Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 34: Making Sense of the Orioles and MLB’s Blackout Policy

Episode Date: September 4, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss two baseball mysteries: the Orioles’ success in 2012, and MLB’s blackout policy.

Good morning and good evening. Welcome to Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus. It is episode 34, and we are recording this approximately one hour after the conclusion of the recording of the final episode of Up and In, Kevin Goldstein and Jason Park's tremendous podcast, which we will all be terribly sad to see go in the wake of Kevin Goldstein's amazing new career. In honor of that, Ben Lindberg, what are you drinking? Nothing. This is a 15-minute podcast, so we don't really have time to crack a beer and get a few beers deep like they do on Up and In, or did on Up and In. And I just finished dinner. No, that's true. And I had some wine at dinner,

but that's over now. All right. Where are you, Ben? I am coming to you via satellite from Langara Island, which is the northernmost island of the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia, Canada, approximately 28 miles south of Alaska. And you did your best to replace me with a guest host, but I was not having it. And I'm here anyway. And your commitment to your commitment to keeping Ian Miller off the air is admirable. Yeah, he has his own podcast. He can he can talk on that one. Your commitment to keeping Ian Miller off the air is admirable. Yeah. He has his own podcast.

He can talk on that one. But I fed a bald eagle today. What did you feed it to? I fed it a fish that was not a keeper. So we tossed it to a bald eagle. And then I almost caught a five-foot shark. It got right up to the boat, and then it got away. And I found out that my fishing guide, Stu, once singled off of Tim Lincecum in high school. Oh, in high school.

Wow. And are these stories all lies to mislead us so that we don't figure out that you're actually in Houston interviewing the Houston Astros? No, these are all true. I just wanted to make your day look boring by comparison, although I know that you just concluded a fancy dinner party. Yeah, sure. So anyway, I'm Sam Miller in Long Beach with the door open and we have a episode ahead. So what should we talk about? Well, I've been sort of out of touch this weekend and have not seen any baseball, though I have read about baseball, which is not really all that

different from what I usually do. I wanted to talk about streaming in-market baseball games. Oh, okay. And I'll just talk about the Orioles for like the fourth time in five days. Yeah, I think that was a close second topic. Why don't, I don't know, why don't I start? Okay. All right. And apologies if the recording on this gets – well, the recording should be fine, but Ben and I have about a half-second extra delay.

And so if it sounds like we are disrespecting each other's opinions, it is probably accidental and in good faith. Taking my time. So the Orioles – I'm going to laugh at your jokes. Ben, can you shut up? You just interrupted me. Sorry. laugh at your jokes. Ben, can you shut up? You just interrupted me. Sorry. The Orioles won today. They are one game behind the Yankees on September 4th. They are like, wow, you know what I mean? That's all. It's crazy, you know know and I think that this isn't news

they've been doing this all year long they are now 11 or 12 games wins better than their run differential would suggest and we ran a few we've run a few pieces there have been some pieces run looking at this mystery and so I just want to sum up real quick the

recent pieces that have been written about this topic and then we can maybe see if we have anything else to say. But you wrote about whether one-run wins, teams that do well in one-run wins generally do better than teams that do well in four run wins or more, I believe. And we found that the three runs. And of course you found that teams that win the big games are generally better teams, which isn't a big surprise.

Um, Russell Carlton looked at one run wins to see if there was, uh, predictive value to them or skill to them and mostly came up empty and found that the most, the strongest, the most suggestive variable in these cases is simply being the home team and being able to walk off a one run victor, but otherwise did not find much to suggest a real skill there. I wrote about bullpens and good bullpen performance and found that good bullpen performance is itself a sign of luck that it is not merely the explanation for

outperforming ones run differential, but in fact, having a bullpen that pitches well is often very ephemeral and fluky and unlikely to repeat, and so it is in itself a lucky attribute. And finally, Bill Petty wrote on the Internet about run differential versus record to see which is more predictive at this point in the season and found that run differential is actually a bit more predictive than record. And so, in fact, the idea that Pythagorean record is a team's destiny is overstated, and we should probably back away from that somewhat. So our playoff odds for the Orioles continue to linger now in the low 20s, despite them being in a good seat for a playoff spot right now

and being just one, perhaps one good day away from taking the AFL East lead. Low 20s is an improvement. So I guess it is an improvement. It was in the teens last week, and it was in the single digits as recently as probably just a couple weeks ago. It was in the teens last week, and it was in the single digits as recently as probably just a couple weeks ago. But nonetheless, I want to know if you think that this is a blind spot in our playoff odds. I don't, I guess. I mean, well, let's put it this way.

I don't really think that the Orioles are secretly better than we think they are. I mean, once you factor in their bullpen and the fact that teams with good bullpens do tend to do well in one-run games or at least better than they would otherwise. And so you can kind of be better than your Pythagorean record by doing that. I still, I mean, the longer it goes on, the more we tend to believe in it

or the harder it is to just wave it away as a fluke. But I'm still not really buying it. I still don't think that they are equal of the Yankees or the Rays. You know, if I had... Or maybe the Blue Jays. Well, maybe the Blue Jays. If I had had to just kind of intuit their playoff odds myself without running any simulations, I probably would have put them higher than low 20s just because they are so close and because it is pretty close to the end of the season. But I am not necessarily a good projection system. So I kind of believe it. I don't think it's terribly off.

yeah i feel like uh jerk bringing the topic up because i don't really have much more to say about the orioles than that they're a great story that i'm having fun rooting for but i don't actually believe that they're anywhere near this good i don't i mean every day that they do this is great for them because it requires them not to be good anymore. They can just sort of hopefully get hot or coast or whatever the case may be, win a couple big games. But I don't know. I would be interested in hearing an Orioles apologist try to explain. I don't know. Maybe there are no Orioles apologists. But I don't know if there's anybody who is suggesting that they actually are a good team or a playoff quality team.

They have one above average hitter by warp. They have one above average pitcher by warp. They are 12th in the American League in OPS+, 7th in ERA+, 9th in base running, 8th in defensive efficiency. They don't fare better with runners on base or runners in scoring position. And it really is hard to make the case, looking at anything other than their record, that they are a good team. This is, of course, why people hate us, because the record is the only thing that matters but it's it seems to be the case and unless there's something extremely mysterious about baseball that we haven't gotten anywhere close to explaining I think it's still the safe

explanation Jason Hamels is possibly coming back on Thursday though though. And that at least makes things a little bit more interesting because he is their one above average pitcher. Yes, and he is a better guy to get than the Joe Saunders and Randy Wolves of the world. You must have missed Joe Saunders today. Oh, he had a perfect game through five or something, didn't he? I didn't miss that, but he was kind of... Something like that, yeah.

He was pretty Joe Saunders-y in his first start for them. But I feel like there will be some sort of backlash inevitably. If they do make the playoffs, there will probably be some articles written about sabermetricians and their fancy formulas, and they can't account for whatever it is that made the Orioles tick and we wrote them off and we were wrong to write them off and uh I don't know maybe some of that will be deserved I don't I don't know that anyone has

said they have no chance um they've always kind of had a single-digit chance in our playoff odds, it seems, for a while now. Yeah, my guess is that, this is just totally a blind statement that maybe isn't true, but my guess is that actually Sabermetricians, who gave the Orioles almost no chance at the beginning of the year, probably gave them more chance than the traditional beat writer who um in my experience tend to see one narrative uh as possible and uh only whereas uh at least at least um our playoff odds did give them a three and a half percent chance um before the season began an acknowledgement of the uncertainty of all baseball events. Well, my guide, Stu, who got the hit off of Lincecum,

told me today, unprompted, that when he looked back at the teams that he was on that succeeded, the common thread between all of them was good chemistry and how well all the players got along on and off the field. And then he proceeded to praise David Eckstein unironically, which was awesome. Yes. Canadians haven't really caught up with the whole Eckstein thing yet, I guess. He's still, he's just a good player up here. There's no baggage with him. Anyway. Not a lot of stews left in the majors. No, not really. Too bad.

This will not be one of them, even though I asked him what the single was. Hey, baseball is unpredictable. Well, it could be. Yes, it was a line drive single. He pulled it over the third baseline, and then he struck out looking. He was next at that. Anyway, enough about Stu. out looking who's next at that. Anyway, enough about Stu. My topic is streaming in-market games. I came back from feeding bald eagles today, and I saw an interview online with Bob Bowman,

who is the CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the people who have brought you such products as MLB TV. And he was interviewed on a Yes Network show called Forbes Sports Money. And he was kind of asked what he sees the future of in-market streaming as. There are a few teams that provide it kind of through their regional network. that provide it kind of through their regional network. Yes Network, I believe, was the first to sort of offer subscribers the chance to stream the games online. And so Bowman was kind of asked about whether he sees this catching on. And he talked a lot about how MLBAM has been a big innovator in streaming technology and geolocation, you know, the technology that allows people to be blacked out, which everyone loves. And they've really been kind of a driver of that technology and have invested a lot of money in it.

And their processes for that are used by many other companies now online. And so he kind of made the comparison between baseball or streaming and market games and the music industry. He said that if baseball doesn't provide its own solution, baseball doesn't provide its own solution, fans will just find a way to get it some other way. He was kind of alluding to Napster or other file sharing services. And I'm kind of conflicted about this because I am a member of the generation that kind of grew up getting music for free and became accustomed to getting music for free. And so I, in a way, resent paying for things on the internet. And yet, I also make my living from people who pay to read things on the internet. So I can see both sides of the argument. I think people object a lot to MLBAM's policies on what

constitutes the blackout area. People feel that it, in many cases, doesn't really reflect a team's actual in-market viewing area. And people also object to MLBAM's policy with sharing videos and immediately removing everything from YouTube the second it goes up so that we have a hard time watching old baseball highlights whereas say hockey fans do not if they ever feel the need to watch a hockey highlight. So I mean MLBAM has given us a wonderful product in MLB TV it is I, miles ahead of anything any other sport has provided. And yet, as much as people love it, they seem to spend as much time insulting the

company or denigrating the company as they do praising it. And I don't know, I wonder what you think the future of, I mean, the future of baseball broadcasting is a very big topic, but do you think that fans will be able to watch games in market, you know, via officially sanctioned streams in the next few years? jury rig their own solutions and go to streaming sites or just find a way to do it. I don't know, five years from now, do you think people will be automatically blacked out everywhere in their viewing area or will they be able to pay or do you think the future is free content? And if so, what does that mean for all the teams that are counting on gigantic broadcasting deals to make payroll? Yeah, I think that the gigantic broadcasting deals are the complication here. I mean, this is where teams are going to get most of their money. This is obviously it's a massively profitable thing for the networks. And I think that ultimately, if there's going to be a in-market streaming option,

it's going to have to be done through, certainly with the, I think with the cooperation, but perhaps even through the networks themselves, the broadcasters themselves. And I think that there will probably come a day not too long from now when that is an option.

I think certainly most TV content, it seems to me, is now available online, if not streaming, than shortly after the fact. And I assume that the demand for baseball games will at some point make it – I mean the thing about it is that most of the things on the internet that are free, if you try to charge for them, you get a lot of resistance. But those are generally things that have always been free, whereas baseball games have not always been free baseball games cost money people are willing to spend money on them and i asked actually i asked one time on twitter to try to do a survey what people would pay to get in-market games added to their subscription and there were people who were sort of violently opposed and said, ah, it should be part of the subscription now, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean, you shouldn't, if they don't charge you for it, then they don't charge you for it. It's a market thing.

But it seemed like the people who answered sincerely were willing to pay, you know, somewhere between $50 and $150 more a month, I mean a year, which is to say between 30% more and double the cost of their subscription to get in-market games. And I think I certainly would, although it's a little different for me because it's a work product. But yeah, I think that they'll find a price that works. Do you think that that is short-sighted and wrong-headed to want to drive people to their site and get those clicks and get that advertising revenue? Or do you agree with the people who say that just getting the highlights out there and allowing them to be shared easily will ultimately lead to more fans and more interest and more revenue? more fans and more interest and more revenue. Well, I think that I wouldn't have a problem with their policy if there weren't such huge, massive gaps in what they provide before about 2009.

The things that I find myself really wishing were there are a lot more highlights from previous years, and not just highlights, but non-highlights just footage from 1972 I mean if you go look on 1972 right now you get like the last out of Fergie Jenkins no hitter or something like that and that's about it and I think there should probably be hundreds of those sorts of things because those are really the ones where when they're up on YouTube and you see them and then 20 minutes later they're gone you think I mean

come on you know what what what revenue are you losing for that as far as the the stuff that's current I mean it I would rather it was all out there but it doesn't bother me too much well someday i don't think it's particularly short-sighted someday i hope they can release the past 40 years or so every second of every game and then we can go back and and gif every gifable moment from all of those decades yeah keep us busy i would love that yes it would it would be i mean you're probably joking and i'm not that That would be amazing. But it corrects me if I'm wrong, but a much, much larger percentage of clips are embeddable basically immediately now, aren't they? Almost one of the more frustrating things about it. A year ago, there was no embedding. Yeah, there was no embedding. And then there was, it seemed like a pretty strict hour kind of blackout embedding window where you'd have to wait, I think, 48 hours or 24 hours to embed most things.

And now, yeah, it seems like I see that embed button immediately more often, but not always. So it's kind of an inconsistent policy, and I never know what I'm going to get. And I'm just grateful to get anything, I guess. I love MLBAM, I have to be honest. I think that there are products I wish were for sale or for consumption that aren't. And they will be at some point. If there's something that they can charge us for, I'm sure at some point they will figure out how to do that

and we will happily pay for it. Yes, sir. And I will put it on my expense account. And I will sign it for you if I have to do that. I don't think, actually, I've never done that. We should talk about that. I'm curious about that. I don't think, actually, I've never done that. We should talk about that. I'm curious about that.

Anyway, Ben, let's wrap it up. I hope that, are you coming back tomorrow? Yeah, I'll be back for our Wednesday show back on the banks

of the Hudson with no sharks or eagles or anything. Okay, well have a safe trip and I'll talk to you tomorrow.