Peterson, Trent, Tommy Pham discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

This is like the unstoppable force of this story met the immovable object of trout and just like the controversy free field that surrounds him at all times. He could have prompted another news cycle here if he had come out and sided with one player or another. Yes. Or just responded in kind to fam, but he opted not to do that very diplomatic, very commissioner like of him and so nothing controversial and maybe that will be the end of this thing. But boy, I did not foresee Nike trout entering the picture at that point. Nobody asked him why he's no longer repping super pretzel, seemingly, I was hoping someone would ask him that question. That's at the top of my mind, but the sea Trent report, I think the only other additional detail while there were a couple, one was that fam felt like Peterson didn't tell the entire story that maybe there had been more than just that lone GIF that he had sent for 5 insults of some sort, possibly or tense or gifts or who knows what. And he also said that he had heard from a number of people in the league who reached out to him in support of fashion. Possibly there just all scared of getting slept. Or being forced to be the commissioner. Yeah. They want to get on his good side in case he's in the league again. Or the other development, I think, was that we found out what the buy in was here. Because you had wondered how much money I sure did wonder that. So we learned, again, great reporting by Trent, but it seems as if the initial buy in was $10,000, and then there was an additional 10,000 that had to be paid by the loser the last place finisher of the league, which fam was in no danger of losing, seemingly he said he was in second when he quit and left the league. So a $10,000 initial buy in, that's a lot for you and me and most of our listeners. Oh yeah. But that's not a lot for Tommy Pham. It's really not. He was making $8.9 million last year. That was just his base salary. $10,000 is like a little more than 1000th of that. Like if you were making 60,000 as your salary, that would be $67, which you wouldn't want to lose $67, but you probably also wouldn't slap someone several months later over having lost $67. So when you put that into perspective, like fam has talked about how he bought a $300,000 Bentley and how he lost $92,000 in a single day in the stock market. I mean, that's his prerogative to buy or lose whatever he wants. But compared to those losses or expenditures, 10,000 is a drop in the bucket. I mean, that doesn't seem like it's anything to get too upset about. So maybe it was more the gifts and the perceived disrespect there or some combination of the two or maybe like if you don't grow up as a multi millionaire, it's probably hard to put $10,000 in perspective and maybe you're still thinking, hey, $10,000, that's a lot of money. There are a lot of things I could do with $10,000. But as a percentage of his salary and probably most of the players salaries in that league, not really a lot. So that does not justify the slap anymore in my mind. Yeah, I think, yeah. Oh, I should say the piece I was quoting from extensively, I think, was written by Andy. It was not written by sea trend. Sorry, Andy. Yeah. So maybe that puts this all to rest. We'll see. I mean surprised. If there was more to the story somehow, but that's all we know as of now, but we will update this developing story as necessary. We did see fam evidently had issued some forewarning of the slap. Also, because in the group chat or whatever it was, the text chain at some point last year, fam wrote that the next time he saw Peterson, he would give him a quote pimp slap. So, Peterson was forewarned, I guess, and four armed for handed. We're slapped, whatever force. Maybe he forgot about that warning, or maybe he didn't take it seriously because I probably wouldn't have. But he did put it out there and maybe he felt like once he issued that threat or that vow or whatever it was that he had to make do. He had to make good on it no matter how long it took. I mean, I think our base conclusions to this have not changed, which is, you know, know who you're joking with and whether your relationship was close enough to allow for that, but also don't slap people. And now we've added a third lesson, which is do not appoint unenthusiastic fantasy football commissioners because that way lies slaps, I guess. I still feel weird enjoying this story because fundamentally someone gets hit in the face. Yep, that's not great. But it does, it does keep adding interesting little twists and turns. I guess that we are more likely to see the conclusion of this or have that we are likely to have seen the conclusion of this because Tommy fam is in the league anymore. I guess what will really be interesting to know is, are there further defections from the league as a result of this incident? Is there sufficient clarification of the rules? Do they pivot away from ESPN as a fantasy football provider to another platform that might better accommodate their bespoke rule structure? Yeah? Yeah. Well, I think maybe we know that we will know, but if someone is going to do an even deeper dive and put an oral history out there or maybe a 6 or 8 part reported narrative podcast, I would subscribe. I would read. So the appetite is there. But thank you to everyone for continuing to chase down this very serious and vital story. And I guess in other news related to recent flare ups between players and suspensions, Josh Donaldson came out and basically showed that he is not all that contrite or seemingly hasn't learned the lesson that one would hope that he would have learned because he came out and issued a quote to the AP. He said that he was hurt that his teammates with the Yankees did not back him up after his Jackie taunts to Tim Anderson, which was something we observed when we discussed that that he really hadn't been backed up by his teammates and that Aaron Boone and Aaron judge and other people not named Aaron maybe seeing that. Come to his defense or had even expressed some disapproval of his comments, which seemed notable just because often teammates will just rally around their teammates, instinctively, no matter what happened. And so there was not a chorus of people backing up Donaldson here, which spoke to either Donaldson's popularity or lack thereof in that Clubhouse or just the nature of the offense here, but anyway, he seems that he is not pleased that his teammates did not have his back here and he said it was tough to hear those comments and I think everyone is playing the world's smallest violin for Josh Donaldson here, so he basically is painting himself as something of a victim here, I guess, that he did not receive the support. He still maintained that Anderson may be misinterpreted the references. He also said I haven't had a chance to talk to him, which it's been a while at this point. If he really wanted to reach out to Tim Anderson, I'm sure that he could have tried to arrange that at least, I don't know whether Anderson would have wanted to talk to him, but I think that he could have made that happen if he had really wanted to. So anyway, Josh Donaldson, Josh Donald Singh, basically. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's an intermediate step of self reflection, right?.

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