Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 885: How We’d Question the Commissioner (Off the Record)

Episode Date: May 17, 2016

Ben and Sam banter about Joey Votto, then discuss what they’d ask Rob Manfred if they knew he’d answer honestly.

If you have to ask, you'll never know. Fucking motherfucker will not be told to go. If you have to ask, you'll never know. Fucking motherfucker will not be told to go. Good morning and welcome to episode 885 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com, and by each and every one of our generous Patreon supporters.

I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hello, Ben. Hello. How are you? Doing okay. Got any banter based on all that hot baseball activity since the last time we recorded? Yeah, not so much. People don't know this, but it hasn't been that long since you and I spoke. It may have been 24 hours since you, the listener, listened to episode 884.

May have been days, weeks, months, years. We don't know. But it's only been about five hours since you and I stopped talking. So I have nothing new to say. I thought you might have wanted to talk about the top of the first between Cincinnati and Cleveland. No. What did I miss? Well, Brandon Phillips doubled to left. Joey Votto scored.

Ooh. Yeah. Okay. I actually was considering bantering about Joey Votto not being Joey Votto-like in our last episode. But I don't have too much to say about it other than that's weird What has he been like? He's been like A bad hitter which is not like Joey Votto at all. No. He

Faked out Phillies fans over the weekend By pretending to Be about to toss a Foul ball to them and then Didn't and then fist pumped At his own non-throw Which was amusing. I wonder how much of that was based on his frustration about not being good this year

and how much of it was just that was a funny thing to do, and he would have done that regardless. So you've seen that fake fist pump? Yes. Yes, have you? I have not. You have not. It's amusing.

I don't know if it's an insight into his psyche or not, but Joey Votto is, as we speak, he is batting 215, 358, 355. He's not. You missed the top of the first. No, that includes the top of the first. Uh-oh. That's live. All right. Let's see.

I'm watching the fake out fan on foul ball. I like the fist pump. He really sold it. I actually like the semi-smirk. Yeah, that too. As he's moving away. They're Phillies fans.

Yes, and I think there was one particular Phillies fan who was ragging him during the game. So yeah, I don't know whether that is a sign of his frustration or just a sign of his generally good nature. Not a very good fake

I'll say. It was an unnatural wind-up and then he didn't actually make a move with the ball. He looked like he was going to throw it but overhand, it looked like he was going to throw it into the upper deck. It wasn't convincing. However, you do what you can okay enough joey vato so that was supposed that was all started with a joke all right yeah uh so ben yeah um there's a comment in the facebook

group that i wanted to talk about and that's going to be our topic today advice to anyone who does a daily podcast start a facebook group and then have thousands of people give you topics in that Facebook group. It's a good source of material. So Doug says, one of my best friends is going to have breakfast tomorrow morning with Colgate commencement speaker. Rob Manfred is said speaker. So if you could ask the commissioner one question, what would it be? I told my friend Fred, I'd share the best questions with him. My question was, where do you see MLB expanding in the next round of expansion? And I thought that I wanted to ask you, so that's the topic. Topic is, what would you ask Rob Manfred if you were in a position where you thought he

would give you an honest answer? I'm going to set as a premise that you are not going to be reporting this answer, so he doesn't have to worry about How this answer is going to play we're going to get What we believe to be a truthful answer Because it's just you and Rob on a Road trip to Colgate And so I don't Know how many you want to do I guess maybe

It depends how many how long we talk about each One but I've got a couple I've got a few okay well The problem with this is that Rob Manfred is very forthcoming He answers just about Anything anyone asks of now Of course we don't know whether he answers

With complete candor but he Gives the impression that he does In most cases obviously there are times When he can't completely Answer honestly but he Is very good at answering questions without making it seem like he is BSing. He is giving detailed answers and thoughtful answers,

and he seems to be very open-minded and very progressive. And so this is probably not as fun a question as it might have been with Bud Selig, for instance. The question that Doug in the Facebook group Wants to ask him he just answered Yeah just the question about Where he sees baseball expanding He just recently was asked that

And he said Montreal and Mexico City That's that I have no reason to Doubt him I don't know whether he would say Something different if you could ask him I mean it'd be interesting to see if he would Say you know want a third team in New York or something like that, that might make sense for baseball, but probably couldn't happen and wouldn't be in the best interest of a couple teams. So maybe he thinks something differently privately, but still, we kind of know what he

said publicly. So I think the best question I can come up with here, other than just asking him if I can have three more questions, that always works in the genie lamp stories. I think I would ask him a CBA question. I would ask him a detailed question. I'd ask him to rank his priorities or his wish list in the ongoing CBA negotiations, and also it would be a two-parter, and also what he's willing to concede. So I want an ordered list of the things that he wants to achieve in the current CBA negotiations, which started in March, I believe there was an initial meeting, and CBA expires December 1st, and I know he's hoping to have a new deal to announce during the World Series. So this is not far away.

But there has been some speculation that these might be somewhat acrimonious negotiations or at least more difficult than the last few rounds have been. That this wouldn't just be a rubber stamp thing, that there are all these major issues facing baseball and the players in the league right now. And so there could be some points of contention. And Manfred, of course, was the lead negotiator in previous CBA negotiations, and he is taking an active role in these. And so I'd love to know what exactly his goals were. What are the things at the top of his wish list that he really non-negotiably wants to achieve here, and what is he willing to concede, because that's something that we will never really know. We'll know what he does concede, we'll know the outcome of the negotiations, but we won't know exactly what transpired in the room, and we won't know what

he would have been willing to give up or what he wanted to achieve but didn't so i think this would be a good single question to sort of get a broad sweeping understanding of what he thinks about baseball and where it's headed and the major issues facing it today you know it's been a it's been 22 years, 21 years of labor peace. And I think when Bud Selig retired and when Rob Manfred was elevated, I think there was a lot of praise for the fact that the sport has had such labor peace over the last two decades, even while other sports have had a lot of labor turmoil. And I think that's really good. I'm proud of them.

Turmoil. And I think that's really good. I'm proud of them. But it also, and I'm not the greatest expert on CBA negotiations or even what either party desires right now. Of the two of us, you're the most part, if they're actually being discussed or if they're actually being implemented, they tend to be very small scale, very conservative, very incremental, or they affect non-union members more than anybody else. In some sense, maybe the reason that there hasn't been much acrimony is because the players' union has been willing to make a lot of concessions to players who are not in the union. And the league has been very sort of small view in terms of what they ask for. That might be exactly right. That might not just be an explanation, but it might be exactly how a league should be.

I don't know but i do wonder whether there have been lost opportunities and whether if it gets to the point where if for instance you know i talked about the it when i when i read the cba and i wrote about it i talked about how there's still this like like one line tucked in there about the length of the season and you can tell that that's uh it's sort of awkwardly in there. And you maybe would conclude that the players union is sort of holding that back as like the big thing. When things really go bad and everybody starts asking for everything again, that's coming out. And, you know, I think it'd be good for – I think the sports should cut their season. think it'd be good for i i think the sports should cut their season um and i just don't know that despite 20 years of labor peace uh it's any more realistic now than it was 20 years ago i'm not

i guess what i'm saying is i'm not sure that relations between the two parties has actually gotten any better and if the times called for a big change uh or a big negotiation over something that entrenched interests would really struggle over. I'm not sure that we have evidence that they're any better at resolving that than they were 20 years ago. It might just be that nobody's been that demanding. Yeah, or it's just no one wants to rock the boat because everyone's making billions of dollars. And it's just the question is whether it's gotten to the point where the teams and the owners are making enough more billions of dollars than the players as a whole that the players will want to put up a big fight about that, knowing that both sides lose if there is some sort of work stoppage. So, yeah, I think it would be interesting.

I mean, I wouldn't want to know what his pie in the sky dreams were necessarily. I'd be more interested in what he thought he could realistically accomplish in these negotiations. But it would be interesting to know both, I suppose. But I'd love to know what's on the table, you know, what he's willing to concede if someone pushes hard enough and someone asks for the right concession. Yeah, I'd be interested to know. I would maybe as a subset of that and more for trivia or curiosity reasons than because they would matter. I mean, Rob Manfred represents the owners. But I would be very curious to know what he personally would happily give up that the owners consider a sacred cow where he most sort

of personally departs from them but again not that it matters it would just be juicy yeah right um all right so i think my first question or if i only had one question it would be some variation of this if a ball player were killed on the field let's say by a hit by pitch, and let's further say by a purpose pitch. But I think that it can apply to any. Actually, I think it could apply to that. I think it could apply to an accidental pitch. I think it could also apply to a comebacker. But if a player died on the field, what would he do the next day in reaction to this? How would the sport

change in reaction to this tragedy? And why doesn't he do it now? Uh-huh. Yeah, that'd be interesting. I guess it would depend, right, it would depend on how it happened. Because if it were a complete accident and it were a batter getting hit, then you'd think probably nothing would change or that's a real possibility that nothing would change. I mean, they've made the helmets better and it seems like the helmets are about as protective as helmets can be at this point. And there's always going to be some slight risk when someone's standing there facing a ball being thrown really hard. So you would be, you know, you'd offer your condolences to everyone. Maybe you'd, I don't know whether you'd stop the sport for a day or something like that.

That'd probably be discussed or considered. But I don't know that you could do anything different. But yeah, if it were a purpose pitch and if you could really establish that it was. Or if it were a comebacker And it were a pitcher Then yeah, you would have people saying I told you so, you could have stopped this We've been talking about this and writing articles About this for years

Yeah, I think you're right, I think that if it were an accidental pitch It would just be, well It would be seen as a risk That's been inherent in the sport for 150 years And We live in fear of it. The batters are rightfully afraid of it. Pitchers, I think, are rightfully afraid of it.

And it will probably happen again, but that's the bargain. The other two, yeah, I think you're right. There would be potentially, particularly for comebackers, I think if there's a comebacker, it seems pretty clear to me, probably, that league actions would change to to protect pitchers to kind of impose these protections on pitchers and um and i guess the answer probably is that it's a lot more politically difficult to fix a hypothetical problem uh than to fix something that everybody has seen happen.

I mean, pitchers, for instance, would probably also be a lot more willing to do it voluntarily, to wear these padded hats voluntarily the day after, even though they're well aware of the risks. Maybe it's just the human psychology at play. And so maybe I wouldn't get a very good answer. But I still feel like, and maybe the, maybe then I should limit it to the hit by pitch, the purpose pitch. But I still feel like we, we all know that it's coming and we don't really do anything to address it. Even though I sort of

feel that it will be addressed when it happens. And I don't know, I'm going to maybe, maybe I, when that day comes, maybe I just feel like there will be a lot of regrets. Yeah. A fun one would be just to air out every conspiracy theory, open up every MLB X file in the history of baseball. And just, you know, how Hillary Clinton recently said that if she's elected that she will dig into the UFO files and see if there's anything there. That kind of classic thing that people say they would want to do if they were president. So he's commissioner. He presumably has access to the best information about baseball. So all the theories about juiced balls, all the theories about PEDs, what percentage Of players we're using

Are using, there must be Things that he knows or Could know that we don't know That would be juicy and interesting So I'd want him to Dig into the basement vaults At Park Avenue and Tell me what's in there, what secrets

Is MLB hiding I, um, playing, segwaying off your mere mention of PEDs. I would love to have a very long discussion about what the point of PED restrictions is. Not that there shouldn't be one. I support that. But what exactly is the goal? Because the, what, I forget which person who was recently suspended was but when we talked to TJ Quinn I was reading some of the things that TJ Quinn had written he wrote that like well it's

possible that one of these things like one of the connections between these players might be that this whatever chemical or whatever is in an over-the-counter supplement that you can just go get it doesn't seem like that's the connection because the players said that they hadn't used it, but it's available over-the-counter. So if it's a legal supplement, then what is the calculus that determines whether ballplayers can use it? Is it that it makes players better? Well, if the calculus is that it makes players better, then what about all the other things that make players better, like spinach or exercise?

If it's that it's bad for you, well, what about, I don't know this for a fact, forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems like HGH doesn't really have negative health repercussions. I'm probably wrong about that, but I could probably use a better example if I were smarter. So it really seems like it's not entirely clear to me how something gets made illegal and why it should be illegal. If, for instance, there was a, I think maybe Russell Carlton has brought this up, but if there was a placebo that made players 30% better, it seems to me that Major League Baseball would probably have to outlaw it because they don't want baseball players to be 30% better. If there was a magic bat that could help you hit home runs,

they would outlaw that probably if it were too good. And so the point seems to be somewhere between following the law and protecting players' health so that players don't have to do dangerous things in order to keep up with their peers, so that players don't have to do dangerous things in order to keep up with their peers, and setting a good moral example, and preserving the competitive integrity of the game. And those are four very different things that don't seem to apply to all the things that are restricted, and that do apply to some things that aren't restricted.

And so I would be curious to know what his own feeling was about why we do this. What is the goal? And when a sheet comes with supplements to be banned or not banned, how he decides which scary sounding chemical is okay and which is not. Yeah. And that would maybe tell us something about how he would handle future innovations like gene therapy or nanotechnology or just new therapies and new surgeries and cyborgs or whatever. It's going to get increasingly complicated as time goes on about what is an acceptable enhancement and what is not. Why is LASIK acceptable and PEDs are not? Whatever the next thing that comes along as we've talked to Jeff Passon about, you know,

what happens when they figure out how to put it in artificial ligament that stops all elbow injuries, figure out how to put in an artificial ligament that stops all elbow injuries, then what? Will that be okay? Will that be acceptable? Or will that be cheating or outlawed? So there is a strange sort of wavy line between cheating and allowable enhancement. Exactly. I think there's even a fifth. I think you just got to a fifth category of reasons that something is deemed unacceptable and it is that uh it makes the game not hard enough and that's a weird thing to uh to want in a sport but also i think an important one yeah anyway uh i i don't know if that i don't know if uh maybe i maybe that one was just since that was a segue, I could go again or you could go. Well, I'm kind of curious just about his general level of optimism about the future of the sport when he's not talking to media, when he's not talking to the public. I mean, I'm sure that he is optimistic.

He obviously projects an optimistic message while acknowledging the problems that have to be fixed. But, you know, how worried is he about, say, the TV bubble and people, you know, baseball becoming a local regional game as opposed to a national one? He's obviously commented on all of these things. He's been asked about these things, and he seems to be somewhat concerned about them. He's been asked about these things, and he seems to be somewhat concerned about them. But obviously he is the face of the league, and he's not going to give it bad PR on purpose. So he's going to acknowledge the problems and the potential pitfalls, and then he's going to say, but we can fix them, and we have solutions for all these things, and we're working on it.

But in private, I wonder whether he ever despairs whether he ever thinks that uh he's the captain of a sinking ship or something not that not that there's any reason to think that he is or that baseball is in serious trouble or anything but i wonder whether he has those moments and and there's a question that we have never discussed at length on this podcast because you have reserved it for a future article for about three years now. In fact, maybe a future book. Maybe a future book. But periodically someone asks us when baseball will end, when I guess Major League Baseball will end, when the sport itself will end,

just based on the rise and fall of sports and civilizations. And they want us to project a date that it will end. And so I'd be interested to hear him answer that question. I don't know whether you can be the commissioner of a league and not get high on your own supply. I don't know whether you can actually maintain kind of a skepticism about your sport when your job is to make the sport as good as it can be and sell it to everyone and make it sound appealing. So maybe just having that job makes you by default more optimistic than you were coming into that job. But still, I'd be interested to know, does he think that baseball will endure for as long as there is human civilization or as long as there are United States? Or does he think that there is an expiration date?

And that's probably not something that he would answer candidly if you were to ask him in front of a microphone. I have something similar, although different approach. I agree that the demographic, if you're him, if you're me, it's fine. I feel pretty good that baseball is going to suit my needs, serve my needs for as long as I need it to. But if I were him, the demographic directions would be extremely just distressing, right? Like terrifying. I don't remember where I saw it, but a few days ago, and sorry to whoever wrote it, and also sorry to everyone because I'm going to get the details slightly wrong, but it's pretty close. I saw that like five years ago, the average age of a Major League Baseball fan, like a self-described Major League Baseball fan or something like that, was 49.

And so five years ago, 49, and today it's 54, which suggests that every – not one new person. Not a single new fan. Of course, the country as a whole is getting older, right? Yeah. Well, no, that's actually my question. My question is to him is it seems like an impossible ask that he's going to somehow rebrand this sport for young people. It's not going to happen. And I don't care how many cool tweets he commissions, how many Papa slams. Is that what he does?

Well, as far as I can tell, that is baseball's plan for getting young people, is that they'll do some tweets. Because what else is there? Now, Rob Manfred can, you know, I think does the right thing by talking about how good Bryce Harper is for the game and sort of using that bully pulpit to at least promote a somewhat interesting culture. sort of using that bully pulpit to at least promote a somewhat interesting culture. But realistically, realistically, we're at the point where a sports unfavorables and favorables among young people, the young people have been exposed to the baseball.

They have ruled. They just don't like it that much. It's okay. You're not going to, unless you change the game dramatically, which maybe you can. I think there are probably ways you could. They would be massive and they would require you to have an extremely long collective bargaining session. But with baseball played the way it is right now, the incremental outreaches that they make to young people, not going to do anything. Okay. It's just not going to do it. Not because of their shortcomings as an organization, but because sports is a sport, people are the people. So my question is, how do you make a sustainable business that is so demographically tilted to the old, to grownups, to even older grownups, to even particularly demographically homogenous grownups? Can you succeed as a business like that? Is marketing to your base a long-term future? And if it is, I'd be curious to know what they do. How do they, because, you know, the TV bubble, like you say,

is going to make it a lot more difficult to get middle-income adults money in the future. And advertising rates are not as good for those people. And so I'd be curious what the plan is for 10 years from now or 20 years from now. Yeah, and I'd also be kind of curious about what percentage of people he would be happy with being baseball fans. percentage of people he would be happy with being baseball fans just you know what how many people what percentage of the population should be baseball fans in the future because it seems like just about everything is becoming more of a you know a limited section of the populace is interested in it just because there are so many options, so many entertainment options in every area that, you know, the best albums don't sell as many copies.

The best TV shows don't get as high ratings. Just everything is more of a niche interest now than it once was, except maybe football. And even with football, people wonder whether it's going to be headed downhill because of all the brain injury stuff so i think maybe just everyone sort of has to settle for what they can get in this future there's not going to be a national pastime there's not going to be a huge mega band there's not going to be a tv show that everyone's watching there's not going to be a TV show that everyone's watching. There's not going to be a sport that everyone plays. And so I wonder what he's willing to settle for. I will note that they are doing what they can for the youth stuff.

I agree that it's an uphill battle, that you can't really just start some initiative and make a generation care about a thing. But I did just get an email a few days ago, and I apologize for just reading from a press release. But this past weekend was the first play ball weekend in support of youth participation in baseball and softball. And they gave out 320,000 plastic ball and bat sets and set up lots of community activities and gave out shirts and it was like this whole big thing that was intended to just increase interest and participation in youth baseball and they are doing that sort of thing and it does seem to be a priority for him and i have no idea how successful it will be but it does seem like he's doing what he can

in that area. I don't know if you have any more. I don't have any more, but – okay. It did occur to me while you were talking that we actually have a podcast that has guests. We could have actually reached out to the commissioner and asked if he ever wanted to come on our podcast. He might have said yes. Sure. But – I mean, I've asked the commissioner questions.

Yeah. yeah has answered them but it's actually not that unrealistic i don't know why we did it this way but well because the premise was that no one else would be listening yes so uh so would you if he were our guest tomorrow uh would these be the questions you would ask him would do you think that these are worthwhile questions to have him answer publicly? Or are they only appealing to us because we don't feel that a media astute commissioner would answer them in a particularly honest way otherwise? Not because he's a liar or anything like that. I'm not saying that he's

dishonest. You're right. I think he's been a very candid commissioner, especially relative to other commissioners throughout history. But maybe these are only interesting questions to think about because they can't be answered well. Yeah. I think I have too much respect for his ability to talk to the media to expect him to stumble into saying something that he shouldn't have said. I've really, I mean, has he ever really made a misstep? I mean, there was that one time when he said something off the cuff about banning shifts and everyone wrote their article and he later said that he regretted saying that, but I mean, that was not really a mistake. I mean, it was something that he got burned a little bit for, but really, I appreciate that he was even willing to consider it. I mean, whatever. He didn't say he was going to do objectionable or that he shouldn't have said. So I wouldn't bother asking him. I mean, you could ask him what he's trying to accomplish in the CBA negotiations, and it would be interesting just to see how he avoided answering because I don't think he would really give us a detailed answer. I'd be curious to see what he would say, but it would probably just be some boring problem about,

you know, wanting to strengthen relations and wanting to continue the prosperity and work well with the players and all that sort of thing. So I doubt there'd be anything interesting. That's kind of why we don't have more people from teams on, you know, we talk about moves that teams make all the time, but we rarely have people from teams on to talk about those moves because for the most part unless it's something in the past they probably won't say anything that interesting about it so well ben if we ever have him on the uh the the show page uh episode text writes itself yeah that's true i don't know would you ask him anything from that we have discussed i might answer i might ask him the when do you think baseball will end question it's just kind of an

out of left field he won't be expecting it and i'd be curious to see how he'd handle it yeah i might ask him all of them i it's more in a way it's more interesting to hear you respond to the questions than uh i would expect it would be to hear him respond to the questions than uh i would expect it would be to hear him respond to them in a public setting but i might ask him anyway yeah sure okay all right you can support the podcast on patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild today's five patreon supporters are michael sweeney chris rupar brian fitzgerald olaf hong and thomas stephen flaherty thank you you can also buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, which is on the New York Times bestseller list for at least one more day,

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