13 Burst results for "Bradford William Davis"
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"So I think it's just trying to find a way to get around the competitive balance tax threshold basically and it's funny I was talking to Ben clemons about who would step in to stop this if anyone and I don't think it's gotten to the point where it needs to be stopped if I've been for stepped in and said 11 years, this is where you reject and nullify this contract. I don't think there are any grounds for doing that. He's still going to be making lots of money at the end of that deal. But in general, it would be for the commissioner's office to step in and do that. And that's what happened in the NHL. But as Ben said, and I was saying to Ben, it's funny in a way because it's like the owners are looking for a way around a provision of the CBA that they themselves insisted on. It was their top priority and burdening. We can't lift the CBT. We can't give any ground here. And they succeeded to some extent, the players didn't get everything they wanted there. And so now that there is a CBT that teams are like, oh, well, but we don't want to incur these penalties here. So what's going on here? Yeah, so it's like they're the ones who imposed the CBT and now players would prefer for the thresholds to be raised, but I guess it's not such a terrible thing for them if 40 year olds are making 20 plus $1 million. But as Ben was saying, this is like a classic kind of collective action cartel kind of problem because even though it's beneficial for the owners as a whole to have the CBT have some teeth so that the leak as a whole can keep costs down each individual actor is then incentivized to find a way around that despite cooperating on suppressing costs kind of being in the best interest of the owners as a whole. You're still going to get just each individual if you have Steve Cohen who's like, well I got a lot of money and I want to spend it or Peter seidler or whoever then they're going to break ranks when it comes to actually citing people and that's when you need the commissioner to step in or at least the owners might want the commissioner to step in and sort of enforce the austerity rules which would benefit them in the aggregate, but not in certain specific cases. So it's kind of an interesting case study, I suppose, economists would have a field day with this. Well, and especially if we had better clarity, I mean, I know we got some of it in the course of the lockout and the CBA stuff, but it's like, you know, I think there are a lot of places where ownership is universally aligned across the 30 teams, but we know for a fact that there are different constituencies within the ownership group, right? And that there are teams that have been much more keen to impose limits as a way of maybe preserving their own competitive position within the industry and other teams that and not just the mets that have been interested in having slightly higher or even much higher limits so that they can sort of throw their weight around in a place where they view themselves rightly as having a competitive advantage relative to their peers. So it would be a really fast if we could get real transparency into all of those sort of machinations, it would be really, really interesting and I wonder if their owners who are looking around at the landscape now are going, all right, you guys were willing to go higher on those CBT thresholds or whatever it is. And I would imagine that part of the dread, especially for teams that are committed to being cost constrained, isn't even so much like, oh, we're missing out on Carlos Correa, right? It's the knock on effects further down the market where we are seeing sort of the Taiwan walkers of the world get four years and $72 million. And it's like, oh, I thought we were going to be able to be sort of in the market for some of these mid tier guys, but the entire market is shifting upward. And now we're seeing ourselves playing in a very different pool where it's like we have to get really excited about Kyle Gibson. Right, yeah. All right. Can I give you the cliff notes versions of my thoughts on the ball stuff? Sure. It was big news. It would have been bigger news in any other week, I think. It's a fact that the insider report from Bradford William Davis and doctor Meredith wells trapped this week amid the madness of the winter meetings that may have stolen some of the spotlight from it, but it's still got a good share of the spotlight because it's a pretty sensational report here. And just some general observations, so for anyone who didn't read it, it's all free, it's available for anyone to read. It's not paywalled. We'll link to it on the show page. And we have had both Meredith and Bradford on the show multiple times in the past. We had them on together a year ago to talk about their previous article, which was about the ball and the fact that multiple models of the baseball were in use in 2021, which was very valuable research that they did because they brought to light something that MLB had not publicly acknowledged and arguably had not even privately acknowledged the fact that two different versions of the baseball were in use in the 2021 season, a debtor ball, and a more juiced ball, and it was their reporting that got MLB to admit this and acknowledge it publicly and that we claimed that it had informed teams or the Players Association, but they were all like, huh? When did that happen? So no one seemed to know about this. And rad Manfred claimed that it was because of supply chain issues and production delays and COVID and everything, which had stymied their plans to switch over to a new model of the ball and so they had been forced to use
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Well, and especially if we had better clarity, I mean, I know we got some of it in the course of the lockout and the CBA stuff, but it's like, you know, I think there are a lot of places where ownership is universally aligned across the 30 teams, but we know for a fact that there are different constituencies within the ownership group, right? And that there are teams that have been much more keen to impose limits as a way of maybe preserving their own competitive position within the industry and other teams that and not just the mets that have been interested in having slightly higher or even much higher limits so that they can sort of throw their weight around in a place where they view themselves rightly as having a competitive advantage relative to their peers. So it would be a really fast if we could get real transparency into all of those sort of machinations, it would be really, really interesting and I wonder if their owners who are looking around at the landscape now are going, all right, you guys were willing to go higher on those CBT thresholds or whatever it is. And I would imagine that part of the dread, especially for teams that are committed to being cost constrained, isn't even so much like, oh, we're missing out on Carlos Correa, right? It's the knock on effects further down the market where we are seeing sort of the Taiwan walkers of the world get four years and $72 million. And it's like, oh, I thought we were going to be able to be sort of in the market for some of these mid tier guys, but the entire market is shifting upward. And now we're seeing ourselves playing in a very different pool where it's like we have to get really excited about Kyle Gibson. Right, yeah. All right. Can I give you the cliff notes versions of my thoughts on the ball stuff? Sure. It was big news. It would have been bigger news in any other week, I think. It's a fact that the insider report from Bradford William Davis and doctor Meredith wells trapped this week amid the madness of the winter meetings that may have stolen some of the spotlight from it, but it's still got a good share of the spotlight because it's a pretty sensational report here. And just some general observations, so for anyone who didn't read it, it's all free, it's available for anyone to read. It's not paywalled. We'll link to it on the show page. And we have had both Meredith and Bradford on the show multiple times in the past. We had them on together a year ago to talk about their previous article, which was about the ball and the fact that multiple models of the baseball were in use in 2021, which was very valuable research that they did because they brought to light something that MLB had not publicly acknowledged and arguably had not even privately acknowledged the fact that two different versions of the baseball were in use in the 2021 season, a debtor ball, and a more juiced ball, and it was their reporting that got MLB to admit this and acknowledge it publicly and that we claimed that it had informed teams or the Players Association, but they were all like, huh? When did that happen? So no one seemed to know about this. And rad Manfred claimed that it was because of supply chain issues and production delays and COVID and everything, which had stymied their plans to switch over to a new model of the ball and so they had been forced to use leftover
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Everyone knows the socks without X are so, so, really, they'd just be so, but still, excellent line, and according to our palette success for this family barbecue, this was a Boris special. He came up with this line on his own because Stephanie Epstein dropped a piece for Sports Illustrated about the creation process for Boris's material, which of course we talked to him about on episode 1903, but Stephanie went long on that as well. I will link to her piece on the show page. Boris also had a nautical analogy, or at least a water based one, he compared free agency to various bodies of water, infinity pools, lazy rivers, inflatable pools, the Yankees are in the infinity pool and they're certainly no shallow Hal in New York, very topical timely reference there. He also had one that I read out of context if there was context and I have not endeavored to discover what the context was, and I don't care. I don't want to know. So it's tweeted by our friend Fabian ardaya. I think the artful Dodger came to San Diego in a submarine. They run silent and they run deep, but I don't think there's anything about the Dodgers that's unusual in their quest to win and to be competitive and seek the best players. I suppose that is somewhat self explanatory if you read it many times. We were just talking about the Dodgers and what if anything they're going to do, that's what he's saying there, except he's using a nautical analogy as usual. The Dodgers came to San Diego in a submarine sure, and then John haman blew up our best of baseball Twitter draft by tweeting arson judge appears headed to giants. Not only an all time typo, but an incorrect report, or at least a premature one, he then deleted arson judge appears headed to giants, tweeted Aaron judge appears headed to giants, and then tweeted giant say they have not heard on Aaron judge my apologies for jumping the gun. Just quite a comedy of errors there, which really led to it an all time afternoon on Twitter. And that wasn't even the biggest Aaron judge news or non news because our friend Bradford William Davis of insider dropped potentially a bombshell report produced in concert with another former guest of effectively wild Meredith wills about the baseball or should I say baseballs, we have had both of them on the show to talk about their previous insider report about how there were multiple baseball models in use last season as in 2021. Now they are alleging that they were in fact three different baseball models in use during the 2022 season, and that's just the tip of the iceberg because they're also some implications in the article that MLB may have been using the new so called Goldilocks ball as they put it, not juiced, not dead, but somewhere in the middle, in some of its jewel events like the All-Star Game, but also in the postseason and in some Yankees, regular season games, according to their findings, which would of course contribute to conspiracy theories about arson slash Aaron judge. There were also some other pretty sensational claims in the piece about MLB threatening people who were interested in sending baseballs to Meredith for testing and I'll be strenuously denied all of this just a lot in that article to discuss and we will discuss it on an episode that I have no doubt we will record sometime soon. And by then, there may be actual news about arson or Aaron judge. Just really a lot happening here. There was also a report that MLB will be experimenting with adding a remote that pitchers can attach to their belts to call pitches back to the catchers, so pitchers calling their own pitches instead of catchers calling the pitches, which is something that occasionally pitchers have dabbled in, Greg Maddux, Zach cranky, and we actually talked about this back on episode 1577, whether pitchers should call their own pitches, maybe we will reprise that discussion sometime soon. I think we've touched on it at other times too. And I gotta give you an update on the free agent contract over under draft because we've had some movement and so far Meg and I are doing great here. So I took the over on Tyler Anderson at 19.65 million, the qualifying offer amount he ended up signing for 39 million, so that was correct. I also took the under on Josh bell at a predicted 64 million, according to MLB train rumors. He actually signed for two years and 33 million. I took the under on Carlos estevez at $21 million. He ended up signing for 14. All correct so far, but so is big, who took the under unjust and Verlander at one 20, so that's quite an edge for her. She also took the under on Andrew heaney at 42, which was wise, he got a two year $25 million deal plus incentives, and of course she took the over on Zac eflin at 22 million, so that worked out for her too. So we're calling all the contracts correctly thus far. I forgot to say, by the way, Cody Bellinger also signed with the cubs. One year 17.5 million, which is slightly less than he was in line to make via arbitration. Just so, so much happening. And just a few minor notes here, one I speculated in the outro of our last episode about the reds and the as and why they drew well on the road, according to one of our listeners who analyzed which teams did best in Rhode attendance, adjusting for the home attendance of their opponents. It was the Yankees and the Dodgers had to expect, but then teams like the reds and the a's also did well, which was kind of confounding. And I gave some potential reasons there, but as some of you have written into point out, this also could be a product of variable pricing, right? So when you have undesirable draws coming to town, then teams may slash ticket prices. Therefore, people will be more likely to go, so that could be a part of it. It could also be that teams arrange giveaways for those days, right? You got to get people to the park somehow. So that's a possibility too. So essentially it's artificially inflated because maybe teams know which are the least attractive opponents and thus they do what they can to juice the numbers. Also, we talked recently about the fact that MLS and the NHL, they have awards that they give out to teams for the best regular season record, we suggest that something like that might make sense for MLB, even though probably most people wouldn't care about it, at least initially. Well, it turns out that the NBA has just decided to introduce such an award, the Maurice Padilla trophy named after the first commissioner of the NBA whose name I may or may not have pronounced correctly awarded to the team with the best record in the league after 82 games, I think MLB should get on this train, even if no one cares, even if people just make fun of teams that win it without having postseason success. If the NBA is doing it, MLB definitely should, because the NBA doesn't have such a problem with postseason randomness, though I suppose it does have a problem with tanking, but I don't know if anyone will stop tanking so that they can win this trophy. Also, thanks to everyone who is recommended disc golf as a possible recreational sport for me, but I gotta say I live in a disc golf desert apparently. I have checked and there's no good disc golf in New York City. I'd have to go way outside the city. So thanks for the recommendation, but I don't think I can take you up on it now. And finally, I was informed by rob Edmond on Twitter that the announcer Joe Micheletti during a recent New York rangers game called Tyler Matt Taylor Mott,
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Gosh. My favorite salt tactic making noises that Dylan will have to decide if he wants to edit out. Let's see. I'm trying to think like amongst the beats who we have on fairly regularly for season previews. Susan slesser. Susan schlosser. I'm gonna do a control S oh no, that's not a good sign. 7 times, correct. Okay. Still alive. Rob Arthur, rob Arthur ten times. And you went too quickly. Think of someone else, wow, who writes about baseball, you know? Like who cares about Kylie mcdaniel? Kylie mcdaniel 7 times. Oh, that's a good one. All right. I'm gonna run out of draft adjacent people very soon. Boy, okay. RJ Anderson? 5 times. Oh, okay. Wow. Good pick. And we need to have RJ on more, too. Uh, Jake mince. Jake mince 5 times. Oh boy. I'm gonna say you guys are doing great at this. I was really afraid that we were gonna get two names in and be like, oh, that person was like four times. Well, on to the next segment. Okay. Keep singing higher. Oh, we'll leach. Will each to all 11 times? Okay. Oh boy. I'm gonna take the other half of the suspect as family barbecue, Jordan schusterman. Jordan, she's your man. Two times. Oh no. Goodbye, Meg. Oh, I said 7 62 and 1730. Can I ask a clarifying question? Did you track them as individuals and then also assess what his family barbecue? No, I tracked, if they appeared as cesspit as family barbecue, I gave them both credit for an appearance. Okay. I was just curious. Can't get yourself out of that elimination. People near the top that were left off this round, Zach lavine, 14 times, Michael Fowler. David Roth is in here as well, 6 times for David rob. And of course, yeah. Joe Sheehan. Aaron Glen, that's a seasoned preview series one right there. Rob neyer, Levi weaver, Nick porco, Alex spire. Rob means 5 times near the bottom. Other people that were only 5 rob mains, Bradford William Davis, Patrick Dubuque, Adam sabzi, Tim britton, Mark keurig Carson to stewie and Harry politis, Paul vitas, I think. Yeah. So yeah, there are 48 people who have appeared on the show at least 5 times. Wow. And that spreadsheet will be released to everyone after the conclusion of this show. All right. But yeah, Russell Carlton, grant brisby and Eric long and Hagen are tied with the most appearances with 18, but Eric is going with a blistering pace because Eric didn't make his first appearance until episode 1002, whereas the energy had been appearing long before that. So Eric is almost certainly going to pass them by pretty soon is if he continues with his high quality prospect information. Yeah, we can say he'll appear later this week as we recap the machines. So I'm not going to do this one, but the next thing I want to share is emails, emails, huge part of the show. There have been 2000 623 emails on the show. According to Ben's quasi official email question database. And my favorite fun fact about this is that the second email ever was read on episode 77, and it was sent in by a man named Mike, who started off by praising the podcast for its lack of fluff. And thank God for all of us that you didn't stick with that trend. We're fluffy. Yeah, very, very fluffy. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I love about the show the most. My favorite memory is working outside on the yard and hearing the third arm conversation. And just laughing at the storm while trying to rake and everyone's looking at me like, what is wrong with you? And I'm like, I will never be able to explain this. I think it would be way easier if you had a third arm. Yeah, it would be. Yes. All right. Next question, let's get into drafts. You have drafts of everything. Competitions. These stats that I'm about to go into, which is surrounding the minor league free agent draft. These stats do not include 2022 as that would require doing stat research to verify the correct the current progress of this year's picks and I am not an actual staff nerd I just play one on podcasts. Over the history of the minor league free agent draft. There have been 193 picks made by people that were actually on the show, not the random pick that was made just to compare. Out of those a 193, how many actually recorded a plate appearance or a batter faced for the season they were picked. Auction mode and Dylan, we will start with you. I know the least about it. The hit rate of the minor league free agent draft out of a 193 is the question. Yeah, so how many of those actually recorded a plate appearance or a batter faced? Actually hit at all. Like a third. I'm going to are we doing minor dice going up? Yeah, we're doing lines just growing up. I'm going to start at 60. 60. All right, Ben. I guess I'll take the overall, although not much over. So pick a higher pick a pick a number. Okay, I guess 61. That is a valid pick. Not to be that guy, I guess I'll just go a little higher, obviously, 65. 65 Meg. What was the total number again? A 193. 71. 71, Dylan. Now I'm a little boy. To get a single flight appearance, or better face. Yes. No, it's hard in that, even though I already said 60. Why are we doing a second round of guesses? We made our guess. You gotta keep pushing it. That's liar's dice. I already sunk myself. It's the I'm playing against myself here, Ben. I have the opportunity to lose myself. Let's say 75. 75, Ben. Is this just like how peer pressured you can be? Yes. Well, you can call Dylan's bluff. You can say it's too high. I will do that then. Okay, well, then you lose because the answer is 92. Really? 47.6%. I feel like a lot of them get a sniff, right? Get a cup of coffee. So fun fact about the minor league free agent drafts. The second best pick in any minor league free agent draft was made by Sam Miller in the 6th round of the 2018 edition when he took wade Leblanc. Here we go onto a mass 662 plate appearances that season, which would have been enough to win the minor league free agent draft every single time it's ever been played on the show. That single pick. The best pick, however, was in the very same round only two picks later, which Ben made Ben do you remember who you picked? Nope. Williams asked to do. Oh, of course, okay. That's the best pick. According to my measuring stick. Which is it was Williams asked to do. All right, how appropriate? Okay, so our last liar's dice is going to be about the season preview series. The season preview series is one of my favorite times of year. Wait, hold on, 2018 Williams has the deal? 2018, Williams has to deal. That's the information that I have. Am I wrong? He only got 97 plate appearances that year. I wish he was. I said, it was the best pick by my measurement. By my measurement is that it was William to be sentimental then. Sentimental. Thank you, Meg. I knew that you would understand. All right, so season preview series. Season previous series has been run over 9 years, I think. And a lot of people have come on and at the end, there's always the tradition of asking people how many wins do you think this team will have? And it's always a local beat writer who has to be diplomatic but honest and give a thorough accounting. What is the most number of wins that have predicted by a guest that was still less than the actual win total for that team that year?
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Like this people will enjoy the game more, we are trying to bridge the gap between that reality, the reality that we exist in now and the one that we would like to see. And that is a very straightforward and transparent conversation. Now we can have a debate about whether the mechanisms and levers they're trying to pull in order to achieve what they say they want will actually work. And if they're the right levers and if they might sort of get in each other's way and go up the gears behind the scenes, but it is at least a straightforward conversation in terms of the goals that they have. And then there's all this nonsense with the most important piece of equipment on the field, so it's just a very weird situation because I think that it might be past the point where we can just take it on its Facebook, perhaps the comms approach should just be here's what we're trying to do and here's the steps we took to do it. And then we should just see if only to try something new. I will say that if we use that somewhat arbitrary starting point of May 14th, the offensive environment has been pretty decent since then, OPS is up almost 40 points league wide the league has hit two 48 three 15 four O 6. The strikeout rate is 21.7%, which is down a bit, like it hasn't been that bad lately, you know, after the doom and gloom to start the season. So I don't know how much of that is the ball, the weather warming, and just maybe the end of a hangover coming from compressed spring training. That's another factor that complicates all of this. So I'm glad that we have this very granular public oversight. And we have so many watchdogs and we've been watch dogs of a sort, but there are people like rob Arthur and Meredith wills and many others who have really tracked this stuff closely and I think that's good because we know that MLB is not going to come right out and tell us these things and you have Bradford William Davis, who is chasing down the story and getting MLP on the record last year about the two balls and everything. That is great. I do think that maybe we've just gotten so deep into just looking at the behavior of the ball on a weekly or daily level that sometimes it's almost like we're in too deep like I almost want to like pump the brakes a bit just because we have these tools available to us that we never used to have. We have this great precision where we can assess the drag of the bow with statcast data and we can look at exit velocities and trajectories and fly ball rated embedded ball data and all sorts of information that we didn't used to have. And so we can't really compare to past eras and say, well this is how it worked then and here's how it worked now because we just don't have that level of information for earlier eras. So we're paying such close attention to this and looking at it on such a almost microscopic level that maybe we can just almost be like buffeted one way or another where we draw conclusions based on a fairly small sample. I don't know, it's tough because there have been cases where it seems like there's really did change mid season or from regular season to postseason and so I'm glad that people are keeping an eye on this but I haven't written about it this year almost because I feel like it's a Groundhog Day sort of situation where it's just like, oh, the ball is dead up the bottle slightly again you know sometimes within the same season. So I guess I would just sound some note of caution just because there's so many factors at play here and as we've learned over the last several seasons like little teeny tiny changes seemingly can have pretty big impacts and so when you're talking about weather and you're talking about humanoids and you're talking about a strange spring training and different numbers of players and pitchers permitted on the active roster and sticky stuff being taken away. I mean they're just so many things that are happening at the same time that it's hard to have a real controlled experiment, which I guess is why we need lab league. I was thinking we need lab leads. 'cause Evan trillick just for the athletic about how MLB has been testing sticky stuff in double-A and seemingly it has not gone well or at least pitchers are not happy about it. They've been developing multiple substances to companies have provided chemical mixtures that are intended to provide some tackiness, some grip without spin enhancing effects and thus far it seems like the returns are not great, at least according to the players that Evan talked to and quotes in this piece, people did not like how it worked and how it felt and it seemed like it wore off quickly and now at least for a while they're back to just rubbing the balls with mud the old way and pitchers seem pretty happy about that. So they were planning to test a different type of substance and they might still later this season, but it seems like they have a high bar for actually implementing this in the majors, which is good, but again, double-A pretty high level of baseball and it seems to have screwed some pictures up because the walk rate climbed pretty significantly in the leagues where they've been testing these new sticky substances and did not rise in other leagues where they weren't and the walk rates in those leagues were the highest they had been in at least 16 years like going back to when the records were easily accessible, I guess. So it seems like there were some unanticipated and undesirable effects there, which again, we need lap leak and you need to populate it with players who are good enough and have pitched to the high enough level that it might tell you something about what real professional and major league pitchers would save. But to not mess with prospects careers would be nice too..
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Just like just on the face of it, I guess you could debate the degree to which the intent was terrible, but even the most generous reading of it. It's just, it's just not what you want to say. Yeah, and I think that regardless of his intent the impact of those words was very readily apparent to everyone and I think Anderson spoke to that quite eloquently. I mean, if you and here I'm craving a bit from James vegan's piece on this, which we will also link to, it is quite good about how we just don't really need to take Donaldson at his word here, but when Anderson gave those remarks to Stephanie Epstein at Sports Illustrated. He was talking about the alienation he feels from baseball and the distance that he feels and we should remember that that interview was given in the wake of him being suspended for using the N word. Right. And so there is a tremendous amount of context both in the immediate moment of him giving that interview and within his experience of baseball in his life that is being brought to bear here. I just don't ever think it's appropriate for anyone, particularly a white player to try to weaponize Jackie Robinson's name against someone who and I think another thing we will link to here is the segment that Bradford William Davis did on CNN where Anderson is a tremendous ambassador for the game. He honors Jackie Robinson's legacy quite actively both in how he conducts himself on the field and the work that he does in the community in Chicago back home, trying to inspire young black Americans to be invested in baseball and play baseball even though he knows how it feels to be alienated from the sport sometimes quite profoundly. So I just think that given all of that weight that's around this for it to be cast off as some like jab when it's this iconic player who's life and legacy is so meaningful to so many people. It's just wildly inappropriate no matter candidly no matter what the relationship is between the people but particularly when the relationship is one that is at could at best be described as strained, right? And when the person involved has told you in the past, don't do that. At the end of the day, these are people in a common workplace and Tim Anderson is having an incredibly important person's legacies sort of thrown at him as if it's a weapon. Well, he's at work when he said, don't do that. We don't have that kind of relationship. You're not in a position to litigate this concept generally, and you're not in a position to use it as a taunt against me specifically. So I just, I don't know what's in Josh Donaldson's heart. I get why there is an instinct to try to unpack the intent because maybe that alters the potential trajectory for him realizing why this is inappropriate and correcting his behavior later, but ultimately we know what this did to the person involved and Tim Anderson found it to be disrespectful to the point that he was, you know, moved physically around it. So I just, you know, I don't think that this is ever appropriate. And you know, I understand that it's not unusual for players to appeal suspensions, but this might have been one where if Donaldson wanted to demonstrate contrition if that had been sort of top of mind for him, where he would have just taken his suspension and moved, tried to move forward with a different perspective on his past behavior and sort of a different way of comporting himself with other players on the field. So I do find it disappointing that he opted not to do that and is appealing his suspension. He's still on the COVID iel, so like any suspension would come later anyway, because he wouldn't have qualified to serve it then, but it was just very like the whole thing was just really icky and I hope that he will whether it is something as weighty and momentous as this or just like being less of a dick. At work that he will conduct himself differently. I don't want to be insensitive to the sort of tonnage of experiences in his life that have brought him to this point to your point. It sounds like he did not have it easy. But that doesn't give you a license to treat other people badly. We have to overcome that sort of weight and conduct ourselves in a way that is at the very least respectful. So yeah, and I guess the Yankees got what they expected or should have expected with Downton. I remember when they signed him or when they traded for him, Brian cashman said he's definitely got an edge to him, maybe that type of personality is going to be good for us. So the idea was like, you get this feisty Josh Donaldson this red ass, right? And I've seen people make comps to AG Krasinski like he's that kind of player who, if he's on your team, you like him, and if he's on the other team, you hate him, but it seems like it seemed to be true. No, it seems like a lot of people who are on his team don't like him. Particularly care for him. So I don't know whether it crosses the line from a good kind of feistiness that could light a fire under a team or whatever cliche you want to use like play with an edge that can be a good thing in some ways, but it can obviously be a bad thing in this kind of way. Like on the field, I guess they've gotten what they expected out of him. He's hit roughly like Josh Donaldson has for the past few years, so he has kind of delivered on the field, but he's also delivered on the field with this kind of incident. And one question about the suspension. So it was a one day deal. And there was a statement that MLB put out. This is from Michael hill, MLB senior vice president for on field operations. MLB has completed the process of speaking to the individuals involved in this incident, there is no dispute over what was said on the field, although it does seem like there was some dispute about what was said in the past or how it was said at least or how it was received anyway, continuing regardless of mister Donaldson's intent, the comment he directed toward mister Anderson was disrespectful and in poor judgment, particularly when viewed in the context of their prior interactions, in addition, mister Donaldson's remark was a contributing factor in a bench clearing incident between the teams and weren't disciplined..
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"I mean, I guess if you can't get to the real truest park, I could see wandering around once to get the lay of the land. It's like as a friend of the show Bradford William Davis quipped the braves would rather build their stadium in the metaverse than a black neighborhood. There's that. But really, I just don't see the appeal. I'm all for, as you said, catering to a different audience and there can maybe be some fun Fortnite style things where maybe you have a concert there that's accessible to people without spending some exorbitant amount or being able to access the place, but I just don't know how many people are really in the market for let's wander around a semi photorealistic recreation of a ballpark. With other avatars, just not really high on my list. Now I'm a picturing you're walking around digital, truest perk, right? You've customized your avatar and you're walking around and then zooming by you is the Acuna from field vision that doesn't look like him at all. And you're just like bye. Yeah, this is doom. We shouldn't do this stuff. I mean, it's not that we shouldn't do it. It's just that like why do it, you know? There's so many things we could do. They're so few actual hours in the day. This talk work, right? Some developers plural had to sit around and figure this out and spend time on it and, you know, when they're like, moms ask them what they did with their week at the end of the week when they call their mouse they're going to say this and their mom's going to pretend to know what they're talking about, but not. And you're going to say developer, that's because, you know, my mom, she's in her 50s or 60s. She doesn't know what that means. That's not why she doesn't care. You should sit with that. Sit with it and think about what you've done. Yeah. Make a metaverse. I would want to visit. I don't know that the technology is quite there yet, but someday, in my lifetime, I imagine there will be a metaverse that appeals to me, just not yet, but who knows? Maybe give it a few more months of lockout and maybe I will be lining up to visit digital truest part just to get some sort of fix. And look, I know that not everyone can be their physically, but if what you're interested in is a tour, all of the ballparks give you tours, they'll give you a tour of Truist. They won't. I don't think they take you through the Clubhouse when they do those, but the reason you want to see the Clubhouse is 'cause you want to see the players there. You don't care about an empty Clubhouse. You think you do, but then you're gonna go in there and you're gonna be like, oh yeah, lockers, huh? Just to everyone who is sending me these press releases. I am once again asking you to just demonstrate one appealing application of this. Aside from NFTs specifically the environmental ramifications and just the general scamming of it. I have yet to really hear one suggestion of why this will make my video games better and what it will enable me to do that I can't currently do. And if you can't answer that question, then I just don't know why I should care or why I should spend any money on these things. My favorite thing about all of the press releases I get about NFTs and MLB is that they all say you get this exclusive enter to win this exclusive NFT and then you read like what you get and there's the NFT and then there are all of these literal physical and real world experiences that go with the NFT and I'm like, so you don't actually think the NFT is cool, which is why you're giving people two free tickets to sit behind. That's not, you know what? It's not a non fungible tokens. Sirs. You're just doing a ticket giveaway that comes with a QR code. What are we doing? I need it here. Yeah. Well, speaking of hating it here, another little bit of news that we wanted to touch on. There was a verdict shortly before we started recording in the Eric K trial. So this has been going on all week. It has been pretty big baseball news in the absence of the regular course of baseball news. And a jury in Fort Worth has found the former angels communications director Eric K guilty of distributing fentanyl that resulted in the death of Tyler skaggs, the former angels pitcher. He was also convicted on a charge of conspiracy with intent to distribute controlled substances and TJ Quinn of ESPN and Sam Blum of the athletic and others have been reporting on the trial from the scene and I don't know that I have a whole lot to add from a legal perspective here. But it's just a sad story all around and it's made some headlines partly because other major leaguers have been testifying including that Harvey and they have acknowledged either using or distributing various drugs of abuse, including opioids and so I think there has been some concern about how prevalent is this in major league clubhouses, not that it's particularly surprising to me that it would be an issue in major league clubhouses because it's an issue everywhere or at least in this Clubhouse. And when you have athletes who have disposable income and also have a lot of aches and pains that they may be incentivized to repress and maybe also have more ready access to ways to get these things if they are so inclined. It just doesn't shock me in any way and you just have to hope that teams are that the league are providing the help that they need and hopefully in more of a therapeutic form than a punitive form. So that future skags cases can be avoided. So I don't know how common it would be for team employees to be providing these substances, hopefully that is the exception. I don't know if it's unique, but just as players in the past in the 80s were using cocaine or in the 90s we're using steroids or whatever. Players are people in the world. And so they are going to do the things that people do. And this is just that there's no happy outcome to this. I guess maybe skaggs family get some sort of closure that there is a verdict in the case, but obviously it doesn't bring him back. So it's just kind of a depressing story all around that you hope can maybe help avert future occurrences of this kind of thing. Yeah, and you know the testimony of Matt Harvey inspired Terry Collins to share a bunch of very personal information that I think that you hit it just right, what we are hoping for in instances like this is therapeutic intervention to make people well and to give them the help and support that they need to deal with not only whatever sort of underlying medical issues, whether they're physical or mental, or sort of driving their use of substances and also the use of those substances themselves and obviously using opioids and cocaine is different. Like I don't mean to equate all of these things together, but I think that you are far more likely to be.
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Always by Ben Lindbergh of the ringer, but how are you? Not too bad? Good. And we are also joined today by Joshi and of the Joshi and newsletter. Hello, Joe. Hey, man, good time to talk to you. Yeah look, I just talked to you too. Thanks for joining us. How's your walkout going? You know? I did not. I think so we did a thing on slack. Get everybody guessing the day throwing out their number. And I said, February 25th. And until fairly recently until the mediator news cycle. I still thought that was possible. And now I well don't. We're recording this on Friday and we'll see what happens on Saturday with the offer. I'm not terribly optimistic. But I now believe we're probably going to lose a chunk of spring training and maybe even some games. I underestimated the owners resolve to win. Despite there not being very much on the table at this time. Yeah, I think that they may have underestimated the player's resolve also. Yeah, so I wanted to have you on because we've been watching you process the lockout in real time via Twitter and your newsletters often at the bottom will list some target, subscriber count where you can quit Twitter forever. I guess you're not quite there because you have been tweeting a lot lately and you've been putting yourself through the torture of trying to teach Twitter about labor relations in baseball, which is one windmill to tilt that. I suppose. So we wanted to have you on to turn your pain into podcast content here because you've been doing your best to try to educate the masses on there. But it seems like there are certain talking points that you have been writing about and talking about for years and I'm sure you're getting through to some people, but perhaps not everyone out there. So we figured, well, let's just have Joanne and we'll just run down some of the worst lockout related or baseball labor related arguments and it'll just be a nice handy dandy podcast primer and we'll put them all in one place. And then we will be able to banish those arguments forever and Twitter will be a Paradise of refined and enlightened discourse. Now, I want a mission to civilize a reference that my fellow sorcerers will get. Yeah, I don't want to be on there as much as I am, but I do feel like when you think about all of the bad information that gets processed. And it's better now than it was in 81 or 94 or 2002. I do feel a certain obligation to put better information out there. And I don't know, that sounds like egg ran I mean, there's no way around it. But I think the only way you beat that information is with good information. So I like to think I'm providing better information. Before we get into that information should we talk about one of our other favorite topics around here is a sports betting. Multiple models of baseball because that's something else you address this week, Joe. And we talked about this a bit when we had Bradford William Davis on with Meredith wills to talk about their work that revealed the multiple models of baseball that were in use last season. Just the gambling implications of that not being able to count on which baseball is in use at any particular time. And you're more pro sports betting than we are or I don't know if we're anti it existing, but we're anti having to know and care about it. I guess. Is where we are, which it seems like, based on your most recent tweet, you are sympathetic to that view. It's such a blitz such a full court press with the gambling and the betting stuff lately that it's kind of a turn off even if philosophically you're not necessarily opposed to it. Yeah, I mean, I grew up around, you know, because sports betting was just something that was always around growing up, the parlay tickets and I know my family had a bookie using things like that. So I kind of grew into it. So I don't have a trigger against it like some people do. And there's nothing wrong with that. But baseball is the sport that has always been the most anti gambling. Dating to the scandals of the late 19th and early 20th century is culminating in the 1919 black Sox scandal. Baseball is the one that has the rule that says if you're involved in all gambling. It's always positioned gambling.
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"No way to do that without sounding pedantic, and yet I notice it every single time. This is just you develop editor as a stepping point. And most people probably skim over this and couldn't care less, but when it's your job to either put the hyphens in or take the hyphens out, then you become fixated on it forever. Now, people listening to this podcast, you read van grass regularly might have their own views on some of these things, and they might disagree with my views. And so they are listening to you, say that and listening to me go yep. And they're going put Meg, you do X, Y, and Z thing. And the great thing about being the managing editor is that you get to say, we hyphenate too much. We're not going to do it. And then everyone does it because you're the one who edits their copy before it goes live. So when I see something like that, I assume that the writer has a deep and abiding preference that is informed by some life experience or a moment of confusion when they were a young person reading a hyphenated less hyphenated text and suddenly they're like, we must put it in. And so I don't feel the need to correct them, because I just assume that they, like me, I think that some rules are kind of silly and are using their authority to defy them. And that's fine. That's a language adapts. It's all. It's all fine. But also, we have an 8 way too damn much. It's we all know. We all understand we can deal with compound adjectives. You know, it's like you have typos in text and you understand what it says because your brain is amazing and fills it in and figures it out because our brains are freaking rad. So anyway, hyphenate lesson, come up with a new hip I pitch acronym. Well, let's go where no one has gone before. Yeah, you can over explain sometimes some listeners were saying well, you can't say times hit by pitch because then it makes it sound like you have multiple times getting hit by the same pitch so you should say times hit by a pitch, perhaps that would be one way to do it. Or that you shouldn't say that you had X hits by pitch, you should say that you were hit by X pitches instead. But again, then it's more words and then you can't realize it as easily or there are certain times when you can say one thing and you can't say another or it would disrupt a list of things when you're saying that he had this many of that. And that many of that and this many times hit by pitch a pitch. There's just no easy answer, but now this was our hot hyphenation talk and hit by pitch banter for today. But the real pressing issue is not how to pluralize hit by pitch, but which ball you were hit by when you were hit by a pitch. Very good transition. No way to know. Thank you. Thank you very much. So let's get to our interview segment. In 2019, rob Manfred said, if we make a decision to change the baseball, you're going to hear about it. Well, in 2021, MLB decided to use two different models of baseball in major league games, and we didn't hear about it at all until it was uncovered by the research and reporting of our guests today. Doctor Meredith wills and Bradford William Davis. You've heard them both before on the show, but as refresher, Meredith is a data scientist and astrophysicist who has in the past few years, used her knitting skills and analysis skills to become one of the foremost destroyers of baseballs, Meredith, welcome back. Thanks for having me. And Bradford writes investigative features for insider, including the one from last week that built on Meredith's work and coaxed admission from the league forced an admission from the league, maybe welcome back Bradford. Yo, good to have you back rather. By the way, it was quite a power move to publish this piece while you were on vacation. It was like, I'll just drop this match in walk away from the fire and I'll be over here sipping butter beer at Universal Studios. That's the way to do it. So Meredith, let's talk about the two baseballs here in the timeline as best as we can establish it here. And maybe you can summarize your methods too. I know that we've asked you about it on the podcast before, but for those who are just joining us. So two different baseball models in use what separates those models in terms of construction and ball behavior. Well, the best details on this actually are in an article that Stephanie Epstein wrote for Sports Illustrated back in February because it turns out the same two balls were used in 2020. It just didn't come up as much. So in this case, the balls themselves on the outside are basically the same. You can't tell them apart if you're holding them if you're looking at them. But if you take the leather covers off, there's a wound portion on the inside that we call the center. That's the thread and then there's layers of yarn and ultimately that cork and rubber pill, which is the very core of the ball. And it turns out that those two centers are noticeably different weights. It turns out the difference is about two and a half grams, which doesn't sound like a lot except that the precision on those weights is much less than that. And so if you actually look at the measurement, there's really no question as to which ball is which. But until you take the covers off, you really can't tell. You might have lighter ones that are much lighter or heavier ones that are much heavier, but a lot of them, no, they're too close to each other with the covers on. And how did the two different balls behave? Yeah, that's a good question. What MLB said and again, this was originally reported in Sports Illustrated was that the balls were the new ball was specifically designed to decrease home runs. Now, they didn't do that necessarily by changing the drag. In fact, they didn't even test the drag. What they did was they made the ball so that that center I was talking about that the innermost layer of yarn. There are three layers. The innermost layer was being wound more loosely. Now, when that is not as dense, what you end up with is it can just squish down more and it's not going to come off the bat as hard. A good analogy would be under inflating a basketball. It's just not going to bounce if it's underinflated. So same idea. The problem unfortunately is that those tests and there was an article in the athletic that was I want to say it was sarris and Lindsey Adler. I think that's right. Those are the three. They did confirm with rawlings that the tests were basically only done in a lab. And it was only for that bounciness for what's called the coefficient of restitution or.
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"But how are you? Quite well. How are you? Well, I didn't get inducted into the Hall of Fame. But I am otherwise, well. Yeah, it seems like everyone was all of a sudden 6 new inductees, headlined by buck O'Neil and Minnie mignot. Okay, not everyone. There were some deserving candidates who were left on the outside still looking in. It was generally, I guess, good news. We're still some frustrations. And it was kind of nice to have some Hall of Fame news that was largely not about the character class. Not that we can't have character class discussions, but it was a refreshing change just to talk about good characters in some cases and players just judged on their merits as players. And we will actually devote most of our next episode to that. So didn't want to give it short shrift, we will have a guest on to talk to us about all of the new Hall of Famers, but we did want to spend this episode catching up on some pretty big news from last week, which was maybe a little lost in the shuffle amid the beginning of the lockout, a report by Bradford William Davis, based on research by doctor Meredith wills about the fact that there were multiple baseballs in useless season. Okay, multiple models of baseballs. Everyone knew that they were multiple baseballs used last year. But two different types of baseballs were used in major league games and MLP came out and admitted it. And according to Bradford's reporting seemingly, no one else was aware of this. So it caused a bit of a stir, and we will be talking to both of them in just a moment. The only thing I wanted to say before we bring them on, we got a lot of responses to our discussion last time about the proper way to pluralize hit by pitch. This is how we're going to get through the lockout, just talking about how you make hit by pitch plural. So art discussion, which was in response to a listener email mostly centered on whether it should be hits by pitch or hit by pitches and a lot of people wrote in to propose alternative methods. Some people sided with one or the other, one popular suggestion was to pluralize both and go with hits by pitches. So listener Ben among many others said, I think it sort of works because both the hitting of the batter and the number of pitches are plural, the batter gets hit multiple times and hit by multiple pitches. Also, it avoids the implication that the batter was hit by multiple pitches within the same at bat and by pitches makes it sound less like the total number of hits a better gut in different categories of pitch. So hits by pitches was a somewhat popular suggestion. I don't know that I would prefer that to hits by pitch, but a bunch of people apparently preferred it. Yes, people seem to enjoy that one. There were a number of folks who suggested that we revert to hit batsman and I can appreciate that if it were a stat that we largely cared about within the context of pitchers, but I think that it kind of puts the emphasis on the wrong syllable as it were. When it comes to hitters because they are not hitting pats when they are. They are themselves the batsmen. So there's that. And maybe we would make it gender neutral too. I think, cricket, I believe recently switched from Batman to batters. So we could go with hit betters, but yes, it's still has that issue that mentioned there. Yes, and I think we had another suggestion times hit by pitch. Yeah, I meant to mention that last time because I mentioned that I will try to write around it by pitches or hits by pitch wherever I can and sometimes I might say plunking or something like that. But often I will write or say times hit by pitch. And I do kind of like that. So you just say so and so blocked a 50 times and struck out a hundred times and had 15 times hit by pitch, something like that might work because as people pointed out in this context hit isn't a now and exactly it's like a past participle verb and so you throw the extra noun in there that you can pluralize and have it be times hit by pitch. It's an extra word and I guess it kind of disrupts the acronym. Hit by pitch is still in there, but really it's like BP. So it's problematic either way. We got people suggesting bases on hit by pitch so that it would be parallel with bases on balls or maybe beans or beans or something instead of plunking, which I don't really like because to me being is intentional. Right. And also maybe specifically in the head. That is the bean that bean is referring to. I know it's become a bit broader, maybe, but to me that's not necessarily an accidental hit by pitch in the butt. That's not a beanie really. So I guess we should note that saber has a style guide a baseball style guy that some publications adhere to mostly use it at fan graphs we mostly and then we diverge 'cause of course we do. Right. And saber advises that HBP is acceptable and that the pearl is HBP so not H's BP, but that also they hyphenate hit by pitch. So they just go hit hyphen by hyphen pitch, and then the plural is hyphenated also. So it's just hit hyphen by hyphen pitches. I don't love the hyphenation there, although it does sort of resolve the pluralization issue because if it's like one word, if it's hit by pitch, it's just a discrete unit, then you can just say hit by pitches and it's all hyphenated and that sort of simplifies the pluralization problem maybe. But I don't love hyphenating it in all cases. Ben. Can I admit to something? Sure. And this is going to offend any number of our listeners, but perhaps most especially my predecessor at fan graphs should he be listening. Carson sis Julie. I think we over hyphenate. Like as a culture, you know? We have a fixation on a high phonations and look, sometimes you need to hyphenate in order to have clarity. I think that as an editor, my prevailing philosophy around style guides and grammar rules and writing in general is that one of the things you should price more than anything is clarity, because you're asking a reader to spend some time with you, and you want them to understand what you're trying to say. And I think that sometimes, especially in the advanced stack context, we, as a collective, don't do as well with that as we could, I think that we are in general much stronger on that score than we used to be, both because our readers are have a better baseline understanding of advanced stats and because I think that clarity rather than cleverness is sort of something that we strive for, but also we sure think that people struggle to understand things if they're not hyphenated from here to kingdom come. I think we could hyphenate a lot less and everyone would just be fine. They just would be fine, Ben. Yeah. I mean, I'm an Oxford comma man. Me too. So when people say, yeah, we don't need the comma. We'll understand it. I know there's some ambiguous cases, but I prefer having that comma. And there are cases where people will under high at times, but really, just in general, as an editor, this may not be the most relatable topic that we have ever considered on this podcast, but it can be very mystifying the choices that writers and their writers I read and I'm very familiar with their hyphenation foibles. Not at fangraphs, of course. But there are people who will hyphenate years old like at the end of saying like so and so was 50 years old. If you say it's a 50 year old person, then you hyphenate. If you're just saying so and so is 50 years old, you don't have to hyphenate. And then I always think, well, should I tell them no, there's no possible way I could say, hey, just in case you were wondering, I noticed that you have this odd hyphenation foible..
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"Regression some plexiglass principle will come into play here, similarly with the twins take a huge step back and maybe you just imagine that there will be some springboard action back into respectability. But yeah, no barrios and kenta maeda, having had Tommy John surgery in September. I know it was the brace type of Tommy John surgery that in theory has a quicker recovery, but really just no rotation to speak of here. I mean, I like Joe Ryan. There are other arms there, but you can't go into a season with that rotation and realistically expect to content. So I don't know what they have up there sleeves and how much more they are willing to spend and whether they'll be active in trades or sign one of the bigger remaining starters. But it does seem like there's more work to do here. But it is at least encouraging that they have retained the services of Byron buxton. So I think the only other team maybe that we need to touch on right now, I guess is the marwin and we talked a little bit about the Marlins recently when the rumors were circulating about the sandy Alcantara extension that is now official. And in addition to that, they have signed Avi silic Garcia and they have traded for Jacob stallings from Pittsburgh. So this is sort of what we said last time that they had the pitching, and now it's about spending and or trading from depth to put together a lineup. And that is what they are attempting to do now. So obviously, Garcia has signed a four year $53 million contract, which maybe is bigger than people had projected for Abby silk Garcia. But the marwan is just meet a lot of offensive help. They need, I guess they need a catcher who can help their young pitchers and stallings who just won a gold glove is certainly that. It's like, I guess if you can't go get pictures, well, in the Marlins case, they don't need to in the twins case they do, but hey at least if you have buxton out there, he will save you some runs in center, like the twins run prevention is a lot better when Byron buxton is on the field. And you would think that the marwin bringing along a young pitching staff it is probably helpful to have someone like stylings. They're not going to be a huge help offensively, but he's not a bad hitter for a catcher. So that's kind of what they needed to do. They needed to either spend money as they did with Garcia, or they needed to trade from their pitching stockpile as they did trading Zach Thompson to Pittsburgh to get styling. So this was sort of the playbook, and they're not there yet either, but it is a start to making this a more balanced roster. Yeah, and you know, I think that while the options here around catcher are just bad across the league, like his ability, like you said to be sort of a consistent defensive force for them is really good. And when you look at the alternatives, this seems fine. You know, I don't think that they really were going to play in the yawn gum space. And I think that it's defensible to say we want someone younger, who can kind of come along with the staff and the only way to really do that is in trade because I don't know, can I interest you in a Roberto Perez? I mean, I know that he has signed now. But I think that this is a better option there. And then you look to the extension and it's like we're identifying the pieces of this roster who are going to contribute when we're really ready to contend and I think that contrast one of them. So I don't know, I like it for Miami, I think that they are gonna get in a spot where they have to spend more even than they did with Garcia, but I don't know. Seems fine. All right, so we've covered the major moves, say I know that we haven't gotten to everything. There's no way we could. There were many reliever moves, the Giants made some pitching moves and brought some guys back and got Alex Cobb and maybe we will get to some of those other moves during the long cold winter months with no transactions. And there's been other interesting news too that presumably we will talk about. Next time there's a proposal about a 14 team playoff format with a draft lottery, so there are things to discuss about that and friend of the show Bradford William Davis has an interesting report up about MLB using multiple models of baseball. This past season, who is surprised by that, but still good to have it documented. So lots more to discuss next time we will be talking about either the beginning of the lockout or the miraculous resolution to avoid the lockout. One of those two things, but we have plenty to talk about next time and then the last show of the week in lieu of talking about the hot stove we will talk about stove leak again. So is this a good model for the off season? I know a lot of people have made jokes about, hey, we should have a lock out every off season. And I know they're just kidding, and obviously we don't actually want that. But is this good is the envy that baseball fans feel about watching NFL for agency NBA free agency and saying, hey, super exciting, day or two here. That's basically what we've had in MLB..
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"bradford william davis" Discussed on Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
"I'm Meg rally of fangraphs and I am joined today by Bradford William Davis, a return, guest, but now with a new gig, Bradford, how are you? Hey, man, thank you for having me. I am, I'm okay. I'm like a little tired because I've been working a lot and then also I had the great misfortune of well, no great was where I sound so privileged. The great fortune of having a flu shot. I don't want to anti max, you know, this is a reputable podcast. But I am tired. Yeah. I think it might be with a flu shot, you know, I don't know, but I'm definitely a deadly woke up like about 12 minutes ago. Yeah, the flu shot thing can knock you around. I got mine a couple weeks ago and the drag was definitely not as intense as it was post my second COVID vaccine shot, but you do feel it for at least a day where you're dragging a little bit. Right, right exactly, so hopefully I'm still a coherent and useful member of this podcast today. And, you know, again, the science works, vaccines, whatever. Get your shots every second community. Yeah. But also I'm tired and that's what you hope that we hope everyone gets their shots and we hope everyone is granted at least a day to recover from when they get them. So last time that you were on effectively wild, you were working for the daily news and you were in the weeds on baseball pretty much every day, and now you have a new job at insider, which listeners might be familiar with as Business Insider, but it is now on a broader mission. And so we're going to talk playoff baseball in the back half of this episode, but I think it's always interesting for people to kind of understand how the specific job you do in sports writing changes the way that you engage with sports writing because a features writer is really different from a beat writer and all of those folks are really different from the kinds of do different kinds of work than the kind of work we do at fan graphs. And so I thought we could start there and maybe you could just lay out for our listeners. How do you describe your current job when you're telling friends and family what you do? Right, so I usually describe myself as an investigator features writer. So that means generally speaking, longer pieces with a lot of research and digging, define the thing that someone probably doesn't want you to know about. And some people do want you to know about, which is why they often come out. But many people usually people who have power authority, you know, in the area field that's being reported on, don't want you to. So that is that's investigative, you know, reporting and writing. But usually stuff that has some sort of public import or at the very least interest that is kind of what I get to work on now at insider. For people who for like true Bradford heads and family news, you may not be terribly surprised that I'm doing that kind of stuff. Given that a lot of what I did back of the daily news, even as I was a columnist, there are sports columnists. We're very investigative pieces, where, you know, that took a lot of time chipping away and chipping the way chipping away to find something that I believe to be important. Other people will be other people who need to be important as well. But the pace is different, of course. I'm not, you know, I'm not a columnist so it's so it's not my job to serve takes, you know, right for Twitter now. I still do get to express my values clearly, you know, in both just the subjects I choose to cover, but also even how I write about them. You know, but, of course, you know, the position, not the position I'm taking, you know, when I choose to run a story is a little different for insider anyway. So yes, that's me. And then the other thing is that the desk is not a sports specific desk either. There are some investigative sports writers like what comes to mind is that Molly and clancy I want to say, right? Of The Washington Post, she's done all this incredible stuff on we've NWSL. You know, writing for wapo. You know, and you know, and so there are a few of those types of people out there. Not many because of the nature of the industry, kind of crashing and burning. Yeah. The Bailey news at G 7 used to have an investigator reporting desk. And, you know, they disbanded a few years ago because of this bandit is not the right word. They were disbanded by institutions of the news by ownership and management, but yeah, that happened too often, unfortunately, because it's clearly needed. And falling any sports needs of weight. But with all that said, my assignments aren't limited to sports or baseball. Because of my background, they do encourage me to continue pursuing sports things. So I'm still at games a lot, you know? Once I was not a whole lot of institutional knowledge of, you know, I guess, sports media, like, okay, like a local paper. Once I kind of heard, oh, I can go to games again. And go on a field, you know, far more valuable than just being on Zoom calls. These are the pandemic, but vaccinated, you know, writers are allowed to be on field during pregame warm ups, and you get some opportunities, you know, not as frequent as before, but you know for back when you're in locker rooms, but you get some opportunities to still pull people aside and talk to them and, you know, I just, I'm there about a week once or twice a week during the regular season. And I went to know you, I wanted the Red Sox Yankees wildcard game as well because I was close enough. But just kind of showing face, which is like half the job anyway just like showing you a real person that just parachuting in. But yeah, and but yeah, getting this, you know, talk to people and chip away at things and so the baseball story that I had done so far for insider was a result of being able to talk to people in person. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about the wildcard game and kind of getting back back on the field there because I imagine that you're sort of in an interesting spot having transitioned into the role that you did because some of the players who you covered while you were at the daily news, you know, it's like not the first time you've talked to Aaron judge, I imagine, but was the dynamic different at all, having been still present, but less present than you would be if you were there as a regular columnist on a baseball beat? Yeah, you know, one of the cool things is that I've been able as I've been kind of reintroducing myself, right? To these players and coaches and everything. One of the things I've been able to tell them is, hey, listen, you know, I'm not here to write about why you blew the platoon advantage. Against Baltimore. Something like that. And like, you know, questions that are of course important within the sense of this game that we all respect and love, hence, you know, doing a podcast on it. Yeah. But like, you know, but are certainly things that you can imagine them not always enjoying having to talk about, right? Right. But basically just that I have bigger fish to fry. Yeah. And so, you know, just in that reintroduction, just let me know listen. You know, I am someone who cares a lot about certain things or issues within the game. And I hope to be able to talk to you about that, you know? I'm willing to do things fully off the record in the off season, you know, like I don't wanna bother you while you're fighting for your wives and the playoffs or on dependent race or whatever. But we can, you know, but I don't need a quote right now, you know? I mean, you know, we can chop it up in December, you know. When things are when things are chiller for you. That's been a pretty nice advantage, honestly, you know? I'm not having to not having the same kind of incentive to just kind of deliver headlines every single day, you know? Right. And show the value of writing good thorough. You know, pieces, you know, that help people think and understand things better, which is not to say that you can't do that quickly either to be correct. But it has been an advantage I've been able to use rhetorically when talking to the two athletes and people in the field. So far, it's actually led to strengthening sourcing, you know, in a way that wasn't happening as quickly course and you know in the brief time that I was in locker rooms at 2019 because that's another thing that just started..
The Takeaway
"bradford william davis" Discussed on The Takeaway
"Do they make a sound joining me now. A mirror rose davis assistant professor of history and african american studies at penn state and co host of the feminist sports. Podcasts burn it all down a mirror. Welcome back how is a pleasure to be here and bradford. William davis is an investigative reporter based in new york exploring race class and help especially within major league baseball and the wider sports industry. Welcome back to you. To bradford exactly so amirah. How do athletes use the press to make a point if they don't get any press yeah Well one of the advantages over the last decade or so has been social media which has really been a disruption to this long history of black women's protests being overload of marginalized sporting lives being kind of not considered. And so they he move in silence. A lot But they also reach out and use a variety of tools at their disposal whether it's social media whether it's zoom Elizabeth williams and the dream on the whole wnba for instance lived on 'cause with kimberly crenshaw with activists on the ground And didn't necessarily work in the spotlight to do the work that they were doing. But bill really really strong connections That a lot of people missed a lot of people just didn't see popped up because they changed the course of history in the way. They impacted the georgia elections And so we see new tools building but they still are interacting with the media in various ways and a lot of times. It simply reminding them that they're they're again saying hello. This is what you're missing. You're missing this. You're telling it in a very simple narrative and we're going to continue to tell our story into live our lives. I'm an insist right. You cover us but we're not gonna go back before so it's interesting this point about the the use of new tools but also I'm just so impressed. By the ways that as emerging activists right they were in contact with folks around philosophy and theories of activism and bradford. I guess i'm i've been back and forth on trying to think about whether sort of the pay inequities The realities that folks like you know players on the atlanta dream get played paid so much less than big league players if that might actually constitute a space of relative freedom or capacity in other words. If you don't make ten million or twenty or thirty million is it easier to risk it or not. That's a great question. I have to wonder that the economic proximity to the realities of racial injustice. Not to say that it doesn't affect anyone regardless of the class status but it certainly is more threat when you on the economic martin's as well. I wonder if that closeness from league that is newer and also has to deal with institutional sexism and racism Leading to just less fruits of You know a capitalistic. Sports industry kinda get is just makes it a little bit more tangible about the need for change and desire to fight forward like that language of economic proximity to the to the realities that come from that racial inequities brethren also wondering then part of it is you know so Women's teams women's basketball teams like we saw with the atlanta dream. We saw this with newark liberty when they were out in front around black lives matter kind of wave one. But i'm wondering other other kinds of sports where you may have a queer folk men women playing but simply because of the kind of sport it is. It receives less media attention absolutely. I mean you know. The women's game has been shaded in this. Since the moment it's it's been inaugurated in the nineties. I mean i was just a kid. You know when the the w started belykh you know. I grew up sadly making but also hearing plenty of jokes about light. All they can't dunk. Oh they can do this or that you know. There's always been a fight where they had to kind of respected and dignify on the terms of its own sport as something that is equivalent and clearly in some ways greater than the way the men's leads choose to move so that's a that's a real. That's a real real problem. It's exacerbated by not having enough women in sports media especially women of color that was a recent study done that showed the incredibly low Percentages of women of color blatant including nobel limits. A black woman who are actually in credential. Sports me but there's lots of lots of potassium people want you know on blogs and twitter but people who actually get to go to games interview them and then write him up for a paper the magazine or whatever spewing in between that's a huge huge issue and and of course people who are using that word again proximity more proximate to the lives and interests and you know and you know. Sporting culture of women's leagues are going to not only want to cover the league but also be able to cover it better in some ways and not being hired or promoted in the ways that they ought to be. So i've really. That's that's a problem in a barrier that leads to less coverage in the sort of persistent discrimination that the league has to continue fighting a mirror. I want to go back to dave's iran's point at the at the very beginning of our conversation and even to what bradford with just saying and i'll just put it this way. Is sexism helluva drug for sports media. Yes sexism racism the intersection especially as a hell of a job. I really liked that phrase that us economic proximity bradford Because to your earlier question is it easier freedom. Well if you have less you also You know it's very easy to to have that taken away too when you mentioned at the top of the show when they were wearing protests shirts in the summer of two thousand sixteen the league tried to find them right for those shirts and i think one of the reasons why the wnba is such a useful conduit to have these conversations about black women is because they're really the canary in the minds of the of the Exemplify right how. It's very easy to slip through the cracks and be overload so sports that don't get enough traction women's sports by and large but also you see here through them what happens when black women specifically right try to claim these sporting spaces. I'm so glad you mentioned that report. Bradford because they think it also exemplifies us. We think about sports media on that report. You talk about gender gains talk about people colored gains and it looks like it's going up up up until you zoom in and realize black women specifically will be like for example one point one percent of sports reporters and so i think all of these things tying together Helps us see right. How you the is for to persists because these stories aren't being told and when they are frame very narrowly by people who don't resemble at all who's on the court who's on the pitch Who's on the field so a mirror as you. So what i've seen you. Both do here is to to reflect. Pull out that notion of economic proximity of the players to those who are most affected by the inequities protesting. But i also hear you. Amirah making a claim about the value of proximity of the reporters themselves to the athletes and their lived experience on whom they are reporting. And yet there's also this sort of you know old fashioned or maybe new fashion journalistic norm suggesting that proximity to our subjects is actually a problem for our journalistic capacity. How do you speak to that. Yeah i mean. I think we do this in as well. This idea of objectivity itself is just like you know. It's a little bit stale at this point. And i think that we have been able to see that especially in sports media the consequence of not having a diverse rate of of voices right. We see this when brock turner's swimming times in in many articles about him committing sexual assault. We see this when espn columnist. Take up space to defend the washington. Football teams name And then when his father in law corrects him and says no actually this is offensive. He's still has calm space to continue to write these articles. Because there's not native voices in those newsrooms. I think that we continue to see the consequence on and yet clinging to this idea of distance of objectively. I think really just gets in the way of reporting better understanding. Like i think that we should just not be basic and what we know. Is we get amazing. Stories with new voices. chiquita taylor. Shout out to her five. Thirty eight ran a piece. Don't where she did data analysis right on undo rags in baseball right and the the correlation to pitch and i mean that is that is a story that would have been very hard to see Even five years ago all right. I i love that sort of specificity around that and i remember that pearson was like okay. This why changing what's happening in newsrooms matters. Bradford i wanna talk on executives topic about Dom smith of the new york mets. He took a knee during the national anthem. After jacob blake was shot and killed by police and then he fielded questions during a understandably difficult press conference. I wanna just take a listen former map. Been very emotional Yeah just to. Countless cds contains been so it was a long day so kind of what they're mentally bradford. What difference does it make. Who writes the story about that mullet man. First of all this connects all the dots because shouted kids l. a. Once again the do rag piece was about marcus. Stroman dom smith teammate. On the mets. Who you know whereas different do rag early. Perform differently undercover. He's wearing is incredible again. Shot the shake. She's awesome but But yeah dom is you see here in sees hurt on that call and i think the difference between i guess cultural competency which is often aided by lived experience which means again hire more. Black reporters is having that difference could be different screen. I think emotional pornography better word to a thoughtful nuance interrogation of all the issues. That led to that moment and so what. I saw a lot in the local press was just that you know him sobbing Just being played over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And it's like. It's clearly not for me because i know i know angry for the presumed and probably virtually likely major league baseball majority of media consumers which are like white bulks white folks of certain class you know like and they're the ones who need to be in probably align align minds convinced that racism actually is bad. It makes you feel bad like and that is you know i get that but like but it's still kind of roasted me because That need to be argued. Certainly not in twenty twenty one and And and a more thoughtful layered exploration of all that was going now all of the teen antics that he was doing alone on the field without any of his teammates of many color. Now joining them all that kinda stuff. You ought to be interrogated necessity. Don't get get that for most of the time because of the makeup of the press corps on train or on film so a mirror. Rose davis assistant professor of history and african american studies at penn state and also co host. The feminist sports podcast burn it all down and bradford. William davis is an investigative reporter based in new york exploring race class and health especially within major league baseball in the wider sports industry. Thank you both for being here. Thank you thank you. That's our show for today folks and we're gonna leave you with a few words from nation sports editor dave's iron heart of that transactional transformationally dozen for me as a journalist so any money. I'm making from this book. I'm giving to an organization called servier city. Dc that works with mutual aid and trying to raise up young people in the dc area. Because i didn't. I couldn't stand the idea that i'm going to profit from the courage of these young people so instead i'm gonna pay it forward and every person i interviewed knows that that's what the book is going towards an out gives them a sense of mission about it as well. The importance of being transformational project is so important to me here at the takeaway. We are inspired by this idea of journalism that is transformational rather than transactional so keep listening in the coming weeks. We're gonna have to wrap up our show with transformational takeaways. These will be short stories of people who are making room for others who are making a difference in their communities and making all of us. Pay attention to issues that matter. Thanks so much for listening. I'm melissa harris. Perry and this is the takeaway. Come back.