*Disclaimer: this podcast was recorded before the news that the minor leagues were unionizing. For our reaction episode to that news, click here.
Bobby and Alex discuss PPP loans in baseball, then break down the news that Arte Moreno is considering selling the Los Angeles Angels, and try and make sense of Julio Rodríguez choose-your-own-adventure contract extension. Then they bring on Matt Ritchie, a freelance writer and graduate student, to discuss his thesis on bolstering the pipeline of Black baseball players, why the sport’s Black population has declined, where the most impact can be made by the league, the benefits and limits of Black representation among the top prospects, and more.
Follow Matt on Twitter at @mkrwrt.
Links:
Arte Moreno exploring a sale of the Angels
Jeff Passan breaks down the Julio deal
Minority Baseball Prospects
Songs featured in this episode:
PUP — “Morbid Stuff” • Fall Out Boy — “Sophomore Slump Or Comeback Of The Year” • Soccer Mommy — “circle the drain” • Booker T & the M.G.’s — “Green Onions”
Episode Transcript
[INTRO MUSIC]
Tell us a little bit about what you saw and, and, and being able to relay that message to Cora when you watch Kimbrel pitching and kind of help out so he wasn’t Tipping his Pitches. So Tipping Pitches, we hear about it all the time. People are home on the stand, what Tipping Pitches it’s all about? That’s amazing! That’s remarkable.
BOBBY: Alex, the news that set the world ablaze this past week was that Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States, in his capacity as President will be forgiving $10,000 of student loans for people who are making under $125,000 per year. Now we are a baseball podcast. We’re famously kind of, we’re not a–
ALEX: [0:55]
BOBBY: –we’re not a presidential politics podcast. For all the things that we are–
ALEX: [0:59]
BOBBY: –we’re not that. We’re, we do talk about, you know, larger socio cultural issues from time to time as listening to this podcast may know. But I did, when I saw this news, and I saw a lot of people talking about this loan forgiveness in comparison to the PPP loan forgiveness. Alex, one of my first thoughts was, who in the baseball world got a PPP loan?
ALEX: Amazing. I, I knew where this was going as almost as soon as you started talking.
BOBBY: So, you know, none of the 30 Major League Baseball teams were eligible for a PPP loan. Because I think that they’re all over a billion dollars in valuation, which I think disqualifies you from the PPP loan program. I went through, I searched all of the owner’s names, as you do. I didn’t find anything too revelatory. Because I think that most of these owners were they to acquire a PPP loan, it would have been through some Shell company that has a name that I don’t know. So I would have known where to search in the ProPublica database for the PPP loans, shout out to ProPublica. So then I just searched the term baseball, and I just scrolled through for a little while. And I found–
ALEX: A little investigative journalism [2:13].
BOBBY: Yes, exactly. And I found three things that might be interesting to you and our listeners.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: Okay the first one is USA baseball. You know, the organization that puts together Team USA. The organization–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –that sends a baseball team, to the Olympics, to the World Baseball Classic. An organization with close ties to Major League Baseball, though not really financially funded by Major League Baseball in a direct way.
ALEX: Right. Not affiliated per se, but lots of crossing of streams.
BOBBY: Exactly. They received $614,870, all of–
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: –which was forgiven.
ALEX: Oh.
BOBBY: Now, okay. The PPP loan program was meant to keep companies affected by COVID running smoothly, covered their payrolls, that sort of thing. You can see how in some world, the government would want to say, hey, this is USA baseball, we need to keep their heads above water. They received this loan on February 9, 2021. So that’s where we’re starting. Loan number two, Alex. Now this one’s my favorite one.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: I save the third one, because I think it has more of a dramatic payoff for the podcast purposes. But I’ll just tell everybody and you my friend that this is my favorite one. $1,333,600 for the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum Incorporated.
ALEX: Ohhhh!
BOBBY: Now this one’s directly related to Major League Baseball.
ALEX: It is, yeah.
BOBBY: So–
ALEX: Was it all, was it all forgiven?
BOBBY: All of it, yeah. Actually, an extra $8,000 was forgiven because of interest.
ALEX: Oh, God.
BOBBY: They received this loan on April 9, 2020. So they saw the pandemic, they were like, time to get this loan right away. Now, if even if Major League Baseball doesn’t directly fund the Hall of Fame. They definitely could give them a one and $1.3 million grant to keep their heads above water–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –during the pandemic.
ALEX: Does it, does it give you the breakdown of where that money went?
BOBBY: It says all of it went towards payroll. It gives you a breakdown. So here are the, here are the categories that the money could go to. Payroll utilities, mortgage interest, health care, rent, refinancing, and debt interest. This all went towards payroll, according to ProPublica.
ALEX: As in theory, it, it should, right? Now, payroll is–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –a very broad term, but that is what these loans are technically for, right? It’s a paycheck protection program. And it’s meant to subsidize, quote unquote, “small businesses”.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Or, or, or less than small.
BOBBY: Well, that’s what I’m wondering like so they had five weeks into the pandemic. They [4:59] the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum ran out of money. One of the most well-funded museums in the entire United States. Given grants by a $15 billion industry in Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Well, they had to wage their propaganda campaign to make sure that the steroid users remained out of the Hall, obviously.
BOBBY: Okay, are you ready for the third–
ALEX: Yep!
BOBBY: –PPP loan that I discovered?
ALEX: Uh-hmm.
BOBBY: Now I will say there’s like a, there’s like 98 wonderful PPP loan that went to like small developmental baseball companies all for like $28,000 or whatever. This third one that I found, Alex, $161,498, for little little thing called the Cincinnati Baseball Museum. Now you might say Cincinnati Baseball Museum is this just like an independent mom and pop baseball museum for the folks of Cincinnati that they can go to, either for free or a very low price. Well, I wonder the same thing. And so I searched Cincinnati Baseball Museum. And the only thing that I could find Alex was the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame which is inside of Great American Ball Park.
ALEX: Slick, not really slick enough.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I mean, our man Bob is hurting these days, we know this, right? We’ve covered this extensively on this podcast that the carrot industry is tanking right now.
BOBBY: Exactly.
SHANE: He’s got carrots, and lettuce, and mushrooms, porcine, vegetable King Bob Castellini.
BOBBY: Now, but you would think that if Bob was really hurting for money, he would try to get something through his wholesale carrot empire.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Not fun well a 100–
ALEX: Do we know, do we know that he didn’t?
BOBBY: Now, not through the PPP loan program. So maybe he took advantage of some other program that affected food wholesale or affected companies of a certain size. Or affected people who were directly, who were directly harmed by issues in the supply chain or something like that. He, you know, Bob probably knows about those things.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Not Phil, Phil was busy doing other things.
ALEX: Like Coke.
BOBBY: Allegedly, this is parody. But an enterprising businessman, especially when in Major League Baseball, would never let a program like this which could be taken advantage of, not to get taken advantage of. So he just had to get an extra $162,000 for the Cincinnati Baseball Hall of Fame. Or the Cincinnati Baseball Museum rather.
ALEX: I mean, that’s a cornerstone baseball right there. That’s I, it’s keeping the game’s history alive.
BOBBY: That’s certainly seems to me like a violation of what the PPP loan was designed for.
ALEX: Yeah, but the PPP loans were designed to be violated–
BOBBY: I know.
ALEX: –right? Like–
BOBBY: Filling out a half page application to get $162,000 for one of the billionaire owners of Major League Baseball.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Can I just say, I, so I did not have the initiative that you had to search this database for Major League Baseball owners.
BOBBY: I really just searched the word baseball.
ALEX: Or just search the word baseball.
BOBBY: While I was editing another podcast, I also, wait before you say what you’re going to say. I also did fire a cheeky little email over to the folks at ProPublica asking if they could help me look even further into this category of someone’s teams and specifically baseball owners.
ALEX: Anywhere [08:31]
BOBBY: As, as the journalist that I am, I did that, I did that legwork.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: No. Haven’t heard back from them yet. Though, I did email them on a Friday morning. So, you know, I’m giving them the weekend.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Giving them the weekend.
ALEX: I looked up one name.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: One company.
BOBBY: John Fisher?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: What? We don’t want to look into him because he’s your friend.
ALEX: So, no, try again. Who did I look up?
BOBBY: I don’t know.
ALEX: A-Rod Corporation–
BOBBY: Ohhh! Ofcourse!
ALEX: –received–
BOBBY: Ofcourse!
ALEX: –$223,300.
BOBBY: Wow!
ALEX: And guess what?
BOBBY: I, I would love to know.
ALEX: None of it forgiven. They paid that chip back like the good citizens they are.
BOBBY: Wow! Wow, so when A. Rod. goes on a podcast and he says I don’t think student loans should be forgiven. Just know that he’s coming from a place of honesty.
ALEX: Right. Exactly. At least he’s not talking out of both sides of his mouth.
BOBBY: At least he’s not a hypocrite.
ALEX: His politics are consistent.
BOBBY: This reminds me that you could have been part of that PPP loan, you could have got your paycheck from that PPP loan. Had you not been a fucking coward and applied to be A. Rod’s assistant at A-Rod Corp.
ALEX: I do peruse their, their job postings from time to time just to–
BOBBY: It’s a real company!
ALEX: –just to see. I mean–
BOBBY: They have real employees.
ALEX: Supposedly.
BOBBY: They do real work.
ALEX: I, I’m not sure what it is. I looked into his ass pack a few weeks ago, just to like–
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: –see what it was up to.
BOBBY: Is it S-pack or is it SPAC?
ALEX: SPAC.
BOBBY: You’re, you’re losing the finance bros. When they can sniff, they can sniff fakes.
ALEX: I know they really can.
BOBBY: And we’re not fakes, for real.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: You were almost A. Rod’s assistant.
ALEX: Famously, finance bros have never been duped before.
BOBBY: All [10:17]–
ALEX: [10:17]
BOBBY: –the time when finance bros weren’t duped.
ALEX: I know. You want to talk Bitcoin?
BOBBY: Anyways, SPAC.
ALEX: Nothing.
BOBBY: It just didn’t say what he does?
ALEX: It’s just not up to anything right now.
BOBBY: Oh. So you’re saying that the company that would eventually bring him public is not up to anything.
ALEX: Correct!
BOBBY: That’s what the facts–
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: –are for.
ALEX: Yeah, right. Exactly.
BOBBY: It’s the finest bro that I am.
ALEX: I just like–
BOBBY: Why does he need to be publicly traded? What good or service is he offering?
ALEX: I don’t know. His expertise, man.
BOBBY: I guess, but like, is A-Rod Crop like consulting company? Or is it just like his ho- is that his holding LLC for his, like landlord enterprises? Is it–
ALEX: I mean, yeah. I think they–
BOBBY: –media production company? Like, as far as I know, the only like, real product that A-Rod Corp put in so the, puts into the world is the A. Rod. YouTube channel.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: That is the only thing I can point–
ALEX: Is Alex Rodriguez himself.
BOBBY: –to, and say, that’s what they do.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, I, I think they do real estate. It’s like real estate and finance. You know, like–
BOBBY: But they also do like business leadership courses, right?
ALEX: Yeah. Whatever that means.
BOBBY: Dude, can you sign up for one?
ALEX: Are they open to the public?
BOBBY: I don’t know. But like, I feel like within six months, you could put together like enough of a resume, or like enough of a story at least that you could get into one. And so I want to challenge you here live on the podcast to do that.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: And whatever money that you need for it, I’m willing to sign off on spent that expenditure for from the Tipping Pitches Patreon fund.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: And frankly, I think that anyone listening to this, who is one of our patrons, is probably willing to do that too.
ALEX: Right, right.
BOBBY: Like if we put it to a vote that would, that’d be yes, most likely.
ALEX: I actually might think this is the best idea we’ve ever had.
BOBBY: We could make a narrative podcast out of it.
ALEX: But only if Alex Rodriguez is actually leading it. Like I don’t want his boy, Nick Silva, or whoever it is.
BOBBY: I don’t know who that is.
ALEX: I don’t know. He just–
BOBBY: This is why we need the narrative podcast.
ALEX: He just–
BOBBY: I don’t know who that is.
ALEX: –[12:14] pictures of Nick like asleep at work. I mean, I’m too deep in the A. Rod, Instagram, rabbit hole. It’s a lot of workout videos these days.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: It’s a lot of like circling the calories burned.
BOBBY: Calories burned in a workout is a myth, I’m just saying.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Not to turn this into a workout podcast, fitness podcast.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Nutrition podcast.
ALEX: Finance and nutrition, that’s are, those are our lanes.
BOBBY: Sounds like we’re stepping on A. Rods. If we don’t stop now, he’s never gonna let you into his business to business mentorship program.
ALEX: I know.
BOBBY: I just really want you to become A Rod’s prodigy. You already got the name.
ALEX: True.
BOBBY: You’ve already got many outlets.
ALEX: [12:50] kinships. I mean, when I was a kid–
BOBBY: I have no idea where this is going.
ALEX: No, it’s nothing special. But when I was a kid–
BOBBY: I wanted to be a CEO.
ALEX: –my name is Alex Bazeley. And I, my baseball nickname, they were like, oh, we’ll do a little A. Rod. thing and call you A. Bay.
BOBBY: Yeah. I know that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So like–
BOBBY: I used to go A Bay Bay to you all the time.
ALEX: Right. Yeah, you and every 13-year old that I pulled around with.
MATT: Except I was 19 when I met you.
ALEX: I don’t know if it’s better or worse.
BOBBY: It’s better.
ALEX: All I’m saying is–
BOBBY: You’re still around, so it’s really good.
ALEX: All I’m saying is we do have that like kind of emotional connection, right?
BOBBY: I have no doubt, no doubt, that if Alex Rodriguez was sitting three feet to my left right now, with a microphone in front of him, that we would have fun.
ALEX: I mean, absolutely. Seems like a–
BOBBY: If we were having dinner, we would have a good time. So I think that you could do this.
ALEX: Is this like one of those Twitter prompts where they’re asking, like, would you rather have a million dollars or a dinner with Alex Rodriguez?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And we’re like–
BOBBY: Titan of industry.
ALEX: –we’re like a dinner because you can’t put a price on the knowledge he’s gonna give us.
BOBBY: I think it actually for our purposes in this weird little niche that we’ve carved out in the long run. I do think that we could turn a dinner with Alex Rodriguez into more than a million dollars. As long as it was allowed to be recorded.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Yeah.Because all podcasters make millions of dollars including us from we’re raking in, we’re raking in millions.
ALEX: That is true.
BOBBY: All with ads.
ALEX: Mostly, but mostly through the PPP loan program.
BOBBY: Mostly through the SPAC that we started.
ALEX: That’s right.
BOBBY: Okay, well this was fruitful. We’ve now put you on a mission to meet Alex Rodriguez at one of his maybe existent business leadership courses.
ALEX: Right. I’m gonna look into it.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: We’ll circle back.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: I think we are not to podcast–
BOBBY: I will not podcast.
ALEX: –do but no, I won’t forget it either.
BOBBY: All right, we’re gonna do that actual podcast. Some of them you won’t be meeting and talking to and taking his business leadership courses is Arte Moreno. Because he’s getting the fuck out of baseball and I imagine he will probably not do anything public after that. We’re going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about Julio Rodriguez’ weird extension. They’re going to have a great conversation with friend of the show Matt Ritchie. Who just completed his thesis in the PhD program in Northwestern. And Matt’s thesis topic was, Why aren’t there are more black players playing baseball right now? And how can we get more black players playing baseball? So we talked about that for about 45 minutes, which is a really great conversation. So I hope everybody will stick around for that. But before we do all of that, I am Bobby Wagner.
ALEX: I’m A .Bay Bay.
BOBBY: And you are listening to Tipping Pitches.
[15:36]
[Music Theme]
BOBBY: All right, Alex, before we get into it, I’d like to thank the United States government for the massive PPP loan that we received. I’d also like to thank our new patrons this week. Shout out to Naveen and Carlos. Which do you want to talk about first? You wanna talk about Arte Moreno. Or you want to talk about Julio Rodriguez? The two guys keep in baseball in the pop culture.
ALEX: Let’s talk Arte.
BOBBY: Okay.
ALEX: He feels like it, this one’s right in our wheelhouse, right? I mean, Julio has too but this is a day that we’ve been anxiously waiting for bated breath. And I’m curious to see kind of how you feel about it.
BOBBY: So for those who don’t know, it was reported last week that Arte Moreno was exploring a sale of the Los Angeles Angels. So we know about as much of about this. Actually, at this point, we know less about this. We know about as much about this, as we knew at the time that we talked about the Lerners exploring the sale of the Washington Nationals before the baseball season started. So right after the CBA was signed, the Lerners were like time to let everybody know, we want to get the fuck out of here. And Arte Moreno, you know, has been in the news this year because of an FBI investigation into him and the Mayor of Anaheim. As it pertains to the sale of the parking lot, the area around Angel Stadium and how it’d be developed. But this is slightly different. I don’t, I don’t want to say that I’m surprised that Moreno might be interested in selling the Angels. But my takeaway whenever like a terrible owner, like Moreno is, is interested in selling. I’m always like, why now? You know, why not five years ago? When everybody hated you, then? Like, you needed to stick it out for these last five years because of what? I wish that we could just like, get a no holds barred explanation from any of these guys about when they decide to sell the team and why? Well, of course, never get that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But, you know, I’m, I mean, my number one takeaway is that I’m happy for Angels fans.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Although not like celebrating it yet. Because we don’t know who’s coming in next.
ALEX: Yeah. The question of why now is a really good one. It does feel like the organization in general is at a bit of a crossroads, right? You have another year of finding middling success, right? And not, not being able to do much with the two greatest players on, on the planet. You have Shohei Ohtani’s contract, which is expiring after the 2023 season.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And obviously, you have the corruption probe that doomed Moreno’s bid to buy the, the land that Angel Stadium sits on and the area around it from the City of Anaheim, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: I just wonder if Moreno thinks it’s like, worth it anymore, you know. He doesn’t have anything to show for his two decades of ownership, right? He came in right after the Angels won the 2002 World Series. So it’s incredible that you inherited a World Series winner–
BOBBY: Wow.
ALEX: –couldn’t do a single thing with that.
BOBBY: Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. Maybe he’s just really invested in the refute- in the future of the Republican Party.
ALEX: I, I mean, how long until he appears on Fox News?
BOBBY: Is he not like already appearing on there regularly? I have no idea.
ALEX: I mean, he’s a shadow producer. But like, I wonder if he isn’t just kind of like reading the writing on the wall about the direction of the franchise. And his–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –ability to actually make something happen with it, right? Because he’s not able to purchase this land that might enabled him to build a new stadium. The Angel Stadium is one of the oldest in baseball right now.
BOBBY: And it’s not very good.
ALEX: And it’s, and it’s not very good.
BOBBY: Is it’s just my analysis.
ALEX: And–
BOBBY: Have you been there?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: Even at Dodger Stadium?
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Have we been the Dodger Stadium together?
ALEX: No.
BOBBY: I’m just checking all the boxes, making sure that I’m not forgetting important events that we’ve done together.
ALEX: I feel like he just main not want to be caught holding the bag.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: When, when Ohtani walks–
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: –that your, the future of the franchise is kind of in dire straits at that point, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Because then all of a sudden, you’re back to where you were 10 years ago with Mike Trout. and nothing else, you know. And so something tells me that he may not trust himself to actually be able to put together a winner, you know. And it’s, and it’s certainly not because the Angel Stadium, it’s certainly not because the Angels aren’t raking in money like every other baseball team.
BOBBY: Oh, yeah!
ALEX: They, they still are. So I think it’s not about that. It might just be sheer boredom.
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: You know, after playing the game for two decades, you say, shit, really?
BOBBY: This is way harder than I thought it was.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that the book is closed yet, on dealing with the Ohtani situation. Like I don’t–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –know for sure that he will sell the team before he has to make that decision. Because the Lerners you saw how accelerated that process can get where I guess the Lerners deemed it better to start from scratch for whoever the next ownership group is. Now, we haven’t seen who that next ownership group is going to be. But you would think that they would have had to have some indication that it would be okay to strip the franchise for parts before selling it to whoever is going to buy it.
ALEX: I mean, I don’t know that you can actually solicit that guidance, can you?
BOBBY: I have no fucking idea. Aren’t laws around this? I don’t know.
ALEX: It feels illegal.
BOBBY: Why? [21:18]–
ALEX: [21:18] potential investor advising on business decisions before being a part of the company.
BOBBY: Who are you, it’s not like the SEC has jurisdiction over this though. They’re not like publicly traded.
ALEX: I mean, does, I don’t fucking know. Like–
BOBBY: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. Once you get–
ALEX: I mean.
BOBBY: –exposed for not being finance bro.
ALEX: Right, exactly. I mean, that’s the thing with like baseball owners is like looking at things they do and being like–
BOBBY: That’s illegal?
ALEX: –that feels like it’s probably against the rules.
BOBBY: So like, okay, even if it’s not illegal, I don’t think that the Lerners would have traded Soto. Had they not at least assumed that the next ownership group would not lower the price of their offer because of that. Or would not be completely back out of a deal because of that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Otherwise, they wouldn’t have done it. Like and you would have had to have had at least preliminary conversations where those people buying the team could be like, hey, if I had Ted Williams on my team, I wouldn’t want to trade him you know.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Like they, they could like wink and nod their way to indicating that the next ownership group would want to have, would want to have Juan Soto. I almost said–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –Ted Williams. But I don’t know, for Ohtani, I feel like Moreno will still have to make the decision.
ALEX: Probably, yeah.
BOBBY: And I think most likely–
ALEX: [22:35]
BOBBY: –will be that he’s not going to be on the Angels anymore.
ALEX: Correct. I don’t think he’s going to pull together a actual sale of the team in the next six months or whatever.
BOBBY: I know, I mean, it does happen fast when it happens.
ALEX: It does, yeah.
BOBBY: Like the, the Wilpon rumors, it was like less than a year till they sold the team. So I don’t know. Speaking of rumors, like to start a rumor right here on this podcast.
ALEX: Okay.
BOBBY: And then like everybody who’s listening, who has a vested interest in the New York Mets to pass this rumor on. Don’t say where you heard it first. Just pass it on. Just say I’ve been hearing from the baseball media. I would like the rumor to be a wall the Angels are going to be selling, you never know what’s gonna happen with, with their personnel. And Brandon Nimmo next year the Mets are probably not going to resign him they need to centerfielder. I know a guy who plays centerfield who’s on a very expensive contract that most teams in baseball would want to trade for. But Steve Cohen doesn’t give a fuck. So you just, you just absorb the entirety of that contract. Give him back a prospect or two, whatever, here take a couple of prospects. Mike Trout, welcome to Queens.
ALEX: Would you take Trout over Ohtani?
BOBBY: I mean, if I had the choice, no. But I think that more teams will be hot after Ohtani.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: In terms of like, you’ll have to pay you’ll have to pay a prospect price that the Mets would have a hard time competing with similar to the Juan Soto situation. But trading Mike Trout at this point with his injury concerns, whatever. I’m just gonna hand wave that because it freaks me out. But the best player of our lifetime just might have his career cut short.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think that you’d have, you’d have fewer teams trying to trade for Trout because he makes whatever 40 million, 35 million–
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: –for the next nine years.
ALEX: Yeah. I mean, the, I suppose the best possible outcome is Ohtani isn’t traded and he hits free agency.
BOBBY: And you trade for Trout and sign Ohtani.
ALEX: There you go.
BOBBY: Start that if you want [24:27]
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I’m just starting the Mike Trout to Queens rumor. Because there’s literally, there’s literally no center fielders who are going to be free agents this upcoming year. Like the best option would be signing Judge and putting him in centerfield. Which, I mean, that’s not a bad option. But there’s no other good center fielders.
ALEX: Right. He’s also not actually a center fielder.
BOBBY: Yeah, he does fine there.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I think I just wanted to be a downgrade from Brandon Nimmo at center. Now we’re just talking, we’re just talking Statcast defense–
ALEX: Yeah, we are. Hey, I mean Mike Trout, New Jersey boy.
BOBBY: Exactly. Although New Jersey in a different way.
ALEX: Yes.
BOBBY: I’m just saying like the Mike Trout to the Phillies rumors have been red hot for like eight years. I just want to reclaim that. I want to claim that away from them, steal that. Mike Trout to the Mets. You heard it here first. But when you tell people that you heard it, don’t tell them that it was here first. Because they will immediately disregard it because we don’t have any source.
ALEX: Just know it in your heart that you heard it here first.
BOBBY: Exactly. Tell everybody you know. It, it that might make its way up to Billy Eppler. It seems like Billy Eppler kind of just makes the most obvious choice in terms of how to spend Steve Cohen’s money. That’s like that’s his philosophical, that’s his philosophy as a GM. It’s just like, how, what is the most obvious way to spend the most money?
ALEX: Which is how more GM should [25:45].
BOBBY: No, exactly clear. Yeah, Billy Eppler, thank you based Billy Eppler. Mike Trout. Okay, back to our [25:50]
ALEX: I mean, I don’t know that I have much more to say, you know, I–
BOBBY: No.
ALEX: We, we know very little about this, right. Beyond the statement that he put out saying he’s going to explore options. Gonna put together a team that’s going to put together a potential package for sale, right? And that’s really kind of it.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Besides him, saying, I’ve loved doing this for 20 years, cashing checks, will the Angels have been .500–
BOBBY: Terrible.
ALEX: Like–
BOBBY: Just one of the worst owners in pro sports.
ALEX: It ind of remarkably bad.
BOBBY: Yeah. Like you think, with the amount of big contracts that he’s been willing to give, you think they would have, like, locked themselves into a 95 win season one of these times.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I just never did.
ALEX: Like, here’s the thing is, I think being a GM is probably a lot harder than people give it credit for, right? A lot of fans are like, oh, I could run this team. You know, like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –I think fantasy sports has done a lot to give fans the notion that they know how to run a professional sports franchise. It’s a hard job. Being an owner is a far easier job.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And I think people would like to admit.
BOBBY: Just say yes.
ALEX: You literally just signed the checks. And I understand like, an aspect of that is also like hiring the right people and facilitating the, and cultivating the right sort of culture for success.
BOBBY: Sure.
ALEX: But that is really extra hard.
BOBBY: That’s why we hire A. Rod. for it.
ALEX: That’s why we hire A. Rod.
BOBBY: That’s why he needs–
ALEX: That’s why you go to his–
BOBBY: –quarter million dollars loan.
ALEX: –leadership class.
BOBBY: No, exactly right. So once you’ve completed the business leadership class, you could buy the Angels basically, and run them better than Arte Moreno.
ALEX: Well, so that’s, this is a perfect time to introduce our fourth tier of the Patreon, which is the Buy the Angels tier.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: It is a million dollars a month. But I think we could pretty quickly get to a number that Arte Moreno would be happy with.
BOBBY: I got a question. Maybe this is an uncouth question to ask, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. Do you think that a single person listening to this podcast makes more than a million dollars a year?
ALEX: Jesus.
BOBBY: Statistically unlikely.
ALEX: Statistically unlikely.
BOBBY: But I believe when I listen [28:10].
ALEX: I mean, how many millionaires are like listening to podcasts in general? [28:17]
BOBBY: I don’t know, inflation, millionaires just your, your 100,000 error now. Don’t answer the question, it’s okay. Can we talk about Julio? You–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –got more to say about Arte?
ALEX: No. I have nothing more to say about him.
BOBBY: It’s only up from here Angels fans, I promise. Julio Rodriguez is basically a Seattle Mariner for the rest of his career, most likely.
ALEX: Yeah. Into like his 40s potentially.
BOBBY: Signed a really weird contract effectively while did this, and so I’m just going to do the same thing. They just read Jeff Passan’s tweet thread–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –because it’s too confusing to do it in any other way. Here’s Jeff passan thread. There’s a lot to digest on Julio Rodriguez extension with Seattle per ESPN sources. The ESPN sources were like Jeff, there’s a lot to digest. The deal could be for 8, 13, 16, or 18 years, sure. It guarantees Rodriguez $210 million. If it maxes out it will be the largest ever, $470 million. The details are important. Here they are, the base of the deals for 8 years and $120 million. It includes this season and run through 2029. After 2028 the Mariners must decide whether to pick up a club option. The size and length of that depends on Rodriguez performance in MVP voting. The option is for 8 or 10 years on top of the original deal, depending on how Rodriguez fares in MVP voting, wins and finishes. It can range anywhere from 200 to 350 million on top of the original $120 million deal. So the Mariners pick up the option Rodriguez’ guarantee in the deal is at least $320 million. Now if the Mariners don’t pick up the option after year 7. Stop me when it’s starting to feel like a clown car. Rodriguez has a player option after year 8 for 5 years at $90 million thus the 13 year structure in $210 million floor. He could turn it down and hit free agency right before his 30th birthday, too. So, okay, now we’re not here to break down the deed, every detail of this contract. It’s not why I wanted to talk about the Julio Rodriguez extension. Why I wanted to talk about the Julio Rodriguez extension. And I’ll say this to get it out of the way up top. Obviously, Julio, and his agent know all this stuff. Obviously, this is a great decision for Julio, the individual. Because he just basically guaranteed himself generational wealth, no matter how his career turns out. We can say all that that can all be true. Obviously, this is a great thing for Mariners fans. And it’s the right thing that we want done. On its face, we want stars of their teams, to only ever wear the jersey of that team. Because it’s a good thing for baseball, if that’s what the star wants to do. And it’s clear that Julio by signing this extension is interested in doing that. I think this is weird. Like, it doesn’t add up to me, I think that this is a super weird extension. It’s basically just doing all of the negotiations for his entire career in one deal. So it’s like, we’re, we’re doing an extension to buy out all of my arbitration, we’re also doing my free agency, before all of that happens. We’re also doing the possible second round of free agency, all in one deal. And not all of it is guaranteed. It’s just like, it’s like no other baseball contract I’ve ever seen. It’s not really market setting, because we don’t know what he’s gonna get paid. So the next 20-year old superstar who comes up, and they want to sign to extension, and that 20-year old superstar says, well, Julio got 470 million, the team’s gonna be like, no, he didn’t. The team’s gonna be like Julio got 8 years 120, that’s what we’re working from. So it’s really weird for like the economics of baseball, in the grander scale in the way that we usually talk about them. Which is, the CBA dictates that arbitration is how you make your money until you hit free agency, and then you get a big contract. That is the system that were like supposed to have, in most cases for most good players. And more and more and more and more, we talked about this with the Braves last week, more and more guys are choosing not to go that route. And so we’re basically just like losing the arbitration system in practice, even if not in writing. That’s my takeaway from the Julio extension. It’s fucking weird.
ALEX: It is weird. It’s unlike any other baseball contract I’ve seen. And generally speaking, I think it’s fine–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –for both sides even, right? Julio himself is, like you said, guaranteeing a lot of money for himself, right? He’s guaranteed 210 right off the bat, depending on whether or not the Mariners exercise a team option down the road and whether or not he wants to pick up the player option, right? So like–
BOBBY: I, I kind of don’t even necessarily agree that he’s, quote unquote, “guaranteed 210”. He could only get 120 from it, and then he could go to free agency before he hits 30. Before he hits his age 30 season, right, although,
ALEX: I think then you would have to factor in whatever he makes in free agency, right? Like–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –like, I suppose worst case scenario, he just takes the 120 both parties decide to walk away, which seems unlikely.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And then he hits free agency and gets paid like a motherfucker.
BOBBY: Yes.
ALEX: I think it’s interesting because of how highly performance based it is, right?
BOBBY: I don’t like that.
ALEX: But like you said, like the arbitration system is kind of going out the window right now as teams find ways to kind of skirt around it. And basically set up their own financial system that is dependent on how good player, how well players perform?
BOBBY: By the standards of MVP voting.
ALEX: Right. Which is, which is–
BOBBY: Or words voting.
ALEX: –which is really flawed.
BOBBY: And fickle.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And determined by dumb things.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Not that arbitration is not also determined by dumb things, but it’s least determined by dumb things that we can predict ahead of time.
ALEX: Right, exactly. And it’s, I do think that the notion of a player’s pay being determined by effectively members of the media is a kind of a weird and not great one. And I think–
BOBBY: Super weird.
ALEX: –that’s, that’s probably a, that’s probably a choice that the voters themselves are not interested in having, right? You don’t necessarily want to cast your ballot, knowing that it very well could have an impact on this person making 10 or $100 million, whatever it is. It does seem to set a bad precedent for me. That said, like you said, the overall premise of the deal itself have is that Julio is a Mariner forever if he wants to be, and if the team wants him to be. Which like, generally speaking is a good thing.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: So it’s like, I don’t even know what my takeaway is from this,
BOBBY: I guess. So, if we ignored it as an individual case, and we if we said every superstar was going to do this from now on, that would be, that would basically completely implode the entire economics of baseball.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: Because, you know, 50% to 75% of players don’t have the option to sign a deal like this. And those 50% to 75% of players either have to buy, either have to sign a team from the extension that buys out their arbitration, or they have to go to arbitration. And now Julio is never going to arbitration, he’s not going to put a salary and have to win or lose. And win that number or lose that number for the next player that comes along. And I’m not saying that that’s Julio’s obligation to do, it’s not, it’s not, it’s no one player’s obligation to do this. But it’s not just Julio, this is like becoming more and more the norm for guys to sign these long term extensions. And we have no fucking idea what the baseball economic landscape is going to look like in 13 years, or eight years. That’s two or three- hit this contract is two or three CBAs away from now.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
BOBBY: Like, that’s insane. And I don’t know for certain that this will not come out as a quote unquote, “pro player contract”. But what I do know is that baseball deals used to be all fully guaranteed. It wasn’t contingent on finishing in the top five of MVP voting, it was this player is great. If you want his services, you have to guarantee him this much money over this much time.
ALEX: Right. And you’d get little bonuses here and there.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: If you–
BOBBY: With a million dollars if you pitch 200 innings or something like that.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: But it wasn’t like a difference of $250 million over the life of the contract.
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: Now, obviously, that’s a little bit blown out of proportion, because the length of the contract changes for Julio is dependent on whether he picks it up, Mariners pick it up, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m fine with blowing up the economic system of baseball. I just would like to know who’s blowing it up and how? Because if guys are just signing individual contracts like this, I’m actually not really sure what direction that leads us in. And this is probably as good of a deal as a 20-year old player could sign.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: I fully believe that, this is I mean, this a great contract. Like if he turns out to be a super, super, super duper star for a really long time. Yeah, maybe it’s team friendly. But if he’s just like a really, really great player for a really long time, I think we’ll probably look back on this and say, yeah fair.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: But like, I have no idea how this contract or any of the contracts that the Braves players have signed is supposed to help or hurt the next player who has to decide what contract to sign.
ALEX: Yeah, I don’t either. I mean, I think that we it’s foolish to try and make predictions about that. I think it’s somewhat meaningful that the way the contract is structured is that it gives the Mariners flexibility year over year to actually add around him, right? Rather than guaranteeing him 40 million every year which then you can make the case that he’s a quarter of the Mariners payroll and so as a result that’s why they just have to sign a bunch of like, one–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –one WAR pictures or whatever. Like there’s actually ways [38:35]–
MATT: [38:35], what the fuck!
ALEX: There’s actually ways to like, build on this, right? In ways that say maybe Arte Moreno wasn’t capable of doing. And I suppose I prefer this to the alternative of flipping a guy–
BOBBY: Yup!
ALEX: –mid arb, you know.
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: Like as a fan, there’s nothing that gets you more excited about your team than something like this. Like economics aside, which is a huge thing to say right? But if you’re an average baseball fan who’s rooting for the Mariners and wants to see them contend year in year out and you want to go to a fuck ton of games, like this is the thing that’s going to get you to buy that season ticket package, right?
BOBBY: Yup! Get you to buy that jersey and instead–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –of shersey.
ALEX: Like I know–
BOBBY: You know it’s gonna be there now. It’s worth buying the jersey.
ALEX: Like I know the whole like butts and seats thing is overrated. But like–
BOBBY: I don’t think it is overrated.
ALEX: –having Julio Rodriguez on your team puts fucking butts in seats, man.
BOBBY: I think that, I think that this is good, because of the choice is probably between most likely between either an extension like this, or like the Tatís extension, even though his was much more straightforward. Or even like the Acuña extension or whatever, Matt Olson, Austin Reilly. The choice is either this extension or more likely go through arb, get disenfranchised from arb, Mariners or not and then similar competitive windows, they don’t actually resign them at a market value, he goes–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –somewhere else. That is the I think probably the second most likely scenario behind the one, the most likely one, which is they extend him and keep them around.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And so if the, if the only way to keep him around and in a Mariners uniform for his career is to sign extensions like this, then that’s fine, right? But like, I just reject that as the dichotomy.
ALEX: Right, yeah.
BOBBY: Because the, the option of going through arb and fighting him tooth and nail for every single arb dollar and then disenfranchising the player by the time he’s ready to hit free agency so that he’s ready to explore the open market. And then another team swoops in and offers him a better contract, because you don’t want to actually, you don’t want the potential blowback of offering a player who’s 28, a 10-year contract or something like that. Because GMs are weird about that shit. But I just think that they’ve decayed the system, and now they’re getting around it in their own manner.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And I don’t feel good about that.
ALEX: Yeah, I agree. We’re moving into uncharted territory–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –right now, with contracts in baseball. And the most recent CBA, I think, did very little to–
BOBBY: Like provide clarity?
ALEX: Yeah, provide clarity, or give any sort of guarantee that the economics of the game aren’t going–
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: –to be like, fundamentally changed.
BOBBY: Like chart a path in a better direction?
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: And here’s the thing is like, guys like Julio are always gonna get paid, anyway–
BOBBY: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
ALEX: –right? He might set the market for his ilk of players. But the superstars were never the ones who I think we were the most concerned about, anyway. There’s a trickle down effect for sure.
BOBBY: Right. And that’s its own problem.
ALEX: Yeah, exactly.
BOBBY: For better, for worse, that is the truth.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: And most of the time, it’s for worse. Alright. I think that’s enough talking about Julio, for a contract that might extend for the next 18 years. I think we have plenty of time to talk about it. Let’s take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll bring Matt Ritchie.
[42:01]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Okay, Alex, we’re now joined by Matt Ritchie, freelance music and sports writer, former grad student at Northwestern, career .438 OBP at Johns Hopkins University. Matt, what’s up, man?
MATT: Nothin much, how are we doing guys? How is life and all that?
BOBBY: We’re doing good. Life is fine, I guess. Hanging in there. Matt, you, you wrote a thesis. Congratulations on the thesis that seems like a worthwhile occasion for celebration.
MATT: I, I wrote a thesis and nothing could have prepared me more. No, nothing could have felt better than submitting. Like just 5000 words of just nonsense. But just letting, just letting it fly. I was like, Oh, this, this, this hits harder than I assume most drugs would feel. Finally, of course.
BOBBY: Allegedly, yeah, of course.
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: [43:09]
ALEX: This parody.
BOBBY: Exactly, nothing to say here can be held against or for us in any way shape, or form.
MATT: Legally, no.
BOBBY: On our, on our 200th episode, Matt, we were asked by it was like an AMA style episode. And people could ask about anything baseball or non baseball related. And a couple people asked us what we did our thesis on. And we talked about it and at length, and people were very interested in it. And neither of us did our thesis on baseball, mine was basketball related. But Alex had basically nothing to do with sports. Your thesis does have something to do with baseball. The, the, you know, a legend topic of this podcast, Tipping Pitches here. So we wanted to have you on to talk about it, Matt. You wrote your thesis about the lack of black baseball players, and how we can fix that, right? It, and, and I’d love to hear why you approach this topic? Why you decided to do a thesis about it? And your methods of study all of these things we want to get into. But I guess the, the, the headlines first, why you wrote the thesis? And I guess what your biggest takeaways were?
MATT: So I don’t know if you guys can tell, but I am black. And so I’ve been playing baseball since I was four. And you sort of when you’re, you know, a black man playing baseball in America, you, you sort of realize a bunch of things pretty quickly. Depending on where you grew up. A lot of the times you might be one of, one of a handful of kids on black kids on a baseball field or black kids in a league or on your high school team. And so, you know, it’s a topic that most black, African American baseball players in the country can, you know, empathize with. Can relate to, you know, have felt most of their life. And so, I wanted to go to the thesis, do the thesis because it was sort of a continuation of a story I released about a month ago, for the Chicago Reader about a high school baseball team in Chicago, the Morgan Park Mustangs about how they’re sort of a, a beacon for black, urban high school baseball. And how they sort of fit in the legacy of black baseball in Chicago. And what their existence and what their success, and you know, their coaching staff and what they all mean to the sport of baseball. And so, basically, I wanted to get a continuation of that. But from the other side of like, okay, why isn’t, why aren’t there more places like this in the rest of the country? Or why aren’t there more enclaves of, you know, just black baseball, like we have in Chicago and the Jackie Robinson South League, where you just have a bunch of black kids playing baseball. And that’s sort of where I started from the big, the big main thesis idea way back, way back in, like May or something,
BOBBY: If you can even remember that time.
MATT: Yeah. Oh, May, May is a blurred.
ALEX: I, so can you talk about what you found? Because we were, we were speaking before we went, before we went live here, right? That we sometimes kind of–
BOBBY: Live.
ALEX: –“live”, quote, unquote. You know, we occasionally take a bit of a flippant attitude towards some of the, some of the issues in baseball, where we’re just kind of like, fuck it, burn it down, you know. Because like, that’s the easy way to respond, especially when you’re frustrated by a sport that you love and may not love you back, right? But you took the time to really take a deep kind of academic dive into some of these issues. And, and like you were saying, try and parse out why there aren’t these sorts of enclaves. So what did you find? Were you, were you focused more on, on why there aren’t these spaces or how to create these spaces?
MATT: So it was pretty interesting, because I believe, it feels like this is one of the more research topics in baseball at this current moment, especially since 2020. People are trying to figure out why black kids aren’t playing baseball? Why the, you know, it’s the stat that black player participation at the major league level has been dropping since 1991. It’s people who’ve been trying to figure it out. And a lot of people think they have the causes, they think they have the reasons which, you know, they’re pretty, they’re, if you guess the reasons to why black people aren’t playing baseball at a wide rate? It’s, you’re probably going to be right. So a lot of people think that basketball and football have gotten more popular, they think that the culture of baseball isn’t necessarily in tune with, you know, the black experience in the country, there is the cost, there is the amount of exposure. And so people have sort of agreed upon that. And I didn’t want to write 5000 words on things that people already knew. And so what it sort of shifted into was about what’s being done to fix it? And not only what’s being done, because, you know, we, we see what’s trying to be done. But why aren’t some of the things working? And what is the next step that needs to be taken in order to make sure that those tactics stick? So it was more, it was less so about the causes. Which I think a lot of people have guessed, but more so the methods to fix the issue that we all see.
BOBBY: Yeah, I mean, so this podcast focuses mainly on things that affect or are touched by Major League Baseball, and, and Minor League Baseball. I’m curious, like, you know, there’s always this debate in large structural problems, how much of it can be fixed from a top down approach versus how much of it needs to be fixed at a Grassroots level and which way is the superior way? Which way will help more people, which way is the more moral way? Which way actually will make an impact to the people who need it the most? And I think that people levy a lot of crit- criticism against Major League Baseball. And even their programs, which I think that, which I think in many cases have been successful, where they’ve tried to make the most effort. But I think people love you criticism against major league baseball for not taking some of these issues, and, and many issues facing the game of baseball. But this one specifically for the purposes of your thesis. Taking these issues as seriously as they need to be taken for a league that has made itself the dominant force in, in baseball worldwide. This one baseball concept that has kind of risen to the surface since Rob Manfred became commissioner. So I’m curious, like, how did you approach that question of like, do we need more Major League Baseball influence? Do we need less Major League Baseball influence? If we’re going to have more, what is it going to look like? And how did sort of the academic approach to this question manifest in trying to answer it?
MATT: So it’s a really interesting thing because you’re out asking the organization that sort of caused this problem or lead this problem happened under his watch to be like, alright time to reverse the course of just decades of inactivity, or, you know, apathy towards the issue. And so, if you’re asking someone to fix the problem, they cause they can only, they can only do it so well. And so MLB, they’ve kicked their diversity programming into overdrive in the recent years, which is great to see, you know. Last year, they dedicated like 150 million to these diversity programming efforts in order to get more black people in the game to get more diversity within their staffs. And you’re like, okay, that’s great. But on the widespread, you know, there’s still a lot of variability with these programs. Because you know, you have the RBI programs throughout the country, throughout all the different cities. And what I, what you definitely find is that not all RBI programs are made the same, they’re not all created equally. They’re not all treated with specific care. They’re not all, they’re not all go, they don’t go as far deep into, you know, the community driven aspects. So when you talk to people within the game, and people who are either working within MLB, or working within these Grassroot organizations that have had interaction with the RBI programs. Some of them, some of the RBI programs just aren’t doing what they need to be done. And so if you want MLB, to fix the issue, then there needs to be like a widespread overhaul of the amount of care being given to each these programs. But you’re asking MLB, they care a lot more about, about that than, that maybe they like they should, but that they’re going to do is, is another question. And so and like, there are great RBI programs, I talked to the executive director of RBI, not the Cubs charities, at least [51:59] a couple of weeks ago for this project. And they do a fantastic job because they do a more holistic system that deals with, deals with a lot of community and aspects. A lot of making sure that it’s not just a one and done thing that they’re trying to make sure that families and people who want to play, either softball or baseball are supported all the way through. And so you get things like that, or you know, you get other teams where RBI programs are more so just a photo op a tweets. Once every couple of months, they go to the RBI World Series, and then boom, they’re good for the year. And so it’s very interesting that there’s just so much variability about the RBI program that, you know, MLB can address or, but it’s team specific. And so at one point, at one point is the oversight, is the oversight then, then, therefore, is what is sort of where I, where I figured it out that.
ALEX: I’m curious how much you think it is Major League Baseball’s kind of responsibility to kind of address these issues. I mean, you were the you know, you were saying that to a certain point they, they could really only go so far, right? They can, they can throw a lot of money at the problem. And they can set up these sorts of organizations. But at the end of the day, it kind of comes down to how dedicated the people are who actually working within them, right? And how engaged the community around them actually is with it. So are there pathways kind of outside of like, capital M- Major League Baseball, that you think can be, I guess, effective and kind of acting as a sort of supplement to the sorts of organizations and programs that Major League Baseball is already kind of doing right now?
MATT: Definitely. And I think that definitely stands from the Grassroots or it’s that work to sort of fill in the gaps of what Major League Baseball can or would like to address. And so, Major League Baseball does a fantastic job, I will say, in through their, their DREAM Series through their Breakthrough Series through the Hank Aaron Invitational. They do a fantastic job recently of making sure that the best African American minority high school baseball players are seen. They make sure that they get the exposure, they make sure- and you know, these events are cost free. Which is half the battle for you know, getting to the next level of baseball. That’s, that’s something that you find in the field that I wrote about in the thesis like, the big, the big, the two big things really are cost and exposure. It takes a lot of costs, takes a lot of money to be seen, you know, at these perfect game events, at showcases, to get in front of scouts. It takes a lot of money. And if you don’t pay that money, that means you’re not getting seen by these coaches. You’re not getting seen by the scouts. And so if you’re not getting seen by the scouts, you’re not making it to the next level. And so MLB can make sure that the cost has gone for these best players. But that ignores a large swath of the kids. And so what these Grassroots sports organizations can do, they sort of supplement that by being like, alright, well, we’re gonna make sure that our kids are taken care of. That we’re gonna get 10 to 20 kids each year. And you know, say you have, so I talked to Nelson Cooper, who is the Executive Director of Pittsburgh Hardball Academy. They started in 2020. And they’re basically, their own travel organization that serves under- underserved and black communities in Pittsburgh. It makes sure that they’ve got 14 new, 60 new, and 80 new teams. And they make sure these kids get to the next level. And if you have a bunch of organizations like that, just sprinkled around the country. That’s already filling in the gaps that, that Major Leauge Baseball can reach that, that they haven’t reached yet. And so it’s about making sure that these kids get seen and those grassroots boards across the country are doing that. They’re making sure that these kids have the fundamental skills that they’re getting to the Showcase tournaments, that, that is how you sort of fill in the gaps of what of what MLB can’t do.
BOBBY: So you brought up Perfect Game, which you could do your own whole thesis on Perfect Game itself. And Alex and I have talked about it, you know, a decent amount on the show. And we’ve talked about accessibility and baseball and that idea, that concept of exposure that you’re talking about. And I think we’ve, we’ve mostly framed it in, in the idea that Perfect Game is there to basically just like rent seek at each level of baseball. Like to, to look for a way to just bring more money out of families and kids who are trying to cash in on a dream, trying to make it to Major League Baseball. They’re, they are there, and they’ve effectively like made a company that is able to turn that profitable. Now, I don’t think that if, if Major League Baseball wanted to get rid of perfect game tomorrow, they could do it. But I, I do think that the pipelines to MLB are, like Perfect Game, being part of the pipeline to MLB has been completely normalized by Major League Baseball and the draft process. And I wonder like, how much did you try to approach that in answering this question as it being like, like a legitimate hurdle to come to, to overcome for a lot of these players? And how much of the blame should we be laying on the feet of places like Perfect Game, and even if you want to go further back, like, certain Little Leagues like being inaccessible–
MATT: Right.
BOBBY: –to most players. Or even like, little leagues folding in cities, because of the lack of funding, and, and then the subsequent lack of participation, because of that lack of funding, because people can’t just afford to, to take the money out of their own pockets?
MATT: Well, you know, as everybody, everybody in the sport of baseball should know, by now, that perfect game will ring you for all the money that you, that you, that you have, if you’re wanting to get to the next level. And–
BOBBY: Joe Biden, cancel Perfect Game debt.
MATT: Oh, gosh. If, if, if he, if he had canceled Perfect Game debt 30 years ago, we might, we might, I know that’s not when Perfect Game started. But you know, you know what I mean. But it’s —
BOBBY: Yes.
MATT: –just that, that organization is just so entrenched. Because, you know, when you see that these high school kids are getting drafted, there’s getting the Perfect Game rankings. They’re getting like all these kids, these kids are the best, because we’ve seen them at Perfect Game. And we’ve decided this Perfect Game scouts have made this kid a top three draft prospects. And so you’re like, well, do I, do I have to be there in order to be a first rounder? Do I second rounder or a third rounder? And kids are spending, families are spending like $3,500 to be on a team that even goes to Perfect Game like once or twice a year. And then that doesn’t even count lodging, you know, people taking off of work. And so if you’re pricing people out at the high school level already like that, just to be seen, you know, imagine how much money that it takes to even have the skills to be on one of those highest case showcase teams. You have to go to trainings when you’re in middle school now. When you’re 11 or 12, you have to go get fielding practice, hitting practice. There, they’re specializing pitchers at this age already. And so if you don’t have that money, if you’re, if you’re if you can’t afford to send your kid to go get, to go be great at 11 years old already, then you’re already out of the game. And that takes a huge swath of the percentage of people that could play the game. Which then invariably includes African American people. African American people are not a monolith in this country. And I’m, by no means saying that every African American player that could play baseball is poor and, you know, unable to afford the sport of the game. But you know, you’re going to lose a large percentage of people that, that just can’t afford to be, be seen by Perfect Game. To be seen by Baseball America. To get to those Under Armour All-America Games. But MLB baseball is looking for those best players, you know. Their, it’s, it’s sort of thing that feeds into itself. MLB, they want to be able to have these best players come in. They want to make sure that they’re seen. And what were they–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –get seen? Perfect Game. Well, if they get rid of Perfect Game, then scouts have to work harder. Teams have to spend more capital to find these kids. It’s gonna take a lot more money for them to do that. You know, there’s a reason that there’s a bunch of Dominican Republic academies for teams. And then there’s not a bunch of, you know, Baltimore’s specific academies breathing high school, high schools, black high school players in order to be seen. It’s, it’s just, it’s just more expensive to do that.
BOBBY: Yeah. Yeah. That, it reminds me of that conversation, Alex, that we had with Ryan O’Hanlon, when we talked about the difference between developing a soccer player in Europe and developing a baseball player in the United States. It’s, it’s not honestly that different from how they develop kids at the Dominican Summer Leagues. And that. it’s just a team specific, and they pay for everything to do with their training. They pay for their housing, they pay for everything. And just like within the United States of America, that concept is so foreign because of the privatization of every single thing that we deem worthwhile in this country. And baseball being one of those things. It’s just like the continued privatization of now the process of becoming a good baseball player, even though it’s supposedly our, our national pastime, and basically funded by public money.
MATT: You can even just look, compare the DR to here, you know, when a kid signs one of those DR academies, they’re there.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: They’re like, like, until they get signed again. So they enter like the 16-year old International Amateur draft, like, you’re like, Oh, this is this kid is going to be probably in our, in our organization. But say you have, say their pain to develop a bunch of kids in high school somewhere, someone, somewhere in the urban center in the country, you know, the amateur draft, there’s not, there’s not a chance, there’s not like a great chance that they end up on your team.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: So imagine you put in–
BOBBY: Develop, you develop Bryce Harper–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –and he ends up on the Mets.
MATT: Yeah. And you’re just like, and you’re just like, well, well, what did I, why would I do that? If, if there’s a chance that they’re that I’m not going to be able to control them with for the next, for next 10 years, right?
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: And so it’s all about what you can get out of it to a certain point, and like, where, where’s the opportunity cost that in order to pay for this?
ALEX: Well, and you know, I think as we talk about this, I think how easy it would be for all the teams to get together and pool a little bit of their money and say we’re just going to subsidize Perfect Game for X number of years, right? Like we’re, we’re going to effectively nationalized Perfect Game within–
BOBBY: Let’s go!
ALEX: –you know, the sphere of, of Major League Baseball. I mean–
BOBBY: Wave the red flag, Perfect Game.
ALEX: Far be it for me to ask baseball teams to spend more money on it–
MATT: Oh, God–
ALEX: –right? I know- like, I don’t even want to go down that rabbit hole. But like, but like it does feel like there are some solutions here that are right in front of them. Not even necessarily solutions. But like, because like ultimately, they’re their band aids, they’re, you know, fixing Perfect Game does not fix the dearth of black players in baseball, right? But if, like you’re saying, if you can kind of chip away and start to bring down these barriers, one by one, eventually you start to get some sort of wave, right? But there has to be actual commitment to that rather than just sort of throwing out a few programs in various areas and hoping that the kids come and find you. Because, I mean, they may not even know that they exist, right?
MATT: Right. And like the thing you mentioned about chipping away. Like, black baseball, in Major League Baseball, peaked in 1981. You had 18.7% of the league was black players. You’re never, I don’t think we’re gonna reset again. Even in like my most optimistic sense is like, this season, we started at 7.2% of the league. And now, you know, according to I think Clinton- Clinton Gates wrote an article that’s like, we’re back to eight like now, like at the All-Star break. And you know, it’s, we’re never gonna get to 18% again. We might, you might get to, like 10 would be great. 10% of the league would be super cool. Like that, like that would be great simply because it’s about being able to see, to feel like sec- accepted in the game of baseball. And you know, you, if you look around a baseball field, you look around a Major League Baseball field and you only see two to three black players on a roster. But like black African American players on a roster, you know, you, you don’t feel as welcome in the game. And then that just extends down because you’re like, well what- am I going to be able to even make it up there? Am I going to, what’s it going to look like at the college level? What’s it going to look like, as the high school. The D3 landscapes, I’ll tell you was just the widest the widest level of baseball I’ve seen ever, you know.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: Those these little small academic colleges up in, up in the mid Atlantic, they were, we, we could do, me, me and my buddy James, who was, who was a year below me, we could count on, like, count on two hands, the amount of kids, the amount of black kids in our conference that played baseball. And so, you know, it’s, it’s all about, like, being comfortable in the game. Which, you know, MLB has, like, tried to do that, tried to make, in the past couple years, tried to like have like a real concerted effort. But, you know, that doesn’t happen until the percentage raises and not so much, not so much just idols, you know. But we love, we love like a star, we love a favorite player. But, you know, it takes, it takes like, just like chipping away and be like, Oh, it’s not just like, it’s not just two black players on a roster, it’s four. It’s not, it’s not just one black pitcher, it’s now three. And so you’re like, oh, like, you know, it’s starting to become a little more normalized. I’m starting to feel a little, I start to relate to like a couple more players on this [1:06:36].
ALEX: Well, it’s I mean, it’s interesting, you know, you talk about kind of culture and acceptance within the game. We’re, I mean, we’re recording this a couple days after on national television, during the Little League World Series. There’s a young black boy on a team full of white players who are putting cotton in his hair, right and Little League World Series came out and gave kind of a mealy mouthed statement about how no one was hurt by this, right the all the families were, were all good and everything. But that felt like such a microcosm of kind of where the game stands today? Where it can put forth all the initiatives that it wants. But unless the culture is within the game is changing simultaneously, you’re not going to get very far with it, right? When you have, when you have guys at the major league level, who are publicly spurning Black Lives Matter, or, or whatever it is.
MATT: Yeah.
ALEX: I don’t know. It feels like you’re, you’re self-imposing limits, right?
MATT: And, and yeah, like that, like, and that, and that’s like, like I said, that’s all about the comfort, like, you’re gonna look and you’re like, well, you know, if you go in a locker room, and you see 39 guys that don’t agree with, they don’t, they don’t relate to your experience. They don’t like some of them don’t agree with some of the things that you believe, it’s going to be isolating. And you know, baseball, baseball has all the old we, we can talk about it, the culture, the, the unwritten rules, yada, yada, that don’t, that don’t bat flip, that don’t wear the big chains. If you bat flip, I’m going to hit you. And so, you know, when you get down to other sports, the, the two most popular sports for black people in the country, basketball and football, they don’t, they don’t punish you for basically living the black experience on the field. They don’t punish you for, for having swag or for having fun for, for, you know, being yourself. And so, unless MLB baseball is, is ready to do away with everything that the sport has sort of been hinged on in the past 70 years, you know, it’s hard to see, it’s hard to see like a like a, like a round where it’s always going to be super accepting. You’re gonna have people that, you’re gonna have people in, in baseball, that are working hard to try and fix the culture. But you know, not there’s a reason culture is like, persist for hundreds, hundreds of years. Because that’s just, it’s entrenched. It’s, it’s taught, it’s, it’s learned that like, you know, this is the way you play the game. This is the way you react to people who look different than you or act different from than you. And so, you know, it’s, it’s hard to say that you can turn the tide of baseball by, you know, by playing a couple, a couple of advertisements with, with rap songs over them. And then, and then that’ll, that’ll, that’ll fix all the issues. Like it’s just–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –it just won’t, it just like, like they can, they can try and appeal but, you know, baseball still got that, that cultural touchstone that recently has just been, not recently but you know, feels unwelcoming to the average black person.
BOBBY: So somebody that you said that baseball doesn’t care about the development of players until they get to the point where they can pay off for individual teams. Like. you know, the 30 Major League Clubs don’t care about the development of players, something that you said about that really sucks sticks with me because there’s such a symbiotic relationship between playing baseball and becoming a fan of baseball. Like, if you played baseball, when you were a kid, you are, I don’t know how many times more likely to be a fan of baseball when you’re an adult. And, you know, it confounds us often on this podcast and elsewhere, how little baseball seems to care about developing lifelong fans of its products and what that actually means for the future of the sport. And I banned to the topic of, of, you know, fear mongering about the future of the sport on the podcast. But I feel like it fits nicely into this conversation, Matt, because, you know, it strikes me that MLB doesn’t really care about someone who plays D3 Baseball. Like they don’t really care necessarily, like, you’re never on their radar. Like, if you only play baseball ops in middle school, that’s okay. If you only play baseball up to high school, that’s okay. You can still love the game forever, and it can still have given you something. But MLB doesn’t seem to really be invested in that experience. And I wonder like it, maybe in your research, but really, honestly, and just to your opinion, too. Like, how do we get over the hump to where MLB starts to care about developing interest in the game, regardless of whether those people actually end up in a major league uniform?
MATT: I mean, basebball is such a point, MLB is has such like a point of entry thing, it’s like you, they really care about you if baseball was passed down from you, from your granddad or from your dad. Like, and, and the biggest example is the Field of Dreams games still being a thing. Like the Field of Dreams game is the most boring concept in the entire world to me. Because it appeals to a bunch of people who are living in the 1980s, who were old enough to care about the movie, and then had to then have progeny that they’ve passed down the interest and a Kevin Costner vehicle. Like, and, and, and it’s just, it’s just like, who is this for?
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: Who, like, who like, what type of stuff is this for? And so like you have to have had, you’d have to be educated in the baseball lore, for baseball, to care about you. To care about, to care about your interest, to fold you in. To make sure that they’re going to cater to you and they want, they want you to come to the ballpark spend money, blah, blah, blah. And so unless you’re like that, or you know, you’re going to be a future player, or you’re going to be in the professional leagues, then, then I guess your shit out of luck. Because like it’s–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –like, I don’t, I don’t understand who they’re marketing for half the time. And I don’t, I don’t understand why, why we send the same four teams over to London every year? Like I, like I, like I don’t, I don’t need to–
BOBBY: You got to think about the lads, man. Come on! What about lads?
MATT: The lads? Okay. I love, I love, I love trying to grow the game. I love trying to make–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –a global thing. But like, doesn’t always need to be like, nobody cares about the Cubs. Like, and so, as someone who lives in Chicago people care about the Cubs. But like nobody really outside of Chicago really cares about the Cubs.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: And that’s, that’s me being like relatively anti-Cub, but I love, I love the ballpark bounce, fun ballpark. But like, it’s all about who you’re trying to bring in the game and whether or not you care about that generation or that like slice of culture, being a part of the game.
BOBBY: I remember when they first announced the, the Field of Dreams game, and they’re talking about [1:13:37] two, or maybe it was after the first one that happened. And CC was like, yeah, this is cool. Like it looked cool on TV or whatever. But why can’t the next one be at Hinchcliffe Stadium in Paterson, where the black, where the New York black Yankees used to play? And I was like, that had never even occurred to me as a possibility that MLB would want to do that or could do that. But that would be so easy to pull off for them to like renovate these old Negro League Stadiums or like erect new stadiums in cities that used to have Negro Leagues teams. And it’s just like, it feels like an easy slam dunk. Like why does it take a decade for an idea like that to gestate? Is, is a major cultural problem and facing Major League Baseball right now.
MATT: And you have to remember they, they only just recently started really caring about the Negro Leagues again.
BOBBY: Yep, I can tell you it took 100 years, my guy.
MATT: It took 100 years and a lot of work from the Negro Leagues Baseball museum for, for–
ALEX: Yeah.
MATT: –Major League Baseball to be like, Okay, you guys, you guys–
BOBBY: Fine!
MATT: –were there.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: You guys, like you can’t write the story of baseball in America without the Negro Leagues. And it took them so long to even, even really, even really say that. And so it’s all about like, who you want, if they don’t think the majority of baseball fans will care about it, then they’re not going to do it. Like remember the Puerto, Puerto Rican game where they had–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –then the Cleveland baseball team as I like to refer to them, ’cause that’s how I like guardians. But Cleveland baseball team is much cooler to me, but I forgot who they played. But you know, they were in Puerto Rico and that game was electric!
BOBBY: Lindor homer was the loudest I’ve never seen a stadium.
ALEX: Yeah.
MATT: It’s he, he could, he could have ran for president that day. And, and I, and I don’t understand why baseball is like, alright, that’s it, let’s go, let’s go put people in a bunch of really old, relatively ugly uniforms, haven’t walked out, walk slowly at a corner and be like, alright, this is what this is what the baseball fan needs. Because that’s, it’s what they think that their demographic is.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: And ends from the culture that they’ve cultivated, and the fans that they’ve catered to for decades. And it all stems from, you know, it doesn’t all stem but it’s, you know, it’s a draining of black participation from, ’cause if you don’t, you don’t have to cater to a community that only has 6%, 7% of players in the league. Like that’s just not a representative sample. You can, you can cater to more Hispanic, like Hispanic and Latin American teams, or Latin American sensibilities. Because there’s more, there’s just gonna be more fans. Like they’re going they’re like, alright, well, we can do this, we can do, there’s a reason to do this there. A lot of players would care about this. And so it’s all about who, who is going to receive the most attention, which then gets back to, who’s being let into the game at the earliest? And then stays in the game, because–
BOBBY: The longest.
MATT: Yes, yeah.
ALEX: Well, the thing is, like, they’re not wrong about their demographics, right? Like, I think the though the, you have to hand it to Major League Baseball that like, they know that the average baseball fan is like, a white, probably man in his, like 50s or 60s, right? And like–
MATT: Right.
ALEX: –that’s the one data point that stuck in their heads. And they’ve just like, pushed it into overdrive, rather than saying, hey, maybe the country is a different one than it was 50 or 100 years ago, or whatever. And maybe we’re actually doing ourselves a disservice. Like, even from a business standpoint, right? You’re doing yourself a disservice by not trying to make your sport at least a little bit more representative of what the country looks like, today. Like it’s there, they’re losing out as well. And I think they don’t necessarily know that yet.
BOBBY: I think they’re just so fat and happy that they don’t care. Like, you know, it strikes me as like, very similar to how Hollywood 10 years ago decided that they needed to start making. Like big budget movies for black audiences, so to speak, as if black filmmakers were out making great movies this whole time. They just didn’t have big studios behind them. And now all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, we need to make sure that we’re marketing towards everybody, or we’re being more inclusive. And there’s been a lot of backlash and how white Hollywood has been. And it’s like, baseball seems perfectly content to winnow down their, like demographic until it’s basically non existent. To me, that’s what seems like it’s happening. It just, it has to get to like emergency level for them to ever actually change their approach to anything.
MATT: And it’s really weird, just because like, even with like the drain of black talent, and then, they don’t understand it’s not like they don’t understand what’s being lost. But they tout, they tout, you know, the history books, and black players fill the history books. But then you see, if none of the numbers are dwindling, there’s not going to be that legacy of future black stars to again, fill those history books. And so you’re like, then what, then what is it? Like every time I see Hank Aaron or Willie Mays tried out on an MLB on MLB like real, then like, alright, so are you guys, do you guys care that the legacy of, of Hank Aaron is dwindling as we speak? Every time you see Jackie Robinson’s any of his words just strewn out every, every April 15. Like, you guys don’t see that? You you’ve let the legacy just disappear under your watch. And that nothing, nothing is, nothing’s really be done to really reverse the course. A lot is being done to make sure that excellence and anomalies peek through. Which you know, it’s sort of in the nature of baseball, like the best players breakthrough, whatever.
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: Everybody knows that, everyone knows how hard it is to get to the major leagues. But that not much is being done to make sure that more of those cases can occur. And so it’s just, it’s just bizarre to me that MLB has found themselves in the midst of you know, the post 2020 world. The post, post racial reckoning across, across the United States. Where Things are still getting worse for the league draft demographic wise. And it doesn’t seem like things are working on a wide scale. Which I don’t know, again, I don’t know if it’s, it’s not apathy. Which is the, which is the weird part, it’s just said then they can’t do what they claimed to want to be doing. And they’re, they’re tricking people into thinking that the top 1% of talent is representation. Where it’s not, it’s not like it’s just like, they’re not they’re exemptions to the trend. And those exemptions are being touted as progress, where I don’t know if people recognize that per se.
ALEX: Well, but, but Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. So like, that’s, that’s it.
MATT: Well, what about Larry Doby?
ALEX: It’s not, that serves, our works, our work is done.
BOBBY: It really does have that vibe.
MATT: It, it, ohh!
BOBBY: It really does have that vibe. Matt, last question for you. What, what surprised you most while doing this project? Like, what did you, I know you obviously went into it with a lot of feelings, with a lot of suspicions and everything. And then you of course, as you laid out, like, tried to come up with real solutions that MLB could take, whether that is from a top down perspective, or from a Grassroots perspective, what they could support, or what could happen, regardless of what MLB does. But what, what either made you, I guess, more optimistic or less optimistic, or what, what really caught you off guard the most?
MATT: I think I’m, I think I’m most optimistic about the work that’s being done at the Grassroot level. Simply because, you know, so it’s a thesis, but it’s more of like, a big ass feature story. Why? Like, it, it–
BOBBY: It will.
MATT: –it’s yeah, no, I was, I was like, oh, yeah, I’m gonna dismantle all these. I was like, wait, no, I at, at some point, it’s me listening to the stories of people who are doing the work. And so you know, there’s, there’s a lot of organizations or a lot of people in organizations I talked to. But the, this is a people like really care about reversing the course, and really care about filling the gaps. Like I talked to, I talked to the, the guys that minority baseball prospects. And I don’t know if you guys are, are like hip to that, but they, they’re based, they’re basically- they’re basically like the black Perfect Game. Like, like, that’s really what they are, they take, they try to make recruiting possible for every minority baseball prospect that is in America. Any kid posts a video, they retweeted. They’ve got, they’re trying to get kids to HBCUs, they’re try to get them in front of college coaches at a wide range. And they’re doing it at a great scale right now. But there’s, they’re obviously not going to be the only ones. And like, they’re, they’re an extended exemplary option right now. But there are groups that are like them, or groups that are smaller than them still doing the work. And I that’s what’s encouraging is that there’s like a wide, there’s a wide swath of people trying to reverse the course on their own. And that is what’s very encouraging to me. That you can see that there’s work being done and that people that black, black people are lifting as they climb through the sport of baseball. And trying to, trying to bring people up into the sport to get to that next level. And wherever level that they want to reach.
ALEX: Yeah, definitely. Matt, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure to have you on to talk about this.
BOBBY: A much more legitimate way of conversing about this than we’ve ever done in the past.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uhm, for, for listeners who are interested in this, learning more about these Grassroots efforts that you’re talking about the, the kind of initiatives that are taking place across the country, are there places that they can read about this? Find out more about it? Is your thesis like, is it gonna drop soon? Like, what’s the deal?
BOBBY: With that PDF, baby!
MATT: Is, I’m, I’m trying to pitch the thesis out. So–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –that’s, that’s TBD. But you know, if it doesn’t–
BOBBY: Well, if any, if any magazine list editors are listening, if anybody would like to, to contact Matt about this, where they make sure you let them know where they can find you and contact you to.
MATT: Yeah, so if anybody ever wants to talk about the thesis, and if they ever want to read it, just you can always find me on Twitter. My @ name is mkrwrt, it’s pretty simple. It’s just my initials and some, some other letters. But I’m always, I’m always happy to talk about the thesis and like, share more of the people who are working on this were like, I wish there was like a database–
BOBBY: Yeah.
MATT: –of like, organizations that are doing this. But you know, maybe maybe that’s the next project. But no, but yeah, you can, I can always be found on Twitter. That’s, if, if you’re gonna find me anywhere it’s on Twitter at yerba matt is, is the name. You know, people refer to me that in real life?
BOBBY: Sometimes–
ALEX: Actually.
BOBBY: –sometimes I have a hard time finding your Twitter because I go to search your actual name and then forget that you’re on there as yerba matt.
MATT: Yeah.
ALEX: No. I, I never forget because that’s one of the best names on Twitter, just, just a thumbs down.
MATT: It’s–
BOBBY: So good.
MATT: –a friend, a friend said it to me and was like, I’m gonna take, I’m gonna use that now, thank you. And then, I think, I think it’s been like, it’s been like a year and a half now just yerba matt. I met like people at the Orioles game a couple weeks ago. And like, it was like, they were like writers, and they were like, oh, yerba, and I was like, no way! I was like, I was like, oh no, shots. Oh like this can’t be real. I’m trying to be a legitimate journalist in the future and they’re just like ah, yerba and I like ohhh. Just shoot myself in the foot every, everywhere I go.
BOBBY: There’s nothing legitimate about Twitter so you’re fine to to put your username whatever you want to be, man.
MATT: Really tough when it’s on my resume is yerba matt.
BOBBY: We’ve talked for 45 minutes and haven’t even talked about the Orioles. So we’ll have to have you back at some point for your, your victory lap about the Orioles actually being good despite their GM not wanting them to be good.
MATT: Oh, ohh. I, I won’t, I won’t take a victory lap until I see Gunnar Henderson on, on my- if, if you know the worst thing is when they’re gonna bring up Brett Phillips. And Brett Phillips again and Gunnar Henderson still gonna be in Triple-A that’ll turn me [1:26:33]. I’ll, I’ll start rooting for the Nat. I’ll jump ship like I should have done in 2005.
ALEX: Well, bit of a tough ship to jump to, right now.
BOBBY: Won the camp that Luke Voit jersey.
MATT: Oh, please.
BOBBY: Matt Ritchie, thank you so much, man.
MATT: Thanks again guys. Appreciate you.
[1:26:54]
[Music Transition]
BOBBY: Okay, Alex, thank you to Matt Ritchie. Thank you to Arte Moreno, Julio Rodriguez, Bob Castellini.
ALEX: Bob Castellini, uh-huh.
BOBBY: Phil Castellini. Thank you to the five members of our Alex Rodriguez. Thank you to Alex Rodriguez. Thank you, the five members of our Alex Rodriguez VIP Club tier, who, with your help, we’re going to be able to get Alex Bazeley into the Alex Rodriguez, A-Rod Corp leadership seminar that we’re not sure if it exists. Those five members this week are Shawn, Kristina, Nick, Bradley, and Alexander. Anything else to leave the people with?
ALEX: Yeah, this is just a quick tangent. It’s kind of something that’s been bothering me over the last week or so. So the Little League World Series, obviously is in full swing right now. And our honorable former President George W. Bush was on the broadcast. With, with seated next to Rob Manfred. Sure, and which like, yeah, fucking sure. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. But I saw a lot of people getting silly jokes off, right? About like, oh, you know, here’s, here’s a noted war criminal and George Bush, right?
BOBBY: Yep.
ALEX: Lots of like, lots of like jokes about the expense. And it just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Because George Bush didn’t put in all of that work, to be one of the foremost war criminals of our time.
BOBBY: Right.
ALEX: To get glibly lumped in with a guy like Rob Manfred, who still has a lot of work to do. And look, he might be well on his way, but like, put some respect on George’s name. That’s all I’m saying.
BOBBY: You sounds like, you sounded like Mike francesa right now. Being like, oh, you’re just gonna compare Glaber to Derek Jeter?
ALEX: Right.
BOBBY: For what? You did it for one year!
ALEX: George Bush did not wake up.
BOBBY: That was kind of [1:29:05]
ALEX: Yeah, I know, I kind of was.
BOBBY: How did that happened?
ALEX: Like, I got to work on it. I don’t know, that’s all I’m saying. I just like Manfred’s like a prospect. Oh, no!
BOBBY: Yeah.
ALEX: Like, it’s like when Pete When like the prospect comes up. And it’s like, he’s the, the next Mickey Mantle. And it’s like, okay, well, no, not really, Mickey Mantle is, is Mickey Mantle.
BOBBY: Do you think if you gave Rob Manfred Truth serum, and we really need to end the podcast right now. But do you think if you gave Rob Manfred Truth serum and said, do you want to be president? He would say yes or no?
ALEX: I don’t think he wants to be president, no. I think especially after this, his tenure as the commissioner of baseball, I think he’d be much happier to be the man pulling the strings [1:29:46]
BOBBY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Chief of Staff, Secretary of State.
ALEX: Right, exactly.
BOBBY: It would be a terrible Secretary of State, actually.
ALEX: The attorney of labor.
BOBBY: Remember, Rex Tillerson?
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, man. It’s Chevron God right there.
BOBBY: He’s gonna be a baseball winner before we [1:30:00]
ALEX: God, don’t put that idea out into the world
BOBBY: Why? We already have oil magnates owning baseball teams. It’s nor–
ALEX: Yeah.
BOBBY: –like he’s at, he’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. Maybe he’ll buy the Angels.
ALEX: Would that be better or worse than Arte, you think?
BOBBY: I think it’s a wash. Thank you for listening to another ridiculous episode of Tipping Pitches. We’ll be back next week.
[1:30:23]
[Music]
[1:30:34]
[Outro]
ALEX RODRIGUEZ: Hello everybody, I’m Alex Rodriguez, Tipping Pitches, Tipping Pitches. This is the one that I love the most, Tipping Pitches. So we’ll see you next week. See ya!
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil
Tipping Pitches 
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