledge that, but

then to say, fine, that doesn't mean we should give the team owners everything they want, right? Just because someone is asking for a billion dollars as their first offer and says, we're going to move if we don't get it, does not mean that you say, okay, where do I sign the check, right? You can counter it and say, maybe a half a billion dollars, maybe a hundred million dollars. We'll, you know, figure, you know, we'll talk about it. And I don't think anybody in this world would say that there's no price point at which building a stadium isn't worth it, either from the very marginal economic benefits or just to be able to put it aside for a decade or two, right? But the way that city officials

and state officials just roll over and give the team owners the first thing that they ask for is, I think, the part that's really outraging, right? is that you didn't even try to cut a better deal. You just said, OK, fine, you've got a nice, glossy consulting report that says this is going to be worth it. Here's our checkbook. Yeah. And I guess another frustrating thing that might anger people if they knew about it is the way that teams try to shirk their taxes and not pay anything into the pot as they're taking plenty out, right? As ProPublica reported recently that the IRS is actually supposedly going after teams for avoiding paying taxes now in ways that maybe were legal or are legal, but maybe they won't continue to be. So there's nothing illegal about continuing to ask for handouts the way that teams are, and it's incumbent on the communities to say no and to slap those hands away. And as Neil called

it recently, the sports subsidy demand boom. If anything, the requests are coming as fast and furious as ever. But as JC said, maybe the tide is turning slightly here. So I guess last question for each of you, what would have to happen so cost? Because, you know, there's no harm, I suppose, in asking and trying unless people really condemn you for doing it, which it doesn't seem like is happening. So, JC, if you want to take that first, if you do see some positive signs, what else would have to happen to really change the situation? Right. So, you know, I've tried to view this as how is it that I, as a researcher, how can I influence policy? You know, I think this is a bad policy. How do I convince people? And what I've really found is that, you know, a lot of this is just

getting the information out there in the public. It's not really convincing policymakers, because as best I can tell, policymakers like hanging out with the team. They like shaking hands with Hall of Famers. They like getting free tickets to games. And so trying to have a policy debate through government representatives isn't going to work. The idea is really sort of get this out there. These things don't really work. And I think the general public is very skeptical. You look at polls about what people think about funding sports teams. They don't like the idea of giving tax dollars to billionaires. That's offensive to them. And they're rightly skeptical. They understand it's a scam. And I think sort of

trying to sort of get this general understanding that, hey, there's a price to pay if you're an elected official running on a stadium platform. I mean, you look at what happened to Tim Lee, the chairman of Cobb County, he was voted out of office in the landslide, defeated by an anti-stadium candidate. The mayor of Nashville looked like he was going to run for another term in office when the stadium turned out not to be popular. He just all of a sudden decided not to run, and an anti-stadium candidate won. You look at what's happening with the Bears stadium, where the governor doesn't seem to be very supportive of it. I think sort of that general understanding that we shouldn't be

doing this, because look at what Rob Manfred said the other day when asked about it. He goes, well, this is what's normally done. This is how it's done. And you sort of change the idea of a lot of things we used to do were common that we don't do anymore because we now think they're awful. And this isn't as morally repugnant as some of the old things we used to do were common that we don't do anymore because we now think they're awful. And this isn't as morally repugnant as some of the old things we used to do that were normal throughout human history. At least let's get an understanding of this is a bad idea. And once everyone sort of starts to agree on that, and that becomes sort of the common knowledge, I think that will help. But that's not great advice. It's just maybe a hope on my part. I think that will help. But, you know, that's that's not great advice. It's just maybe a hope on my part.

And Neil, for there to be buyer's remorse or spender's remorse, but not just that, but actually precluding and forestalling that spending before it even happens for that to be the new norm. What do you think would have to happen? Yeah, I definitely agree that it's not about convincing the elected officials so much as that right now, this whole world of economic consulting reports, mood threats, lobbying, all of that is creating this bubble around politicians to say, OK, this is OK. Right. We know we're asking for a billion dollars, but it's OK. Everyone is saying that this is the way that city governments operate. And the trick is to get people, elected officials, off of that, to get to the point where they say, what are you talking about? This is crazy. So you need to have a lot of things. You need to have people getting voted out of office. You need to have the media asking them tougher questions, which requires readers and listeners and viewers to ask tougher questions of the media, right? And hopefully you eventually get somewhere towards the point where it's more like Europe or even Canada, where the standard is not just that the business of local government is to put public money into for-profit businesses,

right? And I think we have seen a bunch of different skirmishes on that, not just in sports, but the Amazon headquarters and a whole lot of other areas for corporate subsidies. And it's definitely promising, but the power of money is huge, not just to fund people's campaigns, but just to surround mayors and governors with people who are going to be that kind of echo chamber saying, no, subsidies are fine. So we need to break through that. And it's, I think, going to take everything from popular campaigns to trying to get new legislation passed to probably, you know, having court rulings and everything. And the same way anything changes in this ridiculous country, right? You know, from all sides at once.

Well, your efforts have not gone unheeded and unnoticed. They've certainly colored my thinking on the subject and opened my eyes over the years. So you can read Neil's continuing coverage at Field of Schemes, fieldofschemes.com. And you can find JC on Twitter at JC underscore Bradbury and everywhere else. And we appreciate both of your efforts and also your time. Thanks, guys. Thanks. Enjoy talking with you. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Well, shortly after we finished talking to Neil and JC, I saw this story.

The Cleveland Guardians are asking taxpayers to split the $1 million cost of renovating the Progressive Field team shop. That is million, not billion. And that is the Progressive Field team shop, not Progressive Field itself. Aesthetic upgrades such as new lighting and retail displays would fall on the guardian side of the balance sheet. The public would pick up $500,000 and work on heating and cooling systems, flooring,

access controls, and security features. Publicly funded repairs at Progressive Field are accounted for in the team's 2022 lease and paid with proceeds from Cuyahoga County's Syntax, S-I-N space T-A-X. But tax revenues are running low as construction costs rise. What else is new? Got a lot of responses to two topics we talked about on our email show last time. One was whether it would qualify as back-to-back homers if a team hit a walk-off in one game and then a lead-off homer in the next game. We all said no, and no one I saw disagreed with that. But people were puzzling out why it's a no. After all, as Raymond Chen, keeper of the Effectively Wild wiki, said,

we say back-to-back wins and you get to go home and shower between games. We even say back-to-back World Series titles and a whole year passes between them. Clearly, there's an adjustment based on rate of opportunity. There's a new plate appearance every few minutes, so a gap of several hours breaks the flow. And listener Michael Mountain said, Right, back-to-back implies that the gap between the events is as small as typically possible. However, it is the next occurrence of a plate appearance by that team. Maybe that is the smallest possible gap. In that sense, it was the next opportunity for the team to homer.

As listener Ruhi said, I suppose it depends on how you define the next opportunity. In the case of the walk-off and the lead-off homer, they're consecutive at-bats, but in the context of back-to-back, you would probably assume in the same game, because the context surrounding the opportunities kind of resets itself. I don't think this makes next opportunity entirely incorrect compared to consecutive, but the context of the opportunities matters. And as Raymond concluded, I see what

you're getting at. The idea is that the end of the game implies an end to the back-to-backness of plate appearances, because plate appearances are a subcomponent of a game. On the other hand, if you say this player has home runs in back-to-back plate appearances, there's less of an expectation that it occurred in one game, because plate appearances by a player is now a game spanning concept. I agree. Good exchange. This is the kind of conversation that goes on in our Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group. This is what you may be missing out on. Oh, and I also must acknowledge that in that conversation,

I said that I thought back-to-back homers had to be in the same game, even in the same inning. And as a number of people pointed out, you can't really have consecutive homers across innings unless one is a walk-off. Otherwise, an inning can't end with a home run. Also got lots of responses to my musings about why it is that some people have condemned Mike Trout for deciding to stay with the Angels, even though players are often celebrated for their loyalty in remaining with one team, or condemned for leaving one team to pursue some success that has eluded them? Lots of thoughtful answers to that question. Matt, Patreon supporter, said,

I think that there's been this fundamental shift in workplace relations in general. Everyday employees are now less likely to stay with one company or organization out of loyalty. They recognize that changing employers is now the only way to advance their careers and earn more, even to the point where some see long-time employees who stay with an organization as a bit foolish. If fans are seeing themselves in the players or are identifying with the players as the protagonists, I can see how these attitudes crop up. Maybe we see the similarities in the players not being supported and ourselves not being appreciated or recognized by our employers. So maybe the critical voices are coming from a generational divide. Older fans and pundits are more likely to praise loyalty and bemoan the mercenary player because the prevailing attitude about work for them was show up, do your job, be loyal, and you get rewarded.

And for a younger generation, it's more the only way to move forward is by jumping ship until you're in the best spot for you. Could be. I don't know what the age breakdown is when it comes to attitudes toward Trout. OutDaniel said, Isn't the whole thing about player loyalty that we want players to have loyalty to our team and we're somewhere between mildly approve of and are steadfastly against the loyalty of players on opposing teams? Don't get me wrong, I think there's generally a great deal of respect for players who spent their whole career in one place, but if that player is becoming a free agent and our team has a need at that position, we'd sure prefer that player come play for us to them staying where they are. Dylan said,

I think Ben accidentally actually hit on why Trout is different for some people. He called it something like an unreasonable level of loyalty, and I think that's where people end up getting bothered by it. The Angels have just been so bad, and it's gotten so ridiculous that it supersedes any positive feelings people usually have about players staying loyal. I just want players to do what makes them happy, and he seems to be happy there, but even I'm like, come on, man. Lastly, listener Scott says two notes about the Trout slash loyalty discussion that I think makes his situation a bit different from most. One, people knock players for doing stuff that seems self-serving, like leaving for a glamour market or a big payday. In Trout's case,

he's already in LA-ish and sporting a $400 million plus contract. The thing that seems self-serving for him is avoiding any real competitive pressure and opting instead to just put up stats and cash checks on a team with no expectations. I don't believe that, Scott says, but I think that enough baseball fans do. He says he does believe the second point. It isn't a Trout problem, it's an Angels problem. He's done everything possible to make that franchise succeed and they just haven't. Virtually every Hall of Fame level single team guy in the 21st century had more team success. Same for the Hall of Very Good Guys. Fans are more sympathetic

to the players these days and the fans can see that Trout is in a bad long-term relationship. He's held up his end of the bargain. The Angels have not. As one famous single team guy put it, and then he sent a link to a Derek Jeter tweet from 2022. Loyalty one way is stupidity. Hashtag the captain. Valuable thoughts all. Always enjoy when something we banter about sparks discussion. I also enjoy when people support us on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners

d sharbaugh steve romanesco shane maxwell tanner hanwright and jessica snipe thanks to all of you patreon perks include access to the aforementioned effectively wild discord group for patrons only plus monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams prioritized email answers discounts on merch and ad free fan graphs memberships and so much, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can still contact us via email. Send us your questions and comments at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild

on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod and you can find links on the show page and in your podcast app to upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks across the country. If you're looking for something else to listen to

that's baseball related and involves me, you can check out the latest episode of the House of R podcast at The Ringer. I joined my pals Joanna Robinson and Mallory Rubin in a kind of crossover event to talk about baseball through the lens of our favorite fictional universes. And hey, you know I host a video game podcast, right? On The Ringerverse feed at The Ringer, it's called Button Mash. Must be some gamers here who want to hear me talk about that too.

Please listen and subscribe. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically.

Cross-check and compile, find a new understanding. Not effectively, why the can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic?