Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2219: The Potential Playoff Fumbles

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Joe Sheehan banter about high school, the persistent, befuddling allure of Craig Kimbrel, the Orioles’ recent struggles, the playoff-fumble potential of four teams that previously possessed 90-plus-percent playoff odds, their prediction philosophies, the potential for legislation to curb the excesses of sports betting, and what the surprise “retirement” of Adrian Wojnarowski says […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2219 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer and with Meg Raleigh on vacation, old home week at Effectively Wild continues as I keep calling on alumni of my alma mater, Regis High School. Last week I talked to the Miami Marlins Declan Cronin, Regis class of 2015, and today I talked to Joshian Regis class of, well, prior to 2015. I'll leave it at that.

Hello, Joe. Well, following up Dan Zemborski and Jason Benetti too, I just figured you ran out of nice guys and now you're working on the jerks. Well, you may know Joe as one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus and the sole founder and proprietor unsurprisingly of the indispensable Joshian Baseball Newsletter at joshian.com.

He is also a proud Regis grad. And so it's always good to get together here. At Regis and some other schools, reunions are sometimes called jug nights, J-U-G, which are named after another tradition, jug, which as I understand it, actually comes from the Latin word jugum, which means yoke or collar or burden, but is also often said to stand for justice under God. Were you a frequent target of Jesuit justice during your Regis years?

I was because I had a terrible time getting to school on time, coming from Inwood and freshman year taking the buses and then eventually the subway and a crosstown bus. I was late all of the time. I think they started calling it Joe under God. I had one of the easier commutes at Regis just walking across the park, which I think enabled my night owl behavior. I didn't do a lot of jug. I was a good boy. And I think the only time I got jug was when one year I repeatedly failed to find a place to do what Regis called Christian service, which was when you were supposed to volunteer at a parish or soup kitchen or somewhere. And for some reason I kept procrastinating

on finding a Christian service site and turning in the form, which you had to get signed by someone. As did Doug Eichmann, a friend of mine who was also not normally a miscreant. So each day we would see each other and say, got jug again? And we would both nod because neither of us had the form.

And then we would sit and stare at the wall together in some silent classroom after school. But it brought us together physically and also I think we bonded because Doug was a groomsman at my wedding and now he's the head of admissions at Regis. So clearly he reformed. I don't know if you did. Jared Ranere Does he go easy on the kids who don't find Christian service assignments? BD I don't know. I don't know. It's probably part of the cycle of punishing people for not finding a Christian service site.

It's just passed down across the generations. But you were perfectly on time for this podcast, so clearly it worked, I guess, whereas I'm an atheist despite having attended four Catholic schools, so I guess I still lack the proper respect for divine retribution. I did finally find a Christian service site though. I spent time at a community senior center talking to old folks, which I now do on this podcast for fun when I cold call elderly baseball players. So I guess I've changed too.

Elderly baseball writers too, apparently. You said it, not me. I again did not specify which year you graduated. Anyway, Jug Night is evidently what this podcast turns into when Meg is away. You said it, not me. I again did not specify which year you graduated anyway. Jug night is evidently what this podcast turns into when Meg is away. And if I'd gotten Boog Shambi and Pablo Torreon, we could have had an all Regian guest hosts lineup.

You could just do the Regis sports mafia, Pablo, John, Larry Burke, who I believe that it's, he was my editor at SI, now he edits Joe Pisanski's newsletter. There's a whole bunch of us out there. Yeah, Steve Hurt, the various Hurt's at the Alaya Sports Bureau. That's where I did my senior year internship.

I did too, and here we are today. So I guess this is all sounding very clicky and clubby and Regis grads helping Regis grads. Meg, of course, would probably not be invited to Jug Night because Regis is an all-boys school as was my grammar school St. David's which is why I barely talked to a girl until I turned 18. But that's another sadder story which I imagine might be familiar to you. I'm just going to go get some water and let you tell that one. Well now that I've confirmed some stat-head stereotypes, perhaps we should talk about

baseball and hopefully I won't jinx you because I jinxed Declan by bringing him on to talk about his, to that point, Homerless season, at which point he immediately allowed a home run to the very next batter he faced. So I don't know what the equivalent of that would be for a baseball writer, but whatever it is, watch out. I get writer's block for the next six weeks. Exactly. Well, if there were a jug for baseball executives,

Michael Iass would probably be there. Nice transition. Thank you. For having signed Craig Kimbrel, which he could have avoided if he'd simply subscribed to the Joshian baseball newsletter for a mere 79.95 per year, which is a steal certainly compared to 13 million per year for Craig Kimbrel.

And you took a little told you so victory lap of sorts, sending out a Kimbrel newsletter that you had initially sent when that signing happened. And as you noted, they now become the sixth consecutive team, the Orioles that is, dating to the 2018 Red Sox to reduce Kimbrough's role or get rid of him entirely. So you called the Kimbrough meltdown. I think we talked about it at the time too. Why were the Orioles not aware of what would happen when you signed Craig Kimbrough?

Why did teams keep falling for this? Well, this was part of a winter that they basically took off and it almost felt like they wanted to do something without spending a whole lot of money or creating a lot of future commitment. And Kimbrel is a famous guy who saved a lot of games and who still, for casual fans, the name resonates. It really felt like a winning the press conference move. But you could look at the timing, Kimbrel has been in decline. Kimbrel's five-year, six-year peak with the Braves and the Padres is unassailable. Even his first year with the Red Sox, but he's been in decline really since

16-17. And what I did back in December was I basically said, look, forget anything you might want to say about the player himself, his skill set, his velocity, his command, any of that, and just look at how the teams have treated him. And you go back to the Red Sox, basically taking him out of the closer role in the playoffs, because he wasn't pitching very well. The 19 Cubs signed him at mid season because the league didn't want to pay the compensation pick to sign him. So they waited until mid season. He didn't pitch well for the Cubs. Cubs traded them to the White Sox. He didn't pitch well for the White Sox. He was taken out of the closer role. Dodgers left him off the playoff roster in 22. In 23, the Phillies reduced his role.

So it wasn't as if you had to be some saber metric. You know, Saris, I didn't need you to Saris to figure out that Craig Kimbrough wasn't a particularly good pitcher. The teams that had employed Kimbrough had done this for five consecutive years. So to me, there was just no question. Craig Kimbrough was going to start the year as the closer and he was going to end the year. Well, I don't know if I would have predicted a 10.59 ERA over two months, but he's going to end the season

as a free agent. And it was a consistent pattern. So forget the merits of the individual signing, but to get back to what you're talking about with Elias, the Orioles were in position last winter to make big moves because they had this young core that's not making any money. The gap between what they're paying their players and what they reasonably should be paying their players in terms of payroll as a percentage of revenue is huge. I mean, Meg's been

on this all year and I give her full credit. I mean, she's really making this point that these teams aren't taking advantage of their opportunities. So this was the first thing. They did eventually trade for Corbin Burns. And they paid a big price for Burns. But even with Burns, you're talking about a team that, now I looked at COTS the other day, I think the Orioles are 23rd in payroll this year, which is ridiculous when you consider that the park is filling up again. And they had the better part of the Masson deal. And yeah, they had to pay some money to the Nationals because that finally got settled 73 years later. But to me, signing Kimbrough and not doing anything else is the crime. I mean,

so it's a bad move on its merits and it's a bad move because you didn't actually do anything. So a lot of frustration there. And like I said, I respect that front office. I respect the lie. Sig Miedel, I don't say almost 20 years now. He actually came, he spoke at an event we did at Camden earlier this year, but I don't think it's been a very good year for that front office. Yeah, they're clearly doing a lot right from a drafting and development standpoint, but then there's the polishing off the rest of the roster question and they've made some good moves there too, but yeah, they haven't had the investment. And of course that was a previous administration regime, right?

And hopefully now things will have changed. We will see the proof will be in the payroll. But the Kimbrough signing was so curious because it was so isolated, as you were just saying, if they had just been spreading money around and we'll take a closer and we'll take a sand, we'll take a star hit or whatever. Okay, then it's just a rounding error at'll take a star hit or whatever. Okay. Then it's just a rounding error at that point, even if it's 13 million. But if Craig Kimbrel is the one free agent you're breaking the bank for, why

are you straying from your, your philosophy, your miserly ways for Craig Kimbrel, you know, he's, he's not the guy that you make the exception for. And granted it's a one year deal and you've often had the refrain of there's no such thing as a bad one-year contract, right? But I think you would probably make an exception for signing Craig Kimbrel. Yeah, this is the exception that proves the rule. I mean, in the moment, it was a bad signing. And you look at the Royals, JJ Piccolo might end up as executive of the year. He made six free agent signings, but like five of them weren't good. Well, four of them weren't good. Waka actually worked out pretty well. And of course, Seth Luga is a Cy Young candidate. But the Orioles just had

the one. If Kimberl, as you say, is part of a six package and we're going to spray the board and see what we can do and bump payroll into the 130s, maybe I can even understand it then. And a lot of it is, some of it is because I'm holding the Orioles front office, I think to a higher standard. Like the Rockies do this every year and nobody blinks. Well, they've stopped doing it. But there was that stretch there where they just signed a relief into a three year deal every year. And everyone doubt, but oh, well,

that's just the Rockies again. I expect the Orioles to recognize that the best bullpens in baseball are cheap, largely inexperienced and made up of guys who, like leaving the labor issues out of it are just there to be churned. I would think the Orioles would recognize that. And I know that they panicked over the Bautista injury last September and they felt like they had to get that one power right-hander, but you're almost always better off taking 13

million for Craig Kimbrel, spreading that around to six NRIs and seeing what pops. And Bautista was a good example of that, a guy who comes out of nowhere in his mid to late 20s and is making peanuts while he's one of the most dominant relievers in the game. And so, yeah, they had to do something to replace him, but Kimbrough, any Phillies fan could have told you, don't go there, there be dragons. And of course, fan bases sometimes will develop an antipathy toward players that is not deserved, sometimes even Phillies fans perhaps. But in this case, I think just about any fan who watched Craig

Kimbrell over the past several years could tell you what that was like and that you wouldn't wish it on anyone you liked. And I guess part of it is that he's been tantalizingly dominant at times still even after his extended peak. And you mentioned that he wasn't good for the Cubs. He wasn't good for the Cubs the first couple of years he was with them. And then 2021, he had that incredible 30 plus innings where he had about a 0.5 ERA. And then the White Sox said, Ooh, we want some of that. And then he had a five ERA again. For the White Sox.

Even this year, he had a 2.1 FIP or so in the first half. Yeah, he was fine for half the season. And then he had a five year age. He had a 2.1 FIP or so in the first half. He was fine for half the season. Right. I'm not sure this guy might be good for a half season every two years is the front page of the, the Boris package. Yeah. And I guess he hadn't lost that much stuff on a sort of surface level.

I mean, he's still through hard until this year he lost a couple ticks, but he was still averaging 96, 97, even as he was struggling over the past few years. And so I guess a series of teams just kept saying to themselves, well, we can fix him, didn't work for everyone else. It backfired for them, but not us. The Tobias Bluth arrested development approach to team building. And I wonder now, do you think Craig Kimbrell will claim a seventh victim? Will

someone else now that the Orioles have designated him for assignment, I mean, he's done for the year now unless someone wants to pick him up for the last week, but he's not going to be on a playoff roster, but will anyone fall for it one more time? Will they bring him back and roll the dice next year? I think Kimbrell wants to pitch. He'll pitch and I think he'll even be able to find a guaranteed contract. It might be, you know, one in five, one in six. I don't think he'll be reduced to an NRI. I think the first half that he had, the career numbers, the velocity, I think it may be. Now he's gone from the, you know, the White Sox back when they were good, you know, all of three years ago, to the Dodgers, to the Phillies, to the Orioles. I mean, stopping when I get to a bad team, the next contract may be with the Marlins or the Rockies. But I do think

there's a guaranteed contract out for them out there for him if he wants it. Tanner Iskra And even without Craig Kimbrell, who as Sam Miller tweeted after he was DFH, I suppose may have kind of KO'd his Hall of Fame chances. I don't know how much support he would have gotten, but it would have been on a rate basis while he was dominant. His numbers actually took a significant hit just from the past few months of constantly blowing leads and also being reduced to low leverage work, though not low enough for the Orioles at times. Even without Craig Kimbrell, they're still finding ways to blow leads, including James McCann not stepping on home plate on a force play with the bases loaded. I guess we can't blame Craig Kimbrel

for that one. And you just sent out a edition of the newsletter, literally while we were speaking, just before we hit record multitasking. So I have not yet had a chance to read it, but it's about the systemic issues that have plagued the Orioles. What is going on here? A lot of it is just injury. They lost Jordan Westberg, Ryan Mountcastle, Edwin Rutchman has been playing. Edwin Rutchman had a thumb injury back in June, and you can trace his decline pretty much to that day. He's been a real problem for them in the line of cannon for power at all. He's five barrels in the last three months. So he hasn't really hit it all. They lost Grayson Rodriguez. So this has not been the Orioles team that they were in the first half. And I think the optimistic viewpoint would be to say that

they're going to get most of these guys back. Johori Mateo is out for the year, Bautista of course is out for the year, but Rodriguez possibly as a reliever, Westberg and Mountcastle are all due back. Danny Colom, a left-handed reliever, a journeyman who's actually been the best that he's been in his career the last two years for the Orioles. He's coming back. If he bumps Gregory Soto, that would help. Gregory Soto, they picked up the trade deadline from the Phillies and that's been a disaster.

Colom would be a real help in that bullpen. And this is a team, I guess we can probably say this about 11 playoff teams or the 12 team field, that's going to get a lot of innings out of its bullpen and this is a team, I guess we can probably say this about 11 playoff teams or the 12 team field, that's going to get a lot of innings out of its bullpen. Burns, Efflin or Solid 1-2, then you're talking about probably Albert Suarez or Dean Kramer in some order and those guys are going to be 18 and fly. I mean, Kramer's been okay recently, but I think you're still talking about guys who are going to pitch 18 batters and leave. So the more relievers, the more the RLs can get back.

So yeah, the offense has been an issue, the bullpen has been a big issue. But again, if we can see that they're five back and they're not going to win the division, but they're also four and a half up on the Tigers, so they're probably not going to blow a playoff spot. All that matters now is putting your best team on the field in, what was it, 12 days. And I think the Orioles are positioned to do that. Yes. The Orioles playoff odds as we speak here on Thursday afternoon, 98.6%, which is a healthy temperature for a baseball team and a human body. And I suppose this is maybe the first time in recorded history that the Fangrass playoff odds are reassuring Orioles fans. Sorry that Meg is missing this, but they, even if they maintain their hold on a wild card spot, let's say

there are some other teams that are blowing big leads and again, not because of Craig Kimbrel. So I wanted to talk for a moment about those because there is a chance that we will get a few teams that at one point this season looked like locks, at least according to those odds, and yet may find themselves on the outside looking in when next month rolls around. There are four teams, by my calculations, that at one point were 90 plus percent likely to make the playoffs, according to fan graphs, and are now either extremely unlikely to make the playoffs according to fan graphs and are now either extremely unlikely to make the playoffs or are at considerable risk of missing the playoffs. Not the Orioles, but the Braves, the Twins, the Diamondbacks, and of course Meg's Mariners. And I have some stats here

and some numbers on their previous playoff odds and their current ones. And I want to ask you to essentially power rank the potential flops here. And I guess I'll start with the Braves just as I read out these numbers because the Braves were locks or looked on as locks before the season started. And then a lot happened since then. So frequent stat-less consultant correspondent,

Ryan Nelson noted recently on Twitter that the Braves had a 98.5% chance to make the playoffs per FanCrafts preseason projections, which was the second highest figure for any team since the FanCrafts playoff odds started in 2014. The only other team that was seen as more of a lock as the season started the 2018 Houston Astros coming off of the sign stealing season, or I guess still in the midst of some version of sign stealing, they were at 98.8%. And the Braves may blow that, only four teams in that now decade long period have had 90 plus percent preseason odds and missed the playoffs. It's the 2021 Padres who were at 92.3,

the 2019 Red Sox at 90.6, the 2019 Not Yet Guardians at 94.6 and the 2015 Nationals at 94.6. So the Braves this year, they peaked playoff odds wise on April 26th at 99.5%. Their most recent time at 90 or above was July 19th at 94.4. Currently they're 52.1 and that will likely have changed

by the time people hear this. Okay, so that's the Braves. Then you've got the Diamondbacks who peaked at 96.8% on August 25th. Most recently they were over 90 on September 12th at 93.8% on August 25th. Most recently, they were over 90 on September 12th at 93.4 and now they're down to 77.5 as they jockey with the Mets and the Braves for that final wild card spot in the National League.

Then in the AL, you've got the Twins who are trying and mostly failing to fend off the red hot Detroit Tigers that I talked to Jason Benetti about last time. The twins peaked at 95.8% on September 2nd, most recently over 90 on September 12th, very recently at 90.8 and now they're down to 72.4 with just a half game lead over the Tigers. Finally, Megs Mariners peaked

and also were most recently over 90 and they were briefly there, maybe only for a day at 91.7% on June 18th. Now they are at 3.1%. So tell me which would be the biggest case of blowing it if a team were to miss the playoffs. Let me make the philosophical point up front, which is that I don't use playoff odds very often. I occasionally use them as an organizing principle, like, OK, I want to just rank teams in some way and talk about.

And this goes to a conversation we've been having for years. The internal variance of baseball teams is wider than whatever you think it is. So I firmly believe that playoff odds overestimate the teams at the top and underestimate the teams at the bottom. So I don't think the Mariners were ever in 91, whatever percent of chance it was to make the playoffs because that was treating their hot streak as if it was real and not basically

taking enough of an account of the fact that they were eventually going to have a cold streak. You do this for every team in every year. I just think playoff odds are basically too extreme. They just don't account enough for the fact that teams bounce up and down all year long. And again, I know we've been having this fight about banked wins and if a team starts out 10 and 0 and you thought they were a 500 team, you know, what do you project them in the rest of the way? I want to have that fight today. I just want to make the point that I think broadly speaking,

all of those numbers are high relative to what the playoff odds were actually. If we could know some God came down and said, these are the playoff odds. I made the philosophical point. Let's put the Braves in a completely different category because I think they are a different category. The Braves didn't collapse. The Braves have lost two of the five best players in the league for last year and they've lost a bunch of other guys on top of that. If the Braves go 85 and 77 and miss the playoffs, I think you give them a round of applause and you say, we'll see you next year. Because they've endured so much in terms of injury.

Good things have happened. Spencer Schwellenbach has stepped up. Charlie Morton's been better, especially in the second half than I expected him to be. But by and large, this is entirely just, you had that year and you just give them a complete pass. As far as the other three, and this is where just you had that year and you just give them a complete pass. As far as the other three, and this is where I get into the playoff odds

being a moment in time, all three of those teams, the Twins, Diamondbacks and Mariners, all three of those teams are going to finish roughly around where we would have projected them to finish at the start of the year. And the idea that their playoff odds got to a certain point, I think again, is giving too much credence to the in-season variance. As far as in order, I'll probably be most disappointed by the Twins. I had them winning the division this year. Obviously, that's not going to happen now.

We had two losses this week to the Guardians. They went into Cleveland this week with a chance to sweep the Guardians and make that possible. That's not going to happen. Injuries have been a big part of their story. They were actually in really good shape until they lost Joe Ryan. losing Joe Ryan is in addition to everything else to me has been a real issue. They filled that spot. That spot has really got knocked around for them. I want to say since Ryan left, they're like one in six, I think, in that rotation spot. Obviously, when you build around Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa, you kind of don't get to complain about injuries, but that's certainly been part of their story. Correa and Buxner are back now, but if you watch them, they're clearly not a hundred percent. And I think if it was May, they wouldn't be playing right now, but it's September and it's now or never. So you're on the field. But I think injuries are part of their story. I don't think you can separate their winter.

We talked about the Orioles. The Queens took the winter off, kind of waving the Valley Sports we're poor now flag and not taking advantage of a core that isn't really, I mean, they're making more money because Korea is part of that mix, but they signed Santana, that's turned out really well, but they could have used a little more pitching, they probably could have used one more hitter. I love their player development. They just constantly bring up these guys who hit, Walder and Larnac, and Julian's not having a really good year this year, but I mean, he was great last year. I mean, they've done a really good job player development, but they're not spending enough

money around it. And again, I don't want to get a sidetracked on this today. And again, I want to make the point, I think Meg's done a really good job hammering front offices for this this year. But if they miss the playoffs by three games, it's going to be hard not to look at the winter or even the trade deadline where all they did was pick up Trevor Richards and say, this was a reparable problem that you guys didn't address. Tanner Iskra What they should have done is trade away some of their best players like the Tigers did and then success would have ensued. Jeff Sarris

If you just traded Joe Ryan, you guys would have been fine. No, I, so I think I've been mostly disappointed by their, and they could still get in. I mean, they're in playoff position today. Obviously the Tigers are the big story. It's interesting because of how disappointing the rest of the American league is. This could have been a more interesting race, but the Red Sox and Mariners and Rays have just not done anything for like six weeks.

If you told me, if I'd said on July 31st, it's gonna take 85 wins to win the AL, the last AL wild card spot. I would have thought all of those teams would have been a factor. And they just kind of trundled along playing 475 baseball for three months. Really disappointing. Like the Red Sox and Rays this week just split two games. That didn't help anybody. One of you guys, the Red Sox, and even at that, the Red Sox still have a punch, this series, this is actually one of the best remaining series, the

biggest remaining series in the league. This weekend, the twins go to Boston and they play the Red Sox. The Red Sox can sweep this series and actually have the 76 and 76 with a week and a half to play. If they sweep the Twins, they might actually go to the playoffs. So we still got a lot to go on it, but I put the Twins next in that list, then probably the Mariners. And again, it didn't have to be this way because you've got, I say one of the all-time great

rotations because somebody's going to pull up the 1946 Browns or something on it. But in terms of recent memory with the way we structure starting rotations today, the Mariners really have a standout one. The Brian Wu injury at the start of the year, the Luis Castillo hamstring recently, but they've been stable and they've been excellent. And it's just been really something to see them potentially squander this with an offense that it's funny. If you look, they're actually like a 97, Wader Ritz created a plus. The offense isn't as bad as Maradona fans will complain. It just, it hasn't really produced a lot of runs.

There's been a lot of focus on the strikeouts. They are going to set the all time record for strikeout rate and for raw strikeouts, but it's actually everything else. Last year, they had the second highest strikeout rate in baseball. This year, it's the highest. They're striking out more, but the real difference is everything they do when they don't strike out. You're a stat head, you know, strikeouts are an effect.

They're a product of walks and power, the side effect, the weight. And this year, the Mariners are walking, but they're not hitting for anything like power. And I forget if it was you in another podcast, maybe Reid's and Bowers talking about T Mobile Park and how the ball flies there and whether it's a visibility issue with the background. It's definitely been a weird year in Seattle. I think we've got to consider that we're talking about both the pitching and the offense. I think they're going to be a big disappointment because of the rotation. I've spoken for a long time. You also want to mention the Astros were never as bad as they looked in the first. So some of that 10 game lead and 90 whatever percent playoff odds was the Astros just having their really bad stretch

in the first two months of the season. And they'd more or less played like the Astros in the four months since then. So it's not just the Mariners being bad. It's the Astros being good. Yes. And I guess the fourth team, the Diamondbacks, again, they had that monster offense. They still lead the NL, possibly all of baseball, and run scored, which is, that'll win you a lot of beers at the bar, if you pop that question out there. Tremendous second half, Carroll's bounced back.

Eugenio Suarez, not to pick on Mariners fans, but that's worked out really well. Katel Marte, not to pick on Mariners fans. I don't know that they were ever quite as good as they looked when they were at their hottest. They're good. Another team that's probably going to end up within two or three games of where I projected them. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm an Oracle, but if you look at anybody's projections, the Twins Mariners or Diamondbacks are going to end up fairly close to where they were projected, whether it was fan

graphs or BP or an individual making projections at ESPN or Fox or wherever you might get your baseball information. I don't think any of these teams are that far from where they were expected to be. Yeah. And I guess in the Twins case, it's maybe that the Guardians have been better than people expected them to be, right? And, and the Tigers too, potentially, because yeah, there was a lot of criticism. I know Meg and I talked about it when the twins basically sat on their hands this off season and also at the trade deadline. And this winter I criticized it, but I also sort of understood it or at least didn't think that they would really pay a price for it

because I thought that they would still probably be able to coast to a division title there. And now there's a question of whether they will even be able to cling to this last wild card spot, but they did put themselves in that position to some extent. And so I think that does kind of enhance the ignominy of these potential playoff fumbles. If you lose Acuna and Strider and half of the rest of your roster, that's one thing. But if you just don't have those guys to begin with, or you don't have depth, now the Braves didn't really have a whole lot of depth either, and they just didn't need it before this season. Whereas the twins were expected to need it and just didn't really plan accordingly. And then the Mariners we've talked about probably more than anyone wants

to hear about the Mariners. So, but I guess I'm glad that there are at least a couple of playoff spots up for grabs here because I do think that if you told everyone, hey, there are no great teams this year, you would think that while we'd be compensated for that by just having a lot of close races at least, and we just haven't really had that. And so it looked until very recently that only one playoff spot would be up for grabs and that it would basically come down to Braves versus Mets, whereas now you've got the Diamondbacks involved and you also have this AL spot, which is very tightly contested now. So there are still reasons to watch and there's some really exciting regular season series left such as some you mentioned or Braves versus Mets with that spot and also the tiebreaker

at stake and all the rest. I mean, that will be sort of a playoff atmosphere when those two teams tangle. So I guess it's worse than I would have hoped given the overarching conditions here, but better than it looked like it was going to be a week or two ago. Soterios Johnson Whatever the league will say, every playoff expansion dating to 1994, I mean, 1969, look, we have 24 teams now. We can't just have two playoff spots. But you go back to 94 with the expansion to eight teams and everyone since then has been entirely about postseason television revenue, about getting that money that gets evenly

distributed to every single team and the expansion in 94, the expansion in 2012 to five teams, which is really about a reaction to 2011 and then the expansion to 12 teams and future expansions to 14 and 16 and 38 teams. We have 32 team league with 38 playoff teams. I think that's Bud Seelig's dream. But all of this has really been about the postseason revenue. It's not been about September, it's been about October. And I make this point to say that there's no way to structure your league to guarantee races. Like if you had even in the,

I'm a guy who'll talk about the great races that we did have in the 1980s and under the four division format that I grew up with, and I'll talk about the great races, but a lot of years there weren't great races. You'd have a team would be up eight going into September and that would be that. There's no way to structure your league to guarantee races. The distribution of wins is not predictable in any given year. In recent years, we've had four teams get to 100 wins and the division races haven't been all that interesting, but there's been clusters of mediocre teams, particularly the National League, chasing those last couple of playoff spots.

And it just so happens this year that the distribution of wins is a bit different where you could say, well, you know, if we had division races, things would be more. And that was true up until about a week ago until the Orioles fell apart. And, you know, we don't really would not have had division races. Oh, well, if you had four 17 divisions, yes, we can do this all day. But there's just no way to project the distribution of wins. So what you get in September is a little bit random. All we know, and this has been my hobby horse,

is that if you lower the threshold for getting into the playoffs, you shift the focus from really good teams to mediocre teams. And that's what we get every year now. We don't care about who wins the ALE. We haven't cared about division championships since the 1990s.

You know, the Dodgers, the Braves, the Guardians, then Indians, whoever they are, could win a bunch of different championships, but nobody really cares about them. They care about what you do in October. So we can say that, you know, the Auras and Yankees were fighting for the ALE's crown, but really they're fighting for seating.

That's all just about playoff seating. Nobody remembers NBA division titles. It's just all about seating. So that's the choices that MLB has made. I just want to make the point that in any given year, what we get in September is pretty much luck at this point. It's just random and we can't determine it. As for the playoff odds, I think you're right that in some ways we're over reliant on them.

And I don't calculate the odds. I don't produce the odds, but I definitely cite them, I think, and study them maybe more than you do. And I know Ben Clemens took a look at that a few years ago and found that they were fairly well calibrated in the sense that if the FanGrafts playoff odds historically have said that team X had a Y percent chance to make the playoffs, then roughly Y percent of those teams have ended up making the playoffs. And obviously, if you have a bunch of teams projected to be 90% favorites, well, one out of 10 of those is expected to blow it. That's how probability and projections work.

And I actually asked Ben to take a look at this specific question, how many teams have had a 90 plus percent chance to make the playoffs at any point in the season and have ended up missing the playoffs? And the answer is 14 in 10 seasons. The Brewers in 2014, the Angels and Nationals in 2015, no one in 2016 or 17, the Nats again in 2018, 2019 was the most, Cleveland, the Cubs and the Red Sox, 2020 the Phillies, 2021 the Mets and Padres, 2022 the Brewers and Giants, and 2023 the Mariners and Cubs. So it's not unheard of to have a couple teams below those chances, but again, that's 14 teams.

And then I think there were 110 teams that actually made the playoffs combined in those years. And so obviously they had 90 plus percent chances. So that's 14 out of 124 that missed or about 11.3%, which means that of those teams with a 90 plus percent chance to make the playoffs at any point in the season, 89% of them made it. So that sounds about right.

And I do think that when we have this tool of constantly updating multiple times per day playoff odds, then we can get glued to that in a way that perhaps is unhelpful, I suppose. It's like if you're looking at projections of who's going to win the presidential election every single day, there are going to be fluctuations and you're going to freak out one way or another if your preferred candidate dips or gets a little boost, but then it will kind of come back to the equilibrium, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective. I can't think of any former colleagues of mine who face that problem on a daily basis.

Exactly. So maybe we run into the same thing with the playoff odds where even though historically they have worked quite well as that unnamed former colleagues have, if you look at the testing of those, then maybe, yes, a team starts slow and we read a little too much into that potentially. But I think it might still be notable if two or three of these seeming locks. Ah, that's where you get in trouble.

Yes, well, I guess if you're looking not just at preseason odds, but at odds on every single day, then you're going to have more teams that clear that threshold at some point over the season. I just come back to first principles. The in-season variance of baseball teams is wider than whatever you think it is. It's funny because you're the variance swamps everything guy and I'm with you on that. And yet you make predictions, which I typically issue because I assumed that I wouldn't be any better at them than predictions that other people can consult. But you go through the whole exercise every spring of issuing the

full, not the Picotas, but the Sheeans. So you don't have a snappy name or acronym for them, I guess, but you have a whole, you know, this team's going to score this many runs and allow that many runs. And I'm sure that is a helpful exercise just in preparing for the season and knowing who's on every team and what do I actually think of these teams. But then you do sort of stick with your predictions throughout the season. Whereas if someone forces me to make mine, I instantly forget what they were. Cause I just kind of discount my own capacity to predict anything better than

whatever the best available info out there is. Right. I don't think I can beat Vegas, which is going to be relevant to our, our next segment in a second here. And I kind of doubt that I could beat the playoff odds that are published elsewhere too. So I wonder how you square that. swamps everything. We know nothing, Jon Snow approach to baseball, can't predict baseball, Susan, I guess, with that sort of wanting to stick with your predictions, which I know you do just because you don't want to be constantly

flip-flopping and predicting that 10 different teams are going to win, you know, a single playoff spot somehow, right? So there's value and consistency, I suppose, but then in sort of sticking with your priors as we get new information, I guess you're sort of saying that you must have known what you were talking about at one point. Well, it's because I'm making predictions for 162 games. And in June, I've still made my predictions for 162 games. Now, the one reset that I do is with the third-third previews in August.

And this is when, I think last time, you and I talked about it, where basically, I'm going to be biased towards my preseason predictions in part because of that consistency point. 12 teams make the playoffs, there are 30 teams in the league. If at some point you're predicting 20 different teams to make the playoffs, what value are you really adding? Now, I'm not ridiculous about this. I had the Blue Jays winning the American League East. And when I did the reset

in August, I didn't have the Blue Jays winning the American League East. Let's not be silly. But on the margins, I had the Guardians out. And honestly, for about two weeks there, that actually looked like a really good prediction. And the Guardians righted themselves and the Rays aren't going to make the playoffs. I'm going to end up wrong about these things. But just from a, integrity is a bad word for something this minor, but I would rather make one set of predictions as sick to them than rather just constantly change and be able to say at the end of the day, well, I had the maritimes in the playoffs, guys. I don't know what you're talking about. It was on June 22nd and then June 29th and then August 8th,

but I had them in the playoffs. So that's really, a lot of it is an integrity thing. As far as the predictions at the start of the year, I think a lot of what we do as writers is tell people, hey, look, this is what we expect to happen and here's why. The why is a big part of it. When I do the playoff predictions, it's similar. It's, look, I'm going to tell you,

I think it's Reds in four. No, I'm gonna tell you it's Reds in six because that's going to annoy Lindbergh. But the important thing isn't Reds in six, it's the thousand words in front of Reds in six. Like it's not, it's how you get this. So when I do my predictions at the start of the year, yes, I stand by them. I go back in March, I might do in November this year and go back and say, Hey, look, this is what I got right. This is what I got wrong. I think it is an accountability there. If you're going to make forward facing statements and guys like us make a thousand of them a year, you've got to be willing

to go back and say, okay, I got these wrong. Well, I got the Braves wrong because they lost their, their guys. I got the Blue Jays wrong because I was wrong about Bo Bichette. You know, he turned out to not be a very good player. I was wrong about their bullpen. Some of that was injuries. Some of that was underperformance. I want to be able to say both these are my forward facing predictions and this is what I learned from the right and the wrong of them. I think it's part of the process of the writer. And look, there are things you do just to hit certain notes and you don't and I respect that, but I think there are things you do awards. I basically reduced my Hall of Fame

coverage to one sidebar at the end of the year because I hate the Hall of Fame now. I should say I hate the process and the election and the plaque rule. I think my Hall of Fame coverage to one sidebar at the end of the year, because I hate the Hall of Fame now. I should say, I hate the process and the election and the plaque rule. I think the Hall of Fame is a wonderful museum. Everybody should go. But the process of selecting Hall of Famers is diseased at this point. But there's certain notes you have. Preseason predictions, I think, are a note you have to hit. Everybody's excited.

It's March. Let's get excited for the baseball season. Let's present these. Right. It adds value from an entertainment standpoint, even if it doesn't add value necessarily from an accuracy standpoint, I guess it may or may not. And I guess it's helpful to have people predicting things and just kind of going with their gut.

I mean, you're not going with your gut. You're analyzing things, but you're not just defaulting to, well, the playoff odds say this, and If everyone did that, then we would just have herding around that single number or two numbers if you look at prospectus or somewhere else. That might be boring. I don't know that it would be any less accurate unless you're looking back through your past predictions and saying, hey, I beat the house on these things and billing yourself as some sort of tout, which is not really what you're doing when you're producing your just for fun preseason productions. It's just something where I'm not gonna crow

about what I got right or ignore what I got wrong, probably just because I probably forget what I said in the first place because I just don't put a whole lot of stock, I guess, in my capacity to predict things. And I don't know that anyone's coming to me for that. I think they're coming to me mostly for commentary or retrospective analysis or other things

where I can flesh stuff out after the fact or as something's going on, not because they think I'm some sort of Nostradamus, but this is what people expect, it is true. And I enjoy reading your prediction. So you're right. My problem is I'll get 10, 11 teams within three games of their accurate. And my feeling is that if I tell you a team is going to go 87 and 75, that's the midpoint of like a six game range.

Like that, if they go, you know, they win 84 to 90 games, I consider that accurate, but I'm going to focus on the Cubs who I'm going to miss by 12 games. Like that's what I'm going to take from this season. And I was so wrong about the Cubs or I was, I had the Royals as the most improved team in baseball and I'm still going to miss them by 10, 11 games. I think we're all wrong about it. But again, you can look at it and say, okay, well what, what happened? Was this a failure of analysis or was this just one of those things like the Cub, like the Royals keeping an entire rotation healthy all year and having the best performance in baseball with runners in scoring position? I think figuring out the why is a big part of it.

And I don't know, I can't do, I was a stat head 30 years ago when it was involved algebra. And I can't do what a lot of the top young analysts do. I'm open about that. I look at what a Ben does, Robert Orr at Prospectus, Davey Andrews, it's incredible young minds working with tools that didn't

exist when I was starting out. I've gotten more adept. I use Savant as much as I can, but I can't do what some of these other kids do. So I'm, I say kids, you know, probably it's like 35. But I just, I have to, you know, kind of say, Hey, look, you know, where, where am I trying to add my value? And I'm from, you know, I'm trying to do that with the newsletter and you know, write it up as best as I can. But, you know, you got to recognize that. I mean, the stuff I was at the Saber Analytics for the first time this year, where they did the thing honoring the original five perspectives again, Gary Huckabay, I'm watching some of these presentations, Ben, and I'm just, I got my hand in my hands, like these guys, these college kids are speaking

a different language and it's interesting and it's fascinating and it's like trying to understand German. I'm just, I'm in awe of what younger and analysts are doing right now. And I recognize what's important to me. And you came up a little bit later, like the tone has changed a little bit by the time you came up, but I never want to be the old writer saying, same sifted wake. It's so important to me to say even if I don't completely grok IVB, this is important. It's the language of the game now. It's not just outsiders telling you OVP is better than batting average. It's the pitchers wanting this information. It's the coaches teaching them this stuff. This is the language of the game now. So I think it's incredibly important to not be

Maury Brown, sorry Maury, Murray Chess and just railing against this stuff. You had Dan Simborski, the digital dandy on yesterday. I think our generation of stat heads has to be embracing of this stuff, even if a lot of it sometimes is a little hard to grasp. Yes.

Marie Chass famously dubbed Dan the digital dandy, which Dan has embraced. I think it's in his Twitter bio. I would too. And by the way, I agree with you. Making a perfect prediction doesn't mean that you nailed the win total. Precisely. People have found that the natural limit of accuracy when it comes to projections is 6 plus wins. Even if you had perfect knowledge about that team's true talent, there's too much randomness

to nail it on the dot. So yeah, you can build in a buffer. And that's one reason why I continue to read every word you write about baseball at the Joshian Baseball newsletter, that commitment to the continuing education about the game, and also because we disagree about stuff sometimes, mostly not, mostly I'm on the same page, but every now and then we will differ. And I suppose the advisability of predicting sweeps

is one way or making predictions in general, or certainly we have clashed about framing and robo-lumps and that sort of thing, but I always understand where you're coming from. And one way in which we differ, though not entirely, is in your affinity for gambling, which is something that you have done or had interest in really your whole life.

And so the rest of the world has kind of caught up to you, I suppose, but you are not entirely dissimilar from me and Meg. You are in the sense that you are at all interested in sports betting and do sports betting and you have a sort of separate breakout edition of the Joshian newsletter, which is just the gaming newsletter where you make picks and break down odds and such. And yet you also recognize and respect and share some of the complaints that we have.

And I'm quoting from a recent edition of your gaming newsletter where you wrote, whether in person or watching on a screen, baseball fans have been inundated with one message, bet. It was naive of me to think it would be different, of course, but the speed at which everything changed and the heavy-handedness of the messaging has shocked me. I want sports gambling to be legal. I also want to find a way for it to be a net positive for everyone involved.

Maybe we can't have both those things. The rest of this decade and probably the next one will be spent seeking a balance that simply may not exist. And you were sharing some recent research that showed some of the harms to places that have adopted and legalized sports betting in the US. And you see debt loads increase and you see bankruptcy increase,

and credit scores decrease, and credit card delinquencies, and as you pointed out, some of the most financially at-risk people are the ones who pay the literal price for this. And so you, like us, want to kind of cordon this off in a way that it won't do damage, and that's why you do that at your newsletter,

where you provide that content, but only if people want it. And if they don't, then they can not opt into that. And it would be great if that were the case across the board, but it is very much not. And I bring that up because, well, there have been a couple news items about gambling and laws and lawsuits recently. One is that the MLB Players Association is suing some of the big gambling providers, DraftKings, Fandl, etc. for using the names and likenesses of players on their platforms without permission. They have headshots on the apps and the players didn't give their permission to do

that, so they're suing for that reason. And then more sweepingly and broadly, because it's not as if players themselves are really totally against gambling, though they are certainly against some of the effects of gambling, such as people messaging them death threats when they have a bad game. But there are some initial efforts at reform here. So a couple of Democrats, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Representative Paul Tonko of our state, New York introduced a bill which seems very unlikely to go anywhere.

I'm sure that it will be DOA in Congress. It's called the Safe Bet Act. And it is sweeping legislation that would impose a lot of constraints and roll back a lot of the gambling creep that we have seen. And it's been criticized. I've seen not only from people inside the industry, but even from some fellow Democrats and who knows, you know, I'm sure there's all sorts of lobbying dollars here that people are being supported by interests that do not want to see this bill gain any support.

But prop betting on collegiate sports would be banned nationally. It would call for the formation of a nationwide self-exclusion list, which gambling operators would have to check before accepting wagers from customers, which is almost, it sounds like a, you know, robo call, do not call lists sort of solution, I guess. And then there are also measures. It would prevent operators from accepting more than five deposits from a single customer within a 24 hour period, prohibit operators from accepting credit card deposits, require gambling companies to conduct affordability checks on customers before they place wagers of more than a thousand bucks.

Then there are also limitations on advertising. So it would prohibit gambling operators from running advertisements between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. and during live sporting events. It would put an end to the practice of offering customers bonus bets, no sweat bets and other similar incentives. Goes on and on, right? So what do you make of this measure? And if this one proves to be unrealistic as someone who is more pro betting and certainly pro legality, but is also anti-innundation and preying on people who can't bet responsibly, what would you propose that might

protect the people who don't want or can't handle this stuff, would allow those whose betting experience is positive to continue to partake and could actually perhaps pass? Starting from the micro, could they still advertise on podcasts? Because if they can't advertise on podcasts anymore, the entire sports podcast industry goes away. Except for Effectively Wild. Thanks to our Patreon supporters, please support us. But yes. I think it was Tommy Crax recently that thought about this,

about the way that it's kind of propping up the sports podcast industry. But there's a lot in that bill. And some of it makes sense. And some of it, you know, checking people's income to see if they can bet $1,000 is going to be a non-starter, just from an administrative standpoint. By the way, the way ESPN put this at least, it would establish a nationwide ban on sports

betting requiring the 38 states where sports wagering has already been legalized to go through a new application process with the Justice Department and then the Attorney General. Things that aren't going to happen.com. Right. Exactly. Yes. Big picture though, like a federal approach here is probably the best one. I think that the operators would prefer this. What we had, so 1992, the professional and amateur

sports something act gets passed. Bill Bradley, the Senator, the former basketball player is behind it. And effectively it grandfathers in Nevada and a couple of other states that didn't really have a sports gambling set up and says everywhere else sports gambling is legal. So, offshore happens, fantasy happens, DFS happens. By the 2010s, a lot of the states are like, we would really like to have sports gambling. New Jersey was the big, New Jersey desperately trying to save Atlantic City as they've been 40 years, is forefront of this. Basically, Sue's passport gets overturned in 2018 on the case of state rights, which is basically, this isn Basically, Seuss, Passport gets overturned in 2018

on the case of state rights, which is basically, this isn't covered in the constitution, you can't say the states can't do this. So all of a sudden now, we have 50 different, I don't know, 50 whatever with Guam and Puerto Rico, whatever,

administrations for sports betting. And Jersey immediately says, sports betting is legal here. And over the next few years, 30 odd states now have legal sports betting. California and Texas are the two big ones, which is why I never see my friends in California. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But it's basically legal, but it's on a state by state basis. Now, some states have, you know, 10% on profit tax thing. New York has

like a, you're serious, 50% tax on it. I mean, there's all these, there's different regulations in every state. Some states don't let you bet on their college teams. Some states do. It's a mess right now. So the idea that there would be a national law governing this is actually a good thing. But of course, good luck getting Congress to pass anything of substance at this point, right?

I mean, this is just where we are as a nation. This is why I don't think there's, probably a decade out from this at best. I like the ideas that are being presented, many of the ideas that are being presented. Could you get no gambling advertisements during sporting events? No, that's not going to happen. You have this 8 to 10, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. thing, or this not during the game thing. No. But the NFL has specifically said you can only have so many of them in our games. Like MLB could do that. A lot of the pregame and a lot of the shoulder programming

has gambling elements to it. MLB network has gambling elements to it. ESPN has a gaming show at 6.30 every night. Some of those you could probably reduce. I mean, I think you're gonna get rid of like the nightly show, but could you say, hey, look, we're gonna reduce the gambling segments. The gambling segments during the game, what was it?

It might not have been last year, it might have been two years ago, you had Joe Buck pushing in-game betting during the World Series. I mean, could we be, no, we don't, that's the kind of stuff that really, I think, is alienating people. It's one thing to say,

betting on the Phillies minus 145 tonight should be legal. It's another thing to shove it down the throats of people who might not want it, who really don't want it. This is where I think the parallel, it was probably in the article you sent me to cigarette advertising, comes in handy. Like you would never have, you know, Joe Buck pitching Marlboros during the game.

And maybe that's, we've got to kind of draw some lines around the games themselves. Like if you go to, if you go to city field now, you take the escalator up and you're hit with the Caesar sports book. There's gaming advertisements all over the ballpark. Maybe that's got to come back. Maybe we've got to find a way. I'm trying to be realistic here to find a way to carve out where the games are played and the experience of watching the game, similar to what I've done with the newsletter and say, hey, look,

we've got to kind of keep this space. I don't want to use the word sacred, but apart from it, you should be able to go to a ballpark and not be hit with this stuff. I don't want to use the word sacred, but apart from it, you should be able to go to a ballpark and not be hit with this stuff. I mean, uh, what is it? Cap Center or wherever the capital is playing now that's got a sports book inside it. Wrigley, does Wrigley have a sports book inside it? It might. Yeah. I mean, everybody bets on mobile now, so it doesn't really matter. Right. But I mean, this was, it just, I, to me, that's the line to draw. The games themselves, not hitting all the fans with this stuff. Make it available to the people who want it, again, like cigarettes, and kind of keep it away from the people who don't.

And I think that's reasonable. And that's why my frustration with MLB isn't that you can bet on these things right now. My frustration is the way MLB, an $11 billion industry run by incredibly rich people, has run around picking nickels off the ground over the last few years and scrambling for every penny they can get out of the gaming system. You don't need this money and there are negative externalities. A lot of people don't want this stuff. Yeah, and I'm with you in the sense that I don't necessarily think it should be banned either, not that I would miss it one bit, but I just wish it could be more responsible, less predatory, less in our faces at all times. And I'm focusing on MLB here. I mean, there's a whole conversation

about the operators themselves. And this is, I think the law is kind of, I mean, there are all kinds of problems with problem gaming. I mean, the operators do have mechanisms in place. And you mentioned that you compare the self exclusion to the do not call list. It's not, it's more effective than that. You can limit how much you're allowed to bet yourselves, but they're not going to limit that for you. In the same way that if you go to Caesar's

and sit down at the blackjack table, they're not going to stop you there either. So I think that's a fairly consistent point. But I think it's more realistic to focus on what the leagues can do and the media partners can do than expecting Congress to step in with laws because I mean, maybe that's just overly cynical about where our federal government at this point is. But I think we would get a really bad law out of this.

Yeah, I know it's not necessarily in our national character, what with American exceptionalism and so forth to look to and learn from other countries and follow other countries' leads, but of course we were late to legalization and other countries that were earlier to that have seen all of these effects happen and have been sounding the alarm

and raising the red flags for years at this point. And in some cases have imposed regulation. You look at Europe and the UK and you can see that there have been crackdowns on when you can advertise and how you can advertise and who can serve as a spokesperson for these sports books. And so- Didn't they ban Jersey ads in the Premier League? I think so. Yes. I may be getting this from Calcutta who follows the right. But I think they banned ads on the Jersey. So again, they recognize that there's

definitely a problem here. And you know, we got Strauss, the late Joe Strauss, the tribute to the late Joe Strauss on the helmets this winter. So, you know, but in two years, could that be Caesar sports book? And you know, at that point, do people react? I don't know. I just, this conversation is one worth having. And maybe it takes five, 10, 15 years to get to a better place. But I will say that the turn in the last six months to having these conversations is a good thing. I don't want to see anything get banned. The article that you mentioned was from Slow Boring.

It was published in Craig Conqueterra's newsletter. I borrowed it from Craig and did my whole riff on it. Coincidentally, I made a mistake in distribution that was only supposed to go to the gaming. Yes, that's why I saw it because I'm not on the... Much as I like your work, I'm not on the gaming newsletter. It just was an accident in distribution. I sent it to the main list and it turns out like if I'm going to make that mistake, it was a good day to make it.

But this stuff is starting to affect my, like am I contributing to the downfall of society by having a gaming newsletter, by giving it, and I know I've made my peace with what I do. Again, there's a 630 ESPN show every night. You know, I think I'm okay with what I do, but I don't know, I think by and large, we've screwed this up over the last six years.

And I'm not, I think more about the negative effects of it and lives being ruined to be dramatic about it. But when you're reading that report that was published at Slow Boring about where you can actually trace bankruptcies and mispayments and debt to the states that have legal sports gambling was, what was a wake up call for me. And I'm more on the side of we've got to try to fix this somehow. And again, my bailiwick is MLB. I'm going to say MLB and MLB's partners should do it, but eventually we're going to need a federal solution. I just don't know what that's going to look like. Again, I don't think I wouldn't trust our federal government to make the lunch order right now. And as you say, we like to think we can keep our hands and our conscience clean here at

Effectively Wild thanks to the generosity of our supporters, but it would be devastating for sports media, an industry that's already reeling. And I'd not be immune to that either because of course, the ringer, which is my day job, has plenty of gambling content and gambling partnerships. So it's very difficult to not be tied to that somehow, even if you're not personally interested in it or covering it. And I'd also say that I tend to be more of a gradualist or incrementalist, I guess, politically when it comes to trying to move the needle on things, as opposed to, I guess, the philosophy of let's shift the Overton window by proposing something really radical and extreme and then we'll

meet in the middle somehow. And I don't know that that always works. It might sometimes, but also sometimes you propose something that seems way out there and you end up alienating people and making them less receptive to some marginal gains and bit by bit, which is often how a lot of change in progress happens. So if the idea behind this bill is, hey, let's just get the conversation started and maybe some portions of this will someday show up in something that we can pass and that people

will be on board with, then with that, I'm good. And I'm glad again that someone is at least proposing this regardless of whether it goes anywhere for the moment. Now last thing I wanted to ask you about because you're both a baseball and a basketball guy. There was some sports media news that really perked everyone up, I think, regardless of what sports they cover or follow on Wednesday. And that was the retirement, at least as a basketball newsbreaker of the fabled Woj, Adrian Wojnarowski, who dropped, I guess, one last basketball related Woj bomb, which

was about a Cleveland Cavaliers signing for three years. That's the one he went out with, I guess, the Isaac Okoro signing. And then he dropped one last Woj bomb, maybe the biggest of all, which was breaking the news of his own retirement. And speaking of all the modders, he's going back to one of his St. Bonaventure to be the general manager of the Bonnie's men's basketball team and presumably bringing all of his connections and attention getting to that new NIL world

of college sports. And this took plenty of people by surprise and he received the honor, I suppose, of an ESPN report that was co-authored by baseball newsbreaker Jeff Passon, football newsbreaker Adam Schefter, and college football newsbreaker Pete Thammell. So they kind of collectively united to pay tribute, I suppose.

Newsbreaker super friends. Yes, exactly. To Woj. And it just made me think about the distinctions between newsbreakers like Woj and the heir apparent Shamshirania, who is reportedly an impending free agent and is, I'm guessing, going to get a raise. And Adam Schefter in the NFL, and the leading baseball newsbreakers who would probably be Passen and Ken Rosenthal. And I've made this point before, but it seems to me that there is a substantive difference there in the type of work that they do. Now, they do all the same, so same so and so is signing such and such, right? But they also

do a lot of substantive writing and reporting and journalism. That's not just the, hey, I scooped the team press release by five minutes brand of reporting. And maybe that's minimizing what Woj and his ilk do. And I know that he certainly was an accomplished writer in the past before he pivoted to being the breaking news guy, but he said it in his statement, in his farewell, this craft transformed my life, but I've decided to retire from ESPN in the news industry. I understand the commitment required in my role and it's an investment that I'm no longer driven to make. Time isn't an endless supply and I want to spend mine in ways that are more personally meaningful." And I can certainly understand that because just following him and Shams and all the reporting about their rivalry and routine, it sounds like a miserable

existence. It sounds hellish and I'm someone who works a lot and is usually on my computer or on my phone, but not nearly to the degree that these guys are. And in fact, Schefter was talking about this and the reasons, Woj's motivations for walking away. And here's what he said. He wanted his life back. He didn't want to have to work on holidays. He didn't want to be away from more family gatherings. He didn't want to have to take a shower with your phone up against the shower door, which would be dangerous if you're Shannon Sharp, I guess. So you can see a text that's coming in or take your phone with you to the urinal and hold it in one hand while you take care of your business in the other. That's the life that we live.

And I guess that's the life that Schefter still likes to live or is willing to live. And of course these guys are richly rewarded and compensated for that. And I'm not saying that's not how it works for Passon and Rosenthal, because if you've ever been around those guys, they're gonna have their phone up to their ear or texting 80% of the time too. And yet I wonder whether it's just the individual personalities involved

or just the nature of baseball news breaking versus other sports that I guess are generating a little more year round intrigue when it comes to transactions and behind the scenes intrigue and drama. But you still get passing writing features all the time. You still get Rosenthal pumping out daily columns even as they're doing their news breaking. And it just seems substantively different to me. So am I off here or with your perspective

as someone who follows both of these sports closely? What differences do you see? Yes, you've misread me completely. I'm a college basketball guy. Okay. Just in terms of like, who do you follow on like Twitter? I don't follow Sheffter or Woj. But I can tell you that, you know,

thinking about this question, I think it has to do with the timing. Like baseball is a year-round thing where news breaks year-round. In the NBA and the NFL, it's the draft and it's their free agency period. Those are very intense periods that MLB doesn't... We've got the winter meetings, but as we've talked about, the winter meetings aren't what they used to be. We've got the draft, but nobody is sitting there hovering over their phones. Nobody to circle back is betting on which player is going to be the second pick in the MLB draft. Whereas the drafts in the other sports, if you're five seconds ahead, that's

currency, whether it should be or not as a whole conversation. I do think it's funny that Adrian is going to be a fundraiser for a mid-major basketball team. And I say that because I'm not sure that's any less stressful right now in the NIL and actually relating where Isaac Okoro is going to sign. But my feeling is it's his life, do what you want. And I would imagine it's probably less stressful. It's certainly something where he probably is more passionate for it because it is his alma mater.

But I do think that fundamentally we've just come to baseball. Baseball writing has a longer history. So the rumor guys, that's a fairly recent invention. But the columnist, the feature writer, that has a long and rich history. Yeah, there are very few exclusive rumor guys in baseball, right? They do other things.

And I know Woj is doing TV constantly and podcasts, but also usually to break news or he'd be on TV texting on camera, right? And this is a new job. Yeah, it is. And, and you know, people debate, well, how much was this actually useful to ESPN? They got kind of the clout, the cache of employing the big news breaker, but did they get the traffic? You know, sometimes he would get the tweets and he'd rack up several million followers on Twitter, but then did that drive traffic to ESPN.com where maybe he wasn't even writing the news or that went with whatever news he just broke. So

well, this is my issue with the whole tidbit industrial complex. Like just from a baseball standpoint, you'll see something will happen and eight writers will rush to credit Bob Smith. Bob Smith. Bob Smith had it first. Well, great. You got this four minutes before the press release. I don't see the value of it. And whether it's Wode or Schafter or baseball guys, I just don't really see the value of

it. This isn't, you broke the story of Muzahara. You didn't break some enormous story that nobody else had. You got four minutes ahead of a press release. I just don't understand the value of it. I have a personal frustration here where we do this with, you know, transactions, but we don't do it with ideas. So I'll frequently see things that concepts that were invented by one person or another being almost claimed by somebody else, or somebody will

do a piece of analysis, but they don't credit the person who originally came up with the analysis like that to me is more important because that's actually original work. I am it's important to me in my own work say, you know, I got this idea by reading Jay Jaffe. I got this idea by reading Ben Lindbergh. Well, that never happens. I got this idea, you know, I mentioned the other day, you know, Craig Calcaterra published this thing in his newsletter, I ran it and said, hey, this is this is

this might just be a generational thing because coming up as the internet was developing, this was the point of the realm. You credited other people, you linked to other people. And it just might be a cultural thing now, but I just don't find the the rumorocracy all that interesting anymore. So to some extent, what Woj and Shams

and guys like Adam do, it just kind of falls outside my interest level. I'm going to know about this five minutes later anyway. It's different when guys, and it was even different in the age of, I'm going to use a word, I don't know if you're familiar with it, newspapers. If you had a story in the news that day, you had it for 24 hours, everybody was working off of your story until the next news cycle when everybody could catch up. And that's just not the case anymore. Like this did have a lot of value in the days of print.

No, and the guys that we're talking about in baseball do break meaningful stories in addition to every transaction. You know, Rosenthal co breaks the sign stealing story, Passon has had many big stories and stories that teams and agents and players would not want out there. But to me, that's their primary focus. They're reporters in the capital R sense, whether investigative or other, you want to stick that in, but they're going to break big news.

The Mets, the trade deadline stuff or the winter meeting stuff, to me, that's a secondary part of what they do. We don't have a Wode or Shams in baseball because that's not the focus. The focus is on the biggest stories. And I don't know who the, the Rosenthal or Passant of the NFL or NBA is. I just, I don't follow them closely. I'm sure there are people. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, you got Don Van Natta and people like that, right? Who are breaking, you know, big investigative deep dives in these

sports. But yes, it's a separate thing. I'm not saying that, whoa, Dershepter, they never broke any meaningful story. I don't want to make it like that, but it's different. The primary is the big stories that I'm writing and then the rumors and the transactions and all that to me is secondary for guys like, for the big reporters in baseball. I think it's flipped where, and again, it's the timing of those things. It's a younger, more online, like that role developed with those leagues, I guess is what I'm saying, with how those leagues are run. Whereas baseball kind of, the baseball calendar hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 50 years.

Yeah. And that's why I admire that those guys persist in pumping out those stories because maybe they don't need to. If they just shifted fully into news breaking, I imagine they would, they'd not be destitute. I mean, I think they'd still be employed. I think that the core of what they do is the features and the, and the deeper newsy stories. And I think, I think they could drop the other stuff and nobody would miss it. I wonder, I wonder how their employers value those things. I mean, I would think, look,

they're not going to be out on the street. I think if Jeff Passam was just breaking news, then I think he would still be a prominent person in the media. But it's not solely what he does, and it's certainly not what we value him most for. And I imagine it's not what he values most. And so even if he's as busy as Woj, maybe it's more meaningful work to him because he's producing something

more than a tweet, more than a pre-press release, essentially, I would think. And maybe that's because those guys came up as writers and beat writers, and Woj did too. You have a younger generation, you have Shams, who's always been basically a newsbreaker, who's not known for his writing, and you do have a younger generation in baseball that does some of that too, but just not as prominently as the leading guys who have just been these institutions for decades and just don't seem to be flagging at all. But I wonder whether that speaks to not just them and what they're interested in, but also

just the nature of these sports because baseball news, if we're just talking transactions, is just not quite as of interest to the internet, certainly, right, to the population at large. It's just, yes, maybe, I mean, the NBA bills itself as a year round sport, whether it actually is, we could quibble with, but baseball does go dark at times. And the audience being what it is for national news on a national level, because it's a more regional game, I think there's a little less interest if you're just going to break the news that so-and-so signed somewhere. You have to bring more than that. So I do think it speaks to something about baseball and also that so-and-so had it first.

It is sort of laughable and silly and I always enjoy the MLB trade rumors posts where they trace how a news was broken and eight different people contributed some tiny portion of the deal. Like there's New York Times bylines that have like seven people on them. Right. But I do kind of like the collegiality of tipping your cap to whoever had the news first, because we like to credit people who broke news, even if it was 30 seconds before you did. I think there's something to that that is maybe healthier than the just deadly rivalry between the former mentor and protege of Woj and Shams. And the baseball newsbreakers more or less

seem to get along from afar, at least they don't seem to have blood feuds. They are certainly competing and take pride in getting scoops, but there doesn't seem to be at least a public animosity to it. And if you've been as visible and prolific as those guys have, then you're going to have columns and tweets and reports that you would want back. But I don't recall seeing serious allegations, the sorts of things that you've heard about Woj and Shams, say helping teams save money on a player, that sorts of things you've heard about Wode and Shams, say,

helping teams save money on a player, that sort of thing. Of course there's a reason why teams talk to Passen and Rosenthal, they think they're going to get some useful information, but that meddling in moves? That hasn't surfaced. Or relevant to our earlier discussion, Shams having ties to sports betting outfits while moving markets with his tweets, etc. Plus the palace intrigue aspect of your news breaking competition becoming a big story in itself. And in baseball, as for the constant crediting, Craig Calcutara, to invoke him again, has suggested that there's actually kind of a gatekeeping aspect to the so and so had at first that this developed as bloggers

were breaking into the ranks and that this was a way for the traditional media to sort of circle the wagons and say, we're actually breaking news as opposed to these these upstarts, these Joshian, these baseball outsiders who were telling people how to run their businesses, etc. Maybe, maybe that's how it started. I don't know. But I think now, it's, it's almost kind of cordial, you know, it shows some respect as opposed to never acknowledging your rival. So most of those guys work for places that don't exist anymore. And I've had two jobs in 30 years, so I'm doing okay. I do think that it's the nature of the sports more than the nature of the report. I would certainly miss Ken Rosenthal's analysis and reporting more than I would miss the rumor

breaking. I will say that it's hard to, I think the interesting thing about particularly, Sham's trying, it's hard to come in that way. Like you build your credibility by being a reporter and being around clubhouses generally and kind of, okay, well, this guy is doing the work and that's how he gets a network. And that's how he eventually builds up to being. And it's been a little bit different with Sham, I think, because he kind of didn't really have all of that experience. And I wonder if there are going to be people emerging just in that space. But I don't think it's possible to be like 22 and just become a news break, just become a rumor guy, a news breaker in baseball, as opposed to being a reporter

first and then eventually growing into that role. I remember writing about that at Grantland. and I think I may have talked to Ken about it because yeah, it's been a while. There was a time when there was a younger generation of, you know, it was people like Chris. Like Cotillo. Right, exactly. Cotillo's the guy, the only name that comes to mind. Yes, and for the most part, those people, Robert Murray,

maybe those people have pivoted into more traditional baseball jobs as opposed to just continuing to be solely newsbreakers. But they were kids. I mean, they were in school and they were just DMing agents and begging for scraps of news. And then they would parlay that into some other news. And then they actually broke some significant stories, but again, more in the transaction space. And you know, Cotillo is a Red Sox beat writer now, right? I mean, maybe that's just because of the baseball ecosystem, as we're saying, that it's tough to do that solely.

And I like the way baseball does this better, I suppose. Maybe it's not a shocker that I'd be biased toward baseball. But I do think that, you know, on some level, I suppose I respect the grind of just constantly just mining for news and putting it out there, but I just don't know what public utility there is. And it sounds like a hellish existence, however well compensated you are. And yeah, I guess wouldn't want to be a, not that I could or even would be wired to do that job. I mean, I make, I make my living 80 bucks a clip making netstrokes on the internet.

So I can't really complain about other people will spend their lives, but I just, for me, the rumorocracy does nothing for me. Just tell me, tell me when it happens. Well, I highly recommend that other people drop those 80 bucks on the Joshian baseball newsletter. I never miss it. I've been subscribing for years and will continue to for the foreseeable future. So always a pleasure to read you and always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for coming on. Ben, thanks for having me. You guys are having a great year and I listen to every episode. Well, after Joe and I talked, the Mariners met Diamondbacks and Braves all one, the Twins lost, which means that they're now tied with the Tigers. Exciting stuff, but perhaps not quite as exciting as something else that happened after I spoke to Joe. Shouhei Otani had a six hit game with three homers and two doubles and two stolen bases

to not only make 50-50 official, but also 51-51 and counting. So yeah, you may have intuited that we recorded before that occurred, otherwise it just might have been mentioned earlier. And it will be mentioned more. You won't be surprised to learn that I do have thoughts on Otani's latest exploits, but I'm recording this on Thursday night, we've got another episode slated for Friday afternoon, why monologue now when I could banter then? I'd just end up repeating myself next time.

Not that it would be the first time I repeated myself about Shohei Otani, but here's what I will say now, because I can connect Otani to something I was already planning to talk about. The Twitter account for the Tipping Pitches podcast noted that as Shohei Otani walked up to the plate before he hit his 50th homer, the Dodgers broadcast showed Marlins manager Skip Schumacher, as the commentators were wondering whether Schumacher would call for an intentional walk, because there were two outs, first base was open, but the Dodgers were up 11-3, and according to the Tipping Pitches lip reading, which looks accurate to me, Schumacher seemed to

say, I'm gonna do a swear, fuck that, I've got too much respect for this guy for that shit to happen. Famous last words, fortunately Declan Cronin wasn't on the mound for Miami, but Big Mike Bauman was. So he gave up the historic 50th homer to Shohei, and hey, how bad can you feel about Otani taking you deep? But the point is, good for Schumacher. He gave us that moment because he decided

not to issue an intentional walk. Now had it been a closer game, had the Marlins had more at stake, maybe he would have made a different decision. But I'm glad he didn't because we got that memorable moment. We got to see Otani do superstar stuff, have one of the most impressive offensive games of all time, because Schumacher chose to pitch to his opponent's power hitter. Now we've talked a few times lately about intentional walks and how I've become kind

of anti-IBB over time, not just because analytically it rarely makes sense to put someone on, but because it's usually fan unfriendly. It's more fun to see the star swing away, to let great hitters hit, as Otani Illustrated. And I just want to make clear where I stand in this campaign against intentional walks because we've gotten a lot of messages, people suggesting ways it could be done, people questioning whether it should be done, wondering whether it really matters. We had a good discussion about this in the Patreon Discord group, and I've thought more about it and I've learned more about the history of opposition to the

intentional walk, and so I figured I'd follow up. First of all, this is a low priority cause for me. This isn't something I'm doing on day one as commissioner. This is not a core peg of my platform, like calling it the Zombie Runner instead of the Ghost Runner, or better yet, abolishing the zombie runner, or moving the mound back or lowering the active roster limit for pitchers. Some of these things I've harped on. Not losing any sleep over the intentional walk. I don't have that much sleep to lose. However, to paraphrase Abe Simpson, dear Mr. President, there are too many intentional walks nowadays. Please eliminate all of them. I am not a crackpot. Now, there aren't actually that many

intentional walks nowadays. There are fewer and fewer, which makes this even less important. However, I think it would be nice if we could do away with intentional walks in a way that wouldn't be disruptive, and that's the catch, because that's tough to do, but perhaps not impossible. And here's my case, baseball is already unlike many other sports in that a team can't choose to put its star in the spotlight when it matters most. You can pass the puck or the basketball to your best scorer in hockey or basketball. Your QB has the ball when you're making that last drive down the field. In baseball, it's largely luck of the draw, and there are benefits and drawbacks to that,

but when the best hitter does happen to come up in one of those moments, it's usually a little deflating or anticlimactic from a spectator perspective for the pitcher to bypass the big showdown, regardless of whether it ends up working or coming back to bite him. Now I am sympathetic to the idea that there's value in preserving some tactical flexibility, weighing whether it's worth it to put someone on to face a weaker hitter or set up the double play. Can be fun to think through that stuff. And I am somewhat resistant to rules in principle that limit teams' tactical options, like the infield shift restrictions, for example, but there's already a good deal of tactical flexibility in how you choose to pitch to or defend against a hitter. What are you gonna throw him? And I'm not sure preserving the option to

say, eh, we'll just skip this entertaining matchup makes baseball better. You could also say that you should suffer some consequence if you can't really round out your lineup, and you don't have an imposing player to protect your best batter. Though I guess you already pay a price of just not having more good batters. In baseball, there's a batting order that dictates who can hit and who can't, and the intentional walk is, I would say, mostly unfun exception to that. Of course the batting team can pinch hit, just as the team on defense can change pitchers, but there's an imbalance of sorts because the batting team can't just say, nah, we don't want this guy to hit, so we opt to advance to the next spot in the order,

whereas the intentional walk kind of oddly allows the pitching team to do that, arguably at spectators' expense. And the big buildup to that matchup, between your best and their best, sometimes that'll be anticlimactic too, sometimes it won't be a competitive plate appearance, those clashes between titans aren't always going to turn into extended, scintillating, Otani vs. Trout type battles, but if the main characters face each other then no one has to wonder what might have been if they had. If your best beats their best, then good, you slew your opponent's champion and you deserve to win. Now I am far from the first to think this. Joe Pasnanski has been a big advocate in recent years

of trying to do away with the intentional walk, and we've discussed a bunch of mechanisms that might work. But here's the thing, as with so many proposed rule changes in baseball, we've all been beaten to this by baseball thinkers who came before. Now according to our pal, historian Richard Hirschberger, in his book Strike 4 the Evolution of Baseball, the base on balls really started to be enforced in 1866, and it took just three years after that for the first recorded intentional walk to happen, 1869. I looked up the intentional walk entry in the indispensable book by Peter Morris, A Game of Inches, the story behind the innovations that shaped baseball, which is a semi-miraculous

work, probably the most valuable baseball reference book I have ever come across. It documents the origins of essentially everything about the sport. And the entry for intentional walks, which I will link to on the show page, it's on Google Books, makes clear that all of these objections have been common refrains for, oh, about 150 years. Intentional walks were rare in the 1870s and 80s, but when they happened there was IBB blowback. When Chicago pitcher John Clarkson twice intentionally walked Tip O'Neill in 1886, seemingly against his manager's wishes, his use of the tactic was denounced by the St. Louis Globe Democrat as contemptible.

There was a minor league game the following year between Syracuse and Rochester, in which Syracuse pitcher Doug Crothers issued an intentional walk and, I quote, the Rochester contingent in the crowd hissed and dubbed the play a baby act, and some Syracusans joined in the ungentlemanly demonstration. Think we should rebrand the IBB as a baby act. The tactic became more common in the 1890s as offenses doubled down on one-run strategies, and Morris writes, while the 1890s saw the intentional walk become prevalent, opposition continued.

Part of the opposition actually stemmed from the fact that at the time runs were unearned if the batter drew a walk and subsequently scored, and so people said that pitchers were putting people on because they knew they wouldn't be charged with an earned run. But in 1896, Clark Griffith said, The pitcher who is afraid of any batter ought to quit the business. If he doesn't, it will not be long before he has proved a coward and then he will have to quit. The crowd is not in sympathy with any pitcher who is not game enough to let any batter hit the ball at the same time depending on his own ability. In 1900, Sporting

Life said, there will always be two warm sides to the argument and winners from both ends. It is one of those nothing succeeds like success sort of plays as uncertain as the national game itself. Morris continues, the early 20th century saw regular discussion of banning the intentional walk. In 1913, American League president Ben Johnson came out in favor of a ban, no pun intended, calling the tactic one of the most, if not the most, unpopular plays in baseball. Hugh Jennings suggested that this could be accomplished by allowing the batter to leave his box to pursue pitches, but forcing the catcher to remain in the catcher's box. And hey, does this sound familiar?

Various possible ways to eliminate the intentional base on balls by allowing the batter or runners to advance additional bases were outlined by sports writer William Peat in 1916, but the lack of consensus on any one plan seems to have killed the idea. Now when Clark Griffith, who had hated the intentional walk when he was a pitcher, became an owner, he presented a proposal in 1920 to the major league's joint rule committee that would allow base runners to advance one base on an intentional walk and two bases for the second offense, but the rule put the onus upon the umpire to determine the pitcher's intentions, and umpires successfully contended that this would lead to endless arguments about intentions. In 1924, at a meeting of the National League owners, considerable support was expressed

for a ban, however, once more no consensus could be reached on a practical scheme for doing away with the intentional walk. After the 1933 season, the Southern Association announced this plan, if there were two outs and runners on base, four consecutive balls would advance all base runners to bases, with the exception that a runner on second would advance only to third if there was a runner there. The rule change was greeted with excitement but also concern that the National Rules Committee would disallow the rule. It does not appear to have ever been implemented. And then, in 1937, Sid Keener of the St. Louis Star Times suggested giving a batter who walked on four pitches the option of declining the free pass. Again, sound familiar? If a second four-pitch walk resulted, the batter could choose between a

walk to second or again declining the walk. If he declined again and another four pitch walk ensued, the batter would walk all the way to third base. Branch Rickey, in 1950, suggested that a fair penalty for walking batters intentionally might be to automatically start the next hitter with one or two balls. Again, all of this has happened before, and it will all happen again. Nothing new under the baseball sun. So the intentional walk has basically always been unpopular, and I agree with the legions of baseball thinkers before me that it would be good if we could do away with it. But how do you do that without making things worse? That's the catch, the unintended

consequences. If you didn't have intentional walks, wouldn't you have pitchers throwing four wide ones anyway? I don't think making unintentional intentional walks prohibitively costly would be that hard. Something like the declining the walk option until you see a strike, awarding more bases, awarding extra balls to the next batter, sending the on deck hitter to first while the hitter at the plate gets a fresh count. You get the point. The problem is, you could encourage unintentional intentional plunkings. Okay, if I can't pitch around you, I'll pitch at you.

I'll just hit you with one pitch, send you to first that way. Wouldn't want that to happen more often often given all the discussions we've had about the elevated hit by pitch rate, and then you'd put the onus back on the umpires to determine intentionality, unless you also make the penalty for hit by pitch worse regardless of where the player was hit, and then maybe you start to incentivize hitters to try to get hit, it's a headache. Look, it's tricky, and maybe tinkering with this is more trouble than it's worth, and maybe that's why it hasn't happened.

Maybe IBB's backfiring against the teams that issue them is justice enough. Perhaps the only thing worse than having intentional walks is not having intentional walks. This is why I don't really have an IBB in my bonnet about this. However, I am the latest in a long line of dislikeers of the intentional walk, and this is why I wish there were a way that we wouldn't have to rely on Skip Schumacher's honor and respect for his opponent to ensure that we get to see that matchup we've been waiting for. I have been waiting for you to support Effectively Wild on Patreon if you haven't yet. The following five listeners have.

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to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode extremely soon. Talk to you then. Effectively wild!