Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2173: Five Men Out

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss MLB’s clearing of Shohei Ohtani and banning of five other players for betting on baseball (including Tucupita Marcano’s permaban), touching on MLB’s culpability (or lack thereof), gambling ads, the future, and more. Then (39:32) they banter about the latest instance of Tommy Pham going aggro, which demotion is more […]

Just a couple of baseball nerds. They'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, bantering bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling giddily, equaling effectively wildly. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2173 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, it's time to talk about our favorite topic, sports betting. You know, we just have no choice but to return to that well, that poisoned well this time, because we've got news, the big news in baseball. It's about betting yet again. Now, I guess there's

good news and bad news. Maybe from some perspective, all of it could be good news. From other perspectives, all of it could be bad news. But the news is that, A, Shohei Otani's off the hook. So that's something. I guess we can lead with that. But that's not a big surprise given all of the developments that we have heard. did plead guilty to bank and tax fraud charges in federal court. He will be sentenced in October. And because of the thoroughness of the federal investigation, MLB's statement said that was made public, the information MLB collected and the criminal proceeding being resolved without being contested, MLB considers Shohei Ohtani a victim of fraud, and this matter has been closed. Consider Shohei Otani a victim of fraud. And this matter has been closed. And Otani put out his own statement to say, now that the investigation has been completed, this full admission of guilt has brought important closure to me and my family.

I want to sincerely thank the authorities for finishing their thorough and effective investigation so quickly and uncovering all the evidence. This has been a uniquely challenging time. Not that you'd know it from his on-field performance. So I am especially grateful for my support team. Interesting, by the way, that he thanked his support team, not just his family, but also his agent and his agency separately, his lawyers and advisors, along with the entire Dodgers organization who showed endless support throughout this process. It's time to close this chapter, move on, and continue to focus on playing and winning ballgames. So I guess, at least publicly, he's not holding it against anyone that he wasn't protected from this situation earlier. So that's, I don't know if that's surprising or not. Maybe at some point in the future, there will be a lower profile change. But for now, at least, he seems to be standing by his entire team here, his literal team, the Dodgers and the rest of his support team.

And he says, at least, it's time to close this chapter. I'm sure there are some baseball followers who will never close that chapter. But in my mind, I think in most reasonable minds, it makes sense to close that chapter. However, when one chapter closes, another opens, that's not exactly the same. Gosh, yeah. I don't think divine authorities are involved in this one, so perhaps it's appropriate for it to deviate a little bit. Yeah. I guess this is kind of closure too, even though we just found out about this situation a day ago. And even though it opens up all sorts of other questions, which we will get to, but maybe the more surprising and

thus bigger news in the immediate term is that baseball banned a bunch of people for betting on baseball, which is what happens when you are caught betting on baseball. It's not eight men out, but it's five men out. And four of them either are or have been big leaguers, right? So these are some names you know if you're a baseball knower. They're all currently in the minor leagues, though, I believe, right? Yes, that is true. And I guess that takes a little heat off of MLB, not that it should really. It's five guys. Now, one name you might know because it's quite a memorable name, even aside from this news, is Tucapita Marc Marcano. You may remember Tukapita Marcano from our Meet a Major Leaguer segment on episode 1725. So that's when we met Tukapita Marcano. I guess

now we are bidding goodbye to Tukapita Marcano, at least in a baseball sense, because he had the book thrown at him harder than anyone else. And we can get into the reasons for that. But it's Marcano. It's Michael Kelly. Who is in the big leagues. Okay, yes. Was. And it pitched pretty well.

Yeah. And also, Jose Rodriguez, who has been in the big leagues before. He's with the Phillies in the minors now. Infielder. Or was. Andrew Salfrank of the Diamondbacks, who was briefly in the big leagues this year, but was more memorably in the big leagues late last year and even in the postseason. And then Jay Groom, Padres pitcher, minor leaguer. He's the only one who has not been in the big leagues, right? Former rated prospect. And all except Marcano have been placed on the ineligible list for one year. Marcano is permanently banned from baseball. And none of these players appealed. Seemingly,

they all accepted their punishments here. And I guess we can go through exactly what the infractions were. But they all bet on baseball. And Marcano had the steepest penalty, the stiffest penalty, because he bet on games involving his own team when he was technically, I guess. Yeah, he was in the majors, though not active at the time, right? Correct. But still, it's interesting because I think a lot of people, if you don't know the distinction between this betting penalty and that betting penalty, you might just think, oh, all betting on baseball is a permaban, but not necessarily. Actually, if you bet on baseball at any level, any kind of baseball

contest as- Any kind of baseball. It does not have to be affiliated ball. Yes, right. Important for people to understand, yeah. I think it could even be softball, right? It's just anything close to that. I think that's right. If it's any bat to ball sport, yeah. Probably not cricket. Not cricket, maybe. I don't know. But I think you're right that any baseball or softball contest, both domestically and internationally, affiliated or not, is covered by Major League Baseball's policy around betting on baseball. Yes. Just to avoid any appearance of impropriety whatsoever. However, if you bet on a game that you are involved in in some capacity,

that's the real no-no. These are all no-nos, but that's the no, no, that's the one that you really can't violate that bright line or you're gone. Right. The distinction that is being drawn here, and I think, you know, there's a lot of understandable confusion to your point about sort of what is and what is not covered. I think that that is part of why they have the policy of any baseball or softball contest. They just want that bright line to be as bright as it possibly can be. The distinction that is being drawn here is that despite the fact that he was on the injured list at the time and had a season-ending injury, fact that he was on the injured list at the time and had a season-ending injury, Marcano bet on the team to which he was technically assigned, right? And that was not the case for the other four players, even though they bet, all of them bet to some degree, and you know, they didn't, this

wasn't the totality of their bets, but they all bet to some degree on their parent club. But they were not assigned to that club at the time, and they did not to some degree on their parent club. But they were not assigned to that club at the time, and they did not place bets on the teams to which they were assigned, which is how they are able to avoid the lifetime ban. The phrasing is, in which the better has no duty to perform, or which the better has a duty to perform. Now, if I were Marcano, the better has a duty to perform. Now, if I were Marcano, I'd almost think you could maybe get off on a technicality there because if you're on the IL, do you have a duty to perform? But he didn't appeal.

So presumably that seemed like something he wasn't going to get off on that technicality. But he bets a lot. So the betting data here and all of these guys, right, were betting through legally sanctioned sports books and thus they were detected that way. And Marcano, there's really quite a lot of information here that was gathered and publicized in the press release. So betting data shows, I'm reading from MLB's press release here, that from October 16th, 2022 through October 23rd, 2022, and from July 12th, 2023 through November 1st, 2023, Marcano placed 387 baseball bets, including 231 MLB-related bets, among other bets on international baseball games. other bets on international baseball games. Marcano's MLB bets were generally parlays, which would sometimes include multiple MLB-related legs, and they would sometimes include MLB-related legs and non-MLB-related legs.

He bet more than $150,000 on baseball, with $87,319 of that, very precise, on MLB-related bets, approximately $378 per bet. And of the over 200 MLB bets he placed over this period, 25 included Pirates games in which he was assigned to the Pirates Major League Club, despite the fact that he did not appear in any of those games because he had suffered his season ending knee injury by that point. So those are the games that really sank him here and made it a permanent ban for him. Now, an additional detail here, we don't know actually whether he was betting on the Pirates to win or lose, right? Because based on the press release, it says that almost all of his Pirates bets were on which

club the Pirates or their opponent would win. It does not specify whether he was betting for or against. It does not. And I guess even though he was not active because he was on the IL for that team, he could have been privy to information that he might not have been privy to if he was not actually involved in the contest even to that extent, right? It says, and it just kind of craps on his betting acumen here, not craps as in the kind of betting.

Ultimately, Marcano lost all of his parlays involving the Pirates and only won 4.3% of all his MLP-related bets overall. I don't even know if that's a notably bad rate for Parley's because we don't know that much about sports betting. We don't do it. But one thing we do know is that Parley's are just a really bad idea. You're just going to lose a lot. For all I know, 4.3% is not that bad, but he did lose a lot of money. That's just not a winning strategy. The press release says there's no evidence to suggest, and Marcano denies, that any outcomes in the baseball games on which he

placed bets were compromised, influenced, or manipulated in any way. And you'll see that language duplicated throughout the statement with respect to every player, right? That there's nothing that Major League Baseball was able to uncover that suggests that this resulted in any on-field impropriety. One interesting thing is that many of these bets were placed years ago. Right. So I mentioned Marcano 2022 and 2023. But then you have Kelly, his bets in question placed in October 2021. And then Groom, these bets were as early as July 2020, right? And Jose Rodriguez, also 2021, 2022. So that makes me wonder about the turnaround time here. I mean, it's good that this was detected at some points, but did it take years for it to be flagged? detected at some points, but did it take years for it to be flagged or did it come to MLB's attention sooner and the investigation was ongoing? Because Kelly and Marcano, I mean,

these guys were playing. Sol Frank was playing in meaningful Diamondbacks postseason games, right? So, presumably, if there had been any suspicion of that, I mean, there might be procedural things where you can't ban someone until the investigation is concluded, as we've seen with Otani, with David Fletcher, these guys have played as the investigation was ongoing, but it does make you wonder who knew what, when, right? You'd like to think that this would be flagged sooner than years or that an investigation wouldn't take years. And you also have to wonder, did these guys think they were going to get away with it? Because again, they were betting with

legal sports books, probably partners of Major League Baseball, one would assume, or quite possibly. Based on the release, I think that's correct. Yeah. Yeah. And therefore, why did they think this would slide under the radar? Was Tukapita Marcano like, well, it could be any Tukapita Marcano. They might not know it was me. I mean, I don't know if they were betting under their own names. It doesn't say they were using proxies or if they were making up false identities or something. So I'm interested in more deeper, additional, more detailed reporting on how and when this was all detected. But it does make you think, what were they thinking here? Now, maybe Marcano, he just had a gambling problem and was unable to restrain himself. We talked about this with Ipe, although even Ipe seemingly was able to avoid betting on baseball. Not that that particularly helped him in the long run, but why did these guys think

that they were gonna get away with this, I wonder? Or were they just not thinking about it? Or did they think I'm gonna be the exception? Or were they unable to help themselves even knowing what fate could befall them? I have a great many thoughts, partially informed by my favorite thing, the discourse. I'm going to surprise some people, Ben. I'm going to provide a twist.

Brace yourselves. I've been dead all along. I've been dead all along. No, I found myself somewhat annoyed on Major League Baseball's behalf upon observing the discourse surrounding these revelations, right? initial reporting and then today as the details came out. And I think that there's some amount of frustration that I feel on the league's part that could probably be classified as an own goal on their part, right? Because I think it is fair to say, and I have said this very thing, and I still believe it to be true, Ben, that Major League Baseball deciding to embrace with such enthusiasm the legal sports betting world muddies the waters a bit on sort of the baseline moral virtue of the act of gambling, right? It suggests a fineness with the activity broadly that I think, you know, takes some people by surprise given the league's longstanding posture toward gambling in the wake of the Blackstock scandal and Pete Rose and what have you. But the league has been, for its pretty much entire existence and certainly lately since the legalization of sports gambling, has been crystal freaking clear about this bright

line, right? It has been very clear publicly. It has been very clear within big league clubhouses, it has been very clear within big league clubhouses, within minor league clubhouses. It has a strong incentive to prevent precisely this kind of behavior. Because as we discussed when the revelation started to come out around Mizuhara and Otani, the mere whiff of some on-field impropriety as a result of gambling is an existential threat to the sport. It fundamentally undermines fans' belief in the competitive integrity of baseball. And I think to their credit, despite me finding the embrace of gambling anything from really freaking annoying to distasteful in terms of its potential implications for the normies, the civilians engaging in it, I think that they have been very clear with their personnel, you can't bet on baseball. have been very clear with their personnel, you can't bet on baseball. They let people bet on other stuff, you know, in a way that like, if it were me to avoid any kind of mess, I would probably say, you can't bet on sports. I think I've said that on the pod too, right? But if these guys had placed legal bets on the NFL, we're not having this conversation. That's completely above board,

provided they're doing it with a legal sports book and not as Mizahara did with an illegal bookie. And I think that the rationale between that distinction is perfectly saleable, it's completely comprehensible, and it has been completely clear from the beginning. And Manfred says this in his release, right? We have been clear that the privilege of playing in baseball comes with a responsibility to refrain from engaging in certain types of behavior that are legal for other people. And I want to refrain from speculating on whether Marcano is grappling with a gambling addiction. I don't know the answer to that question. That's not within the purview of this press release.

I think that his behavior relative to the four other players that were sort of ensnared in this round of suspensions and bans, you know, it stands out in terms of its volume, but I don't know. I don't know if he is dealing with gambling or addiction or not. I hope that this doesn't sound callous. Like on some level, it fundamentally doesn't matter. It informs our understanding of the story. It makes an already sad situation potentially more tragic right if he is dealing with that but this is the line and they have to hold it and they have to be draconian you know i think that michael bauman put it really well in the piece he wrote about this for us today at fan graphs like it has to be very clear there have to be no exceptions. And I think the rules are simple enough to understand better the distinctions between betting on other sports legally, betting on baseball, but not for a team, you know, as it pertains to a team you're

assigned to versus betting on a team you are assigned to is important. Like this level of transparency is critical. And I think that they did a good job here. It doesn't mean that the circumstances surrounding it aren't unfortunate. It doesn't mean that I don't feel for these guys because I do. It doesn't excuse the behavior. And I think that there need to be very swift consequences for it. Swift is maybe a thing we can linger on, but this is how it has to work. And I think it worked the way it needed to. Twist! Even if Marcano or any

of these other guys has a gambling problem, that doesn't necessarily mean that they would be compelled to bet on baseball specifically, right? Sure. There are any number of other sporting events, events of all kinds that they could bet on, and I don't know whether

you just lose all control and you're just betting on anything and you're helpless to prevent that, but you could cast any number of bets on any number of events. And as long as they're not baseball, if you were doing it legally, we wouldn't even know about it, right? It would not be the subject of a press release. It would not be something you were punished for. And it is possible that all of these guys were gambling compulsively on other sports. We don't know, right? The report doesn't specify. And they were also betting legally on X and Y. We don't know. It doesn't say that, yeah. Some of these guys were placing so few bets and for such a small amount that it's almost less understandable. You know, if you can't help yourself and you're constantly placing bets, I at least understand how you get to that point.

If you're someone who's placing, Michael Kelly placed 10 bets involving nine MLB games seemingly over a period of a couple weeks and just a pittance. I mean, he bet less than $100 on MLB games, an average of less than $10 per bet. He actually won five of his bets and had a net win of 2830. So congrats. Hope it was worth it. He was the rare gambler to walk away with some money, though certainly not when you factor in his loss of salary and reputation and everything else. But that makes it almost more confusing to me. You know, if you're going to do this and violate that bright line, I kind of get it if you're just totally crossing the Rubicon and just can't stop. But if you're just dabbling, dipping a toe in, it just seems so avoidable, so preventable. But I think I'm more or less with you because, yes, I think there is kind of an optics problem,

I guess, when you are reaping the rewards of the legalization of sports betting, and you are bombarding your audience with sports betting messaging, and you are doing all sorts of deals, and you have all sorts of sports betting partners, and we're just blanketed with this stuff. I get that. And so some people will say, oh, double standard. How can you, on the one hand, profit from this and advertise this and advocate that everyone bet, and on the other hand, punish your players who do bet? Well, some double standards make sense. A double standard isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it's a sensible thing.

There should be a double standard. If you are involved in the games you were betting on, that's a pretty big distinction between you and me and most people in the world, right? So I think it is fair to draw a distinction there. Maybe they should do. That might be a little harder to justify because if you were on the one hand saying go bet, bet, bet, bet on all these other sports and then you were telling your players that they could not bet on other sports that they are not directly involved in, then that would be a little more like a double standard that doesn't make sense that you're banning players from doing something that they're not directly involved in just because it might look sort of sketchy. But when it comes to betting on baseball, that's just an entirely different thing. And I think it does make sense to say, yeah, you're not allowed to do that because you are actual participants in these activities. And I think that it's important when we're talking about the sort of sports betting industry to make sure we're getting both the sequence and the sort of causal

direction, right? Like, Major League Baseball did not invent the concept of sports betting, right? Major League Baseball saw the ubiquity, the growing ubiquity of sports betting and thought, aha, that's a business opportunity. But the precondition for them to find that to be an opportunity already existed, right? And again, I am miss, I find all of this, I'm going to do a swear, annoying. I think it ruins for a lot of people the experience of watching baseball because so much of the broadcast is about that egg now, right? And so I think that that is a worthy conversation. But the idea that there is a direct causal relationship for these particular guys seems to misunderstand sort of what the

broader environment looks like. And I think that's a problem because I think we want to understand the broader environment. I think that we can talk about Major League Baseball hopping into bed with these sports books and view it as potentially exploitative, as vampiric, you know, like, and that they opened the door to the vampire and said, come on in, friend, the vampire and said, come on in, friend, right? Like, I think that we can have that concern and still view it as a parallel conversation to what should the standards, professional standards be for big leaguers and affiliated personnel, rather than viewing it as the same conversation, right? And like, again, my tolerance for this stuff is, I think, a lot lower than a lot of other people's. And I think that when we're thinking about sort of as a society, how do we regulate and police the behavior of adults in relation to vices that can be consumed or acted upon in reasonable ways, but also carry addictive potential, like where does sports gambling sit along that continuum? I think that that's a really important conversation for us to

have and to study. And if I'm going to really lay something at the feet of all of these sports leagues, not just Major League Baseball, I think that we do not have a good handle on how the gambling piece and the technology piece interact with one another and how the technology piece might amplify the addictive potential of sports betting because I do think that that is a huge part of this, right? The fact that you used to have to go to a sportsbook or go to an off-track betting place with the weird mirrored windows. That was a different project than I'm sitting in the clubhouse and I'm bored and I'm going to flip through my phone and, oh, there's that parlay bet. The parlay bets, man. Stay away from those. Stay away from all of them, probably, but especially those.

You know, stay away from those. Stay away from all of them, probably. But especially those, especially those, you know, like the there was that hedge fund guy who was like, I'm short all of these sports books. And then he was like, oh, I didn't take parlays into account. And they are huge moneymakers for all of these outfits. Right. So we can level accusations, potentially big accusations at Major League Baseball. And God knows I have,

and I will continue to. Because in addition to my concern for other people, I still find this stuff grating and annoying as hell. But I think we want to just be really clear about how these conversations interact with one another to the extent that they do and where they're separate. Because it is important to get this right, both for the sake of the sport and its professional and competitive integrity. And for the folks who are like, maybe I should download DraftKings, like we should understand what that does to people because it seems like it does bad stuff. Yeah. MLB wasn't really the ringleader when it came to pushing for legalization, even among sports

leagues, say the way the NBA was. And MLB has certainly jumped in wholeheartedly, right, since legalization. But I think because of the historical scandals and associations, MLB was somewhat reluctant, even relative to other leagues, until they realized how much money could be made. It's so much money. to other leagues until they realized how much money could be made. So much money. Yes. And to be fair, it's a for-profit entity, and it's probably a little unrealistic to expect them to just sit this out as every other sports league and sports media entity

just makes money hand over fist or gives itself over to sponsorships. If MLB turned up its nose and said, no, we will not support this, that might be an admirable moral stance, but it's not one that a lot of big businesses seem to be making. So that would be something of a double standard, I suppose. But I think just having any kind of sports betting marketing, it contributes to the pervasive messaging. And MLB, it's a drop in the bucket. It's a bigger drop, certainly, than some other entities contribute. But we would be bombarded with this stuff regardless.

And I think you're right that you can't draw a direct line and say it's MLB's fault that these guys bet on baseball. Now, certainly, the environment where we're just constantly hearing about sports betting, there's no way that that doesn't make major leaguers or people in general or any kind of athlete more likely to place problematic bets. And if you've got this stuff on MLB Network and MLB Network's on in the clubhouse and someone sees something. Again, they are warned very scrupulously not to do this. And even a young player who comes along and has

never heard of Pete Rose or Shoeless Joe Jackson, they do sit them down and they have meetings every season and there are signs everywhere. You can't claim ignorance about this particular rule. But just putting that out there, inevitably, there will be some people who see that and then can't help themselves. And so indirectly, MLB is kind of contributing to that problem. And even this week, there was a report by Bloomberg that FanDuel is probably about to put its brand on the 18 regional networks owned by Diamond Sports Group. And there's going to be FanDuel related programming and you're going to hear about FanDuel and you'll probably see all sorts of bets and betting lines. And full disclosure, FanDuel has a partnership with The Ringer where I work also.

So you can't avoid these things, really, whatever you do. And I guess before FanDuel, those channels were Bally branded, so it's not new. But I think the timing of that just made it seem like, oh, well, we're going to be buried in this even more. And there will be more of these stories. And there certainly will. This is probably a sign of things to come. To be fair, this has probably always happened to some extent. obviously. It happened more than a century ago with the Black Sox. It happened prior to that fairly routinely. And it happened with Pete Rose, and it's probably happened umpteen times that we never knew about. These things are largely legalized, and there's at least a method to detect stuff like this that doesn't involve a federal investigation. And back in 2015, Jared Kosart was fined because he placed illegal non-baseball bets, but that was before the legalization in the U.S. And this has probably always been going on.

There have been players placing bets, and we just never knew about them. been going on. There have been players placing bets and we just never knew about them. So it's not as if it is an entirely new threat to the integrity of the game, but I think it is probably a more severe threat just given the ease, as you said, just the availability of all of these things. And it's not just MLB, it's for John T. Porter and the NBA. We've seen NFL instances. It's all over the place, right? So you can't necessarily single out any particular sport. We are a baseball podcast all of this stuff when it's put in front of me as like a consumer of the sport. Like I said, I do have very real concerns about what this is going to do to individual people, whether they play baseball or not. My particular grousing about the unfurling of the discourse is mostly about this accusation that it's hypocritical for the league to say they can't bet. And it's like, well, I don't think that that has merit, right? I think that there are very clear delineations between those populations of people, like you said, in terms of what they can do to the on-field product, that doesn't mean that betting is good or that the way that the league has embraced it is tasteful or moral or

anything else. But I just think that there is a really clear, bright line to draw there and an easy one to understand. People have rules about conflicts of interest, right? I'm a BBWA member. If I have a rookie of the year vote, it's unethical BBWA member. If I have a Rookie of the Year vote, it's unethical for me to vote and then place a bet on who the winner of that award is going to be. Yeah, it's like insider trading, right? Right. We draw these ethical rules, and we acknowledge conflicts of interest in all kinds of professions. And I think it's really important to have those rules, in all kinds of professions. And I think it's really important to have those rules,

whether you have legal sports betting or not. And it's particularly important when you are living in a regulatory environment where that stuff exists. And that would be important whether MGM was the official sports book of Major League Baseball or not, right? I think we want to be clear about it. And there's also this kind of weird infantilization going on in some ways with these guys. Like, again, I don't want to downplay how devastating gambling addiction can be. And if that is what Marcano is dealing with, then, you know, he has endless sympathy from me on that. But first of all, we don't know that to be true, right? And these guys do bear responsibility for their behavior as professionals. Now, if they are dealing with addiction, that can color our understanding of that responsibility and their ability to execute on it, right? And I want resources to

be available to those guys, you know, even when they're done being in the league, right? But I think that sometimes we're tipping a little too far. It's like, you do need to be able to say, here are the rules that you have to observe as a pro. They're important rules, even if there are circumstances that might help us understand why someone might break them, right? That change our perspective on their behavior from callousness or a moral failing or an indifference to the competitive integrity of the sport and shift it into this person is dealing with addiction

and it should make us understand their behavior differently. It doesn't change that we have to have rules around this stuff to govern the sport. Yeah. I think it's unseemly. It's distasteful. It's tiresome, the extent to which MLB and many other sports and broadcasters have subjected us to sports betting messaging.

And we are one of the last sports podcasts in the world that seemingly doesn't do sports betting ads. So we're with you on that. Oh, yeah. I mean, like, get rid of this stuff because it's annoying as hell. Yes, yes. But to leap from that to, aha, right, to there's someone or something being hoisted on a petard or someone is reaping something they sowed, That's kind of a double bank shot sort of thing here, right? So it may be kind of contributing to the worsening of the world in this one way that there's so much of this. But is it necessarily making the game's integrity more suspect than it has been before?

Does MLB bear responsibility for that? I don't know that we can clearly conclude that. Now, if we get at some point clearer evidence that someone is throwing games or that an umpire is doing something untoward and betting on games that they're officiating or something, well, then you're going to get a crisis that I guess could cause some kind of re-evaluation of the sports relationship with gambling, even if you can't directly tie that incident to the messaging that we're discussing. That might be such an existential crisis that there is sort of a step back from the precipice, or maybe hopefully we just get regulation of some sort. Maybe, hopefully, we just get regulation of some sort. So we just kind of go over the heads.

So we're not relying on a sports league to say, oh, we will make a moral stand here. But they will just have their hands tied. Once again, my response to all of this is always, excuse me, Congress, what are you busy with? I mean, a lot of it's bad, but like, you know, like, why would we ever think that confronted with the potential to make a bunch of money in a perfectly legal way that a corporation's going to say no to that? That doesn't excuse it. I'm not saying that they're making a good moral choice or that they can't make moral choices. I wish they would. But I have been around the block enough times to be like, just tell them they can't. If you don't want them to, someone who has the power to do things under the force of the state should say, hey, knock it off. This is annoying and bad for people. You know what I mean? Like, what are we doing over here? Well, we're living in the country we live in apart from anything else. But, like, come on. Congress is very quick to haul MLB in front of itself for some grandstanding session about PDs or whatever else is going on in baseball.

But maybe a little less quick to take to task as these companies. So that'd be good. That would be a nice little problem not to head off. Certainly every form of livestock is out of the barn at this point, but we could look to other countries that have legalized earlier and have rude that decision or have walked back certain ways of advertising or betting and say, oh, maybe we should learn from that, but we probably won't. So, this won't be the last story like this, but yeah, I think we've kind of covered the nuance, hopefully, of the ways in which this is bad and the ways in which it is not bad in those specific ways. It's not really good, except in the sense that, well, at least it was discovered and punished, I suppose.

So we should maybe talk about some news that's not about sports betting. That would be a nice little change of pace, unless you have more. I want to be clear. I don't want anyone to walk away from this thinking that I have changed my opinion. No, we're not sports betting apologists here. I still think, and I'm sorry, I'm going to do another swear. I still think this sucks and I hate it loudly. I just think having a precise conversation is worthwhile.

And so here I am being annoying about that. You know what else sucks? The White Sox. We haven't talked about how much they suck lately. It's so bad, Ben. They're trying as far as we know. They're not throwing these games. They're just bad at baseball. It's catastrophically bad. Yeah. Yeah. But specifically, I wanted to bring up Tommy Pham, who really just phammed all over this past weekend. He got aggro in a way that really only Tommy Pham seems to do going to be some fighting words, if not actual fights that are exchanged after this. It just, it seems exhausting to be Tommy Pham. That's my main takeaway. He's

just seemingly always in kind of fight or flight and probably not flight mode because he's constantly kind of challenging people to fights or at least expressing his willingness to fight, if called upon to fight. So there was a play at the plate. It was against the Brewers. And Tommy Pham was thrown out at home in this attempt to tie the game. And really, Pham objected to being sent at all. And he's probably right about that, that it was not a great send. And I think the stat cast data backs that up. But Pham says,

it was a shallow fly ball to left field. You would expect the left fielder to throw the base runner out on that play. The third base coach sends you, you've got to go. So really, just kind of justifiably maybe, but not tactfully throwing third base coach Eddie Rodriguez under the bus. I'm nailed out at home by a mile. It sort of seemed like he was not making out anyway, but he almost really ran into it. But he says, I'm nailed out at home by a mile. I'm going to the dugout. I hear the tough guy, that is William Contreras of the Brewers who was celebrating this pivotal play. I hear the tough guy with all the hoorah. I never start anything. Chuck Peterson might beg to differ. Although- I think Tommy Pham would probably say that Jack started it. Probably would say that.

Yeah. He didn't physically start it. No, he did not. I never started anything, but I'll be prepared to finish it. There's a reason why I do all kinds of fighting in the off season. Cause I'm prepared to F somebody up.

He didn't say F. So take it as what it is. The ESPN story says, a veteran known for his fiery demeanor. Yeah, I guess that's one way you could say it. This recalls a play at the plate a couple of years ago where Pham said he was willing to fight Luke Voigt, who was involved in that play. He said, I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all. They can say what they want. Everybody on that side, man, they know I get down.

I know a place here. I know an owner who would let me use his gym if we need to settle anything so they can take it, whatever. That play was dirty. He went on. He talked about the gym again. He really just wants to throw down

at the slightest provocation at all times and has been involved in some altercations, which I guess didn't go great for him. Far from the field and not at gyms either. So it just seems like- I mean, he was a victim of a crime. Yes. Yes, he was. To be clear. He was. He was a victim of a crime. Yes. Yes, he was. To be clear. He was. He was a victim of a crime. And he's been tweeting through it as well. And he's been tweeting some stuff about his political affiliations and welfare and misgendering and other messages that I wouldn't say cast him in the best light, but really it's just seems like it would be very tiring to perceive these affronts, you know, real or imagined just to go around life like that,

just constantly being ready to scrap. It just seems exhausting to me. Yeah, it does seem exhausting. Seems exhausting to play for the White Sox as it is. And he plays hard. No one can question his effort level, I don't think, on the baseball field, at least in most cases. And it seems like some teammates appreciate that if they haven't been on the receiving end of a slap or a challenge to a duel or anything but like man it is just kind of a repeat pattern you just read one of these stories and you're like oh it's tommy fam going off again he's a really interesting character to me because he does seem to garner positive reviews from some folks. Like there are definitely

clubhouses where he is, you know, has been well-received. So I think he is a complicated figure from that perspective where some of the behavior that he has engaged in publicly just reads as like kind of obviously antisocial and you would think that that would result in you know like universal reviews right um five out of five dentists agree kind of stuff that doesn't seem to be the case fam's a hard one for me because i think that there is again you know we've talked about sort of where does the stuff you've maybe struggled with in your life, when it starts to brush up against your behavior toward other people, where does our sympathy begin and end? And that can be a complicated question, too. I mean, you can't be fighting people.

I don't know, man. That part seems pretty obvious to me. I think that I hadn't seen the tweets. Some of them are not good. I also can imagine feeling very frustrated when people like kind of armchair psychologize you. I, even if we don't have a perfect understanding of the motivations behind it or like how someone gets to that place. So I don't know, man, I think that like if I were Tommy Pham, I would stop. But I don't want to pretend that I have like a full, you know, I can wrap my arms around everything that goes into like the motivations behind this behavior, like what's spurring them, you know, but it's not great. Like, you can't be fighting people. I don't know. Like, that's not a.

He's not starting anything. He's just saying he's willing to finish it if anyone else would start something. But yeah, as you said, challenging upbringing in a number of respects. And he has been a good, productive, valuable player over the course of his career. And he's had an 11-year big league career. And so I wouldn't necessarily call him a clubhouse cancer or something like that, because as you said, if you're in the same clubhouse with him and you aren't on his bad side, then you might like the intensity

that he brings to these things. My sense is that like he was largely well regarded by, say, the Diamondbacks last year, you know? Yeah. And then like he called out the Mets, and their lack of effort or preparedness last year. But then there was some reporting that seemed to suggest, well, maybe that wasn't all in Tommy Pham's head. Maybe there was some substance to that, too. And I don't know whether the fact that he was signed so late this spring means anything. He was tweeting about that, too, because some people were implying that maybe he was not signed until late because of the team's reluctance to have him around or something.

And he was saying he had had earlier offers, but I guess they were not to his satisfaction and he wasn't great last year. So how much is it is salary demands or age or anything else? Is it teams that are wary of signing him because of quotes and incidents like this, or is it entirely different reasons? I don't know. He's had a pretty long career. So like this, this hasn't been something that has prevented him from being a big leaguer. Took him a long time to get to the big leagues.

He was blocked. He overcame some hurdles there, but he has managed to stay around. And if he were just intolerable to be around and seen as being bad for a team's play, then that probably would not be the case because he's not a superstar. He's been a very good player at times, but not necessarily in the category where you have your own rules or teams are willing to put up with the heinous stuff just to keep you playing baseball. Right. So you're right. It is sort of, I don't know if it's singular,

but it's unusual. Yeah. I mean, this part is not complicated for me. Like fighting people is not a good avenue of conflict resolution. Like I feel comfortable saying that. Issuing fighting words with this regularity and this dramatically and pointedly.

Yeah. That's not the greatest de-escalation tactic. Yeah. It doesn't seem like that's, as you would say, his project here to de-escalate in all of these circumstances. I don't think that I like came up with the notion of a project, Ben, although I've done a lot of little projects lately. And man, I will just continue to defend puttering.

It's such a healing kind of a deal. But yeah, I mean, he's a complicated mix of guys who seem to really like him, behavior that reads as pretty obviously antisocial to me, an admirable sort of overcoming of obstacles at points in his career and seemingly life. sort of overcoming of obstacles at points in his career and seemingly life. And, you know, behavior that I think does make it more challenging to roster him, even if it doesn't make it impossible. I don't know whether being on a bad team like this is extra frustrating to someone that competitive. Oh, my gosh, yeah. He chose to sign with the White Sox, knowing or should have known that they'd be bad based on when he signed. I don't know how many other options he had out there, but if he had any other options, probably would have been for a more competitive team than the White Sox.

But maybe that's something that makes tempers even shorter and also makes it seem like, gosh, like, is it worth it? Like, are the White Sox worth this level of intensity? Like, are you too invested in the White Sox here? Because no matter how intense you are, they're not going to be good. I did want to ask you about elsewhere in the AL Central. We got a couple surprising demotions, not necessarily surprising in the moment, but certainly would have been surprising preseason, let's say. Which do you think would have surprised you more if I had told you this a few months ago, that the Tigers would demote Spencer Torkelson to AAA or that the Twins would

demote Edward Julian? I'm trying to decide how hot a take I want to have about Spencer Torkelson. Okay, let me put it this way. I think Edward Julian is a better baseball player than Spencer Torkelson. Okay. I don't think that's particularly controversial. I think that he has a more varied profile in terms of what he can contribute. I think that he also faces a bit more roster squeeze than spencer torkelson which seems to have contributed to his demotion right because

you look at him and you're like you're kind of producing like a league average second baseman why are you getting sent down and then you're like he started hot and then has been ice cold for for quite some time since april but overall you're right right. But overall, and it's like, it's a month, and I think that the defense is better than it had originally been thought to be. So that seems like it provides a floor, but also like Royce Lewis is coming back and they have other veterans

and maybe they have roster crunch in a way that is not as present in Detroit. But also I think Spencer Torkelson is just kind of like maybe not necessarily a big league caliber player. And he, it's pretty hard to be a big league first baseman and have a 71 WRC plus. Like, you know, whatever you might say about Julian's defense, however fluky you think a couple of months might be on that side of the ball, he's at least a middle infielder. Spencer Torkelson is just a first baseman. I don't think you're putting him anywhere else. He was hitting 201.

Again, he had a 71 WRC+. He's slugging 330, you know. And when Dan wrote about these demotions for us, like last year, when you looked at Tork's underlying performance, right, the stat cast metrics sitting beneath his surface level stats, you could make, I think, a reasonable argument that he was getting jobbed a little bit and that he was hitting the ball harder and that you know maybe it was all going to come together and in the second half we kind of saw that right where he was you saw his his surface stats suddenly much more in line with what stackhouse was suggesting and that is just not the case um this year you know like his hard hit rate has cratered he's not barreling the ball at all his max exit velo is down a little bit you know he's actually outperforming his x slug you know it's

just this is not a good big league profile and when you're sitting at first base like it's just not something that's gonna be able to sustain that. I kind of found Dan's argument compelling, which is maybe the better move on the Twins part would have been to keep Julian up and clear out some of the veterans who aren't going to be long-term stalwarts for Minnesota. Your mileage on that might vary,

but the torque thing is... It's been hard for Pac-12 hitters lately, Ben. It hasn't been a good run for Pac-12 guys hitting in the big leagues. I probably wouldn't say that because I barely know where anyone played college baseball and even if I knew which school they played in. It's on his Fangraphs

player page, Ben. I still wouldn't know which Pac they played in, even if I knew their school. You know Arizona State's in the Pac-12. Do I? I mean, like, RIP to the Pac-12. I didn't even get to eulogize the Pac-12. Is that the Super Pack? Is there another pack?

Oh, my God. I don't know. Bowman was right about you. That could mean so many things. That could mean so many things. I think if you had asked me two years ago, Torkelson would have surprised me more because I don't know if I'd heard of Edward Julian then, right? Whereas Torkelson was a – He was a top 100 prospect, Ben. Was he?

Well, fan graphs maybe. For us. But no one else, right? He was not a consensus top 100 guy. Correct. I couldn't give you a complete audit history of his top 100 status about other publications i think that we were the high publication on him yes i know that's the i and i know that steven kwan went to oregon state i know i know which

pack is just saying in general it hasn't been the best i mean they're not really they're gonna play baseball as an independent now as as far as I know. They don't have a, Oregon State doesn't have a home. It's very sad. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Got to host a regional, though. Well, Julian was, I think, only fangraphs a top 100 guy. And he was, what, like an 18th rounder.

And Torkelson, of course, was a 1-1 first overall pick and a top five consensus top 100 guy. So that would have surprised me more to know that he had failed to launch. And also, it still would have been somewhat surprising after last season because he'd made strides. Now he'd made strides from being bad as a rookie, but he'd made strides to being not bad, not great, but not bad. And it seemed like he was a breakout pick in some quarters this spring. And it seemed like he was a breakout pick in some quarters this spring, and it seemed like there might be further room for progress there. But yeah, I think if you had asked me this spring, then I would have been more surprised by Julian, just because Julian was

so good last year. Torkelson had already had struggles and growing pains, whereas Julian just seemed to hit the ground running and just was a really good player from day one. He had a song about how he was going to rule again. And now he's drooling instead of ruling. And it stinks. But according to the preseason projections, their offensive expectations were similar. So the Fangrass depth charts had Julian at a 114 projected WRC+, and Torkelson at 117. As you said, of course, Julien may be more overall value, but similar with the stick. So it is surprising on both counts. But you're right. I think I would bet on Julien to have this be a blip and put this behind him more quickly, even though Torkelson has the unparalleled prospect pedigree. I almost lumped in Jack Sawinski and the other central who

was demoted by the Pirates last month after a semi breakout 2023. So that was sort of surprising too, but maybe not quite in the same category. So disappointing when someone seems to be putting it together and then just it all falls apart. But that is what has happened here. Our friend Sam Miller, he had a tweet the other day about the competitive landscape of MLB, which read, there are only six good teams. I've never seen anything like it.

This was on May 30th. And I did not follow up with Sam personally to ask him which six teams, because he had a subsequent tweet from someone who was trying to divine which six teams he was talking about. And they guessed based on Fangraph's projections that it was the five teams

that Fangraph's had projected for 90 plus wins, plus the Guardians and sam said close was mostly being goofily hyperbolic so i'm not going to make enemies by being more specific so i didn't want to force him to make enemies or try to persuade him to make enemies but have you felt that that there are notably few good teams or even great teams that, as Sam said, you've never seen anything like it. Because it's interesting, Sam was not necessarily making a value judgment there. He was not saying that was good or bad. But I think people might take that as a negative, that there aren't that many good teams. And yet, when there are a bunch of super teams,

then that's seen as a negative too, that everything is too stratified and that too much of the talent is concentrated with a small subset of teams. And if anything, I would prefer this if we even stipulate that this is the case, that this feels notable. And I guess it would not be surprising if this were the case, because I think we talked about this and I briefly wrote about it in our Ringer preseason staff predictions post that it seemed like there was going to be a lot of parity and that there in for most of the past several seasons that I was actually kind of looking forward to a log jam, a wild card pileup, which is what we're getting here. And some people would probably complain about either. So damned if you do, damned if you don't. But also maybe blessed if you do, blessed if you don't.

I don't know. There are people who would probably take a positive from either of these situations. So do you find this to be the case that you're looking around and thinking, huh, there aren't really a lot of very impressive teams right now? And if you are, is that bad or good or neither? bad or good or neither. I'm laughing because I'm picturing like Rob Manfred doing like namaste hands on a poster that says blessed, like

up in an Airbnb, you know? Like in that wedding invitation font. It's like blessed. It says live, laugh, love on the bottom. He's just like looking downpensive. How did that become such a popular decorating scheme i want to name i want to know whose fault that is um it's like the cat who's

just hanging in there just but see those are cute because it's like you know he's he's doing it you're rooting for him i don't know if we're rooting for a man, Fred. Do I feel like the quality of play is noticeably worse relative to either last year or my expectations? I think that the way that, I think maybe my answer to this is yes, but it's manifesting for me in a different way. Like the, the way I'm noticing it is different where I feel the absence of a lot of injured players in a pretty specific and profound way. And that's maybe coloring my experience of the season. Like I really miss watching Spencer Strider pitch, you know, I like feel his absence. I now feel the absence of Ronald Acuna Jr. You know, we've had a lot of guys who've had

season-ending injuries. Some of them are guys who we expected to be sort of main characters of the sport. Also, there are a couple of teams that tried in an active way in the offseason and have been noticeably dinged by injury. You know, like the Diamondbacks uh top of mind for me on that score in part because they were just in the world series in part because they did try and also because like they're just down the road i thought i was gonna see a different kind of caliber of team than i've seen so far i think that some of it is that divisions that i expected to be better have been worse, like the American League West. As much as I, Meg Rowley, famous Mariners fan, I'm enjoying them being like four and a half games up on the Rangers and Astros. The Astros being 27 and 34 isn't what I had in mind coming

into the year. But again, I think a lot of that is injury, although some of it is underperformance as well. But there are teams that have really pleasantly surprised me. I don't know if it's enough to counterbalance my general sense, but how about those Royals, Ben? How about those San Diego Padres, you know, outperforming my expectation? Are they some like Titan? No. Are they are they going to win that division? Almost certainly not. But I I had pretty low expectations for them coming into the year and they have exceeded them thus far, although they're having a shadow box with injury, too. Speaking of the Padres, by the way, when I went to MLB Trade Rumors, as we were recording the top story, and we don't deal in rumors that much here. We're not rumor mongers, mostly. But when the Padres and Preller are involved, I might make an exception. According to Dennis Lynn and Ken Rosenthal, there's strong interest from the Padres in Garrett Crochet,

which would be, they already traded for the White Sox best starter before the season even started. And they're just like, yeah, that's working out okay. Let's just run it back. You know, maybe they can get Tommy Pham back while it's just inject some intensity into that clubhouse for the stretch run, but they're just never done. They are never done dealing. I love it. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. No, you're fine. You know who's been pretty good this year? Dylan Cease. Yeah, he has. The centrals have been surprisingly good. I don't know that they're sustainably good. I would, oh God, I'm so reticent to do this because the last time Fangraphs had a position on the Guardians, we had to hear about it on social media for four freaking months. But I don't think that the Guardians are as good as

their record suggests, but I do think that they are a better team than I maybe gave them credit for coming into the year. And Quan's performance, Kwan's performance has been fantastic and they have weathered Bieber's absence in a way that I would have not thought possible. The Royals, we've already,

we've already chronicled their rise. They have gone from being, you know, kind of pesky and, you know, whatnot to just like being 36 and 25.

No, that's surprising. I mean, they have both had, I won't say situational luck, but certainly situational overperformance. So they have exceeded expectations situationally. They have timed their hits extremely well in a way that is to their credit, but as you say, often difficult to sustain because it would be historic if the Guardians did sustain what they're doing. They're seven wins better than their base runs record. Yes, and yet they have been good nonetheless.

And so, yeah, it's not that there are no great teams, I guess, unless you just don't buy into them because the Yankees and the Phillies, as we speak, are on pace. The Phillies are a great team. Yeah. Like 111, 112 wins. I didn't think the Yankees were going to be this good a few months ago.

The Phillies doesn't surprise me as much. I mean, this pace surprises me. It would surprise me with just about any team. Powered by vibes, powered by vibes, that team. Yeah.

And good pitching and. Yeah. I mean, not just vibes, but also vibes. But also vibes. But also vibes. Vibes, the cherry on top. But yeah, like if I had to name which teams are good the way that Sam was sort of alluding to there, I mean, I guess you'd certainly put the Phillies there.

I'd put the Dodgers there. I'd put the Orioles there. I would probably put the Braves there despite their significant losses. I would put the Yankees there, I think, especially with You say the Dodgers? Garrett Cole coming back. Yes, the Dodgers. Dodgers. And the teams that have exceeded my expectations, I thought the Mariners were pretty good when the

season started. And I guess they've played up to Jerry DiPoto's target winning percentage, more or less, thus far. I know that's not exactly what he was saying, but sort of. But there is a lot of mediocrity. And there's also extremes on the low end, too. We just discussed the White Sox, and no one else is quite in the White Sox class. But Rockies, Marlins, Angels, A's, you know, don't get too full of yourselves because you're not that good either. But I don't think any of them is in danger of getting too full of themselves. Well, maybe the Rockies, who knows? But I don't know that it's that unusual, but there are a lot of

teams just in the vast, mediocre middle, which I think is something that I said on the podcast and in print before the season started. And I think I prefer this because even some of these teams that have been great that are on pace for well over 100, I'm still kind of questioning, well, are the Guardians this good? Are the Yankees this good? Maybe they are because Judge and Soto are unstoppable and here comes Garrett Cole, right?

And are the Royals this good? And I'm not totally sold on some of these teams, but I think I prefer that. I think it's not like NFL not knowing who the good teams are. It's just a little more like that than it has been in MLB recently. And I think that's okay. I think that's fine that there are more teams that are theoretically in it. And there are fewer teams that are just head and shoulders above the rest of the sport. I think that that's right.

It does remind me of back in the fire Joe Morgan days. One of Joe Morgan's catchphrases always used to be about how there were no great teams anymore. And what he usually seemed to be saying is that like the big red machine is not playing now, basically. But that was a constant refrain with him there are no great teams anymore it's like joe there have there aren't some pretty great teams out there like some of these seasons it seems like there's some great teams here if you could stop uh looking through rose-colored glasses at the teams that you played on specifically so i don't want to be a joe mor Joe Morgan in a Joe chat here back in the day at ESPN and say, oh, there are no great teams. It's not like back in my day or something. No, there's still some pretty good teams. But on the whole, and I don't think competitive balance or a lack

of parity has been a pressing problem for MLB, even though there are some people who persist in that belief, if only because the playoff structure doesn't really permit you to keep winning and emerging with a championship. But yeah, on the whole, I think this is kind of okay. I feel the absences, like I said. I feel the absences in an active way. It is coloring my understanding of the season and sort of my enjoyment of it, but that doesn't mean that there isn't much to recommend it. Like, for instance, Ben, I would submit to you that yesterday's Brewers-Phillies game was perfect. It was a perfect baseball game.

It was to me, it wasn't a perfect game, to be clear. But it was perfect. And I enjoyed the hell out of it. Did you engage with this contest at all? I did not. No, not in the moment. This was the return of Reese Hoskins to Philly. He, as you know, is a beloved figure to many a Philly fan.

Yep. The David Dahl game. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's not how it will be remembered. Although, props to you, David. You had quite a day. What a day.

What a day for David Dahl. David Dahl. That's satisfying. That's satisfying to say. David Dahl. David Dahl. But Reece Hoskins came back. He received a lovely, stirring, standing ovation from the assembled Phillies fans.

from the assembled Phillies fans. He got to engage in a little bit of chicanery on the base pass where he stole second base, and JT Realmuto tried to throw him out, and he couldn't do it, and they both came up with a smile on their faces after he exchanged a nice little side hug with Bryce Harper at first base, and then Reese Hoskins tried to score from second,

and the ball did not go quite far enough. And he got thrown out at home and he and JT both were smiley about that. And then Reese looked like he was going back to the Phillies dugout as if to go, oh no, I don't live there anymore. I got to go home to my home. And he went back to the, and then he had a home run later and he got he got like a he got a positive response from philly's fans uh when that happened they were uh leading at the time that he hit his solo shot so i think it was you know it was an easy moment but look philly fans have a reputation and sometimes it's deserved and sometimes it's not and they they were like we we see your your slanderous reputation for us and we we offer you one Reese Hoskins hug and response.

And then the Phillies won, so everyone got to keep feeling good about Reese Hoskins and Philly. I mean, probably not the Brewers, but, you know, that wasn't the lens through which I was viewing this particular contest. It was perfect. It had great vibes. Also, the Phillies booth yesterday was in rare form. Kruk was really having a day and it was beautiful and I hope his friend Newt is

doing well. And so, look, is it a perfect season? No. Is it the best season of baseball I've ever seen? No. Is it still offering daily delights including what I submit to you is a perfect baseball game? Yeah, Ben, it is.

It did do that, you know? And I'm saying that on a day when the league had to ban a guy for life for gambling, which is dark. You know, that's a bad. Today, I would submit not the best day that Major League Baseball has ever had. A day where it rose to the occasion in a way that it needed to, but not its best day. You know, this is potentially scary stuff. But yesterday, I got to see a perfect baseball game. So, you know, you win some, you lose some, I guess is my point.

Okay. Maybe we can close with a lightning round of follow-ups on assorted topics. We're typically not very lightning-like, but we'll do our best here. How dare you? I am only ever as verbose as I need to be. Again, many people have said I'm the best podcaster they've ever heard, so I don't know what you're talking about, Ben. Well, we sometimes strike in the same place twice when we return to topics, and that is what we're doing, in fact, here. Because this is a topic that we've talked about many times and answered many hypotheticals, but skills showcase competitions, right?

How many questions have we gotten about this? So many. Comparisons to the KBO, for instance, and why don't they do this at the MLB All-Star Game? and why don't they do this at the MLB All-Star game? Well, they're still not doing that, but they are doing an MLB Futures Game Skills Showcase on All-Star Saturday this summer. There are going to be three events, and they're all offensive hitting-centric events.

So there's a hit-it-here competition. Hitters aim to hit certain targets in the infield and outfield to earn points corresponding with those targets' values. There are obstacles representing infielders that are placed on the infield dirt, and you can get points for hitting things on the fly or on a bounce. And similar to the KBO Bunt King competition, you can earn points by bunting the ball onto bullseye style targets. Then there's a second round, call your shot, where hitters will have a number of swings to showcase their control so they can announce that they're going to try to

hit the ball to left, right, or center. And then if they do that, then they'll choose to hit to one of the other remaining fields. And then they'll have to hit the last one and cross them all off their bingo cards, catch them all, all the fields. And then they can, after they clear all the fields, they can continue to call their shot and it has to hit the outfield grass to count. And then the third round is essentially a home run derby. It's just a home run derby in which you earn bonuses for homers hit to the opposite field. And you can also earn bonuses for streaks of home runs on consecutive swings. So in principle, this is sort of the thing that a lot of our listeners have advocated for over the years.

What do you think? Are you celebrating this? Should it go further? Will this be a dud? Would you like to see it elevated to the big league all-star game? I'm fine with it. I'm excited to see it. Just make the Futures game nine innings long, and I don't really care what you do in the way of a skills competition. Next. Yeah, I think I'd rather see other skills showcased is the thing that would probably be more likely to lead to injury, unfortunately, and thus we're less likely to see them. But situational hitting isn't even really an aspect of performance that's prized anymore. Granted, I guess it's easier to do if you're hitting slow pitches like old school batting practice.

But then at that speed, is it even that impressive? I don't know. I'd rather see throwing competitions, guys just airing it out or pitchers trying to hit certain targets maybe. Or running. I'd like to see races, right? But you're just not going to see that probably. see that probably. And it'll be hard to get big leaguers to sign on to this, probably harder to get their participation than it is to get minor leaguers, even top rated prospects. But you know what? In theory, sure. Let's try it. Let's see how it works. And if it works well, then we can

always expand it. All right. Speaking of all-star game events, the all-Star game will be taking place in Texas, right? In the Rangers' home park. And one thing the Rangers will not be hosting this June, this Pride Month, as has been the case with all previous Pride Months, is a Pride Night event. This is certainly a topic that will earn us a one-star iTunes review or two. But nevertheless, we soldier on. one-star iTunes review or two, but nevertheless, the soldier on, and what, if anything, would you care to say about not only the continued non-hosting of a Pride Night event by the Rangers alone among the 30 major league teams, but also this possibly coincidental, but possibly not switch coinciding with the start of Pride Night, where Levi Weaver of The Athletic

noticed that the Rangers switched their slogan on their website to Straight Up Texas, which admittedly has been a slogan that they have used before in previous months and maybe years on social media and elsewhere. But they did flip the switch for some reason to switch to straight up Texas, just as the calendar rolled around to Pride Month. And as I'm sure they knew that they would get the usual annual scrutiny about their continued non-hosting of this event, perhaps intensified by the fact that the spotlight will be on them this summer. Yeah, their website had previously had run it back because they were defending World Series champions. I wonder, it's like, are you conceding the rest of the season, Texas Rangers? Like, what's up with that? I'm going to endeavor to be quick about this because I have already tweeted about it and what is less fun

than hearing about your tweets but i do want to allow for the possibility that this is a unfortunate coincidence but i would like to express skepticism at that because i think that the folks over there are surely aware of the discourse that exists around their team's refusal to host Pride Night, which we should make clear. All reporting suggests is a decision being made at the ownership level. So this is not the PR staff. This isn't the front office. This sits with the owner, as far as we know, based on reporting. sits with the owner, as far as we know, based on reporting. So it's a story every June because they are the only team at this point that doesn't have some sort of pride celebration at the

ballpark. It seems pointed. Reporting backs that up, that this is, you know, like a statement being made on the part of the ownership group. They've got plenty of other nights and celebrations and themed events. Yes. So I'm skeptical that that decision is being made with an indifference to how it would read based on the organization's prior choices around Pride Night and its embrace or lack thereof of the LGBTQ plus community. and it's embrace or lack thereof of the LGBTQ plus community. And so if it's an unfortunate coincidence, boy, is it unfortunate. And if it's not a coincidence, hey, screw off. You know, that's antagonistic in a way that is unnecessary,

especially given the existing antagonism of refusing to host a Pride Night. A lot of other people have said a lot of good stuff about this. I think that it's fine for us to, and perhaps appropriate for us to like recognize the limitations of corporate pride given the historical roots of that event, which was initially a protest versus, you know, like banks having floats at pride parades, right? There's like a big distance between those two things. But I do think that when you decide to host other affinity nights and you intentionally exclude pride from that list, you are not creating an environment that is open and welcoming to your LGBTQ plus fans and all of the people who love and support those fans

and want them to live full, dignified lives. So I don't want to say that a Pride Night would fix all those problems, but I think not having one sucks. And I think that's a particularly true statement when you consider that the Rangers play in a state whose government is actively antagonistic toward gay people. So I think it sucks. And I also think that when Major League

Baseball decides that it cares about something, it often uses the All-Star game as a point of leverage to either ask teams to change their behavior or to make a statement. And so I think it's pretty easy to draw conclusions about the Rangers getting an All-Star game despite that. I know that it's a new-ish ballpark. I know that they faced backlash for their decision to move the All-Star game out of Atlanta or the Atlanta suburbs. And Manfred has basically apologized for that. And, you know, the Braves are going to get an all-star game next year, but you have a lot more say over the behavior of the organizations in your league. And I wish that Manfred, especially as someone who said he's not going to be a commissioner in a couple of years would use

this moment to say, Hey, host a Pride Night, please, just do it. The website slogan is not something that I would have noticed or most people would have noticed if it had not been pointed out. And if it is a pointed message, then that's just adding insult to injury, right? But the bigger problem, I guess, regardless of whether the slogan was intentional or not, is just continuing not to have the Pride Night. And I don't know that a Pride Night needs to be mandated league-wide. Like, if you want not to have a Pride Night, then I guess I'm okay with you not being compelled to have a Pride Night. It's just that if you elect not to, alone among every other team, then people

are going to draw pretty reasonable inferences from that that are backed up by reporting. And if you're the Rangers ownership, at least maybe you don't mind them drawing those inferences you want to send that message, right? But I think it's fair for people to condemn them based on that. And it is also true, as you said, like some of these events now, they can be kind of performative or hollow or obligatory. It's not necessarily that the corporation is animated by inclusive spirit. It's sending an inclusive message regardless of whether that's incredibly heartfelt or not. And sometimes, to be cynical, it's about selling tickets or it's just about not standing out in a bad way.

And so hosting a Pride Night now is not some bold statement of support necessarily that marks you as an outlier or anything. But on the flip side, not having a Pride Night, that does mark you as an outlier. They're the only one. And there's really only one message you can take from that, right? So to send that signal, that is really an attempt to say something or certainly is conveying something.

certainly is conveying something. I'm going to borrow this thought from a Patreon pod that the If Books Could Kill guys did when they were talking about Target and corporate pride last year and Budweiser, you know, with that whole controversy when, you know, Budweiser sent like a beer to a trans influencer and then parts of the internet lost its freaking mind. The part of this that feels bad and ominous, separate from the inclusion piece of it, which I do think is important and I don't want to downplay, like I think sending a message to your fan base, like we are welcoming people here. And if you aren't on board with that program, you're not in step with us as an organization. However, you know, meaningful that is or how sincere it is, I do think it's an important message to send

regardless. But I also think mostly it's like, this shouldn't be controversial, including this part of our broader community in sport and in baseball shouldn't be controversial. And ceding that ground and saying there is a controversy here feels really bad because it should be a given rather than something we're debating. So again, I think you're right. Some of this stuff is to sell tickets. Some of it's to sell merch. Some of it is just the furtherance of capitalism. But I do think that there's a piece of this that's very real where it's like, we shouldn't be ceding this ground. The Rangers can't even be ceding it. They never claimed it in the first place, right? And I also want to say, part of the reason that I

point out that this is, as far as reporting has suggested, an ownership decision is that I know that there are people who work for the Texas Rangers who hate this. I know there are people who work for the Rangers who wish that this weren't true. And they are like queer people who work for the Rangers and they have to deal with this on a very different and personal level that's different than mine, right? Where they have to grapple with this as a reality of their workplace. And so I want to be careful about who, you know, when I say the Rangers, like who I mean,

I mean the weird skeletor who owns their team, you know, I think that's an important distinction to draw because the people who work for the club, who, you know, are part of the gay community or care about people in the community or just think that people should be treated with dignity, like they have stakes in this too. and i don't want to confuse the fact that like they support this because i know that a lot of the people who work for the team don't so let's make sure to you know draw distinctions and again be precise here because i don't want anyone who's working for

that club and has tried to do you know work internally to change this and has met resistance to feel like they're being singled out here because that's not what we mean. We appreciate what you're trying to do behind the scenes because I know that it can't be easy. and pro-inclusion message to host one, but I think not hosting one does send an anti-inclusion and exclusion sort of signal, right? And that is seemingly on purpose. That was pretty quick for how much I have to say about that, actually. I feel like I have honored the spirit of the lightning round. We talked about nicknames for Kyle Tucker. We got some submissions and the best of the bunch probably was one by Dan who suggested not Kyle Tuck Everlasting Tucker,

but Kyle Tuck Ever Blasting Tucker. Yeah, really good. Really, really good. Tuck Ever Blasting. Yeah, love it. It is, it's good or maybe it's bad, but in kind of a good way. Dan said he was channeling

John Sterling on this one, which I consider a compliment. It's a little wordy. Like, I don't know that I would say it all that often. I put it on a sign. You put it on a sign. Old Kyle Tuck-ever-blasting. Tuck-ever-blasting. You just say Tuck-ever-blasting. Yeah, I guess. Just put it on a sign. Okay. Yeah. that was great. And listener Dennis noted that when we talked about Mets seemingly pop-up, out-of-nowhere star reliever Reed Garrett, at the time he had a.54 ERA with a.501 OPS against in 10 games. Since we talked about him on the podcast in 13 games, 6.08 ERA, 880 OPS against. His FIP has more than doubled. So basically, we broke Reed Garrett, and I apologize.

Yeah, sorry. I don't know. Maybe 10 games was too quick to reach the conclusion that he's unhittable, or maybe he's just had lousy luck lately. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle, isn't it always? But yeah, we had a little bit of an effectively wild jinx or curse there for poor Reed Garrett. And also some news about position players pitching specifically. There haven't been that many of them this year. And that's notable because they've gone up and

up and up and up every season. And I was inspired by a recent Rob Means piece. He noted that there were very few of them in May. There were only a handful of position player pitchers. And on the whole, I got this data from him. April and May combined, we've had 24 position player pitching outings this year. outings this year. April and May last season, there were 45. So almost twice as many. 2022, there were 24, same as this season, but that was post-lockout and weird circumstances. 2021, there were 31. 2019, there were 29. And then 2018, there were 11. So you could make the case that in sort of a normal year, this is the fewest position player pitchers we've had through this point in the season for like six years. So the increase seems to have been arrested. Maybe it's even coming back to earth a little bit. I don't know if it's real. I don't know what to attribute it to. But I think we all felt like this has gotten a little bit out of hand. This was fun at first, but now we've gone too far and maybe not quite as far this season so far. So I guess that's kind of encouraging. I guess that's encouraging. And I am having my impression of all of this informed by the most recent position player pitching I saw,

which was Cole Tucker, who, did you see this? Cole Tucker, athlete. It was great. He like spun and caught a ball in the air and threw it to first base. It was awesome. It was great. I was like, look at him. Look at him go. Look at Cole Tucker go. It's also very funny that that position player pitching performance came against the Mariners Cole Tucker famously now a member of the Los Angeles Angels organization but as I

look at our new player pages that feature pictures of players Cole Tucker is wearing a Mariners cap because he broke camp with Seattle so anyway that's funny so I don't know if this means anything Cole Tucker is wearing a Mariners cap because he broke camp with Seattle. So anyway, that's funny. So I don't know if this means anything.

If it does mean anything, maybe it's just because scoring is down and pitchers are getting knocked out of games a little less. And so there's a less acute need for position player pitchers. That's it. Maybe it's just that there aren't as many games that qualify under the eligibility rule because you have to be trailing by eight or leading by 10, the latter in the ninth inning only. And so maybe there haven't been as many games with lopsided scores that could qualify. Or maybe it's just,

as we talked about, teams are just designating pitchers for assignment, bringing up new pitchers all the time. So if you could just cycle through real pitchers, you don't need position player pitchers as acutely.

Anyway, it's perhaps a trend. And also, Ben Clemens, other Ben, just wrote about strategy for Fangraphs.com, and he and I were chatting about this because he advocated for the mid-plate appearance pitching change, specifically with Atlanta's bullpen, because he pinpointed that Aaron Bummer, Braves reliever, is really great, one of the best in the game at getting ahead of hitters, but not very good at finishing them off because he'll just, you know, throw sinkers for strikes and he'll get ahead in the count, but then he doesn't have a great strikeout pitch. Whereas his bullpen mate, Pierce Johnson, he throws tons of curveballs and he gets lots of whiffs and he can finish off batters in two

strike counts better than almost anyone in baseball. So Ben is advocating, bring in an Aaron Bummer to start some guys off, get ahead in the count, and then bring in Pierce Johnson to finish them off. This seems like the ideal of the deployment of the mid-plate appearance pitching strategy that we've talked about, that I've written about for years. Will it happen? Probably not. But if it's ever going to happen, this seems like a case where it should. Why do you think this hasn't happened? Why has this not made the leap from college, where it's, I wouldn't say commonplace, but not uncommon, to the majors? commonplace but not uncommon to the majors. Usually, we see strategies like this once people like me are talking about them. Teams are ahead of the game, and they will do any edge and anything

that goes against the grain historically, whether it's pitch selection or shifting in the past or the opener or democratizing save distribution, whatever it is. They'll do stuff that in the past or the opener or democratizing save distribution, whatever it is, they'll do stuff that in the past would have been, what? You can't do that. And yet this seems to be the bridge too far. Teams just do not do the tactical mid-plate appearance pitching change in the majors. I have two theories. The first of which is I wonder if teams look at the three batter minimum and feel like this is just too much work relative to that right which you know ben talked about in his piece that it's it's definitely an inconvenience but it's not like a gating factor to implementing this but i do wonder if teams just look at the three batter minimum or like you know complicated But I wonder if mostly it's, they look at it and they're

like, it's too cute by half. Okay, wait, I have a third theory. I think this is actually the likely answer. Well, I think it's the second most likely answer. The first most likely answer I think has to do with, you know, fitting this into the three batter minimum framework and feeling like it's just more trouble than it's worth. I think the second most likely thing, and this perhaps speaks to the difference between the pervasiveness to the extent that's true in the college ranks versus in the pros, is that these are pros, and maybe it feels bad. Maybe they're just like, hey, it's going to bum Aaron Bummer out to say, it's gonna bum Aaron Bummer out to say you can't get the third strike you know you can't get that last one to get this out I think that that in a way that is perhaps particularly heightened in a professional setting where there's a lot of like pride involved and you have to to navigate this

understanding of these guys as pros versus amateurs, you're just like, I can't ask him to do that. Like, it's one thing to have a piggyback starter. It's another thing to say, you're probably not going to get that third out, even if the numbers bear it out, you know, more often than not. I think it's just, it's not enough of an edge to justify the discomfort that it would inspire and the sort of wound that it might inflict on someone to say you can't get that last strike, you know? Yep. I think you've neatly laid out all the issues there.

And yet I'm still sort of surprised that the raise or someone just hasn't gone ahead and done it regardless. And to be clear, I think it would be kind of cool to see it every now and then, or if one team started doing it, I would say, oh, that's clever. They're really going for it. But long-term, if it became a common strategy, it's probably bad for baseball. I would not necessarily object to it being banned even, because I don't think it would be great for entertainment to see mid-plate appearance pitching changes. I guess you could say, well, there's some suspense, you know, two strikes and now someone's coming in. If it's a high leverage moment, it might be sort of exciting, but I wouldn't want more pitching changes necessarily. And also if I'm saying I think it would be effective,

which I do think it would, well, that's just going to send strikeout rates even higher. It's hard enough to hit these guys as it is without changing the look mid-plate appearance. So maybe it's better for baseball that this is not happening. And yet I am semi-surprised that it still just seems to be something that teams are unwilling to do at this level. All right. something that teams are unwilling to do at this level. All right. Last thing, we got an email, or at least I got an email, probably you did too,

about a development with Sabres special committee about studying black baseball and the Negro leagues, just as a follow-up to our conversation last week with John Thorne and Larry Lester and about MLB's reclassification of the Negro Leagues and incorporation of Negro Leagues stats into the rest of the major league stats. Sabre has had a special committee devoted to studying the various Negro Leagues and assessing their major league caliber qualifications for some time here. And they've now reached different conclusions than MLB has about certain leagues and seasons. In the past, they've been largely aligned. So both MLB and Sabre, which had studied this previously, had reached the conclusion that, okay, 1920 to 1948, those are the years where the caliber of play is high enough that this was major league caliber. Those are the years where the caliber of play is high enough that this was major league caliber.

Now, Sabre's special committee, which I think is composed of different people than were on the MLB committee. There might be some overlap. There might be. Has recommended or has decided that they have found the 1949 to 50 Negro American League to be major league caliber as well, in addition to some independent black baseball teams, which MLB, as we talked to John about, has also made some of those conclusions about independent teams that were previously or were about to be in one of the leagues again, maybe those would be major league caliber. So I don't know what the implications of this will be when it comes to, say, displaying stats, because when baseball reference initially added Negro League stats, it was based on the recommendations of Sabre's

committee, I believe, that found those years, and those years happened to align with what MLB then determined separately. If we have different determinations now, we could potentially get different sites reporting different years of major leagues. I guess this is something that fan graphs might have to think about at some point too, right? And on the one hand, I don't think MLB, Major League Baseball,

the corporate entity, should have or has any monopoly on saying this was Major League caliber or not. They can call their stats official, and they do, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have any more authority to pronounce what was Major League caliber or not. And there are already some discrepancies, right? Right. Beyond the Negro Leagues, there are already some discrepancies. Yeah, that's true. Baseball Reference accounts the National Association as major league, whereas MLB's committee back in the 60s said it was, I think, the first professional league, but not the first major league. So it's true, there already are some discrepancies, and this

could potentially add additional discrepancies. And I don't know, I guess I support different esteemed bodies reaching different conclusions. There's no one hard truth here. And yet, I guess when it comes to conveying the import of all of this or sort of standardizing stats displays, it could introduce some complications to what is already inherently a pretty complex process. I feel out of my depth offering an opinion about what the right, exact right thing is here. Because I lack the expertise to say that their determination is right or wrong, I think that we have relied on Sabre's work a great deal in our process of incorporating those stats into the site. And I do find it interesting that they have a difference when Major League Baseball has often relied on some of their work. I think that I mostly view this as a process still in flux. Like, you know, John made this point when he chatted with us about Major League Baseball's

determinations, which is that, you know, history is a process. And they, I think, are far from done themselves in terms of what, you know, will ultimately end up being the official record from their perspective in terms of Negro League stats. So I don't know quite what we're going to do yet. We've started those conversations internally. We had, I think, just for simplicity's sake, maybe hoped that it would line up perfectly. But yeah, I think we're still trying to figure out exactly what we're going to do. But, um, I think that if our baseline posture is I want to, uh, you know, I trust the work that Saber does and they have experts who, who do know what they're talking about. I want to acknowledge the very good play of these folks whenever it's appropriate to do so.

And so I don't know if it's good enough for Sabre. I think it's probably going to be good enough for me because they sure know a lot more about it than I do. And I think that this process has shown that we want to give people their flowers. All right. More to come. All right. By the way, after we recorded, Reed Garrett gave up another run. Sorry, Reed. Also, sorry that I have such a hard time remembering whether your name is Reed Garrett or Garrett Reed. I have a Heston Kerstad, Keston Herstad kind of confusion going on here. However, I'm never confused about this much. You can support

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on upcoming Effectively Wild listener meetups at MLB ballparks. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. I just gotta know, Edward Julien, are you gonna rule again? Edward Julien, are you gonna rule again? Edward Julien, are you gonna rule again? He's a Serf, a rookie match in the Sun He knows French, and he leads a platoon

There's one thing, I just gotta say Edward Julien, are you gonna rule again? Edward Julien, Are you gonna rule again? Edward Julian Are you gonna rule again? Edward Julian Are you gonna rule again?